There is not a special place in Hell for people who didn't support Sarah Palin. Do you know what I mean? It's ridiculous. And there is certainly not a special place in Hell for women who don't support Hillary Clinton.
'The End of Men' was an incendiary title, but the actual book was very sympathetic to men. It was very invested in a lot of the challenges men are facing with unemployment and the economy changing because of technology.
There are a whole bunch of structural and systemic factors we need to address in order to move away from the model in which women really are still dependent on men.
Women's roles in the movies remain, for the most part, girlfriends, mothers, wives.
A very successful woman, Palin has the wherewithal to move forward consciously. What she did was move forward thoughtlessly and overconfidently, without considering that her abilities or qualifications would ever be questioned.
You know how few movies there are in the world about women and their work? I mean, it's like 'Silkwood' and 'Erin Brokovich.' There are exceptions, but they are so exceptional.
The vast majority of women who marry still take their husband's name. And I'm not vilifying that behavior! But that's a pattern where women are truly still taking on their husbands' identities.
Plenty of the women who were single in the nineteenth century wrote about their desire to evade marriage. Marriage was scary in a lot of ways. It often involved having a lot of kids, losing your autonomy, being in service to a husband and children who were often born at an unremitting pace without the benefit of modern medicine.
In 2008, Clinton and Obama were similar politicians. Obama was definitely advertised as the more progressive candidate, and that's part of why more progressive people - including women - went for him.
Since the late 19th century, the median age of first marriage for women had fluctuated between 20 and 22. This had been the shape, pattern and definition of female life.
Single women will get us closer to gender equality, and that will take many forms, including a reimagining of what families entail and what it means to have a full female life. Also, their presence will force the government to support a population of independent women more capably.
I think that technology - computers and smart phones and 24-hour availability - often leaves me, and others I know, feeling blank and depressed at the end of a day. I also believe that hyped expectations for raising children leaves many women and men feeling as if their days are a blur of carpools and play-groups and tutors.
In 1970, the average woman had her first child at 21.4; by 2012, it was almost 26, an age by which many young adults are at least a few years deep into jobs or careers.
There are all kinds of ways in which women, together, change the world. And I don't mean that in a cheesy way. I'm not somebody who believes all women should support each other. I believe very strongly in women critiquing each other, just not critiquing each other more intensely because they're women.
Look at somebody like Margaret Sanger, who was married young and had kids but then left her husband and wound up living a kind of single life as she got into the founding of what would become Planned Parenthood.
Women are living independently, but we don't yet have the social and economic policies behind us to support that independence.
When I say, 'The choice to not marry,' that doesn't always translate into, 'I am a woman, and I am deciding that I am not going to get married,' or 'I am rejecting marriage.'
I wasn't remotely ambivalent about marrying the person I was marrying, but I was 35. I was deep into my adulthood, and I identified as single.
I'd spent my whole adult life considering myself an independent entity, my life filled by work and friends and family. Suddenly I had a male partner, someone I woke up with and went to sleep with every night.
When lawmakers start to make laws that hurt single women, often the women that they're hurting the most are not the economically powerful ones. They're not Sandra Fluke. They're not Lena Dunham, who conservatives hate more than anybody. They're hurting low-earning single mothers.
