The world is different today.

Last night, for the first time, a woman accepted a major party’s nomination for the presidency of the United States. (I know you all know this. I just wanted to say it again, because it qualifies as a genuine, 100% Big Deal. I only wish my mom had been here to see it.) One of the most powerful moments of the evening came when Hillz and Chelsea embraced after Chelsea had introduced her mother. The glance that passed between them contained not just love—although there was obviously plenty of that (and how nice to see it on a convention stage, for a change)—but all the elements of what I have come to call the Knowing Look. That’s the one that women give each other that says, I understand. I understand what it’s like to be the smartest person in the class, and the least popular. I understand what it’s like to respond to unwanted attention with humor, because girls don’t get angry. I understand what it’s like to be in an abusive relationship and to be afraid to tell anyone. I understand what it’s like to like math, or science, and be told that’s not what girls do. I understand what it’s like to be so tired cleaning houses all day for other people that you fall asleep standing up on the subway. I understand what it’s like to have your PhD advisor, your boss, your mentor demand sexual favors in exchange for a recommendation. I understand what it’s like to work in an office where women’s clothes, hair, makeup, bodies are openly discussed, dissected, disrespected. I understand what it’s like to be left holding the bag, the debt, the children. I understand what it’s like to be barraged by idealized, retouched, Photoshopped images of women on the Internet 24/7/365 and feel like you have to measure up and you never will. I understand what it’s like not to be able to find toys for girls that aren’t pink. I understand what it’s like to be paid less than the men in your company and to have to suck it up because you need that job. I understand what it’s like to be date raped. I understand what it’s like to have three part-time jobs so you can support your two children as a single mother. I understand how far we’ve come to be standing on this stage, tonight, mother and daughter, two women for once not in the service of men but in the service of the common good. Earlier in the evening, I heard a caller on Brian Lehrer’s national call-in show say that he didn’t understand “the ballyhoo” over Hillary’s nomination. Behind the bravado in his voice, I heard fear. Fear that a woman might do the job as well as a man. Fear that he might lose the power to cajole, to control, to dominate. Well, to all the men out there who are threatened by Hillary Clinton because she’s brilliant and kind, strong and compassionate,…

Nobody likes the smart girl.

Recently, I had conversations about The Election with two friends of mine—one male, one female, both educated, intelligent people with whom I enjoy a little verbal political sparring from time to time. I came away fairly unsettled. F1 and F2, you see, don’t know each other, and are very different demographically, socially, and politically—and yet they used virtually identical language to contrast their mistrust of Hillary Clinton with their appreciation for Donald Trump. Both cited Clinton’s support of her husband after his affair with a younger woman was revealed as reason to distrust her; at the same time, both were dismissive of the New York Times' recent investigation of Donald Trump's behavior toward women, saying in no uncertain terms that the story had been manipulated to smear the candidate. (F2 [sadly, the woman] went so far as to say that it "wasn't Trump's fault that he was rich" and that women were "throwing themselves at him.") My friends see no irony in chiding one candidate for choosing to stay in a marriage compromised by bad behavior—surely, a private decision? —and chiding the media for calling another out because he asked a young model he had just met to change into a revealing bikini and then paraded her around at a party as though he owned not just the bikini but the body inside it. It's been getting pretty clear for a while now that the last eight years have largely been about how much America really hates Black people, and I'm worried that the next eight years are going to be about how much we really hate women. This isn't just idle, middle-of-the-night musing; the facts are grim. The gender pay gap is widening at the lower and higher ends of corporate America. Big men on campuses east and west assault women with seemingly little danger to their own careers. Politicians speak on the national stage of "legitimate rape." Women's healthcare—and I don't just mean access to abortion—is under attack at a level unprecedented in our history. America remains the only developed nation without mandatory funded parental leave. On the flip side of that equation, child care is abysmally expensive and often unsafe. And while well-meaning icons like Sheryl Sandberg urge us to lean in, there are plenty of women in this country whose shaky employment status isn't conducive to that kind of self-promotion (but is conducive to all kinds of sexual harassment, which we don't hear about because those women are too busy keeping their jobs to blow the whistle on their bosses and co-workers). So, not such a different world from the one twenty-five years ago in which Donald Trump felt free to show off the attributes of his newest "Trump girl." But never mind all of that—at least for the moment. Let's agree on the idea that, if it doesn't hate women, America doesn't like them all that much. If you don't believe that (really? Dig a little deeper and then tell me I'm crazy), there's at…

