I wrote about my partner not telling me who they're voting for

I'm a little late getting this posted (I do post all relevant links on Twitter and Facebook), but I wrote a piece for the wonderful DAME (I highly recommend bookmarking the site) about how it feels to be supporting Hillary Clinton but my partner not wanting to tell me who he's voting for for president, which could be Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, a third party candidate, a write in candidate, or nobody. I miss writing essays and have been trying to carve out time to write more of them, but this is a start.



On the career front, I'm mostly a copywriter these days, and I'm proud of learning a new skill/career path at 40, but I don't want to give up "me" writing entirely, though the steady paycheck thing more than makes up for any downsides. It's a daily challenge to figure out what's feasible in terms of managing my time, what's worthwhile financially, what matters to me. I'm catching up on pieces that have fallen by the wayside so I can make room for new ones. I'm also getting ready for what I hope is my biggest, best and most successful book launch ever (December 13th is the big day!). Though my books, thankfully, have long legs and tend to sell even years after their release, that first release month is so vital and I dread messing it up. So that's what I'm up to, and trying to make writing from the heart something I practice more often. I'll be at writing conference BinderCon in New York this weekend, so if you're there, say hello, and if you're interested in this fabulous event for women and gender nonconforming writers, check it out. They also hold an L.A. version in March. I'll be doing something I've never done before, a theme for me of this year: pitching editors in person.

For Fortune, I wrote about what millennial women think of Hillary Clinton

For Fortune.com, I asked millennial women across the political spectrum what they think about Hillary Clinton as a candidate and whether or not they associate Bill Clinton's affairs, sex scandals and the allegations of sexual assault against him with her campaign. Many of their answers surprised me, and just may surprise you too.

This was a little different than my usual beats, and I welcome that. As I said earlier, I've been trying to figure out, to put it mildly, "what to do with the rest of my life," and knowing that I can write about new topics for new publications helps energize me to and remind me what makes freelance life interesting and lively. Whatever you think of the election and who you're backing (or not backing), I hope you'll check it out.

Racialicious on Gloria Steinem, pitting race against gender

Racialicious on Gloria Steinem, pitting sex against gender (via Funky Brown Chick on Twitter)

But the contradictions on how to consider Senator Clinton’s gender seem to run deeper – all the way to the Senator’s campaign. Senator Clinton repeatedly cites the change that will be affected by electing a female president, but then dismisses the charge that she is playing the “gender card”. (By contrast, not once has Obama said that he should be elected because he would be the first Black president). Senator Clinton claims to be the candidate of feminists (indeed, Steinem herself basically questions the gender authenticity of young women for daring to choose a male candidate over Senator Clinton – going so far as to suggest that “women are the one group that grows more radical with age”) and yet Clinton expected to ride the wave of her husband’s accomplishments all the way to the White House. And in case we found out that she actually had very little to do with those accomplishments, she and her husband have carefully chosen to exclude White House documents pertaining to the First Lady’s role during the Clinton years from the public eye.

Ultimately, however, Steinem’s piece (intentionally or unintentionally) draws a line in the sand between people of colour and women, essentially disregarding the everyday racism faced by Black and Brown people, and claiming the Oppression Olympics gold medal for women. Further, by casting the debate as between Black men and White women (despite her imperfect creation of Achola Obama), Steinem renders the woman of colour invisible, reaffirms the binary Black-White paradigm of race, and demands we take a side in the epic battle between race and gender. Is it no wonder, then, that women of colour have long felt alienated by feminists like Steinem? Where do we fit when we’re being asked to choose between Obama and Clinton as a metaphor for race versus gender? And how are we supposed to react when an incorrect choice labels us as “less radical”?