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In 2006, long before hashtags, Tarana Burke began a grassroots “me too” movement to try and reach women and girl survivors of sexual assault, particularly women of color in low wealth communities. In 2017, actor Alyssa Milano used “me too” as a hashtag, and it went viral. While much has...
I recently reviewed commentaries on the Indian Supreme Court's decision regarding the right to the title (ownership) over a piece of land in Ayodhya where the Babri mosque was built under the Mughal rule of Zahiruddin Babur more than 400 years ago. It is a spot that Hindus believe was the exact...
The recent firing of McDonald’s chief executive Steve Easterbrook over a consensual relationship with an employee highlights the thorny issue of workplace romance in the #MeToo era, which has heralded a number of CEO resignations over inappropriate behavior that previously was condoned or...
Thirty years ago, on November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall came down, and with it the communist regime that had held the East German “workers’ and farmers’ state” in its iron grip since the beginning of the Cold War. A year later, the two German states were reunited. The mood was exuberant,...
It is easy to see incels — short for "involuntarily celibate" — as just another example of misogyny. This is so, but it is also true that the incel phenomenon departs from how today's masculinity works. Incels are part of a growing trend of radical-right movements that are anguished by the...
In early 2019, Foreign Affairs took a detailed look at the social and potentially political implication of the emergence of a phenomenon called “Deepfakes,” the result of recent advances in digital technology. The article describes the kind of manipulation of images and sound that now...
Yoga gurus and cult leaders – I’ve seen a few. Four weeks ago, I unknowingly joined an alleged New-Age cult on the New Zealand coast, together with a giant kraken and some neatly dressed pensioners who would make any book club proud. They were among the 200 people of all ages preparing for a...
Nationwide protests have been taking place in Lebanon since mid-October. I am blessed with knowing some very smart people in the country, from various backgrounds, who hold the ideal of Lebanon and its possibilities close to their hearts. So, in following recent events on social media and...
“A biological male claiming to be a transgender woman, won the 2018 UCI Masters Track Cycling World Championships in Los Angeles over the weekend.” That’s how the alt-right news website Breitbart greeted Rachel McKinnon’s victory last October. Since then McKinnon, a Canadian track cyclist...
Nobel Prizes are not what they used to be. This is particularly true when it comes to literature. Who, for instance, still remembers that the late Dario Fo, characterized as the “acerbic, anarchic clown of a dramatist,” received the Nobel Prize in 1997? Or, going back into a distant past, who...
Two years ago, my wife and I went to a dog “salon” in a small French town on the other side of Geneva. The puppies were adorable, but even more were the kittens one breeder was exhibiting together with his puppies. Taking advantage of my obvious immediate infatuation with the tiny creatures,...
