What once was pure joy and pleasure is now fraught with worry and consequence. Yet for women, that’s always been the case. — During the height of pandemic isolation, the year between the arrival of Covid-19 and getting vaccinated, I wondered, as I spent day after day and night after night alone, without seeing anyone, without touching anyone, what first-time post-pandemic sex would be like. How it would feel to be in the…

The sexual revolution is still being fought. With attacks on contraception looming, the battle has arrived at our bedrooms. Men, myself included, have long taken for granted the responsibility (not to mention the expense and physical imposition) for birth control. To be blunt, the most I’ve ever had to do…

Mass shootings are the symptoms. The diseases are misogyny and extremism. The linguistic metaphor falls like a cruel joke. After the devastating, demoralizing, horrifying, enraging Uvalde school shooting, elected officials in Texas referenced a law they passed in 2019 allowing districts to “harden” their schools. Don’t these officials know any…

Jews in America are facing antisemitism at levels unexperienced in our lifetimes, adding to a precarious sense of isolation. It had to be pointed out to the FBI that a gunman taking a rabbi and four other Jews praying during a Sabbath service at a synagogue constitutes an attack “related…

Laws imposing forced births strip away self-determination— creating a two-tiered society of who does and doesn’t have bodily autonomy. People who have had an abortion are yet again telling their stories in public. They are trying to humanize a medical procedure that has granted them power and control over their…

From climate change to electrical grids to our jobs, our diets and our homes, it can be humbling to realize how little power we really have. I didn’t have the Texas winter storm that bad. In fact I was remarkably lucky. It could have been so much worse. In June…

The scope of a mother’s love is so much bigger than I ever knew — and it’s changed how I’ve loved. — At first come the logistics. Dates on weekday nights, or carved out of weekend mornings or afternoons, when the child is with his or her dad. In the case of a toddler, perhaps coming over after bedtime, but not spending the night. The chance of an earlier-than-expected wake-up, or perhaps…

The results of Proposition B won’t solve Austin’s homelessness problem. But it will tell us how we’ll deal with it and who we are. On the turning away From the pale and downtrodden And the words they say Which we won’t understand Don’t accept that what’s happening Is just a case…

Men must get in the fight to end sexual abuse and violence against women. — It’s time for men to give back the night. As if we could, as if the night is ours at all, much less ours to give. The night belongs to us all, equally, and should be shared and enjoyed by us all, equally, as we choose, safely. And along with…