Two days ago, I was on the road for 14 hours so I missed the National Coming Out Day celebration. This day is important to me and many others. I came out when I was young. At the time, over twenty-one years ago, I did not know one person who was out of the closet….
Author: JLM
Angela Lansbury’s School of Feminist Witchcraft
Written by JLM; Published by GENDER FOCUS on June 21, 2015 *Substitutiary locomotion (definition): the craft of using the substitutive power of language for feminist purposes. Long before I had ever heard the word “feminist,” I knew about witches. What I knew about them, aside from their green noses and warts, which represent so obviously…
God Beyond Gender: On Peter Wilkes’ A Woman Called God
Written by JLM; Published by GENDER FOCUS on May 18, 2015 I wrestle intellectually from time to time with the issue of god and gender. Maybe you do, too. Over time, I’ve grown skeptical about the importance of gender to divinity, as gender seems like a human issue, whereas God, to me, is unfathomably beyond…
Getting Real about Cultural Illusions: Review of Roxane Gay’s Bad Feminist
Written by JLM; Published by GENDER FOCUS on February 18, 2015 A title like “Bad Feminist” is about as rhetorically effective as it gets: it’s divisive, it’s evocative, it’s thought provoking, it’s maddening, and it’s badass. The simple act of placing a moralistic modifier before “feminist” pulls you in as much as it irksomely pushes…
Review of The Queer Cultural Work of Lily Tomlin and Jane Wagner
Written by JLM; Published by GENDER FOCUS on November 21, 2014 Jennifer Reed’s The Queer Cultural Work of Lily Tomlin and Jane Wagner, released by Palgrave Macmillan in December 2013, will be of interest to an array of readers, particularly to Tomlin fans and those with an interest in queer theory and gender studies. As…
Free-Diving Off the Banks of Normal: A Review of Debbie Taylor’s Herring Girl
Written by JLM; Published by GENDER FOCUS on September 7, 2014 Debbie Taylor’s release of Herring Girl takes us where we’re not yet comfortable but dying to go: beyond normal. The novel interweaves lives, past and present, in a saga that will make you scoff at the absurdity, sigh at the humanity, and sink into…
We Are Robin Williams: Becoming Helpful in Helpless Times
Written by JLM; Published by GENDER FOCUS on August 14, 2014 The tragic death of actor and comedian Robin Williams has many of us talking about things that legitimately need attention and discussion. To me, what seems most glaringly obvious in these retrospective conversations and reflections is that we are merely on the foothill of…
Speak Out Against Slapstick Misogyny: A Stern Ethics Rant/Sermon for Hillary Haters
Written by JLM; Published by GENDER FOCUS on August 14, 2013 Screen capture from the “Slap Hillary” game, showing a cartoon hand slapping Hillary Clinton’s face I’m going to take a moment to deliberately not be nice, for the first time on Gender Focus. It’s time to get mad, again, about the archaic scapegoating of…
National Day In the Closet (a.k.a.: How to Be a Good Neighbor)
Written by JLM; Published by GENDER FOCUS on July 2, 2014 I am writing this because of nightmares. Have you ever been lying in bed, about to fall asleep, and you – while still half awake – begin having a nightmare, and you know you’re having one, but you cannot pull yourself from its semi-conscious…
Personal-Political Review of New Femininities: Postfeminism, Neoliberalism and Subjectivity
Written by JLM; Published by GENDER FOCUS on November 18, 2013 A month ago, I eagerly asked Gender Focus editor, Jarrah Hodge, to review New Femininities: Postfeminism, Neoliberalism, and Subjectivity. And pumped I was when I received this collection of provocative scholarly essays with beyond-scholarly import that engage gender from different perspectives but with broad-mindedness…
Headmistress Press + Hexmistress Jess 