There and here.

London has a new mayor, and the phenomenally accomplished Sadiq Khan—with a biography any good socialist would cheerfully give his or her left arm for—has been receiving congratulations from future colleagues worldwide on his victory in the election, which boasted the highest turnout ever for a mayoral contest. The mayor of Paris swoons over his "humanism" and "progressiveness." Jakarta's governor calls his victory an "inspiring story of democracy, merit, and tolerance." A breathless tweet from -H herself extols Khan's virtues as a "champion of workers' rights and human rights." Even the sister of his challenger, Zac Goldsmith, calls his victory "a great example to young Muslims." This son of a Pakistani bus driver, who grew up on a council estate, avoided a rough crowd at school, developed a passion for education, politics, and equality, and keeps it real by taking out the trash and putting his two daughters to bed, is the darling of those who would unify a splintered electorate everywhere. Except, presumably, that other self-proclaimed great unifier, Donald Trump, who as of this writing remains undecided as to whether Khan would be allowed into the U.S. if he were victorious in the Presidential stakes. These days in politics, you can either be a lover or a hater. There is no in between. Khan is a lover—a lover who because of his heritage and his looks would likely be targeted for suspicion in any number of cities in the United States of today. He insists, in his first interview with Time as Lord Mayor, that being British, Western and Muslim is not a contradiction; that his election symbolizes the spirit of Londoners who "respect, embrace, celebrate" their diversity; and that "it's really important" that he "use his experiences to defeat radicalization and extremism." He's vocal on the need for good role models for young British Muslims today, so that when presented with the sometimes alluring prospect of fighting for ISIS, they can "just say no." He's not shy about his convictions and he’s willing to stand up for his beliefs, even when that puts him in danger—a fatwa was issued against him thanks to his support for gay marriage. Perhaps most importantly, he believes that his election means that "actually there is no clash of civilization between Islam and the West." I've been trying for a day now to reconcile Khan's ascendancy to a position that puts him in charge of the daily lives of nearly 15 million people with the irrational hatred of Muslims in the U.S. that forces innocent travelers off planes; earns people death threats because of the color of their skin; and constrains the devout to abandon plans to build places of worship. This isn’t saying that there’s no anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.K.—there’s plenty, much of it in evidence during this election. Zac Goldsmith ran a campaign The Guardian called “soaked in racism”—ironic and sad, given his own not-exactly-mainstream-British heritage. But somehow the innate generosity of spirit and openness of mind that has always…

Let’s all get married.

