‘Outrageous!’ That was the word used way back in ’85 in response to the expectation that men take a contraceptive that had a side-effect of reduced sex drive. Hello. Let me tell you about the contraceptive pill for women. Side-effects include headaches, nausea, weight gain, mood changes, yeast infections, loss of vision, high blood pressure, …
January 2011 archive
Jan 25 2011
Every Man, Woman, and Child
There’s an interesting phrase. Man, woman, and child: those are my options, are they? Identifying oneself by one’s sex is a prerequisite for adulthood: if I don’t want to identify myself by my sex, as either a man or a woman, I’m left with identifying myself as a child. How interesting.
Jan 18 2011
Congratulations!
Congratulations. Now there’s a word we misuse a lot. ‘I’m getting married!’ ‘Congratulations!’ Why? Why should this be cause for congratulations? Is it a good thing? Half of all married couples end up divorced. (The other half just couldn’t be bothered.) Is it an achievement? There are no qualifications except being a certain age. Which …
Jan 11 2011
Paying Stay-at-Home Moms
Every now and then, we hear the proposal that women be paid to stay at home and be moms. That women are paid to be surrogate mothers suggests that regular mothers also deserve payment. So. Should we pay regular mothers the same as surrogate mothers? For starters, who is this ‘we’? Surrogate mothers are paid …
Jan 01 2011
A Millennial New Year’s Resolution
This was written, of course, in January 2000. I don’t do New Years’. I especially didn’t do this New Years. Though the chance to join in worldwide celebration of an error in addition (our calendar is such that there wasn’t a year zero – 1 A.D. came right after 1 B.C., so actually we’ve just …
fiction
