Strange Bedfellows: How feminism and porn get it on at the Feminist Porn Awards

An interview with Chanelle Gallant, founder of the Feminist Porn Awards
When I first learned of the Feminist Porn Awards, I wasn’t surprised to discover that Good For Her was behind them. An independently owned and operated sex shop in Toronto, Good For Her’s feminism is as explicit as its inventory, so it seemed fitting that [...]

The Bin Ladens

 
Steve Coll’s riveting new book not only gives us the most psychologically detailed portrait of the brutal 9/11 mastermind yet, but in telling the epic story of Osama bin Laden’s extended family, it also reveals the crucial role that his relatives and their relationship with the royal house of Saud played in shaping his thinking, [...]

Why Radical Islam Just Won’t Die

THE big surprise, viewed from my own narrow perspective five years later, has taken place in the mysterious zones of extremist ideology. In the months and weeks before the invasion of Iraq, I wrote quite a lot about ideology in the Middle East, and especially about the revolutionary political doctrine known as radical Islamism.
I tried [...]

Why do we write?

Dr Johnson had no doubts, or pretended to have none: ‘no man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money’. This is manifestly false, unless you make writing for some other reason one of your definitions of the word ‘blockhead’. In any case it’s not true of Johnson himself. Despite the indolence for which he [...]

Shock treatment

In 1971, Dr. Matthew Israel founded the Behavior Research Institute in Canton. Its name was later changed to the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center to honor the jurist who upheld Israel’s controversial methods in court. At Harvard in the 1950s, Israel was a student of B. F. Skinner, founder of behavioral psychology and author of “Walden [...]

On the Phone!!!!!

On Saturday morning I had to catch the 7.40 from London to Manchester. The train was cancelled, leaving a lot of annoyed Manchester United fans swearing and threatening to headbutt the next Virgin train.
I hovered behind them while pretending to be foreign, so that if they tried to speak to me I could pretend I [...]

How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read

Carrying this book around recently I’ve caught more than a little flak, not least from my kids, who once thought of me as a literary intellectual, or at the very least as a guy who espoused the virtues of reading. Hey, really, I told them — as well as my wife and the guy sitting [...]

Sometimes It Pays To Dress Like A Slut

This week we read the story of my namesake, the Biblical Tamar. I encourage you to read the story for yourself, it’s chapter 38 of Genesis, but the gist of it is that Tamar is cheated out of a marriage by her father-in-law, Judah, after she has been widowed by two of his sons. When [...]

has us all wearing the same damned underwear

The mass appeal and accessibility of America’s largest lingerie brand has us all wearing the same damned underwear. Sue us if we want a little bit of originality down under.
Victoria’s Secret has a monopoly on our private parts, and we get it. It’s accessible, relatively affordable (so we tell ourselves), full of options—and synonymous with [...]

I Am America (and So Can You!)

Books are for pantywaists. Or at least that’s how ”Stephen Colbert,” the excitable commentator played to rock-star perfection by Stephen Colbert, viewed them before he became a published author. Now comes the flip-flop, as Mr. Colbert brings the gale-force power of his promotional talents to the hawking of ”I Am America (And So Can You!),” [...]