Based on all the dumb shit I've been told about how men allegedly are and women allegedly are, I've concluded the following: Being masculine is apparently just like being a proud lion, it is an intrinsically superior gift of strength and wisdom bestowed on men by the universe that women must stroke and honor (or… » 3/11/14 1:50pm 3/11/14 1:50pm

In the world of rejections, I always think of the movie Say Anything: A guy is allowed/expected/culturally celebrated for wooing his ex back with grand gestures. It would be a very different movie if she simply called the police. (If a heartbroken woman holds up a boom box in the rain outside her ex's bedroom, the… » 8/03/13 5:00pm 8/03/13 5:00pm

And now for the most important question of our time: what is a "bro," exactly? It was the second-most popular plea for clarity my parents made while visiting me at college (the first most popular was, "Why in God's name are you basically pursuing a degree in analyzing vampire erotica?"). "Callie," they would ask,… » 6/24/13 2:15pm 6/24/13 2:15pm

Stubble is hot. You know this. And now science confirms it. To be clear: We're not talking about a soul patch or an elborate Riff-Raff style swirling goatee. Just plain old stubbly, scruffy, ungroomed facial hair. » 4/26/13 5:10pm 4/26/13 5:10pm

There was a crucial moment when I was newly pregnant where I had to make a choice whether to take a (better-paid) job that would have me still in clubs, reviewing rock shows three or four nights a week for an alt-weekly while gestating, or peel off to the more family-friendly track of writing about culture with… » 3/26/13 11:50am 3/26/13 11:50am

Last week marked the birthday of Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain (he would have been 46), a dude who was cool about a lot of stuff — guitars, hair colors, well-worn sweaters, infectious hooks — but one of the things he was the coolest about was women. Or rather, his ardent support of their absolute equality. Kurt Cobain… » 2/28/13 5:00pm 2/28/13 5:00pm

Hello, muffins. Here at this site, we spend a lot of time railing against the shitty shit that dudes do, because, come on, shitty shit is shitty. It's shitty to act like women owe you attention and/or genital touching simply because you're noble enough to refrain from being an abusive dick-monster. It's shitty to tell… » 12/19/12 5:00pm 12/19/12 5:00pm

If there's one thing I'm always going to remember about the 2012 election, it's that it was the moment I first saw the white male monopoly lose its vise-grip on American culture. Not that white men aren't in charge anymore—they are, and they will probably always be a dominant political bloc—but there's a sense that… » 12/04/12 5:10pm 12/04/12 5:10pm

The good news is: feminism happened, so men don't get to just run around slapping our asses with impunity anymore. The bad news is that now that overtly piggish behavior is heavily, heavily socially discouraged, there's a subset of men who resort to less overt means when they want to act like jerks. Meet the Nice Guy. » 12/03/12 3:00pm 12/03/12 3:00pm

Yes, yes, yes, I know there are a billion kooky subcultures floating around out there on the internet, most of which are incredibly offensive to human beings with clear eyes and full hearts, and ripping them to shreds on a widely read blog is the very easiest of all pickins. And I knooooooooow we shouldn't give… » 12/02/12 11:00am 12/02/12 11:00am