Hopefully this will lead to at least a little bit of justice-doing.

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The Disney Princesses are a collection of characters meant to give little girls hours of play-time enjoyment. Yet the message behind many of the Disney princesses does seem to be the same: you may be resourceful, sweet, and kind, but in the end it was all for the sake of a happily ever after with your prince charming.

Great analysis. Plus, Disney Movies.

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The new CEO of Yahoo has given birth to a boy and named him Bogue. She plans to work from home throughout her maternity leave.

Correction I misread the linked article. Mayer has not yet named her baby; Bogue is the surname of Mayer’s husband.

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An economist tries to go all Stephen Levitt on contraception by using data to show that ready access to contraceptives hurts womankind.

There are a few interesting ideas in the piece, but he largely undermines them by engaging in logical errors, conflation of ideas, and unfounded assertion. See if you can find them all! I’ll spot you the first one:

It may be biologically inevitable that relatively more men will populate the sex market and relatively more women will populate the marriage market. The reason for this is simple. The vast majority of women want to have children sometime during their lives.

Really? Says who? Conventional wisdom may suffice for ordinary conversation, but aspiring to prove your point with economics requires you to provide the reader with data.

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For my mom, because she loves Hello Kitty and I love Star Wars. Also, because it’s adorable.

Via The Mary Sue.

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When libertarians reacted to moral dilemmas and in other tests, they displayed less emotion, less empathy and less disgust than either conservatives or liberals. They appeared to use “cold” calculation to reach utilitarian conclusions about whether (for instance) to save lives by sacrificing fewer lives. They reached correct, rather than intuitive, answers to math and logic problems, and they enjoyed “effortful and thoughtful cognitive tasks” more than others do.

Is this supposed to make us sound bad?

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Diverse slideshow of vintage suffrage posters. My favorite is “What a Woman may be, and yet not have the Vote” (for the content less than for the artwork).

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Everyone is angry with Katie Roiphe (again) for this piece more or less bemoaning the fading presence of “serious feminists”. I do like this part:

The tacit assumption is that we all take for granted a certain set of shared beliefs, and we should mock those few retrograde Neanderthals who do not agree with us. The tone is less urgent and more queenly. It contains the idea that feminism is cool, and that it will mock you like a cool and impressive girl at the lunch table if you are in violation of its principles. The idea is to make fun of your enemies, not preach at them.

It’s probably no secret by now that I like polite, reasoned debate, so I think snark should be employed only very sparingly. The rest of Roiphe’s piece is largely tripe, though. I’ve mentioned before that, if anything, feminists—like nearly everyone else—suffer from a lack of humor, not the other way around.

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Stephanie Coontz, for The New York Times, analyzes how far we’ve come, and how far we have still to go:

Fifty years ago, every male American was entitled to what the sociologist R. W. Connell called a “patriarchal dividend”—a lifelong affirmative-action program for men.

The size of that dividend varied according to race and class, but all men could count on women’s being excluded from the most desirable jobs and promotions in their line of work, so the average male high school graduate earned more than the average female college graduate working the same hours. At home, the patriarchal dividend gave husbands the right to decide where the family would live and to make unilateral financial decisions. Male privilege even trumped female consent to sex, so marital rape was not a crime.

Great read, full of fascinating data points. Too bad she’s not an economist.

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Even our language is sometimes biased toward men.

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It’s like Rachel Held Evans is putting the words right into my mouth.

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I agree with this analysis by Mark Adomanis. I’m glad Yekaterina Samutsevich is free again, and it sounds like she made a shrewd maneuver by switching representation and tactics, but this just seems like a way for Putin’s government to seem magnanimous and pay some lip service to justice without actually changing in any meaningful way.

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Watch Penny Wong stick up for her PM, who yesterday spent 15 minutes telling the Opposition Leader exactly how hypocritical he is about sexism within the government.

Via Blue Milk.

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Shea Bennet of Media Bistro’s “All Twitter” section suggests that this could spell bad news for Twitter, which has only one female executive:

Twitter certainly isn’t alone in this shameful display. Foursquare has no female executives at all, and Dropbox only has one. Except… Foursquare has 100 employees, and Dropbox has 170.

Twitter has 1,300+.

Personally, I’m guessing that Twitter could easily be the exception to the rule, since they seem to be doing pretty well. This isn’t the first study to find this sort of correlation, though, so I hope other businesses are paying attention.

Also: Dropbox only has 170 employees?!

Via The Jane Dough.

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Today is the first-ever International Day of the Girl, so in honor of the occasion, here is a post by Rachel Kassenbrock for Ms. Magazine on child marriage:

Alemnesh was seven years old, living in Amhara, Ethiopia, when her family secured for her a marriage to a much older man. She was expected to drop out of school and take on the burden of household responsibilities. In this new life, Alemnesh would never learn to read or write. She would likely be sexually exploited at a young age and, vulnerable and disempowered, and[sic] she would never have appropriate access to information about sexual and reproductive health. This could have led to early pregnancy and obstetric complications, the leading cause of death among girls aged 15 to 19.

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One afternoon in late September, Coweta County Sheriff Investigator Jason Fetner asked Christopher Bailey, a 35-year-old substitute teacher at East Coweta High, to meet with him regarding a school theft. But when Bailey arrived, Fetner told him the real reason for their meeting: he knew that Bailey had been posting photos of his students—“Hot senior girl in one of my classes,” read one charming caption—on the subreddit r/CreepShots, some of which had been viewed thousands of times.

Other Redditors have been gathering information about posters to the CreepShots thread and using it to ID the worst offenders.

It seems as though they may have succeeded in shutting down the subreddit, probably due to—and this may be my favorite part—blackmailing the senior moderator in charge of it.

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Our hope does not rest in the next Caesar, it rests in Christ. No economic system will usher in utopia. No political party will set all things to rights, or wrest control away from the sovereign Lord and plunge the world into oblivion.

Perspective.

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Libby Anne performs a smart analysis of a conservative Christian infographic titled “Why Wives Need to Give Their Husbands More Sex”. The whole concept stinks of the now-disproven-but-still-won’t-die denialism of the female sex drive and the only slightly less sexist belief that men are somehow helpless to control their own libido.

One little bit I think Libby Anne missed: the bar graph labeled “A Neglected Sex Life Spells Trouble” tries to create an impression of correlation between sex-deprivation and other kinds of marital trouble by simply putting them next to each other on a chart. Sadly, I know there are people who fall for that sort of thing.

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A group of Scottish men who meet monthly at a Glasgow gentlemen’s club—no, the other kind—to drink whiskey sours and learn new sewing techniques.

I just have no words to describe how wonderful this makes me feel.

Via The Frisky.

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Yesterday evening The Good Men Project put up a post titled “Older Man Provides Booze to an Underage Party, Dad Saves the Day”. At some point between when my RSS reader downloaded it and when I actually read it and tried to click through to the permalink for the post, they removed it. The only remaining records of its existence are search engine results that lead to a 404 page and this tweet. Even the Wayback Machine didn’t get to it.

I can speculate on why the post was removed: it was porn, and misogynistic porn at that.

