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E.J. Graff

E.J. Graff writes on social-justice and human-rights issues, particularly discrimination and violence against women and children; marriage and family policy; and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender lives. She is a resident scholar at the Brandeis Women's Studies Research Center and the author of What Is Marriage For? The Strange Social History of Our Most Intimate Institution (Beacon Press, 1999, 2004).

Recent Articles

Call it Trafficking

E.J. GraffJan 03, 2013

Last week, in a horrifying move, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a bill to ban American citizens from adopting Russian children—ironically enough, in retaliation for U.S. efforts to punish Russian violations of human rights. It's ironic because thousands of Russian children (and children across the former Soviet bloc) live in institutions, as no child should. Denying those children desperately needed new families could almost be considered a violation of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, which requires that countries act on behalf of the best interests of the child.

2012's War on Women

E.J. GraffDec 31, 2012
Flickr/Vince Connare

For the ladies, the year’s sound track could have been a strangled gasp, followed by snorting and laughing out loud. The attacks on women’s health, on contraception, on abortion, on the definition of rape—it was all so over the top that very early on it seemed that the Republicans were determined to get out the ladies’ vote for the Democrats in 2012. In one outrageous incident after another, old white dudes and anti-choice women made it clear that they think single women should spend their time smiling modestly, gazing at the floor hoping for a marriage proposal—and that married women should stay barefoot and pregnant, relying on menfolk for pin money and taking care of their babies.

Paying for Having Been Raped

E.J. GraffDec 21, 2012
AP Photo/Cliff Owen

Cross your fingers, but it looks as if Congress is going to let women in the military rely on health insurance to pay for abortions in cases of rape or incest. That’s been a long time coming, as Mother Jones reports:

What Do You Tell the Children?

E.J. GraffDec 17, 2012

When the Sandy Hook news first came along, my wife and I had the same instinct: turn off the news before the boy gets home. We’re practiced, here, in information lockdown; we’ve protected him from hearing about Aurora or the Sikh temple or any other of the mass shootings. There would be no NPR and no TV news; newspapers would go face down, into a private pile, where he couldn’t see a headline. The fact that someone had shot up a school whose oldest children were in his grade, maybe two hours from where we live, was not a fact we wanted to enter his emotional world.

Whether Scalia Likes It or Not

E.J. GraffDec 13, 2012
Flickr/U.S. Mission Geneva

Last week, when the Supreme Court decided to take both the Proposition 8 case, which challenges California's constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage and a challenge to the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which barrs the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages performed in the states, my inner Eeyore got a little carried away. I realized that when Brian Brown—head of the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), the chief opponent of marriage equality, started quoting me in his fundraising e-mails. While I’m honored he would notice, that made me recognize I should explain my thinking more clearly.

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