Disclaimers: This is not meant to demean moms who bottle feed. This is not meant to demean moms who nurse in private. This is not meant to demean anyone except pornography enthusiasts (may the babies of the world barf on you).

The short version: Pornography is taking away our ability to pick different lenses for the bodies around us; we are reading the form of the body as if it had only one meaning (sexual) instead of in the context of the situation. Breastfeeding in public fights the objectification of women’s bodies by re-humanizing the body and connecting it to a functional reality (what’s more real than a hungry baby?). As we stop banishing it to nursing rooms or blanketing it under nursing covers, a healthier social understanding of bodies could result. Continue reading →

“It’s time to make college tuition free and debt free.” I can imagine the loud, Brooklyn accent and the messy, white hair as I read those words. And I appreciate the sentiment: Education matters, and we should try to make it both accessible and excellent. There’s also no question that our schools underserve minority and low-income students, many of whom would struggle to pay for any amount of post-secondary education, and that college tuition in general is unreasonably high, often costing more than it’s worth. I agree with all that, and yet, I disagree with Bernie Sanders’ proposal. Continue reading →

Michael came home tonight rejuvenated from playing racquetball, excited to see me, and eager to bring the In-and-Out he got with his racquetball partner for the two of us to eat tonight.

He knew that when he left to play racquetball, I had just started taking a nap.

He knew that when I take naps, I tend to be out for hours, that when I am wiped out, it takes me a long time to bounce back.

He knew that I wouldn’t really have the energy or the desire to make Spaghetti squash, the meal we had agreed on for the night.

He would tell me, an hour or so later, that he envisioned walking inside the apartment and finding me asleep in bed. I would wake up when he came in the room, realize I hadn’t started the spaghetti squash, and start apologizing—then, he would tell me that it was all okay and that he had dinner taken care of.

Michael did not know that although I was very wiped out, about an hour before I thought he would be home from racquetball I got out of bed, started the squash in the oven, and stayed up to clean and get some school work done. Continue reading →

I think I became aware of the fact that sexual orientation is supposed to be an important part of one’s identity around 4^th or 5^th grade. I made a special homemade valentine’s card for another boy who had moved in. I was not romantically interested in him; I meant it as a special gesture of welcome. But he avoided me thereafter. In middle school, my male peers would talk knowingly of which female classmates were “hot,” but would profess utter ignorance about which male classmates were attractive. Female peers did the same. Being male (and straight, though this part went unspoken) meant, so we thought or affected to think, that the attractiveness of the other gender was transparent and that of our own opaque. Which, of course, is utter nonsense.

For as long as I have been attuned to the beauty of the human form, I have been attracted by male beauty as well as by female beauty—though my appreciation of male beauty more easily remains purely aesthetic, while my appreciation of female beauty more easily becomes erotic. Continue reading →