As many of you have already heard, I was a guest on Skeptically Speaking a few weeks ago, on the topic of why women menstruate. PZ Myers tackled the evolutionary perspective first, and then I got to answer audience questions and talk a little about my own research. Because I think it’s important for [...]

The folks at Duke University’s Women in Science and Engineering organization (WiSE) have invited me to their digs to give a talk. So, I’ll be back out in #scio12 territory next week. I arrive early afternoon on Tuesday and leave early morning on Thursday. (Maybe some locals would be interested in a Tuesday dinner meetup?) [...]

Today I’m going to share something different with you all. Because of this blog, I get a lot of email and contact with women who have stories to tell about their experiences in science. I have heard enough of these by now, stories of harassment and assault, of belittling and being passed over, of subtle [...]

Twin City Derby Girls, lining up at the start of a jam to support their jammer. My other posse. Photo courtesy of Alex Wild. The women in scienceblogging session at Science Online this year was very different from last year. More people were venting, and what they were venting was scary: stalkers, rape jokes, physical [...]

In his SciAm post addendum (scroll to the bottom), Jesse Bering has been very gracious. This post really isn’t about that now-infamous advice column, but about broader ways to interrogate claims people make. This post is another way of thinking about Sci and my #scio12 session on “Sex, gender and controversy” (see our other session [...]

Scicurious and I are leading the “Sex, gender and controversy: writing to educate, writing to titillate” session on Thursday (at 2:45pm, room 1cd) at Science Online 2012. Despite the fact that the discussion at #scio12 will only be an hour long, we managed to fill a two hour Skype conversation with our thoughts and ideas [...]

This is a repost of a piece I wrote after the women in scienceblogging panel at Science Online 2011. Seeing as we’re heading into #scio12 season and there will be another women in scienceblogging session (this time in the brilliant and capable hands of Janet Stemwedel and Christie Wilcox), AND a writing for women’s magazines [...]

It’s the end of 2011, and I have a number of reasons to celebrate: a wonderful family, a wonderful job, a fun gig at SciAm, a roller derby season about to start back up again, and Science Online 2012 in a few short weeks. It’s the time of year to reflect on what we have [...]

Dear Kate, I am an evolutionary psychologist, which, in and of itself, isn’t a bad thing and society largely accepts the need for people like me. However, our evil, feminist, not-patriarchal-enough culture fundamentally doesn’t get me in particular, a special snowflake among evolutionary psycholgoists. You see, I am an Evidence Free Science Provocateur. I am [...]

I submitted the first round of my materials for my third year review recently. The third year review is the half-way point between one’s hire as a tenure-track professor and going up for tenure. You can be fired at this point. But the most common outcome is that you get a strongly worded letter from [...]