One of the few skills I’ve retained from my teen years in the public school system of mid-Nineties America is the ability to get undressed in front of people without ever actually being naked. It is an art form particular …
The darkness of dance
I was a quiet, nervous little girl who didn’t much like the chaos of life. I could escape that, though, in the safety and discipline of the dance studio. With hair scraped back and uniform strict, the daily repetitions of …
Hag feminism is the future
At the beginning of the year, a scandal erupted over a TikTok trend of young women in tight clothes posting videos shaming men for hitting on them at the gym. As recently as 2018, the story would have been one …
How Bill Clinton created post-truth America
While Bill Clinton was campaigning to be President in 1992, the singer Gennifer Flowers gave several interviews in which she named him as her long-term lover. Clinton denied it, of course. It was one of the many lies that he …
The triumph of the introverts
Before scooping up your grandson, niece, or little cousins for a hug this holiday season, the internet would like you to know: “Kids who think they need to comply with adult requests for affection are more likely to be sexually …
Is the Shitty Media Man innocent?
Even in the colourful environs of New Orleans, Stephen Elliott’s car stood out: a bright pink Honda hatchback with a panda motif on the doors and hood. But on a January morning in 2019, people who walked past the vehicle …
Is Ronan Farrow a MeToo hero?
There was a brief moment, at the very beginning of the MeToo movement, when it seemed as if real change was in the air. Five years ago this week, the New York Times released its first report on the alleged …
How surrogacy is transforming medicine
In 1954, Russian scientists successfully grafted the still-living head of a puppy onto an existing adult dog. I recently stumbled on a photo of the resulting horror which I think will haunt me forever. But why is it upsetting?
Those …
Cat Person wasn’t a MeToo fable
Imagine you hear the following story from a friend. You’re both in college, in a town full of boarded-up shops, where you refer to the “county residents” as if they are another species. Both of you think of yourselves as …
Why gay men ignored MeToo
An explicit tweet about social etiquette at a condomless gay orgy recently went viral as the mostly heterosexual public grappled with the sheer perversity of what they were reading:
Is it unethical to attend a “no loads refused” pimped-out cumdump …
MeToo lost me the love of my life
Dear Taylor,
Please, please don’t shove this in recycling and do hear me out. I apologise for disguising this letter in a NatWest envelope to make it look like one of your bank statements. I realise that appears duplicitous. But …
MeToo killed Game of Thrones
It must have been some time after the first brothel scene, but well before Jamie Lannister threw a child out of a window after being discovered mid-coitus with his twin sister, that the first audiences of HBO’s Game of Thrones …
When did physical approach become scary?
When did physical approach become scary? By “physical approach” I mean what used to happen constantly on the street, in restaurants, in bars, in between classes of all kinds: a person approaching another person to flirt with them or ask …
Amber Heard’s toxic femininity
The Men’s Rights Movement was born to weigh in on cases like Johnny Depp’s. The movement gained prominence during the Seventies and Eighties in response to what some men saw as preferential treatment of women in family court cases, especially …
What’s wrong with being straight?
As a gay man — I know that awful phrase is usually followed by irrelevant twaddle, but please bear with me. As a gay man, I have always found heterosexuality quite fascinating. I have made something of an unconscious study …