The writer may have thought he was giving some sort of hat tip to equality by framing the post in terms of consent so his story of a barely-legal drunk girl being raped at a party by an older man would seem ironic or like a cautionary tale, but if so, the effect was too subtle. This is rape porn, and ending it with the rapist in the back of a police car doesn’t indicate a passion for justice when the “arresting” officer is the perpetrator’s father, who is clearly just going to let him sleep it off and then turn him loose again.

Strangely, no one else caught this story, as far as I can tell. I’m going to try to get some attention for it, because I think The Good Men Project deserves to be held accountable, and frankly, I’d like to hear their explanation—good or bad—for why they allowed this on their site in the first place. I’m even more interested in their rationale for pulling the post without comment of any kind.

UPDATE

I had originally posted image files containing the text of the post from The Good Men Project here on this page because I couldn’t find the content anywhere else. Thanks to Dianna E. Anderson, I can now link you all to this . Apparently I have still much to learn about this sort of thing. I have removed the image files from this site, although I will continue to retain a PDF copy on my hard drive in the event that the cached page disappears.

UPDATE 2

Google’s cached version has now been updated and reflects a later version of the page, after The Good Men Project had removed the offending content and posted their apology. In the interest of permanance, I am replacing the link to the cached version above with this link to a PDF saved from the Google cached version. The quality is not as good, but since it is on my personal web host, I am better able to guarantee that it will not disappear.

Scott DeJarlais, a “pro-life” Republican Tea Party Congressman and doctor, slept with a patient, got her pregnant and then pushed her to have an abortion.

I’m still very skeptical of the idea that Republicans are deliberating waging a “war on women”, but it gets very hard to defend the pro-life movement and libertarian values when people act like this.

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The Facts

Late last night I wrote a very short report on how The Good Men Project had posted a piece of rape porn under their “Moustache Club of America” section, then taken it down after only a short time with no explanation or even acknowledgement that it had existed. Thanks to the collective efforts of a few people on Twitter, the site has posted an apology of sorts at the original post’s URL. Here it is, in full:

Editor’s note: The content previously at this URL was grossly offensive and absolutely not representative of the Good Men Project’s values. It was published without the supervision of myself or any other member of the Good Men Project editorial team, and taken down within two hours (from 11:47 PM to 1:38 AM) of being published. We initially took it down completely in the hope that this ugly aberration might simply be erased, but in case anyone received the link via an RSS feed or similar source, we are adding this apology to clarify matters. We sincerely regret the oversight that allowed such a profoundly offensive and tasteless piece to appear, even briefly, under the Good Men Project banner, and offer our apologies.

—Noah Brand, Editor-in-Chief

Dianna E. Anderson wrote an admirable analysis of the situation before the apology went up, then updated her post after the apology was issued to point out how inadequate it was:

While it is “regrettable” for them that this posted (mistakenly? Hah), why does a man who writes this stuff still write for GMP? Why is he still allowed to contribute? And if he posted this unilaterally, why does a man like him have administrative posting privileges? And what sort of environment is Good Men Project creating where he would possibly think this is an appropriate thing to post?

An apology is important, yes, but the fact that someone who has posting privileges thought this would be okay material for the site speaks to the environment created by GMP and deserves some deep introspection and change, rather than a shallow, quiet apology.

Somewhere along the line Buzzfeed picked up the story, and earlier this evening Anna North posted a piece that included comments from Noah Brand, The Good Men Project’s Editor-in-Chief, Oliver Bateman, editor of the “Moustache Club” section, and Lisa Hickey, the site’s publisher. They answer, by my estimation, two halves¹ of Anderson’s questions above.

I’m going to quote pretty heavily here because I think it’s important to read everything The Good Men Project has to say for itself.

Brand first gives us a bit of spin:

He called it “dreadful” and said “nobody at the Good Men Project stands for that kind of rape-apologizing nonsense.” The story was published on a sub-blog of GMP called Moustache Club of America which gets less editorial oversight than its main pages, and which Brand says sometimes publishes “edgier content.”

The fact that “Moustache Club of America” posts “edgier content” is obviously supposed to provide some sort of explanation of how this content—which crossed the line from “edgy” into “offensive” before speeding on into the wastelands of “sub-human”—could ever have been deemed fit for posting by anyone.

Next, Brand gives us a slightly-expanded explanation for how the piece got past editorial:

Moustache Club editor Oliver Bateman did not look at it before it went up. Brand says the post was up for about two hours, and everyone at GMP hoped they could remove it without incident, but it had already gone out over RSS. The official Good Men Project Twitter account also tweeted it, though that tweet has now been deleted.

For the record, that tweet has not been deleted. North should have fact-checked the story better. Update: apparently the story was tweeted twice from the official Good Men Project Twitter account. One of those tweets, the one Anderson and North refer to, has been deleted. The one I link to above has not.

Now on to Bateman’s commentary:

Moustache Club editor Oliver Bateman said the piece “was an experiment. It was not espousing the act of rape but engaging it, playing with ideas of sex and power. However, not all experiments are good ones.” He added, “Ryan was perhaps trying to say something about society and the way it accepts rape, but the message, if any, was mangled in the transmission.”

Bateman told BuzzFeed Shift that Bjorklund “is a talented writer but this is a piece we should have worked on together.” Bjorklund had previously been able to post to the site directly, without editing; any future posts of his will be held in a queue for an editor to look at first.

This, at least, straightforwardly (and, let us assume, truthfully) speaks to one part of one of Anderson’s questions; Bateman states without ambiguity that Bjorklund had direct posting privileges, even though he doesn’t explain why. Unfortunately, the rest is rank apologism, defending an obvious misogynist and his offensive rape pornography (more on this later). Even more unfortunately, this also clarifies that Bjorklund will continue to write for The Good Men Project.

Lastly, North quotes Hickey, the publisher:

“We believe in being feminist. We believe in equality, egalitarianism, and treating people with respect and honesty regardless of gender.” She added that the site strives to talk about gender issues “in a way that won’t alienate our core audience or feminists,” but that they haven’t always been successful. In the wake of the Bjorklund story, she says, the site will be instituting closer editorial oversight, as well as trying to talk about issues like consent “in a way that clearly adds to the greater good and doesn’t subtract from it.” Of the site as a whole, she says, “we’re a project. We continue to evolve, and we really do want to get this right.”

This, combined with North’s remarks regarding the lack of editorial oversight for “Moustache Club of America”, constitutes the other one-half an answer—in this case, for Anderson’s question of how The Good Men Project came to create an environment in which Bjorklund thought his rape porn story would pass editorial scrutiny (after the fact, of course). And that half an answer is, reading between the lines: “We’re sloppy.”

Analysis

So.

Let me sum up, just to keep the story straight. Two nights ago, Ryan Bjorklund posted a short pornographic story glorifying rape to The Good Men Project’s “Moustache Club of America” section. He did this without going through an editor, because he was, at the time, allowed to post content directly without editorial oversight. Within two hours someone in editorial realized how offensive the piece was and pulled it without explanation. Today, in response to questions and pushback from a few readers and bloggers, The Good Men Project eventually published an apology with little explanation. Later in the day, BuzzFeed interviewed several of their staff and published a story containing the organization’s explanation for their lapse, promises of future improvement, and assertion of their good values and intentions.

Now, here is what is wrong with all of that: at one level or another, all of those explanations, promises, and assertions are lies, and the reason I can say that hinges on Ryan Bjorklund.

