Most commented posts
- Short Men — 64 comments
- Bare Breasts: Objections and Replies — 27 comments
- Why Do Men Spit? (and women don’t) — 26 comments
- Short Men — 19 comments
- Walking Alone in a Park at Night — 11 comments
Peg Tittle
Author's posts
Mar 07 2011
How many specialists does it take to change a lightbulb?
Every now and then, perhaps with Hegelian predictability, there is a swing in academia toward the holistic approach, toward systems theory, if you will. In this anti-atomistic, anti-reductionist view, the essence is the process, not the structure; what’s important is not so much the thing, but the relationship between the thing and other things. I …
Mar 02 2011
What’s Wrong with Profit?
Many would say it’s simply undeserved. By any standard – be it need, ability, effort, or accomplishment/contribution. In this respect, one might be tempted to compare profit to the ridiculously high salaries of sports stars. And senators. But salary is not profit. Even if a salary is ridiculously high, it is still a salary, a …
Feb 10 2011
God Promised
With such regularity, it really should be the refrain of every national anthem, we hear something along these lines: ‘The land is rightfully ours. God promised it to us.’ Yeah well, God lies. Or at least he changes his mind. Consider this:
Feb 02 2011
The Political is Personal
Back in the 60s or 70s, one of the insights feminism gave us was that the personal is political. It’s been a valuable insight. Many of us now routinely interpret personal interaction politically: we try to understand the influence of race, class, and gender; we try to determine the nature of the power differentials. I …
Jan 27 2011
The Pill for Men
‘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, …
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 …
Dec 26 2010
Why Do Men Spit? (and women don’t)
Why do men spit? (And women don’t.) I mean, is it physiological? Do males produce a larger amount of saliva? Even so, why the need to spit it out? Why not just swallow it? Would that remind them of swallowing semen? Which is female, effeminate, gay? (I’ll ignore for the moment the assumption that all, …
fiction
