Rape jokes are only funny if they’re punching up at rape culture

Read this Guardian essay by Rebecca Solnit. And thanks, Cynical, for the link.

The fruits of segregation

Read this essay by Richard Rothstein at The Economic Policy Institute Blog. It’s awesome and includes things like this: Whenever young black men riot in response to police brutality or murder, as they have done in Baltimore this week, we’re tempted to think we can address the problem by improving police quality—training officers not to …

Yet another reason to love Notorious RBG

Last week, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, with Rabbi Lauren Holtzblatt, released a short feminist essay on Passover. The essay looks at the story through the eyes of five women most closely involved: Retelling the heroic stories of Yocheved, Shifra, Puah, Miriam and Batya reminds our daughters that with vision and the courage to …

Let’s win an inn

So there’s a Maine inn — Center Lovell Inn — that the owner wants to give away to someone who can write a beautiful essay. So here’s my idea: We pull together, write a boffo (why doesn’t any one use that word any more?) essay, and then we all live up there together in a …