I don’t care what Oliver Bateman thinks Bjorklund was trying to say about society, the man’s writings are misogynist. I could write an entire post enumerating his offenses, but I’ll stick with two. The first is Bjorklund’s most recent post, from September 25, “The Bad Man Project”. A character study of sorts, the short story describes a disconnected and emotionally numb man who engages in a series of one-off sexual encounters with women he despises:

Although an atheist, he preferred college-aged Christian women. He preferred them because it was likely that they hadn’t lived long enough to experience any kind of continuous, uncoddled pain. Also because he already knew how quickly they’d believe his cheap, optimistic lies. It also helped that whatever he convinced them was worth doing would eventually be absolved by their merciful and understanding Lord.

Bjorklund may have thought that by putting “Bad Man” in the title he was being subversive and signaling his disagreement with the main character’s thoughts and opinions, but the actual tone of the piece is sympathetic toward the man and vaguely—or sometimes not-so-vaguely—contemptuous of his female conquests.

Even more damning is Bjorklund’s “8 Simple Rules for Surviving a Break-Up”, from July 29 of this year—a list of terrible things you can do to the lady you just got out of a relationship with. Here’s a sample (Warning: offensive sexual slang):

1. As for her sketchy female friend– she’s heard the most slandering jibberjabber spewn from your ex’s cumdumpster. Her hotter, more superficial friend (or frenemy) has been the cause of her past insecurities. Chances are this is also the friend that she complained about to you the most during the course of your relationship. This girl is certainly DTF, because unlike her other friends who offer shoulders to cry on, this friend is her sleaziest and is already sick of hearing her go on about how hard it is. Their relationship is all but done for anyway, and both acknowledge they have very few things in common except being perfunctory sperm receptacles. She’ll appreciate your forward spitefulness and happily accept your invitation to beat her cheeks.

This speaks for itself, I think. If Bjorklund is trying to be subversive and ironic with his rape- and bigotry-glorifying stories, he’s doing it too subtly. Since his actual writing quality could most charitably be described as heavy-handed, I doubt excessive subtlety is really the issue.

So, to return to Dianna E. Anderson’s questions for The Good Men Project (specifically: why did Bjorklund have administrative posting privileges?), Ryan Bjorklund is not at all the sort of man their editing staff should have trusted with direct-posting privileges, particularly if one of their goals is “to talk about gender issues ‘in a way that won’t alienate our core audience or feminists’”. Further, the decision to retain him as part of the writing staff is a poor one for two reasons:

1. His writing is unlikely to contribute positively to a discussion of gender issues. Even if the editing staff immediately starts to take that goal very seriously—and I’ll go on record here as being very skeptical—they will find themselves spending inordinate amounts of time editing Bjorklund’s work for offensive content and sentiment.
2. Even if Bjorklund was certain to produce nothing but woman-friendly content from now on, posting rape pornography is the kind of mistake that should disqualify you from a second chance. Bjorklund should have been fired on the spot, not allowed to continue posting as long as he agrees to be edited.

Therefore, if we exclude the possibility that The Good Men Project is managed by idiots, the fact that Bjorklund not only wrote for them but had permission to post without supervision indicates that his writing and ideas were considered exemplary. Since it should be clear by now that his writing is not at all exemplary for a website hoping to constructively join the discussion of gender issues, I conclude that at least up until Tuesday, The Good Men Project did not actually espouse that goal, or did not take it seriously.

To answer Anderson’s second question, then (Why is Bjorklund still allowed to write for The Good Men Project?), I conclude that the publisher and editors do not actually find his usual work to be offensive and did not find this specific piece to be offensive enough to justify termination. Query nearly any feminist, or nearly any woman, even, and I think the response would overwhelmingly indicate that a pornographic story glorifying the unpunished rape of a high school girl would be considered offensive. This is pretty common sense stuff, and anyone who really cares about a healthy dialogue between men and women should know this. But since The Good Men Project plans to continue publishing Bjorklund’s work despite its offensive nature, I conclude that going forward they still do not care about this stated goal.

Now, with regard to Anderson’s final question: “what sort of environment is Good Men Project creating where [Bjorklund] would possibly think this is an appropriate thing to post?” We can only speculate. In my recent job supervising at-risk boys in a group home, though, I learned one truth over and over: the behavior you allow is the behavior you tacitly approve. Whether The Good Men Project cares in theory about furthering the conversation on gender issues is not actually relevant. What matters is what they do, and clearly what they do is allow misogyny to go unchecked; they may even—reading between the lines—reward it. They may not intend to do these things, but they are doing them.

The Good Men Project is not all bad. I continue reading the site not just because this is the subculture I choose to write about but because some of their writers do occasionally post thoughtful or pro-feminist content. I doubt that the editors are actively misogynist; most of the sexism I encounter there is typical of the culture at large. But given their stated goals, they should certainly strive to rise above passive acceptance and reflection of cultural gender values; they need to actively pursue egalitarian standards in thought and expression. I sincerely hope they are, as they promised Suzannah Paul and me on Twitter, “using this as an opportunity to look at our editorial & posting policies & make changes.”

But I’m skeptical. I agree with Sarah Moon’s conclusion on the subject:

The Good Men Project needs higher standards.

Correction: In my original post I theorized that The Good Men Project may actually have contacted Anna North themselves in the hope that she would publish a story that showed them in a favorible light. While I still think North’s piece should have probed the issue a little more deeply, I have been informed that the initiative in publishing the story was hers.

Remember how I wrote that The CW was developing a modern-day re-telling of Alice in Wonderland? Well, NBC has also bought an Alice adaptation to develop for TV. This one is actually set in Lewis Carroll’s Wonderland, but—Twist!—seven years after Alice’s adventures, with Alice now as the reigning Queen of Wonderland.

The show’s creator is Anthony Zuicker, who also created a little known series called CSI, so at least the man knows how to make a television show. On the other hand, I hope that doesn’t mean Wonderland (yes, the show is called Wonderland—you know, to distinguish it from The CW’s Wunderland) is going to be a crime procedural.

Please, Hollywood: don’t mess up this thing I love so much. I already gave you The Chronicles of Narnia!

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Sally Howard of The Telegraph travels to the Ukraine to meet the self-described “heirs to the Amazons”.

Some other very cool photographs of the Asgarda here.

Via FuckYeahWarriorWomen

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Innocent people are daily stopped by police on the streets of New York, shoved up against a car or a wall, and told that if they verbally complain they’ll be physically assaulted on the spot. It’s official NYPD policy to temporarily detain and frisk pedestrians who aren’t committing any crime. The threats and other abusive behavior aren’t officially sanctioned but happen all the time.

This particular person recorded the entire thing.

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If you’ve been following the Pussy Riot story, this is a must-read.

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Photojournalist Stephanie Sinclair has spent over eight years in Afghanistan, Nepal, India, Ethiopia and Yemen, documenting the problem of child marriage.

More images are available at the National Geographic website.

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Excuse me while I momentarily sigh with despair over the entire Republican Party.

OK. Now that’s over: Roger Rivard, a Wisconsin state representative, recently said that in his youth his father had told him the above thing. He later clarified to a reporter:

“He also told me one thing, ‘If you do (have premarital sex), just remember, consensual sex can turn into rape in an awful hurry,’” Rivard said. “Because all of a sudden a young lady gets pregnant and the parents are madder than a wet hen and she’s not going to say, ‘Oh, yeah, I was part of the program.’ All that she has to say or the parents have to say is it was rape because she’s underage. And he just said, ‘Remember, Roger, if you go down that road, some girls,’ he said, ‘they rape so easy.’

