Instead of our weekly check-up of news, we’re dedicating this space to organizations you can donate your time and money: American Civil Liberties Union Southern Poverty Law Center Showing up for Racial Justice. Planned Parenthood NARAL Equal Justice Initiative Facing History Teaching Tolerance Physicians for Human Rights Zinn Education Project Students4Justice The Center for Media Justice… Read more →
Category: News
Diagnosing Donald Trump
In his analysis of Donald Trump’s fitness for office, Brookings Institution fellow Robert Kagan recently wrote that “we can leave it to the professionals” to label with precision the relationship between Donald Trump’s behavior and what may be a clinically defined mental illness or personality disorder. Other commentators are less reluctant to diagnosis Mr. Trump…. Read more →
How Anti-Vaccine Ideology Crosses the Political Spectrum
Vaccinations have not been a major issue in the 2016 presidential campaign so far, but perhaps they should be. Republican candidate Donald Trump has repeatedly made statements promoting the disproven idea that vaccines cause autism. Third-party candidates have also joined the anti-vaccine chorus. Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson opposes mandatory childhood vaccinations, while Green Party candidate… Read more →
Sunday Morning Medicine
A weekly check-up of gender, medicine, and history in the news A brief history of chairs. Insomnia and birth control. Bad girls before the 1960s. The Gawker of Early America. Dog cakes and drug doctoring. What if women never won the vote? A farewell to abstinence and fidelity? The slave trade roots of private prisons…. Read more →
Olympics in the Marvelous City
For anyone who hasn’t been paying attention to the international news, Brazil — and its Olympic city of Rio de Janeiro — are in crisis. The senate recently voted to open impeachment proceedings against its president Dilma Rousseff. The former president and populist leader Lula da Silva will face trial for obstruction charges in the… Read more →
Report from Pride: LGBT History Is (Not Yet) American History
Last June I participated in the annual Pride March in New York City, the biggest celebration of LGBT pride in the world. My girlfriend and I marched with the Episcopal Diocese of New York, waving a tiny rainbow flag someone handed us and walking behind a long white banner down 5th Avenue. After a slow start,… Read more →
The Brexit and Women’s Rights in the UK
Although women comprise the majority of voters in the UK, they were noticeably absent in the debates and discussions surrounding the potential “Brexit” — Britain’s proposal to leave the European Union. For the duration of the Brexit battle, middle-aged white men — surprise — remained the public faces of both the “Leave” and the “Remain”… Read more →
Dispatches from Rio: Rape in Rio de Janeiro
This is the first of several pieces we will run about the city of Rio de Janeiro in the lead-up to the 2016 Summer Olympics. On May 21, 2016 a sixteen-year-old girl was gang-raped in a favela in the Eastern zone of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. During a party in the favela, a group of… Read more →
Blood and Tears in Orlando
On June 12 of this year, a lone gunman entered Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, FL, and carried out one of the deadliest mass shootings in U.S. history. The attack left 49 dead and 53 others badly injured. The wounded needed blood, and lots of it, which put a severe strain on an already… Read more →
More Than Blood
We awoke to news of the carnage in Orlando. I had slept in — the first long, good night’s sleep after a hell of a week: a funeral, my 45th birthday, graduation, another funeral, and a graduation party. I woke up refreshed, but not for long. Several friends had already texted or sent me Facebook… Read more →