A Message Straight from the Heart

November 18, 2016

We recently observed national Domestic Violence Month, and, for a change, The Palmetto State received some (relatively) good news: We are no longer the deadliest state in the country for women murdered by men. South Carolina is now #5, behind Alaska, Louisiana, Nevada, and Oklahoma, according to a report released three weeks ago by the…

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When Someone Shows You Who They Are

October 21, 2016

Political analysts tell us next month’s presidential election will be decided by the women of America. This is fitting because if she is elected on November 8, Hillary Clinton will become the nation’s first female president. With little more than two weeks remaining until this excruciatingly awful campaign ends, women— particularly suburban and college-educated white…

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Sexual Harassment Redux

September 16, 2016

A quarter of a century seems like a long time. And yet, 25 years after the famous Anita Hill hearings that electrified the nation, the scourge of sexual harassment is with us still. Witness the recent, high-profile lawsuit filed by Gretchen Carlson against Fox News founder Roger Ailes, alleging longtime, brazen sexual harassment. The difference…

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Women (and Men and Kids) Tip the Scales

July 15, 2016

If you like to watch old movies on cable TV or Netflix, you’ll probably notice how thin most of the actors are. Not painfully thin, just normally thin—the way most people in America used to be until the 1980s. Fast forward to television shows and films today, where overweight actors are fairly common. There is…

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The Joy of Reading

April 15, 2016

A month or two ago, a video made the rounds on social media showing a little girl sobbing her heart out when she learned from her grandmother that Barack Obama wouldn’t be president much longer. He has been in the Oval Office since the first-grader, whose name is Kameria Crayten, was born. She has known…

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Misogyny and Sexism: Coming right up!

January 15, 2016

If Hillary Clinton receives the Democratic Party nomination for president in 2016, brace yourself for misogyny and sexism galore. For ambitious women, it has ever been thus. As the writer Jessica Valenti puts it, “For as long as women have wanted to have a voice in our political process, there have been men looking to…

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Wonder Woman: Back in Business

December 19, 2014

It’s less than a week ’til Christmas, but there is still time to rush around and buy a Wonder Woman doll or other Wonder Woman paraphernalia online or at your local toy store! There is an upsurge of interest in this venerable female super hero, probably because two new books about the Amazon princess have…

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Guns and Abortion

September 19, 2014

Southerners love their guns, and they are more likely to own firearms than folks living in other regions of the United States, according to a 2013 Gallup poll. Moreover, men are three times likelier than women to own guns. Imagine, then, what would happen if the courts started regulating gun dealers to the point of…

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Well behaved women seldom make history

July 18, 2014

“History is written by the victors,” Winston Churchill once said. He also could have said that history is written mainly by men. This fact plays out in unsurprising ways. Women, for example, account for only 1 in 10 figures represented in U.S. history textbooks, while only 13 of the more than 200 statues in the…

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