Phoebe Maltz Bovy is a former editor of the Sisterhood blog at the Forward. Her writing has appeared in several publications, including The New Republic and The Atlantic. Her book, “The Perils of ‘Privilege,’” was published by St. Martin’s Press in March 2017. She has a PhD in French and French Studies from New York University, and has read a lot of 19th century French Jewish newspapers for a 21st century American.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy
By Phoebe Maltz Bovy
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Life Donald Trump Hates Jews. He Hates Women Too. What If You’re Both?
Two discussions exist in parallel, not in conversation, and have pretty much made up my social-media feeds of the last few months, but the last few days especially: Trump hates Jews. Trump hates women. Look what Trump said about Jews! Look what Trump said about women! Lost in the mix is the fact—self-evident, presumably, to…
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Life All (?) The Women Trump Has Groped
So, uh, Trump. As should not come as any surprise, but somehow kind of does, Donald’s “locker room” talk about non-consensually grabbing women’s genitalia was not, as he’d claimed during the second presidential debate, merely “words.” A candidate who had thus far come across as casually (if professionally) misogynistic (fat-shaming, ogling) has now crossed over…
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Life Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s “Dumb” Remark About NFL Players’ Protest
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has, alas, said something disappointing. She told Yahoo’s Katie Couric that she finds football player Colin Kaepernick and others’ refusal to stand for the national anthem was “really dumb.” Ginsburg added that she believes the protest should be legal, but the criticism of what is, after all, a peaceful…
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Books Ferrante and the Freedom of the Jewish Woman Author
It’s neat, in a way, that Elena Ferrante’s Jewish. Well, not Ferrante—the author behind the pseudonym. Anita Raja, the Italian translator whom Claudio Gatti has convincingly argued is Elena Ferrante, is, as Gatti recently explained in detail in the New York Review of Books, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor. Whether we think it’s terrible…
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Life Come on, Lena Dunham: Gwyneth Paltrow is Not a Realistic Role Model
Lena Dunham and Jenni Konner made “entrepreneurship” the theme of their September 20 Lenny newsletter. In an introductory email to subscribers, Dunham begins by ‘fessing up to her own past internalized sexism, recalling the time when she assumed a well-dressed college classmate “had been given an all-access pass to her father’s gold card,” only to…
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Life Is Jennifer Weiner Not Pretty Enough for Oprah — or Just Too Insecure?
Jennifer Weiner, the massively popular popular-fiction writer who also has a column in the New York Times and a profile in the “New Yorker,” was disappointed at not also getting selected for Oprah’s Book Club. That disappointment, which Weiner expressed in a few since-removed Facebook posts (hereis the one she’s settled on, for now at…
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Life Hillary Clinton Doesn’t Have a ‘Presidential Look’ — Which Is Great
Donald Trump does not believe Hillary Clinton “has a presidential look.” How unkind of him! And yet, how restrained, as far as he’s concerned. The “presidential look” remark is, for Trump, exceedingly mild stuff. The birther candidate is not comparing his rival’s physique to a chicken takeout order or demanding her execution, as his fans…
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Life I’m a Proud Jew — But Sometimes I ‘Pass’ as Not Jewish
By most accounts, I am not a self-hating Jew. I wrote a doctoral dissertation on a Jewish-studies topic, have a blog with the word “Zionism” in the subtitle, and have published enough articles on Jewish-related topics that there’s a (charming) post dedicated to me on one of those big white-supremacist websites. There’s a poster of…
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