“What the whole genesis of it was, it was advice to me, telling me, ‘If you’re going to go down that road, you may have consensual sex that night and then the next morning it may be rape.’ So the way he said it was, ‘Just remember, Roger, some girls, they rape so easy. It may be rape the next morning.’

“So it’s been kind of taken out of context.”

This is a little better, although I don’t really approve of scaring boys into celibacy by painting young women as so lacking in moral fiber that they would accuse someone of rape rather than admit they had consensual sex.

I’m just even more confused by why all these Republican politicians can’t seem to get that rape is a very important, sensitive subject and they should stop using the word lightly or making unthinking remarks that require long, involved explanations to understand “properly”.

Edit: If you read this earlier than the afternoon of October 14, in place of the preceding two paragraphs you saw a long, snarky rant about the inherent misogyny of Rivard, Sr.’s thinking. On reflection and dialogue with one of my readers, I decided that it was unnecessarily condescending and, more importantly, incorrect.

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Adrian Chen profiles Michael Brutsch, known as Violentacrez on Reddit, where until recently he moderated over 400 subreddits, many focused on sexualized or pornographic photographs, or inflammatory topics designed to inflate page views.

His most famous subreddit was CreepShots, one of whose contributors was the Georgia teacher fired for posting upskirt photos of his underage students.

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Justice Key Dingake has ruled that three elderly sisters can inherit their father’s property instead of their nephew, who is the oldest surviving male:

“It seems to me that the time has now arisen for the justices of this court to assume the role of the judicial midwife and assist in the birth of a new world struggling to be born. Discrimination against gender has no place in our modern day society.”

Botswana, it seems, has a progressive national government that unfortunately tolerates regressive local laws and customs that run counter to its constitution. That may be about to end.

Via Jezebel.

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Miami University, in Oxford, OH, is scrambling to find the person responsible for posting a list that included advice ranging from drugging women’s drinks to slitting their throats in order to prevent them reporting the crime.

Kate Van Fossen, vice present of Women Against Violence and Sexual Assault, assures us the risk is very real:

“It could have been a joke, but the fact of the matter is that those thoughts are crossing someone’s mind. There are girls living in a hall where someone came up with that,” Van Fossen said. “It’s just disturbing.”

In fact, it’s almost more disturbing to think the list was a joke; the university probably doesn’t hold that many men who seriously think rape is a good idea, but it may very well foster a culture that treats date rape as a laughing matter.

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A recent study shows that giving girls the vaccine does not increase their likelihood of having sex:

Unlike previous studies that have largely relied on self-reported sexual activity, the new study measured clinical signs of sexual activity over several years, like whether the girls had been tested for a sexually transmitted infection, received contraceptive counseling or become pregnant.

“What we’ve done here is take a more objective approach and use clinical data to look at outcomes that are related to sexual activity and compare them,” Bednarczyk said.

This fuels my skepticism regarding the efficacy of scaring teens into celibacy.

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Is the acting of applying makeup really so gross? Is it impolite to destroy the fantasy that all women wake up with dark black lashes, rosy-cheeked complexions, no red veins around our noses, and perfectly arched brows?

That’s exactly what people are complaining about, whether consciously or not—shattering the belief that a woman’s job is to look sexually appealing any time a man might set eyes on her.

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Nick Rynerson, writing for Christ and Pop Culture, comments on the decision of a Florida judge that a man who believes himself to be the reincarnation of Jesus is sane enough to be executed:

It is safe to say that one of two things is happening here. First (and most probable) is that somebody… wants this criminal dead and by golly, he’s gonna get him. Or second, the public at large has completely lost any grip on Christian doctrine and a guy claiming to be Jesus is mistaken for basic orthodoxy.

I’m not sure which of those things I’d rather turn out to be true.

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The 14-year-old girl the Taliban tried to assassinate has been secretly transported to England for care.

Pakistan’s ambassador to the Emirates, Jamil Ahmed Khan, said he had seen Malala before the plane resumed its journey, and told local media that her recovery was “very steady”.

She will be treated at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham - an NHS (National Health Service) hospital with a major trauma centre specialising in both gunshot wounds and head injuries.

The cost of her care and rehabilitation is being met by Pakistan.

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Content Warning: Graphic Descriptions and Discussion of Sexual Activities

I’m posting this mostly in the interest of fairness, because earlier this week I wrote a very critical piece about The Good Men Project in which I asserted that the site as a whole is doing a poor job living up to its own ideals with regard to engaging women and feminists in ways that won’t offend them.

One of The Good Men Project’s resident feminists, Ozy Frantz, calls out Jezebel for posting a piece of rape advocacy in the form of advice on getting a man to agree to anal penetration. I won’t quote from the Jezebel piece; those who feel they can stomach it can read it for themselves. I will point out, though, that it is by a guest writer, Karley Sciortino, who goes by the handle Slutever, and it is the first of a new sex column.

I say it should be the last. In the above-referenced post, regarding the writer of the rape pornography The Good Men Project published, I wrote:

Even if Bjorklund was certain to produce nothing but woman-friendly content from now on, posting rape pornography is the kind of mistake that should disqualify you from a second chance.

I’m going to make the same call about rape advocacy. Jezebel should find someone else to write their sex column.

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What is perhaps most frustrating about engaging in such conversations within the evangelical community in particular, however, is that differences regarding things like Calvinism and Arminianism, baptism, heaven and hell, gender roles, homosexuality, and atonement theories often disintegrate into harsh accusations in which we question one another’s commitment to Scripture. In some cases, folks are so committed to their particular views on these issues they seem incapable of making a distinction between the Bible itself and their interpretation of it, and so any critique of that interpretation is seen as a critique of Scripture itself! And so we miss one another entirely. Instead of a lively, impassioned debate about the text, we engage in lively, impassioned debates about one another’s commitment to the faith.

I can’t even tell you how much experience I have with this kind of mentality.

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A recent poll by Catholics for Choice shows a sizeable majority of Catholics are not very concerned about abortion or gay marriage, and very few think that the advice of their bishops should influence their political decision-making.

The Vatican has a problem.

Via Feminist.org

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Conor Friedersdorf of The Atlantic, writing about the tragedy of Amanda Todd’s suicide, gets it almost totally wrong for once:

When a child is bullied to the point of suicide partly because a photo of her breasts was circulated to her friends and family, shouldn’t we ask ourselves why the Anglosphere retains social norms wherein being seen topless is regarded as horrifying and shameful?

In a word: no.

Modesty is cultural. Every culture sexualizes some part(s) of the human body; in our culture, one of those parts is the female breast. Intrinsically, this is neither good nor bad, and claiming that our culture is somehow worse than other cultures because of it is really just very low-level exoticism.

Buried in some of this nonsense Friedersdorf comes close to making several good points, and I particularly agree with him that we should not teach children to feel humiliated or shamed by breaches of these cultural norms. But what we should blame for the tragedy of Amanda Todd is not our sexualization of breasts; it’s the horrible person who hounded and tormented her, then succeeded in shaming her in public until she felt so full of despair that she took her own life.

