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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

Vaccinate Boys Against HPV, Too

E.J. GraffOct 26, 2011

This week a federal advisory panel recommended that boys, too, should get the HPV vaccine—the only existing vaccine that protects against cancer. Until now, the vaccine had only been recommended for girls to prevent cervical cancer, although both boys and girls are susceptible to infection by the human papilloma virus. The new recommendation for boys comes for two main reasons. First, there's been a rise in throat and anal cancers attributed to HPV, in both men and women. There are now more throat cancers because of HPV and oral sex than because of smoking. Second, if men aren't infected, unvaccinated women are safer.

Gals to the Back of the Bus

E.J. GraffOct 26, 2011

Jezebel reports that, in Brooklyn, there’s a public bus line where women have to sit in the back of the bus. Men sit in front. Really. Apparently, God made the rule.

So What if I Hadn't Been Born?

E.J. GraffOct 26, 2011

When I blogged over at Slate’s XX Factor (now Double X), I grew fond of Rachael Larimore, with whom I agreed to disagree with on almost everything. I am not being sarcastic. Recently, I heard a rabbi talk about the importance of discussing major issues not to convert others—not to win—but to “improve the quality of our disagreements.” I love this concept as a way to improve our public discourse on core political subjects, which are often religious wars in another guise.

Whistleblowers

E.J. GraffOct 25, 2011

Somehow I missed the movie The Whistleblower, an action film about a woman in the UN peacekeeping forces who tries to hold her male colleagues and superiors accountable for sexual coercion and abuse of girls, boys, and adults they are supposed to be protecting. (The movie is on my list now.) Women’s E-News reports that a UN screening of the film last week involved a testy exchange between Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, the filmmakers, and others who say that the problem continues—and that the way that the UN deals with it is worse than inadequate.

FBI Updates Definition of Rape

E.J. GraffOct 24, 2011

In the wake of a fierce and sustained campaign by feminist groups, the FBI is incrementally moving toward an updated definition of rape. The old one, written in 1929, leaves out a lot of what most of us consider to be rape. Here's how Erica Goode in The New York Times wrote up the controversy: 

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