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In the Wake of the Epstein Files Release, Remember that Abuse Is Everywhere
When I first came to Japan in 1989, a few Japanese actually told me that there was no child abuse in Japan. That shows that there was little consciousness of this social problem in those days. But I would guess that most people in the U.S. and Japan, of my generation at least, have been […]
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How to be a Good Man
[A version of this essay was presented to the 4th International Congress on Critical Interventions with Men Who Exercise Violence Against Women in Mexico City on December 6. 2025.] From social media influencers to academic theorists, preachers and politicians, everyone weighs in on the question of what makes a good man, especially what young men need […]
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A Transgender Lesson Plan
I retired from the University of Texas at Austin journalism school eight years ago, but I can’t stop thinking like a teacher. So when I read the Texas Tech University chancellor’s memo instructing employees to comply with state and federal dictates that “recognize only two human sexes: male and female,” I pondered how I might […]
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Understanding Biology ≠ Biological Essentialism
Anyone who has critiqued, or even dared to question, the ideology of the transgender movement likely has been accused of being a “biological essentialist.” The most recent episode of this in my life came when a friend read the chapter in my new book about the trans debate and told me that I was advocating […]
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Losing Honestly and Gracefully

After election defeats, political writers are quick to explain that if only the politicians had read my book and followed my advice, things would have been different for our side. My pitch is a bit different. Please read It’s Debatable: Talking Authentically about Tricky Topics, but not for a winning electoral strategy. If candidates opposed […]
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Our Feminist Future Includes a Liberated Palestine
In thirty years, on some fall morning like today, we wake up and turn on the news. No one is talking about banning abortion or “legalizing abortion” because we don’t talk about wombs like they exist to be legislated around anymore. Instead they are announcing the closing of U.S. military bases in the Pacific, and […]
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Does Your Feminism Include Palestine?
Women’s Marches are being planned across the country ahead of Election Day to “show the strength of our feminist movement.” However, curiously missing from the talking points around the strength of the feminist movement is the women of Palestine – who have endured the brutality of anti-feminist policies for decades under the illegal occupation by […]
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“Intellectual Hick”: Sorting Out Our Complex Identities
I am from rural America, sort of. I’m an intellectual, sort of. I’m certainly on the political left, but some comrades believe I’m turned conservative. Like many people, I don’t fit easily into conventional labels used in today’s polarized political debates. To understand me—and anyone else—takes some sorting out. Here’s how I sort myself out. […]
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Fighting Dragons

I love Naomi Klein. Strong, courageous, principled. In her latest, Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World (2023), willing to open her life for us to see for ourselves what makes her tick. A world of doppelgangers, shadow selves of many varieties from our repressed inner Other, to an AI construct of who you are in […]
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We Have Met the Enemy and they are Other Democrats

Photo courtesy of Ross Rowley The Israeli government is like the bad friend who only calls to ask for money or favors. For 75 years, Jewish supremacists beguiled our nation into believing their problems were America’s problems too. By using the tragedy of the Holocaust, they captured our sympathies and eventually played us for suckers […]