Bullies are bullies, and if they want to torment someone they’ll find any excuse. Furthermore, if bared breasts had not been taboo, Amanda Todd’s persecutor would have just persuaded her to show whichever part of her body was.

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Becci Yare of Feminspire on being accused of “false advertising” for augmenting what God gave her:

I only ever speak for myself, but do you really believe I’m padding my bra for you?

If a woman decides to alter her appearance because of some deep-seated insecurity, that’s between her and her therapist. Everyone else should keep their opinions to themselves.

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Where by “family planning”, they definitely mean contraception, not abortion:

The centrist New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good released a 15-page document on Monday calling for “common ground” support of family planning and the health of mothers and children.

“We affirm that the use of contraceptives is a responsible and morally acceptable means to greater control over the number and timing of births, and to improve the overall developing and flourishing of women and children,” said the Rev. Jennifer Crumpton, one of the advisers to the evangelical group.

Good for them.

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Did you know the first computer programmer was a woman? In celebration of the day, instituted to “raise the profile of women in science, technology, engineering and maths”, why not read her Wikipedia entry?

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Goldman had asked actress Tippi Hedren in an interview whether she’d ever considered “sleeping her way to the top.” When criticized for this by Jennifer Weiner, he accused her of wishing she could have slept her way to the top.

Good on the Times for suspending him. Maybe this will send a message to other male journalists that this sort of thing will not be tolerated.

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The police may have been playing things close to the bullet-proof vest, but Anonymous is something else entirely. On Monday night, they released a roundup of personal information—that is, they “doxed”—a Vancouver-area man, claiming he was the one behind Todd’s suicide. They released a cache of identifying information including his Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ accounts, links to his accounts at perv sites like Jailbait, photos, chat transcripts, and home address. And, as is traditional, a bombastic “Expect Us” video.

The Internet cheered. The media made house calls. And the RCMP reportedly dispatched two squad cars to the house in case someone decided to go vigilante IRL.

Only one problem: wrong house.

Contrary to popular perception, Anonymous are not omniscient, and it seems highly likely they got this one wrong. The guy they outed certainly looks like a creep, but probably not quite that level of creep.

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As much as I loved Julia Gillard’s rant about misogyny amongst her opposition, we already have a word for “entrenched prejudice against women”: sexism.

Words are important, people. You shouldn’t monkey around with them for trivial reasons.

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Amanda Hess gets this exactly right. As many shady aspects as there are to Mitt Romney’s story of proactively hiring female executives, his larger point was that business-driven affirmative action for women is not only acceptable but laudable.

Or, as Justin Green at The Daily Beast puts it: Only Mitt Romney could make liberals bash affirmative action.

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A week ago young Richard Neill posted his somewhat amusing pretend outrage at how Bodyform, a maker of feminine hygiene products, had misled him about the nature of menstruation and its effects on women. Bodyform has responded with a much more amusing apology.

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From a survivor whose rapist plea-bargained his way out of it:

Why had I thought I’d be immune to being called a slut, whore, homewrecker, protected from having my motives and intentions questioned, from being treated as if I were the criminal? And by my own attorney, no less.

A grim story, but it ends on a hopeful note.

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Great news.

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I thought these people were supposed to be progressive.

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Emily Bazelon of XX Factor on Michael Brutsch, AKA Violentacrez, the Redditor moderator outed by Adrian Chen of Gawker as the troll behind /r/creepshots:

Here’s why I feel a bleat of sympathy, though, for Brutsch, who turns out to be a 49-year-old computer programmer working at a Texas financial services company. Or worked, I should say, since he says he lost his job after being outed. Brutsch comes across as loathsome and pathetic in Chen’s telling. But he’s now not just one of thousands of loathsome and pathetic trolls—he’s the one whose story has gone viral and whose disabled wife stands to lose her health insurance as a result.

So? Big mistakes earn big consequences. Brutsch did a lot of terrible things, and I don’t feel bad at all that his employer did not want to retain his services after they found out about those things.

But there’s something so unsettlingly selective about the way in which we punish the few people whose bad Internet behaviors become mainstream notoriety. When prosecutors enforce the law to go after criminals, they’re supposed to do it uniformly… I wish Michael Brutsch could bear his share of responsibility and sprinkle the rest onto all the other trolls out there.

Don’t we all. But as Bazelon says, “Brutsch was king troll”. The most egregious offenders earn the worst punishments; some get away scot-free. I’m not going to feel sad that one person involved in this misogyny got caught and punished just because not everyone did; if I hold out for 100% victory I’ll never get to celebrate.

I feel sorry for Brutsch because he’s obviously a poor, stunted excuse for a man who needs therapy and more, importantly, Jesus. I refuse to feel sorry for him because he got the just reward of his ugly behavior.

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Baby tech, in general, has been optimized for women. Diaper bags often feature floral designs. Burping cloths tend toward the pastel. The aesthetic assumption of most infant-care devices is that even the things that could be done by either parent will be done, ultimately, by women. Products’ appearance subtly tells men, “Sorry, guys, this is not for you.”

Not the Megapram, though!

(You’ll just have to read it.)

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Speaking of robots*, guess who Google have guarding their North Carolina data center?

*Yes, I know they’re not robots; they’re guys in armor. It was just too good a Romney joke to pass up.

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Gawker’s Adrian Chen recently leaked a memo from Reddit CEO Yishan Wong, in which Wong clarifies Reddit’s values with regard to free speech and “doxing”, or publicly posting personal, identifying information about others. With deference to John Gruber, I will now interpret this memo in full.

There sure has been a lot of trouble lately for reddit[sic], and I’d like to talk a bit about that before I nip off for a spot of tea.

I’m going to explain why it’s only “asking for it” when we’re talking about a woman being raped.

We’d like to chart the right course for reddit’s future, and we are taking this seriously.

I’m so serious about it I put off having tea to write this, guys.

We stand for free speech.

We stand for free speech for Redditors.

This means we are not going to ban distateful subreddits. We will not ban legal content even if we find it odious or if we personally condemn it.

We know /r/creepshots and its ilk drive a ton of our traffic, so we’re going to keep them around.

Not because it’s the law in the United States - because as many people have pointed out, privately-owned forums are under no obligation to uphold it -

Shut up, haters.

but because we believe that ideal independently, and that’s what we want to promote on our platform.

If we started censoring misogyny and bigotry, eventually people would be clamoring for us to censor more legitimate content, and we don’t want to open that door.

We are clarifying that now because in the past it wasn’t clear, and (to be honest) in the past we were not completely independent and there were other pressures acting on reddit. Now it’s just reddit, and we serve the community, we serve the ideals of free speech, and we hope to ultimately be a universal platform for human discourse

Those squares over at Condé Nast just wanted to stifle us, the real journalists.

(cat pictures are form of discourse).

You should now never listen to another thing I say about “discourse”.

We also know that this will be a difficult course to take. We know that some will not agree with us. And we even know that we may not succeed, or that we may even be forced to compromise.

We’re pre-blaming any censorship we eventually decide to do on unidentified outside forces who just don’t love freedom as much as we do.

But we also think that if someday, in the far future, we do become a universal platform for human discourse, it would not do if in our youth, we decided to censor things simply because they were distasteful.