It’s almost June, and therefore full-on Wedding Season. I am and have always been a huge wedding junkie, and now, thanks to the miracle of the interwebs, I am able—despite not having received a single wedding invitation for this year (they do tend to drop off with age)—to follow the wedding fortunes of people I’ve never even met. Therefore, I’m thrilled to report that a couple of very nice people whom I don’t know (but would like to) are getting married. The estimable Lisa Congdon is a little farther along in the process than Renaissance Man Daniel Kanter, but—happily—they are equally enthusiastic about their nuptials. Both Lisa and Daniel have written recently and touchingly about their journeys toward marriage (journeys that, in the slow realization that they didn’t have to spend their lives alone, mirrored my own). Both have, despite considerable odds both internal and external, found their soul mates and are prepared to throw in their lot with them, now and forever. Both believe in the transformative power of love, and in the coming together of two people to create and nurture something bigger than the sum of their two parts. Oh, and both are gay. Anyone who knows me at all knows that I am a somewhat aggressively vocal supporter of gay marriage—of marriage in general, in fact. It seems to me that any two people who are crazy enough to take that kind of a chance on love, in an age when pretty much nothing is certain, deserve all the support we can give them. It has long angered me that, in an era where we have progressed so much in so many ways, we still have to put any sort of qualifier before the word ‘marriage.’ ‘Gay marriage’ shouldn’t have to be. ‘Marriage’ ought to be—ought to be able to be—good enough for everybody. Why, despite the best efforts of pretty much everyone I know, are so many people still so scared of broadening the reach of this state-sanctioned institution? I guess rather than just ridiculing the arguments, I should address them (call me crazy, but heck, let’s just go for it). Let’s see. First off, there’s ‘gay marriage will corrupt children.’ Funny, none of the children I know who are growing up with two moms or two dads seem to know they’re being corrupted. They do seem to know they’re loved and wanted, though…sometimes more than you’d think. One of my closest friends bravely adopted his partner’s niece a while back (she had been raised up until then by her grandparents, but evolving family circumstances forced a reconsideration), forming for the couple an instant family; someone I know recently began fostering and plans to adopt, with her wife, two siblings deemed hard to place because of their birth mother’s drug addiction; another friend and her wife have two children of their own by the same sperm donor, both lovingly conceived, lovingly (if painfully) birthed, and superbly well-adjusted (which is to say, as nutty as most…

Jolie ain’t just pretty.

I was 25 when my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer—and so, at a time when most young women are more concerned with their breasts as a source of pleasure than anything else, I began to worry that mine would kill me someday. I had my baseline mammogram soon after my mother’s cancer surgery (there’s probably some irony there, but I'm not looking for it), and have had one faithfully every year since, which means that this year marked the twenty-fifth time I’ve had my breasts squeezed painfully between X-ray plates by a bored radiology technician. I get my mammograms done at Rosetta Radiology in New York, a wonderful facility that tries to put some dignity back into the practice. And it was there, last year, that a caring doctor reminded me once again that I really should be tested for BRCA1. Cancer is almost a joke in my family. With us, it’s not so much a matter of if, but when. Among the relatives who’ve had cancers which convey a hereditary risk, I count my mother; my father; both grandmothers; my grandfather; my aunt; an uncle; the list goes on. As to other risks for breast cancer, I tick almost all the boxes (large-breasted; dense-breasted; early menstruation; no children; cystic; and so forth). Moreover, I am at least 50% Ashkenazi Jewish (and my mother always had suspicions about her grandfather which, if true, would convey to me a double whammy of genetic idiosyncrasy). Prudence and my Virgo nature, therefore, would suggest that I really should be tested to see whether I carry the gene that could determine, one day, whether I live or die. Yet I have resisted for more than ten years, since the test was made available on a wide basis. I just don’t want to know. I was in the car yesterday when I heard that Angelina Jolie had made public her decision, following her discovery that she carries BRCA1, to have a prophylactic double mastectomy and breast reconstruction. Lest you are tempted to tag this as a publicity stunt, don’t be. The decision to undergo this procedure is an incredibly courageous, radically life-altering one, one that I am 100% sure Jolie did not make lightly, nor without the maximum of sleepless nights that must accrue to such a choice. Jolie writes, in her New York Times op-ed piece, that her mother died at 56 of breast cancer. My own mother was 55 when she got sick, and I will never forget having to answer the first thing she said when she was coming out of anesthesia after her radical mastectomy, which we had all hoped would be a lumpectomy: ‘They had to take it all, didn’t they?’ My mother’s question summed up just how important breasts are, and I make that statement without attaching any irony or humor to it. Our breasts serve as an integral part of our identity as women—sometimes as our entire identity, depending on who’s looking. They define us as different…