Critiques en avant-premièrePeg Tittle

Fact-driven fiction.

Speculative.  Provocative. 

What could've been. 

What should've been.

Contents: Damages, Home for Unwed Fathers, Fighting Words, Comedown, What Sane Man, Sweet Sixteen, Ballsy, Justified, It's a Boy, Men Need Sex, How We Survived, The Knitting Group, The Mars Colonies, A PostTrans PostPandemic World, Unless, Alleviation, The Women's Party, My Last Year.

Jess used to be a man. Then he found himself in a female body.

It wasn't funny.

Why would anyone even think it was?

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There's a scene in Tootsie (1982) that is surely one of the most unacclaimed scenes of all time: Dustin Hoffman's character, Michael, as 'Dorothy', makes a suggestion on the set, and the director dismisses it out of hand. As I remember it, Hoffman's face—conveying surprise, confusion, indignation—shows perfectly Michael's reaction to the absence of (and, just maybe, awareness of) male privilege. The entire movie should've been about that. Just that.

It wasn't.

And so I wrote Jess.

A collection of think pieces on a variety of topics: the environment (the notion of garbage, who owns the water, climate change as entertainment, … ), business (the limits of advertising, the notion of profit, …), rights and responsibilities (making certain words illegal, a concept of noise trespass, …), social issues (cultural anarchy, … ), ethics (what’s wrong with selling your organs, euthanasia, should parents need to be licensed, …), education (the failure of …), sports (drugs, competition, …), religion (intelligent design, tax exemptions, …), and so on. Philosophy with attitude. Because the unexamined life is dangerous.

The title says it all. A collection of close to two hundred exposes and analyses of everyday sexist shit (and gender shit, since gender is aligned with sex) that pisses me off. Includes pieces previously published in The Philosophers' Magazine, Philosophy Now, Herizons, fbomb.org, Humanist in Canada, and Victoria Times Colonist, as well as a great many previously unpublished pieces. Note: This second edition includes all of the pieces in the first edition, plus seventy additional pieces. Also, note that it includes all of the pieces from the four Shit that Pisses Me Off volumes that address sexism. (The other pieces are anthologized in Just ... Think about It!)

I hope that 'gender recognition' legislation, which reveals a failure to differentiate between sex and gender and, with respect to sex, a denial of the definitive role of chromosomes, will soon be repealed. I fear that this horror story will take its place.

Impact presents an extended confrontation between a sexual assault victim and her assailants, as part of an imagined slightly revised court process, in order to understand why they did what they did and, on that basis, to make a recommendation to the court regarding sentence. It does not go … as expected.

What if one day, all of the women suddenly disappeared? Without what it is that women do, what it is that women are — what would happen? Radically feminist. Dystopian.

What if one day, all of the women suddenly disappeared? Without what it is that women do, what it is that women are — what would happen?

A collection of think pieces on a variety of topics: the environment (the notion of garbage, who owns the water, climate change as entertainment, … ), business (the limits of advertising, business in denial, …), individual rights and social issues (making certain words illegal, slutwalks, cultural anarchy, a concept of noise trespass, …), ethics (what’s wrong with selling your organs, euthanasia, should parents need to be licensed, …), education (the failure of …), and so on. By the author of Critical Thinking: An Appeal to Reason.

The title says it all. 110 pieces say it in more detail.

War rape, profit, baby androids, tax exemptions for churches, make-up, having kids, assisted suicide, abortion, grades inflation, littering, business ethics… Philosophy with an attitude. Because the unexamined life is dangerous. The fourth book in the series; a collection of short thought-provoking pieces on everyday matters that matter.

Pregnant men, paying stay-at-home moms, advertising, income tax deductions, people skills, boy books, speech codes, porn, god, testicular battery and tranquilizer guns, the Academy Awards, intelligent design and evolution… Philosophy with an attitude. Because the unexamined life is dangerous.

Why do men spit (and women don’t)? What’s the real problem with cellphones? What’s wrong with wedding leave? Do you remember Grade Ten History? Why isn’t being a soldier more like being a mother? What did God really promise? And let’s talk about sex… Accessible investigations of everyday things. Philosophy with an attitude. Because the unexamined life is dangerous.

Challenging thoughts about everyday things: casual day at the office, calling people Ms. and Mr., parenting without a license, flying a national flag, women’s fiction, drugs and sports, profit and loss, marriage, the weather report, hockey brawls, jury duty… For every belief, attitude, and behaviour Tittle investigates (in a way that only a trained philosopher can), she exposes the often unflattering implications of endorsing that belief, attitude, or behaviour (not the least of which is that there is no reasoned argument one can give in support of, no acceptable, sufficient, defensible rationale for, the belief, attitude, or behaviour in question) and, furthermore, presents a great many counterarguments to those who would nevertheless persist – leaving the reader with way more to think about than the word count would suggest. Philosophy with an attitude. Because the unexamined life is dangerous.