As has been widely reported, Vermont (the first state in the notion to approve same-sex marriage through the legislative process) is now considering decriminalizing "sexting", the much-ballyhooed practice by which teens take and send explicit images of themselves using their cell phones. The absurd… Read full post »

Over the holidays, I met with one of my former youth group kids. Miguel is at university now, doing very well. He's in a steady relationship with the same girl he's been seeing since the start of his sophomore year, a year and a half ago. And while… Read full post »

Nine days after the election, the reaction to the narrow passage of Proposition 8 -- eliminating the right of same-sex couples to marry in California -- continues to build. Major demonstrations are planned at city halls across the state this Saturday, and a series of grassroots organizations have sp… Read full post »

In a comment below a post-election reflection at my blog, Hector (a pro-life Anglo-Catholic Obama voter with a strong social conscience) remarked, in regards to the various state results:

It’s truly sad that many social conservatives in America appear to care more about whether something is c… Read full post »

Noted feminist blogger Jill Filipovic had a great post up last year: I'm Never Getting Married. It opens:

I actually don’t know if that’s true (her claim in the title of the post), but the closer I get to standard marrying age, the less I think it’ll ever… Read full post »

I'm grading midterms today, with an eye to passing them back Monday. I gave all of my classes their midterms this week or last. In each class, including my women's history course, the midterm was designed to take ninety minutes. Within that time, students were to answer two… Read full post »

I count fellow Angeleno and men's rights advocate Glenn Sacks as a friend, even though he and I are likely to disagree on virtually every issue. I winced a bit, however, at his rather snarky linking to an old post I had written at my blog in praise of erectile… Read full post »

In my Intro to Lesbian and Gay American History class, we talked a bit about gay marriage yesterday. The course is structured chronologically, and as we approach the middle of the term, we're just now getting to the 20th century. (I've been lecturing on the likes of Karl Ulrichs, Karl Benkert,… Read full post »

Yesterday in my women's history class, we began making our way through Joan Brumberg's The Body Project.  I've been using the book for years and years, and it's a huge hit with my students each semester.

It is Brumberg who first drew my attention to statistics about menarche, marriage, and the… Read full post »

I'm very much looking forward to Jessica Valenti and Jaclyn Friedman's forthcoming anthology: Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape. I submitted a piece for inclusion, but a while ago received a very kind rejection note from the editors. I don't think the… Read full post »

My previous post on bridging the porn divide on "rethinking a virulent anti-porn/sex work stance" attracted a great many comments at my blog and is attracting a few here at Salon.  Amber Rhea put up a lengthy and thoughtful initial response at her place, and both she and Ren took issue… Read full post »

If you ask most folks who have been blogging for a while, they'll remember the one "break-out" post that got them noticed, or first attracted a significant number of comments and hits. For me, it was this post about pornography back in April 2004. I wrote in response to… Read full post »