One lovely fall evening, as I was home making a deep-dish apple pie, I reached up into the cabinet for my flour sifter, but it wasn’t there. “Did someone move my sifter?,” I yelled out in displeasure. Since there were only two cats and one other person in the apartment, who could have moved it?  […]

Aesthetic Realism explains the fight that can be in women between honestly appreciating the world, and wanting praise just for ourselves. In his book Definitions and Comment, Eli Siegel defines “appreciation” as “The enjoying of a thing by seeing it as it is.” And he explains: Pleasure from a thing is based either on knowing the […]

I’ve seen firsthand that kindness is possible in love and in sex. In fact, it is crucial if a woman is to have the proud emotions she hopes for. I once felt kindness in love wasn’t possible, and I went after something very different. For example, having dressed in a clinging outfit, I remember thinking, […]