You try to live a life of culture and refinement, as my friend Greg likes to say; you even re-up your lapsed subscription to The New Yorker every time the discount rolls back around and have the tote bag collection to show for it. And yet on an otherwise unremarkable Monday you find yourself …
The most important lesson I continue to learn is that we have to give people a chance to grow. No one is born preprogrammed to deal with society and the way it constantly evolves. We learn and then we grow. This lesson has been weighing heavy on me lately when I see posts on social media about …
On Sunday, California's Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire) announced the origin point of the El Dorado Fire, which has been raging through San Bernardino County since Sept. 5. It began at a gender reveal party held at El Dorado Ranch Park where a pyrotechnic device was used to …
I am Black and alive, and that's half the battle today. Seriously. I woke up. No cops shot me in my sleep or on the street. I didn't get charged with a crime I didn't commit. A white person didn't tell me I didn't live in my house and call the cops. I didn't have a heart attack or stroke from high …
Much of the talk about going back to school focuses, understandably and necessarily, on safety and equity. But a new study from the University of Cambridge suggests we keep something else in mind as school resumes, in one form or another: gender norms. That is, we should avoid them, explode them …
An increasing number of nonbinary people are being represented on screen — Asia Kate Dillon on "Billions," Indya Moore on "Pose," and most recently, possibly on "Euphoria." As nonbinary visibility has increased in pop culture, the binary blue and pink world of gender reveal parties has grown …
From Homer Simpson to Phil Dunphy, sitcom dads have long been known for being bumbling and inept. But it wasn't always this way. Back in the 1950s and 1960s, sitcom dads tended to be serious, calm and wise, if a bit detached. In a shift that media scholars have documented, only in later decades did …
When I read about Amy Cooper, the woman in Central Park who called the police on a black birder because he'd asked her to leash her out-of-control dog, I was horrified. But, as a sociolinguist who studies and writes about language and discrimination, I was also struck by the name given to Cooper in …
After the fourth day of coronavirus "remote learning," I took a sponge to the chalkboard calendar on our fridge and wiped it clean. My husband had received a pay cut and much of my freelance work dried up, and whatever activities were marked there — track meets, dinners with friends, overpriced …
Masculinity isn't inherently "toxic." Yet within the current necessary cultural reckoning about inequality and abuses of power, the complicated issues around what it means to be male right now have been harder to define and discuss. So when Michael Ian Black's son was preparing to leave for …
Growing up, I rarely heard my parents complain about their adopted country, the U.S. But whenever they grumbled about the plumber's refusal to remove his shoes before entering our home or the overabundance of butter in American meals, my perpetual question to them was: "Why'd you immigrate here …
When Besha Rodell reviewed a new, hotly-anticipated restaurant called Otium for LA Weekly in 2016, she awarded them two out of five stars. After she finished writing, Rodell — who at the time was the restaurant critic for the weekly paper — began to read what the other critics in town had to say. …
On Jan. 3, the American Dialect Society held its 30th annual “Word of the Year” vote, which this year also included a vote for “Word of the Decade.” It was the year — and the decade — of the pronoun. In a nod to shifting attitudes about gender identities that are nonbinary — meaning they don’t neatly …
It will not come via owl post or carry any special engraving, but sooner or later, your son will get his invitation to Dick School. Maybe you remember the day your own arrived. It is, for the American male, that moment when you learn that there is only one limited ideal of what it means to be a …