Our grandiosity knows no bounds.

Our rules today include the following two exceptions:

1. We will ban illegal content, and in addition sexualized pictures of minors, immediately upon any reports to us.

We will ban illegal content. Sort of. Mostly. Depends on your definition of illegal, and which state you live in. Sexualized pictures of minors are fine if no one can prove they’re underage.

We gave our rationale for that back when that issue was resolved, and we will maintain that policy for the same reasons.

We don’t want to get sued or jailed, which is why we’re sticking with plausible deniability, so you can quit your whining, perverts.

2. We will ban the posting of personal information (doxxing), because it incites violence and harassment against specific individuals.

We will ban the posting of personal information because if people could be held accountable for what they post we wouldn’t get all this lovely linkbait.

The current events have made it clear that the implementation of #2 requires some development.

All this bad publicity is hurting us, so we’re going to make a token change to the rule.

Those of us who’ve been around are familiar with the reasons behind that rule, the destructive witchhunts in reddit’s past against both users and mods - even people who had no idea what ‘reddit’ was - prompted suspicion and ire, and often ending with undeserved harassment, death threats, job loss, or worse for the affected individual.

Getting a taste of our own medicine is just the worst.

Even reddit’s favorite journalist Adrian Chen once wrote an article decrying the practice and mob mentality behind it (see: http://gawker.com/5751581/misguided-internet-vigilantes-attack-college-students-cancer-fundraiser).

Adrian Chen’s story of the totally baseless persecution by Redditors of what turned to be a lovely young woman attempting to raise money for a children’s hospital shows how terrible it is when people persecute Redditors. In other news, we have always been at war with Eastasia.

But our ability to enforce policy ends at the edges of our platform.

(Unfortunately).

And one of the key functions of our platform is the sharing of content on the internet. I’m sure you see the problem.

With the entire internet turning against us, how else can we post links to things on the internet?

So we must draw a line, and we’ve chosen to do the following:

1. We will ban doxxing posted to reddit.

2. We will ban links to pages elsewhere which are trivially or primarily intended for the purposes of doxxing (e.g. wikis or blogs including dox)

In response to public outcry against our banning of links to Gawker articles, we’ve decided to ban links to even more sites.

But, we will not ban things which are legitimate investigative journalism.

This is how we’ve made our peace with tacitly encouraging trolls and relying on them to do our dirty work but trying to stay buddy-buddy with the members of the press who out them.

Free speech is expressed most powerful[sic] through the press, and many times throughout history a bad actor has been exposed by an enterprising (even muckraking) journalist,

Screw you, Adrian Chen.

and it has been to the benefit of society. We include in this definition blog posts that a reasonable person would consider a piece of journalism that happens to include a link to #2 above.

I hereby designate all Redditors “reasonable people” and empower them to decide when we should engage in censorship.

We recognize that there will be a continuum between trivially obvious doxxing sites (e.g. a wiki page entitled “Collect the dox here!”) and “true” journalism, but the world requires judgment calls so the area in between will be where we focus our efforts in adjudication.

I put the word “true” in scare quotes so you would know I don’t really mean it.

I do believe that reddit is in some ways like a city-state, and we need to move towards transparent and codified systems of enforcement. We hope to make these calls together in a helpful, precedent-setting manner.

If I use lots of official-sounding words like “adjudication”, “codified”, and “precedent”, no one will see through us when we decide to keep censoring anyone who makes it harder for us to be hateful and creepy. Plus, in the future when anyone criticizes us for censorship, we can blame it on our “systems of enforcement”.

We know that some of you may not agree with where we’ve drawn the line. But this is our best judgment given the competing principles at stake. We want to do it openly and honestly, even if it is imperfect, and we do it because reddit needs a decision in order to move forward. We ask that you support us.

We encourage all you decent, humane people outraged by the misogyny, racism, homophobia, and pedophilia we’ve been permitting to quit being babies.

There is another thing.

I will now say the same thing a different way.

Let’s be honest, this ban on links from the gawker[sic] network is not making reddit look so good.

I hate it when we lose money, you guys! Also, capitalizing stuff is really hard. Don’t you hate using the Shift key? You have to move your entire hand over, like, half an inch! Then your little finger is totally useless while you’re doing it; don’t even get me started on capital “z”s.

While the ban was originally being discussed by mods, we were discussing it internally too. We even briefly considered the consequences of a site-level ban on the entire gawker network,

We really wanted to do a site-level ban, but then we pansied out, because money beats principles every time.

and realized three things about it:

1. It would ultimately be ineffective at stopping off-site doxxing. People who want to go after someone off-site would still do it. They have plenty of other megaphones besides reddit.

If only there were some way to keep people from operating websites that aren’t Reddit.

2. It would definitely raise the profile of the issue with the general public, and result in headlines like “gawker exposes creepster; reddit engages in personal vendetta to defend pedophile.”

We know because we’ve already seen hundreds of headlines exactly like this.

This would hardly help us explain the problem of irresponsible release of personal information to the general public.

All this reasonable criticism is really cramping our ability to convince people that it’s consistent on our part to permit violating the privacy of underage girls but forbid simply printing the real names of some of our more disgusting, subhuman users.

3. Practically speaking, it wouldn’t really deter or hurt gawker anyways. This is in contrast to domain banning spammers, where it is not just punitive, it literally stops the spam.

I can’t even tell you how much I wish we could stop Gawker.

We do believe that doxxing is a form of violence, rather unique to the internet.

(Unlike upskirt photos, which are a form of violence unique only to slimy perverts.)

Even innocent individuals can be accidentally targeted due to mistaken identities - a key difference between online mobs versus with journalists who have a system of professional accountability.

The only real problem with our appalling behavior of late is that we occasionally get our facts wrong.

And we believe that while we can prohibit it on our platform, we can only affect the opinion of others outside of reddit via moral suasion and setting an example.

The real bad guys here are the people who call us out for our hateful habits.

From the time when reddit first banned doxxing on its platform, I feel that there has been a change in the general attitude towards doxxing on the internet. It’s still widespread, but we made a clear statement that it was a bad thing, worth exercising restraint over.

We’ve encouraged other people to believe that internet anonymity results in a net benefit to everyone, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

TL;DR: We stand for freedom of speech.

We don’t stand for freedom of speech.

We will uphold existing rules against posting dox on reddit.

What we actually stand for is saying whatever we want without consequences.

But the reality is those rules end at our platform, and we will respect journalism as a form of speech that we don’t ban. We believe further change can come only from example-setting.

We know we lost this one.

All of us at reddit work here because we think that reddit is a community like none other.

(i.e., the kind that makes us rich)

We think it can be a powerful force to change the world for the better.

Where “better” really means “worse”.

There are numerous examples of how we - all together - have already begun to do this in small and large ways.

I’m sure someone can list at least a few of them. Anyone? Just call one out, any time. Yes, back there in the corner? Oh. Thought you said something. You know what? Let’s move on.

And I think that part of our ability to do so lies in our ability to set an example with our actions and decisions. In our case as admins, we chose to recognize that opponents have the right to criticize us, to expose us, to tell a story about us - even if we don’t like that story or we feel it’s wrong.

Whoops, I forgot to put scare quotes around “chose”. I’ll get to that after tea, I guess.

