Since the Elliot Rodger story broke two weekends ago, many took to Twitter and other social media platforms using #YesAllWomen. With this hash tag, women posted circumstances regarding all kinds of abuse and discrimination. For many, this kind of sharing can be a way for a victim to have their voice heard, a forum for […] More »

Nice guys always finish last. Whenever they treat a woman like a friend, it doesn’t end up in sex! Sometimes, the guy will buy flowers and gifts for the woman, despite the fact she has expressed zero interest romantically, and again—no sex! This woman often becomes re-classified as an ice queen, a bitch, a friend […] More »

Talking about having a cold is pretty socially acceptable. Common ground conversations start with this, not unlike the weather. But talking about something as normal as having a period needs to be prefaced with some sort of, “Sorry for any guys around,” and half-expecting disgusted protest to follow whatever you say. This isn’t about all […] More »

We were told that journalism was in a bad place. Just not this bad. CBC News recently announced it will cut $130 million from its budget this year, which will eliminate about 660 jobs within two years. This is because of “funding shortfalls and revenue losses,” says the CBC article. This Throwback Thursday looks back […] More »

Words of wisdom from fat activist Jill Andrew Jill Andrew wants to start a fat revolution. When she was a kid, says Andrew, she used to play around with euphemisms to make herself feel better about her body—PHAT (pretty hot and tempting) was a popular one. “As I grew up,” says Andrew, “I realized, ‘No […] More »

A scientific and anecdotal rumination on why today’s kids are more than all right—they’re the best generation yet I had only been a College professor for three years when Gregory Levey’s controversial and much-discussed magazine piece “Lament for the iGeneration” was published in 2009. I interpreted it as a cautionary tale: if we’re in the […] More »

White artists appropriating black culture isn’t new (Elvis, anyone?)—but pop culture social commentary as of late is taking a hard look at the practice. Recently, singer Lily Allen has been criticized for using black female dancers as props in her video for “Hard Out Here.” “Much of the video features Lily Allen dancing in a […] More »

Imagine having your waist measured with measuring tape and being a size “passionate.” Or stepping on a scale to see, not a number, but the word “perfect.” Body positive activists already have—and Special K has mysteriously come up with these same ideas to put in their ad campaigns. On August 21, a commercial for the […] More »

“I tried to remember any case in the course of my reading where two women are represented as friends.” -Virginia Woolf There’s a hoary old cliché about male nerds that they’re perennially afraid of women, clamming up whenever one begins to talk, scoffing through their retainer at the thought of one intellectually matching them on […] More »

Yesterday Toronto’s mayor admitted on his radio show that he has made  “mistakes.” By now, the whole world (literally) knows that Ford is embroiled in a substance abuse scandal; beyond the vague-sounding “mistakes” there is, of course, the video in which it appears Rob Ford is smoking from a crack pipe. But what about the […] More »

When I returned from China over the summer, having worked there for a year and a half, people would ask me, “What was it like?” And I, like a child trying to verbalize their first lofty idea, was sort of tongue-tied. There are over a billion individual perspectives in the country, yet only one autocratic […] More »