Good morning! Last week I wrote about disability, gender, family norms, wiping bottoms, the 19th century, and noodles. Later today I’ll write more about my new essay on “How to Talk Like a Feminist (If You’re a Guy).” Please comment here with stories I should cover next week! Sunday – Ricky Gervais and the “Angel/Retard…
I am currently writing a talk about work/life integration in an age of changing gender norms in the family. In other words, my wife and I both work, we both spend as much time as possible with the kids, but because my schedule is more flexible and my wife travels, I do a lot of…
In an uplifting story, here’s how Heathrow responds to a young man with autism who regularly flies from England to Boston to attend school. The 21-year-old has severe autism and obsessive compulsive disorder, but has to negotiate the hectic bustle of Heathrow airport to attend Boston Higashi High School in the US. To cater for…
Last week, when I wrote about Barilla and Nico’s diet, I said that what I really wanted as a fulsome apology and a vow to do better, rather than Barilla’s non-apology apology (where he lurched from anti-homosexual rhetoric to sexism). It seems we have one. Here’s the video in English. It has an acknowledgment of…
How Did We Get Into This Mess?, as a rule, tries to find historical underpinnings of contemporary problems. I’ve been thinking about the ways that contemporary shifts in politics do and do not reflect past political realities. In today’s post, I want to engage with an impressive diary from Daily KOS, the liberal site, on…
The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a…
When my son was born, I processed the words “Down syndrome” in part by starting to write. First it was Livejournal, then Facebook, then a few op-eds, and now my current combination of Facebook, Twitter, published Op-Eds, and periodic re-posts to other sites. I decided to make “Lollardfish,” a name I used on early online…
Apparently there’s a new show on Netflix called Derek. I haven’t watched it. Who has time to watch that sort of thing in between parenting, working, writing, cooking, cleaning, gardening, sports, cooking shows, and all the other things that fill up my life. Apparently, though, it features a lead character who is unbelievably good and…
Every Sunday, I offer a round-up of the links I posted this week. It’s been a good week with lots of interesting comments, RTs, Facebook replies, and other interaction. I love comments! New feature: Under-read post that I really like – Please read: How to Write an Opinion Essay in 63 Easy Steps. I just…
My first widely-read essay was last May, for CNN, on my daughter’s “best-dressed” award. I argued: Our culture constantly projects the message that only appearances matter, and this message is aimed squarely at our children. We can fight this only by working against the grain, resisting gendered language and emphasizing the internal over the external….