So we reversed the site-level ban on Chen’s gawker piece.

You know, the one I earlier implied that we only considered but never actually implemented.

The mod-implemented ban on the gawker network is still in place,

See? Nothing’s really changing. B-t-dubs, if any of you mods want to take it upon yourselves to—oh, I don’t know—institute bans on other sites that criticize us or expose the identities of our creepier users, then that’s obviously up to you. We like to stay pretty hands-off in our ivory tower so we can plead ignorance or high-mindedness when things start to heat up.

and we know that some of you disagree. We seem to have a difference in opinion, and we hope you’d like to share with us why.

We love criticism from within, because that increases traffic. Now, which of you lovely ladies has my tea?¹ Bend over and grab it for me, will you, Sweetheart?

Via The Atlantic Wire

Jill Filipovic explains the legal basis for the decision.

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“My uncle’s wife told me I should kill this person. I said I couldn’t kill her. She told me, ‘If you can’t kill her, then help me do it.’ She forced me and I helped her,” Najibullah recalled.

“She took me inside her home and hid me. When [Mahgul’s] husband left to go to the bakery, she told me to come out. She held her [Mahgul’s] legs while I beheaded her,” he continued. “I asked her [Parigul] why she wanted to behead Mahgul. She said, ‘I hate her because she doesn’t listen to me.’”

Just one incident in an appalling and unceasing pattern of violence against women.

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Oh wow. Why don’t these idiots just say they think the rights of the unborn trump the rights of the women carrying them? People would still disagree, but at least then they wouldn’t sound like crazy science-denialists.

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Katherine Fenton, the young lady who asked about the gender wage gap at the town hall debate, has since been branded a “feminazi” and slut-shamed for (allegedly, her Twitter account has been shut down) writing some sexually-suggestive and alcohol-related tweets.

It’s a good thing her response to “are you a feminist?” is “absolutely not”. We all know how poorly people treat feminists.

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“She seems able to understand. She’s got motor control. She’s able to write,” Dr. Rosser said, adding that Ms. Yousafzai had been able to give doctors written approval to make details of her condition public. “Whether there’s any subtle intellectual or memory deficits down the line is too early to say,” he said.

Had the bullet that hit her been “a couple of inches more central,” he said, her injury would have been “unsurvivable.”

In related news, HURRAY!!

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The center will offer surgical abortion within the first nine weeks of pregnancy and administer medical abortion, which is induced through taking a pill, only if a medical doctor determines the pregnancy would result in long-term health effects or death for the mother.

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Some people have rightly criticized Roger Olsen recently for attacking a straw-man version of feminism, but at least he had the sense to solicit this post by a self-described Christian feminist, who also happens to be a seminary-trained [female, if that’s not clear] pastor:

Women are culturally conditioned to behave: to mind their P’s and Q’s, to be nice, to speak soft. We are often never told that it is okay to be angry (even when we are being threatened), nor are we taught that it isn’t actually wrong if our words cause emotional discomfort to others. This is a documented reality, but I know it from personal experience. The thing is, our anger towards patriarchy is legitimate and right, but the anger has been suppressed over the span of generations.

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Sarah Innis of xoJane responds to research suggesting that women find men more sexually attractive when the men do housework:

I know that while my partner wants to live in a clean house, he doesn’t actually want to do the cleaning. I cannot bear to ask him to do chores because, in my experience, a) it sounds like nagging b) it still won’t get done until he is good and ready, which inevitably is long past the time when I am good and ready to see the job completed and c) refer back to “a.”

I remember the pastor who did our premarital counseling telling us we should compete to see which of us could outserve the other.

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Dr. Thomas Bray has been sentenced to 25 years in prison for the assault and rape of Jennifer Bennett:

Bray slapped, raped, sexually abused and strangled her until she passed out. She thought she was going to die– and so she’d resorted to scattering her hair that he’d pulled out around his condo, so police investigating her disappearance would know she was there.

Bennett showed remarkable foresight, not only in this action, but in her counter-instinctual decision not to shower before going to the police. She also successfully resisted a subpoena of her Facebook account, email, and personal computer and a court-ordered investigation of her Google search history.

It’s a victory on every level, not just because her rapist was convicted and sentenced but because the victim-blaming privacy violations were not permitted be carried out. As sad and frustrating as it is that women have to be this bold and determined to obtain real justice for sexual violence, this is a win.

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Even if it’s a stunt, it’s a good one. Send your suggestions to @marissamayer.

Via Your Tango.

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Excellent broad summary of male privilege in the world of geekdom (at least, the stereotypical geekdom of comics, video games, and comics-based video games).

Via The Good Men Project.

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Website tracking the number of tweets containing the expressions “faggot”, “so gay”, “homo”, and “dyke”.

Spoiler: it’s a big number.

Via The Atlantic.

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Warning: contains some explicit and hateful words.

My favorite one is: “Why should I care about this so-called ‘unfair’ depiction of women when women have more rights than men nowadays and feminists are trying to destroy capitalism?”

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Jessica Bagnall of Feminspire expresses some hope that the rape and murder of Jill Meagher may have brought about a fundamental shift in attitudes toward sexual violence:

All of Australia seemed to collectively mourn the loss of someone that wasn’t even in the spotlight—but she was someone we could all relate to. It seems as though, suddenly, we realised—this could have been us, our sisters, our friends. This could have been one of us. And it’s brought such a wave of realisation with it that my Facebook feed seems strangely devoid of classless rape jokes.

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Millner says in the complaint that she was accidentally handed a paycheck of a fellow assistant manager, and “discovered he was earning thousands of dollars more per year that she was despite having considerably less experience,” the lawsuit claims.

Other female workers, including a Navy veteran, were told they could not be promoted to management because it was a “man’s job,” attorneys said. A manager at a Franklin, Tenn., store told a female worker that “women should be seen and not heard,” the lawsuit alleges.

It’s 2012, people. 2012.

Via The Frisky.

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So adorable and educational!

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Libby Anne responds to a common argument against abortion: that pregnancy is just one of the risks of unprotected (and some times even protected) sexual intercourse. She uses the analogy of safety features in cars: traffic lights and driver’s education are like contraception—safety features designed to prevent accidents from happening. Seat belts and airbags are like abortion—emergency measures to prevent harm if an accident happens anyway.

Saying that we should do away with plan B or abortion because they enable people to engage in risky sex without having to face the natural consequences (i.e. pregnancy) is like saying that we should embed knife-like spikes into cars’ steering wheels in order to cut down on risky driving behavior (because a driver being slammed forward would be automatically impaled).** After all, things like seat belts and air bags decrease the risk of injury when getting in a wreck and thus lead to more risky driving. Even so, things like plan B and abortion (which, let me point out, are not identical) decrease the potential harm suffered by an accidental pregnancy and thus, it could be argued, lead to more risky sex.

That’s nonsense. It would be an apt analogy if anyone thought that automobile safety features had a moral component to them—that putting on a seat belt is harming another person, for example. But no one does. Plenty of people, though, believe that abortion causes harm to another person, which is why we are even having this discussion in the first place.

There certainly are people who are concerned that abortion enables risky sex, but that’s a flawed argument as well. The best argument against abortion is that it may be the killing of a human being. I couldn’t care less whether people engage in risky sex, but if they do it and a woman conceives, telling her that she knew the risks and is now obliged to carry the pregnancy to term is nothing at all like embedding stabbing devices onto steering wheels.

