Pleasure: Does it sound like a dirty word to you? Yet life without pleasure — without spontaneity and playfulness, sexuality and sensuality, esthetic experience, surprise, excitement, ecstasy — is a kind of death. People deprived of pleasure don’t get kinder and gentler but meaner and nastier. Indeed, it’s not the excess of pleasure, but pleasure-starvation on a mass scale that we have to thank for the rampant piggishness and urban violence that plague us.
This is Willis at her best: caring about the human condition so much that she cuts to the real deal and not only speaks what is on her (and our) mind, but challenges us to rethink our cultural priorities.
So, yes, knowing that there will be no more freshly minted Ellen Willis articles leaves me feeling bereft. I’d kill to know what she’d say about the Mark Foley and Ted Haggard sex scandals, and, my God, Borat: what would she have said about Sacha Baron Cohen? But just as I was moping in my grief, I thought of labor organizer Joe Hill’s exhortation “Don’t Mourn, Organize,” and wondered what Ellen Willis would say. Surely, even in this situation, she would distill something fine from the sorrow. It’s yet another reason to be thankful to her.
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Beauty for beauty's sake, Last of the Tuba, Arts and science, More 
- Beauty for beauty's sake
For several years, Cristin Searles of Providence has been stitching together soft sculptures that catchily evoke natural forms.
- Last of the Tuba
In a 2006 performance in the Boboli Gardens in Florence, Italy, MaryPat Warming wore a costume with a third prosthetic breast, stood with the Madonna’s poise at the edge of a wall with the vista of Florence unfolding behind her, and endeavored to consume the contents of several wine bottles full of whole unpasteurized milk.
- Arts and science
The power of Casdin-Silver’s work was in her eye for compelling bodies and their fleshy, otherworldly presence in her holograms.
- Dead white females
Can you remember the last time you curled up under the covers with Marcel Proust’s I n Search of Lost Time ?
- Money Matters
In 1979, at the height of the so-called “women’s movement” in America, a dollar coin was issued featuring the image of the feminist suffrage leader Susan B. Anthony.
- Cock tease
Through a series of roles and relationships, The Penis Responds opens the sort of candid, body-centered conversation more often associated with feminism and Women’s Studies.
- Personally speaking
For decades, feminists have rallied behind the phrase “the personal is political,” meant to remind us that our personal lives are intrinsically affected by politics.
- Your history
For a building, inclusion on the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s 11 Most Endangered list is a mixed blessing.
- The beat goes on
I would like to thank the Boston Phoenix for choosing to speak the truth in your article “ The Year Women Got Beat Up ” when it could have easily chosen something more circulation-friendly.
- Cause for pause
The Ogunquit Playhouse’s final show of the season is a musical for the ages — for the ages, that is, of about 45 to 60.
- Sexual politics
Eve Ensler’s play is as much a manifesto as a dramatic production, not so much agitprop but an animated display of wordy protest signs condemning violence against women.
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News Features
, Bob Dylan, Special Interest Groups, Women's Issues, More
, Bob Dylan, Special Interest Groups, Women's Issues, Hunter S. Thompson, Mark Foley, Norman Mailer, Susan Sontag, Sacha Baron Cohen, Ted Haggard, Jean Genet, Less
