Today marks the tenth anniversary of “The Puppy Episode,” aka “The coming Out Episode” on Ellen, the comedian’s eponymous first television sitcom. GLAAD has a lengthy press release discussing the significance of the show. It was a turning point in depictions of LGBT people on television, and an empowering moment in many of our personal
Originally published in Bay Windows, April 19, 2007. When I first read the title of Waiting for the Call: From Preacher’s Daughter to Lesbian Mom, I expected the tale of a woman rejecting her religious upbringing and denouncing her parents as she came out. Jacqueline Taylor’s memoir is thankfully not as simple as that. It
Today’s guest post comes from Paula Gregorowicz of The Paula G Company. As a life coach, her goal is to help each of her clients “design a successful life that works without the burnout and compromise.” This sounded like advice that would benefit moms (and thus our children), and so I asked if she would
[I’ve updated this post based on reader comments. Thanks to all, and keep the ideas coming. It’s good to see so many lesbian moms who have achieved such success—though I’ll quickly add that this is a personal choice. It’s just as acceptable to choose to stay home with one’s children, or forgo career advancement for
As a lesbian mom, I’m always interested in stories by adult children of LGBT parents. Writers such as Abigail Garner have reminded us how important it is for “queerspawn” to have a voice of their own, not filtered through our naturally biased lens of parenthood, however well intentioned. I was delighted, therefore, to see that
Is leaving a paying job to stay home with your kids “the worst mistake [you] ever made”? That’s what author Leslie Bennetts says older women have been telling her. She’s thus written The Feminine Mistake: Are We Giving Up Too Much? in order to “warn a new generation about the hidden costs of financial dependency,”
Take a moment to go read Sometimes Daddies Do Get Pregnant (How I Do Queer Parenting), by Lucy Silva Marrero, at Hip Mama. It’s a rare but needed look at raising a child in a family with a transgender parent, and the challenges of painting a broader-than-usual picture of gender roles. “I love that my
From the incomparable Virginia Woolf: I went, therefore, to the shelf where the histories stand and took down one of the latest, Professor Trevelyan’s HISTORY OF ENGLAND. Once more I looked up Women, found ‘position of’ and turned to the pages indicated. . . . A very queer, composite being thus emerges. Imaginatively she is
Women’s History Month is coming to a close, but I wanted to make sure I included the poem “Heroines” by poet and lesbian icon Adrienne Rich in my series of quotes about women and history. I am cutting here for purposes of length and copyright, but that is doing some injustice to Rich’s work. I
Today’s quote about women and history, in honor of Women’s History Month, is from Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey. The protagonist, Catherine, is answering an inquiry from her friend Eleanor about the type of reading she enjoys: I can read poetry and plays, and things of that sort, and do not dislike travels. But history, real
