You Don’t Have to Give It All Away

Colbie Caillat

Colbie Caillat

Some guys think girls flaunt skin to gain power and superiority over men.

But most do it because “hotness” so often measures a woman’s worth. And a girl likes to feel good about herself.

So plenty of young women feel pressed to put on the act, even if it feels awkward and overexposed.

I’ve created a string of thoughts that come from my women students, Colbie Caillat’s “Try” and Ashley Judd’s response to chiding over her “puffy” face:

* * *

An old boyfriend told me that I wasn’t as attractive as other girls. I asked him why he didn’t think so. He said,

I don’t know. You’re always all covered up. Maybe you’d look more attractive in a cocktail dress. You don’t open your clothes and let men in.

Read the rest of this entry

Men, Women & Domination Fantasies

50 Shades of Grey

50 Shades of Grey

How similar are men and women’s sex fantasies when it comes to sexual domination?

I’ve already looked at gendered similarities and differences in romantic fantasies, sex with strangers and multiple partners. But what about fantasy when it comes to dominance and submission?

I used University of Montréal research, which had looked at how common different sorts of fantasies were, to make a sex comparison. Read the rest of this entry

Jesus Was a Feminist 

Jesus, a feminist

Jesus, a feminist

Looking at mainstream Christianity today, few would guess that Jesus was a feminist.

Jesus’ life story is found in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. And there is no sexism in any of them.

Instead, Jesus recognized the worth and dignity of everyone, regardless of gender, ethnicity or class (feminism is concerned with all of these). Read the rest of this entry

Girls Can Be Tomboys, Boys Can’t Be Sissies

No sissies. Just tough guise.

No sissies. Just tough guise.

Every quarter I ask my women students if any of them had been tomboys when they were little. Many hands enthusiastically shoot into the air. The women often have fond memories of their time climbing trees and digging in the dirt.

Then I ask the men students if any of them had been sissies. The class bursts out laughing. One hand might sheepishly creep up.

One man claimed the question was unfair since the word “sissy” is stigmatized but “tomboy” is not.

Actually, there isn’t a non-stigmatizing word for a boy who acts like a girl. And there’s a reason for that.  Read the rest of this entry

Should Women Give Men The Porn Star Experience?

The porn star experience?

The porn star experience?

A lot of guys have come to expect P.S.E. [the “Porn-Star Experience”] … and plenty of women are more than happy to oblige. A few might enjoy it, but for most it’s harrowing. I think there’s a fear that if they can’t make it happen, their boyfriend will retreat online.

Read the rest of this entry

What Abusers and “Pro-Family” Conservatives Have in Common

"The pill"

“The pill”

Birth control sabotage is a common form of partner abuse. In a report released by the National Domestic Violence Hotline, 25 percent of women callers to the hot line, who voluntarily answered questions about birth control and pressure to get pregnant in their relationships, reported some form of reproductive coercion.

The callers said their partners hid birth control pills or flushed them down the toilet. Some refused to wear condoms or poked holes in them. One woman’s partner became furious when she got her period. Read the rest of this entry

Who Wants To Be A Piece Of Tail?

A piece of that?

Want a piece of that?

• Piece of tail

• Piece of ass

• Piece of “that”

That’s how a sexually attractive woman might be described.

Well, “attractive woman” is an overstatement. Attractive body part, maybe.

The whole woman isn’t wanted. Just a piece of her.  Read the rest of this entry

Sexy Women Only Want Attention of Sexy Men

Blake Lively walking down the street. (She's an actress, she probably wants everyone to notice her.)

Blake Lively walking down the street. (She’s an actress, she probably wants everyone to notice her.)

Sexy women don’t want attention from me. They only care about attractive men.

Guys sometimes complain about that on my blog.

To the extent that this may be true, the sexy woman and the unsexy man are actually just two sides of the same coin.

She may only care about sexy men.

But he probably only cares about sexy women. Read the rest of this entry

My Mom v. Stanford

gavel2_8833By Blair Crangle-Hall

My mother, Colleen Crangle, was the first woman to take a sex discrimination case to trial against Stanford University.

In 1995, after receiving a Ph.D. at Stanford in Logic and The Philosophy of Science and Language she joined the university’s academic staff and was soon recruited to a bioinformatics research group. The American Medical Informatics Association presented her with a prestigious award, and an article in The Biochemist recognized that she had quickly established a reputation for excellence.

Sounds picture perfect. But it was not.  Read the rest of this entry

Relationship Terms That Dehumanize Women

By  @ The Good Men Project

Like most American boys, I grew up knowing dozens of terms that objectify women’s bodies and diminish women by reducing them to just a single part. It wasn’t until my 20s that someone taught me, and I started to understand, just how dehumanizing and common all this was. Jean Kilbourne’s Killing Us Softly videos have been particularly eye-opening.

Meanwhile, we do a very good job of dismissing relationships as unimportant in American culture, even though most guys value them very much. These expressions below need to go the way of the dodo. And yes, some of these could be applied directly to men by women or have easy parallels. Those expressions need to go away too. Read the rest of this entry