Feminism is, very definitely, the starting point for my writing. By this I mean that I start with the assumption that gender identification is a major factor in shaping our lived experience and that not all gender identifications have equal power. I don’t think I’ve suffered from extreme versions of sexism—just your garden-variety disdainful rejection of my work and interests, for the most part—but I know that my experience as a writer has been both affected by sexism and enriched by the feminist community. Because I write from a perspective informed by biology, I’m deeply skeptical about essentialist ideas about female identity and I’m also hopeful about our ability to modify the gender cultures that shape us as individuals. So I write in part to articulate how feminine identity constrains us, in part to show how it might allow us to rethink our possibilities. [Read more at So to Speak].