Speak Out Against Slapstick Misogyny: A Stern Ethics Rant/Sermon for Hillary...
Screen capture from the “Slap Hillary” game, showing a cartoon hand slapping Hillary Clinton’s face by Jessica Mason McFadden I’m going to take a moment to deliberately not be nice, for the first time...
View ArticlePope Francis Dodges Binarism and Raises Questions for All
by Jessica Mason McFadden Let’s talk Pope for a few minutes. The figurehead’s been in the news lately, and has, I guess you could say, a fairly big circle of influence. Clearly, it’s time that we, as...
View ArticlePersonal-Political Review of New Femininities: Postfeminism, Neoliberalism...
by Jessica Mason McFadden A month ago, I eagerly asked Gender Focus editor, Jarrah Hodge, to review New Femininities: Postfeminism, Neoliberalism, and Subjectivity. And pumped I was when I received...
View ArticleNational Day In the Closet (a.k.a.: How to Be a Good Neighbor)
I am writing this because of nightmares. Have you ever been lying in bed, about to fall asleep, and you – while still half awake – begin having a nightmare, and you know you’re having one, but you...
View ArticleWe Are Robin Williams: Becoming Helpful in Helpless Times
The tragic death of actor and comedian Robin Williams has many of us talking about things that legitimately need attention and discussion. To me, what seems most glaringly obvious in these...
View ArticleFree-Diving Off the Banks of Normal: A Review of Debbie Taylor’s Herring Girl
Debbie Taylor’s release of Herring Girl takes us where we’re not yet comfortable but dying to go: beyond normal. The novel interweaves lives, past and present, in a saga that will make you scoff at the...
View ArticleReview: The Queer Cultural Work of Lily Tomlin and Jane Wagner
Jennifer Reed’s The Queer Cultural Work of Lily Tomlin and Jane Wagner, released by Palgrave Macmillan in December 2013, will be of interest to an array of readers, particularly to Tomlin fans and...
View ArticleGetting Real about Cultural Illusions: Review of Roxane Gay’s Bad Feminist
A title like “Bad Feminist” is about as rhetorically effective as it gets: it’s divisive, it’s evocative, it’s thought provoking, it’s maddening, and it’s badass. The simple act of placing a moralistic...
View ArticleGod Beyond Gender: On Peter Wilkes’ A Woman Called God
I wrestle intellectually from time to time with the issue of god and gender. Maybe you do, too. Over time, I’ve grown skeptical about the importance of gender to divinity, as gender seems like a human...
View ArticleAngela Lansbury’s School of Feminist Witchcraft
*Substitutiary locomotion (definition): the craft of using the substitutive power of language for feminist purposes. Long before I had ever heard the word “feminist,” I knew about witches. What I knew...
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