historically and cross-culturally." In 1992, Tavris wrote The Mismeasure of Woman: Why Women Are Not the Better Sex, the Inferior Sex, or the Opposite Sex, a vigorous defense of equality feminism, the view that women are neither inferior to men nor superior to men, but are entitled to equality in all spheres. The title was an homage to Stephen Jay Gould's The Mismeasure of Man, because both books showed how societal prejudices can affect research—in his book, in the study of intelligence, and in hers, in the study of gender. Tavris' book draws on research in many disciplines to explode myths about "male and female" brains (a perennial issue), alleged gender differences in "natural" abilities, the social creation of "PMS", and other popular beliefs. In a final chapter, she examined and critically evaluated the emerging "recovered memory" epidemic in America, in which women were going into therapy and coming out believing they had been victims of sexual abuse for years, but had repressed the memory. In January, 1993, she wrote a controversial but influential lead essay for The New York Times Book Review, "Beware the Incest-Survivor Machine," on the popular "sex-abuse-survivor" books, showing that their assumptions about memory, trauma, repression, and recovery were scientifically unwarranted. The Mismeasure of Woman received The Distinguished Media Contribution Award from the American Association of Applied and Preventive Psychology and the Heritage Publications Award from the division of the Psychology of Women of the American Psychological Association. Tavris identifies as an equality feminist (in contrast to the strains of feminism that have promoted notions of female superiority or inherent differences in psychology and abilities). For Tavris, feminism and science are not incompatible: on the contrary, she regards the scientific method as a way to "further the goals of feminism, and feminism is a way of improving science." Tavris has long believed that science and critical thinking are "the major tools we have for assessing which ideas are better than others, and of forcing ourselves to let go of ideas that don’t work." In this goal, she maintains, skepticism – a willingness to question received wisdom, to demand good evidence, to be willing to hold even our own ideological beliefs up to scrutiny – is an essential ally. So, she would add, is a sense of humor. Personal life Tavris was married to the actor Ronan O'Casey until his death in April 2012. She has testified