Journalist – Historian – Speaker
For the 100th day of school at my daughter’s pre-school, students were supposed to come as their favorite superhero or princess. My daughter is the batgirl on the left. My daughter’s teacher is the superwoman on the right. My whole theory on parenting against the grain is to try and create space for my children, …
Today, a set of tweets from the producer of The Bachelor, Bachelorette, and other programs contributing to the inanity of American culture and transmission of limiting gender norms has gone at least semi-viral. According to this author at Huffington Post, he’s a hero for standing up to an annoying airline passenger. And she does sound …
My 9yr old complained to @LEGO_Group re mag she was sent,reply was useless. Re-registered as ‘John’.Big difference. pic.twitter.com/Tbdo1X39zc — Jacky Wafflewaitress (@Wafflewaitress) November 22, 2013 I think about toys and gender a lot because of the ways that early experiences shape our brains. My daughter gets invited to a lot of parties – because almost …
Earlier in the week, the Australian writer Catherine Deveney published a piece on motherhood and discourse in The Guardian. It mirrors some of my own arguments about the ways that our emphasis on motherhood is bad for women and men, albeit in different ways. She opens by talking about the line, “Motherhood is the most …
For people who follow sports, lately there’s been a wave of conversation about locker-room bullying and what it means. A player for the Miami Dolphins, Jonathan Martin, outed another player, Richie Incognito, as a bully. Threatening and insulting (racial slurs) voicemails were uncovered. In the initial wave, many critiqued Martin, the person bullied, for defying …
I didn’t set out for this to be Disney-week on thismess.net, but here we are. Sunday I discussed an art project to critique Disney via applying the princess lens to our heroines (and the ways that people read that art project so differently). Tuesday turned to the “History Princesses” and a critique of the Daily …
Last week the Daily Mail, not my favorite U.K. paper, published a piece called “The History Girls.” Let me say up front that I respect the work of the scholars in question and I understand why they cooperated with the newspaper and its photographers (and hair/makeup artists). But here’s how I see the resulting piece …
Over the past few days, quite a number of my friends have shared this now well-traveled link. In it, the artist renders a number of true heroines – Hillary Clinton, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Malala, Anne Frank, and others – as if they were Disney princesses. The diverging responses have been remarkable and I have tried …
Next week, I am speaking at Northwestern workshop on work/life integration in higher education. I do think there are specific challenges and insights that I can talk about as a male academic, and I’m looking forward to exploring them with faculty, staff, and admin at one of America’s great universities. I’ll have more to say …
Matt Walsh is a conservative blogger and radio host. He has a strong readership. I’ve talked about him before. He wrote a letter to his son in the wake of the Miley Cyrus-Robin Thicke VMA show, which assumed his son would be heterosexual, find one woman, marry her, and worship her forever. I wrote: Victorian …