Kate Rockwood

Swarms of females wearing ape masks march to a movie awards ceremony, touting posters, signs and paper bags for the crowd. This is not another group of fans gone crazy, ready to pounce on the celebrities as they exit their glossy white limos. These are the Guerilla Girls, the self-described conscience of the art world and they are here to protest the lack of nominated female directors at the awards...

Originally published January 2002, University of Chicago's Free Press

In the ongoing war between radical feminists and the Religious Right, there is one battle in which both sides have curiously joined together. Rather than fight each other, these strange bedfellows have combined forces to combat pro-pornography feminists. Their motivations may differ: fear of moral bankruptcy vs. the halting of the objectification of women...

Originally published January 2001, University of Chicago's Free Press

Value-based Payments Leave Men's Sex Skills Penniless

In Germany they opened up "the first women's brothel" but this month the brothel went bankrupt - not for want of customers, but because the owners didn't collect money from the women upfront. Instead, the women paid after they had sex and paid "for what they thought the services were worth."...

Originally published February 2002, University of Chicago's Free Press

Perhaps nothing is quite so awkward as having your mother ask, "So, have you met any nice lesbians on campus?" Yet my mother can stop worrying about the status of my social life, rest assured that I was able to mingle with many a lesbian and sme fine young gay men at the GenderFuck dance, sponsored by Queers and Associates (Q&A)...

Originally published April 2001, University of Chicago's Free Press

Queer Marriage Makes Invisible Those Relationships Defined as "Other"

"We can have a big potluck and all hang out," I tell her, grinning. I am talking of We in the broadest sense: myself, my love, my love's love, my love's other love, my fuckbuddy, my gal pal, my best friend, my dating partner, my friend's rommates, my kissmate and her boyfriend, my kissmate and his best friend, my confidant and their friends - the web of friendships and sex and intimacies and confidences that has spun itself around us...

Originally published March 2002, University of Chicago's Free Press as part of a three-article opinion piece on gay marriage

Queer Mentorship Program Takes Root

"I'm so proud that it actually happened," says Anne Pizzi. "I mean, I'm grateful that it didn't get swept away like all the other great ideas I've stumbled upon. This time Kathy [Forde] and I talked about it and figured out how to make it happen and, well, it happened." If Anne Pizzi is slightly amazed at the success of the LGBTQ Mentoring Program, she has a right to be...

Originally published September 2001, University of Chicago's Free Press

"Three" opens shortly after the probable suicide of a young woman, identified only as S, who boarded with a married couple, Ruth and Leonard. It details the conversations between Ruth and Leonard, discussing the probability that S has taken her own life, as well as their daily interactions and frustrations with one another. Ruth shifts between needy and biting, refusing Leonard's sexual advances and opting instead to endlessly play dress up with her cat...

Originally published September 2001, University of Chicago's Free Press

The Kama Sutra, second only to the locker room in supplying sexual advice and encouragement, is most historically read in the translation by Richard Burton. But some women claim the translation is unbalanced in the department of pleasure, fraught with everything from vague references to mistranslations. So what's a pro-sex boy or girl, interested in pleasing his/her partner(s) while pleasing themself, to do?...

Originally published February 2002, University of Chicago's Free Press

A week before the play "The Terrible Girls" opened, I attended a reading by Rebecca Brown, on whose eponymous novel the play is based. Quick to smile and easy with the crowd, she remarked, "It's like Christmas. I get a play and then I get to do a reading too." She describes "The Terrible Girls" as a novel, or rather a series of episodes involving two characters, named I and You, that add up to something in the end. Brown adds, as an afterthought, "some serious, some funny."...

Originally published May 2001, University of Chicago's Free Press