Category Archives: Feminism

Settling for Headline Justice

As a soldier in the #MeToo Army, Erica Naito-Campbell was not ready for battle. The granddaughter of a prominent Portland, Ore., developer, Naito-Campbell accused two black civic leaders of sexually assaulting her, detailed in a convincing news story that later led to felony charges. But after a one-week trial, Charles McGee and Aubre Dickson were […]

The Privilege of Being Female

The young woman behind the counter at Grand Central Bakery in Portland’s Multnomah Village wore a black T-shirt with white letters telling the world: “The future is female.” I wanted to ask her what exactly that meant. What does a female future look like? She was so young, and considering that this is Portland, a […]

Abortion: A Political Moneymaker

The night Ronald Reagan was elected president I was a young reporter working in a newsroom, and I half-jokingly told my female colleagues, “Well, ladies, break out the coat hangers.” Thirty-eight years later, through subsequent Republican administrations, we still have a right to legal abortion. If Brett Kavanaugh is confirmed for the U.S. Supreme Court, […]

Children’s Hour for the Democrats

After playwright Lillian Hellman was blacklisted as a Communist-sympathizer, she later looked back and wrote: “My belief in liberalism was mostly gone.” In its place, she substituted something she called “decency.” She recalled in her memoir, “Scoundrel Time,” how life changed for her after she was ostracized. People stopped calling. Of those who still called, […]

The Last Days of America

In matters of male-female relationships, my working-class brother is fond of saying, “It isn’t the bulge up front that counts – it’s the bulge in back.” Judging a man by the size of his wallet is kind of like measuring a female by her cup size. Except now it’s a lot easier for a woman […]

A Lesson for Harvey’s Girls

The last thing the Harvey Weinstein Pile-On needs is a mewling #MeToo hashtag so females everywhere can easily climb on board. If women want to be taken seriously, they should turn to the example of someone like Dee Dee Kouns. She learned through the worst kind of tragedy how to fight injustice. Her 26-year-old daughter, […]

Men and Their Kinks

The mistrial in Bill Cosby’s sexual abuse case was as anticlimactic as his performance in bed. What kind of man needs to drug a woman to have sex with her? Especially when the man is famous and rich? As the president of the United States could have told Cosby, when you’re a celebrity some women […]

Political Hands Rock the Cradle

Life begins with somebody getting screwed. Sounds cynical, but that’s how it is. Who’s getting screwed by President Donald Trump’s decision to end federal funding to organizations that provide abortions? Women and children – and, yes, some men. It’s ironic that Trump’s signature on a law targeting Planned Parenthood funding came in April, which happens […]

Signs of the Trump Revolution

Which pussy, its hour come round at last, marches in the streets, slouching towards Washington, D.C. to get even? Pussies of all colors and undefinable genders. This is not “The Second Coming” that W.B.Yeats had in mind in his famous poem. It’s the Second Coming of America’s feminist movement, and it already has a buzzword […]

The Cocky World of Sophia June

When she was a little girl, her daddy probably called her “princess.” Or at least he treated her like one. She went off to her first day of kindergarten in clean clothes and a smile of anticipation, captured in a photo by a mother who loved her very much. Her father ran a construction company […]