Remembering Edward Van Halen
Edward Van Halen (EVH) was my favorite guitarist of all-time. As a disciple of what is now called “classic rock,” it’s disconcerting for me to be living through this current…
Mickey Z
The Greatest (sic) Generation also didn’t believe #BlackLivesMatter
Reminder: The U.S. military that fought against fascist white supremacy ("Antifa," if you will) during the Second World War was segregated. *** Army Chief of Staff General George S. Marshall bellowed…
Amidst the racial strife, we’re ignoring a pandemic (no, not THAT pandemic)
What if I were to tell you about a virtually ignored state of emergency, a lethal pandemic of which the exact numbers will never be fully known? I’m pretty sure you’d have a…
Welcome to a Pandemic of Collective Grief
“I could not count the times during the average day when something would come up that I needed to tell him. This impulse did not end with his death.…
Interview with a COVID-19 survivor
“At my lowest points, the unsettling realization came to me that given the ferocity and rapidity of change with this virus, a further plunge could mean that I might not…
The public perception of Stormy Daniels, “porn stars” and “hookers.”
“The reasons a woman only has to make one porn film to be a ‘porn star’ are similar to the reasons a man has only to sign on the dotted…
How to (really) Help Homeless Women
For my entire adult life, I’ve tried to help homeless people. For years, I wrote for Street News -- a once-popular advocacy newspaper mostly produced and sold by homeless people in New…
Facebook Makes Everything Worse
Here’s how “awareness” works in 2017: Something happens. We post about. Until something else happens. We revel in the likes, shares, or comments. Or we wallow in self-doubt about the…
The low-key passing of Manuel Noriega
By the time Manuel Noriega died on May 29, 2017, the “ousted dictator” or “Panamanian strongman” had long since taken up residency in the proverbial dustbin of history. He hadn’t been…
Who Cares About Helping Homeless Women?
I hadn’t seen J. in more than a week and that was concerning. It always worries me when one of my “regulars” vanishes. Often, this situation has resulted in me…
What if I told you 2,000 women per year are murdered by men they know? (Interview with Dawn Wilcox)
On May 28, 2016, a gorilla named Harambe was killed at the Cincinnati Zoo. A small child had fallen into the primate’s enclosure and… well, you know the rest. “As I…
That Time When Male Violence Altered The History Of Women’s Tennis
Not too long ago, while leaving the gym, I overheard a conversation about the best female tennis players of all-time. As I walked home, I pondered my own list and…
The Dworkin-MacKinnon Anti-Pornography Civil Rights Ordinance
The Dworkin-MacKinnon Ordinance -- originally written in 1983 by Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon -- was an amendment to a civil rights law. It stands as a mostly ignored template…
Rebuilding Activism From The Ground Up
I. I recognized a familiar sound I’d just finished working with a personal training client near Central Park before hopping on a downtown R train. Over my shoulder was a…
It’s Not A Level Playing Field. It’s A Jigsaw Puzzle With A Lot Of Missing Pieces
“I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields…
The End of Patriarchy: Radical Feminism for Men | Mickey Z. interviews Robert Jensen
“It seemed that there was a need for a book that laid out the problem of patriarchy in plain language.” (Robert Jensen) While we’ve never met in person, Robert Jensen…
3 Ways To Recognize An Emergency In 2017
Let’s say you were strolling down the street when you spied a small child who had drifted away from his family. As motor vehicles streamed by at illegal speeds, the…
What The Gym Taught Me About Fighting Trumpism
I’ve spent more time in gyms than I can even begin to calculate. I can now recognize how this choice instilled in me a skewed and unhealthy body perception and…
In 2017, What Will YOU Do To Resist Trumpism?
A woman I know (white, middle-aged, let's call her D) recently told me about a Muslim family that lives on her block in Queens, New York. One of the family’s…
Would You Donate Even $1 To Help Homeless Women?
As you all know, I tried the “activism” thing. I really tried. But now, I’m ready to focus my energies on two things desperately needed in the Trump Era: cultivating…
U.S. Leaders Didn’t Stop The Nazi Holocaust. They Won’t Stop The Next One Either
My first book was an alternative history of World War II called Saving Private Power: The Hidden History of the “Good War.” The jam-packed release party took place in July…
Masculinity Goes To The Movies…
Recently, I was tagged on Facebook to participate in something called the “80s Music Challenge.” I excitedly agreed but such social media shenanigans did not come without an ugly lesson.…
What My Mom Taught Me About LOVE
I wasn’t supposed to be born. After my mother gave birth to my sister, the doctors told her she’d never have another child. They couldn’t say exactly why (she was…
It CAN Happen Here !
So, I recently told you all about Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s positive assessment of Mussolini and how FDR was the architect of U.S. prison camps. There’s much more but even with…
We’re On The Brink Of Collapse And Donald Trump Is More Than Happy To Exploit It!
Preface: This is not an article. This is a desperate plea to evolve. During the many, many talks and lectures I gave between 2008 and 2013, I’d often provide a…
In The Days Of My Youth, I Was Told What It Means To Be A Man
Over the years, I’ve written a fair amount of autobiographical pieces but it’s only recently that I’ve begun to re-explore some of these episodes from a more critical, radical perspective.…
Was Elie Wiesel Really “The Conscience Of The World”?
When news of Elie Wiesel’s death broke on July 2, the predictable paeans and plaudits flowed. President Barack Obama, for example, called his fellow Nobel Peace Prize winner “the…
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