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It’s a bit of a slow day for news in the world of ladies, so why not enjoy this brief survey of the life of France’s famous second-wave feminist?

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You have to wait till the end.

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The Varsity Boys of Piedmont High School have, for the past five or six years, been “drafting” female students (without their knowledge) and competing to score points by engaging in sexual acts with them—a disgusting practice the administration has just discovered.

The school is not planning to discipline the students involved, said Randall Booker, an assistant superintendent of educational services, nor would he discuss how many students might have been involved.

“Our focus really isn’t pinpointing the who or the details,” he said. “Our focus is really about having this continued conversations with kids, getting them to feel comfortable, getting them to learn why this is disrespectful, inappropriate.”

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I’m not making assumptions. I was simply told that by the executive at Disney Animation with the cold blue eyes who sat behind his desk. It was 1987. They were getting some flack because they didn’t have enough women in creative positions—especially their story department—their current count: 0.

Great story and insight from Brenda Chapman, director of The Prince of Egypt and Brave.

Via Women in Hollywood.

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Apple today announced substantial updates to their iPad, iMac, and MacBook Pro lines, a minor update to the Mac Mini, and the all new iPad Mini tablet. Marco Arment, creator of Instapaper and The Magazine has some great initial thoughts on the new products.

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Three men in white hoods attacked Sharmeka Moffitt in a park, burning 60 percent of her body and writing “KKK” and “N*****” on her car. Horrible.

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Sarah Moon wants everyone to stop telling Western women they should quit complaining because things are worse elsewhere. Compelling.

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Libby Anne, everyone’s favorite former-fundamentalist feminist atheist, comes to the defense of Christians who don’t claim to interpret the Bible “literally”:

Evangelicals and fundamentalists claim over and over and over again that all they are doing is taking the Bible “at face value.” According to evangelicals and fundamentalists, they are the ones who are actually following the Bible and liberal Christians are not. Liberal Christians, they say, have rejected the Bible and simply do and believe whatever they think best. Because evangelicals and fundamentalists trumpet this message so loudly, it can be easy to end up taking them at their word.

I disagree with much Libby Anne has to say in her post, particularly her classification of people like me as “liberal” Christians, excluding us from the category of evangelicals, with whom I still identify. She totally nails the mentality of some biblical literalists, though—the false sense of holding the hermeneutical high ground because they rationalize away different parts of the Bible than “liberal” Christians do.

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A recent study reveals some of the gender biases that contribute to the under-representation of women in physics-based fields. Researchers asked female and male scientists for their opinions on why women are more likely to go into biology than physics. Here’s one of my favorites:

“Physics is more difficult for girls and you need a lot of thinking, and the calculation, and the logic. So that’s maybe hard for girls.” — male grad student, physics

With the physics and the thinking and the calculation and the logic and hoyvin-glaven!.

Via The Mary Sue.

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So don’t give me any of this “It’s because women aren’t good at negotiating pay raises” or “Women who quit to have babies skew the data” business.

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It baffles me that more people—like roughly everyone—aren’t angry about this.

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It seems like Betteridge once again applies, unfortunately.

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Rape, child abuse, neglect, eating disorders, misogyny, profanity… probably more I missed. This raw, autobiographical track about her childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood by rapper Angel Haze covers so many horrifying and traumatizing topics.

You should totally listen to it.

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Everyone is angry today at Indiana Senate hopeful Richard Mourdock for saying in a debate last night that he opposes rape exceptions to abortion because:

“Life is that gift from God. And, I think, even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen.”

This is a terrible intrusion of religious belief into political theory; Mourdock’s theology should have absolutely no bearing on our public policy. It also, understandably, offended many people, registering as cavalier and unsympathetic to rape victims, especially those who wound up pregnant as a result of their trauma.

It does not, however, indicate that Mourdock is a terrible human being who wants women to suffer. As Libby Anne says:

It’s quite difficult to on the one hand say that “God is in control” and “everything happens according to God’s plan” and on the other hand say God is not at all at fault when bad things happen. After all, if God is all powerful and in control and everything happens according to his plan, then, well, he lets rapes happen and those rapes that happen are according to his plan. This is what I was taught and I remember believing it. What we saw last night was that Mourdock hasn’t figured out how to mash God’s omnipotence and man’s free will together in a way that makes actual sense and not come across as, well, extremely offensive.

This is the only coverage of the event I’ve read that showed any understanding of Mourdock’s actual viewpoint: that God is all-powerful and all-knowing, and that everything that happens—everything ever—happens because, on one level, God causes it to happen. This includes rape, murder, and genocide, and it also includes love, beauty, music, and art. This point of dogma—shorthanded as “sovereignty”—is nearly universal to orthodox Christians.

Of course, that’s still a stupid basis for decision-making, because another nearly-universal Christian belief is that we should at least act like humans have free will. If we didn’t believe in free will, we would be powerless to fight injustice or even proselytize. Believing in free will, though, enables us to condemn people for exercising it unjustly: for example, we can heartily condemn rapists and acknowledge that God does not at all want rape to happen… even though we may also claim that he caused it to happen.

If that sounds paradoxical, it is. Welcome to the world of theology.

Contrary to what many feminist writers claim, it is actually possible to oppose legal abortion and not hate women. Richard Mourdock may be misogynist, but he didn’t show it last night; he only demonstrated an inability to properly and non-offensively articulate his theology and a fairly common Republican belief that that theology has relevance to his political platform.

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Feel free to apply Betteridge’s Law of Headlines.

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During my one year of seminary I had to do a group project on a theological system; my group ended up with Covenant Theology. The project required us to teach an entire class session on Covenant Theology at some point during the semester, so we had to know what we were talking about. When we split up the work, I took the history section, because I like history.

Covenant Theology, for those unfamiliar, explains God’s interactions with humanity by referring to three covenants he has made with his people: the covenant of works, the covenant of grace, and the covenant of redemption. While too multi-faceted and nuanced to discuss here, the important thing to understand is that Covenant Theology is a framework for interpreting the Bible. One of the expressions of that framework, Calvinism, claims over 75 million adherents worldwide.

Most people boil down Calvinism to its Five Points, known among Calvinists as “the doctrines of grace”. While somewhat reductive, they are not inaccurate and do provide a simple shorthand for the ideology. The Five Points are:

1. Total Depravity: All people are inherently sinful and unable on their own to choose God.
2. Unconditional Election: God has, from eternity past, chosen those to whom he planned to give salvation (“the elect”).
3. Limited Atonement: The atoning sacrifice of Jesus’ death applies only to the elect.
4. Irresistable Grace: God’s calls the elect to himself through the Holy Spirit regardless of their own resistance to his call.
5. Perseverance of the Saints: The elect cannot thwart God’s calling by falling from grace.

If some of that sounds a little extreme, that’s partly because I left out all the nuance for lack of space. Unfortunately, it’s also because Calvinism is a little extreme, due mostly to the hermeneutic of its era of origin.

Calvinism (and Covenant Theology) developed during the Reformation, beginning as an argument over double predestination, the belief that God has pre-determined the eternal destiny not only of the elect but also of the non-elect. In other words, God has already decided (quite some time ago) whom he is going to save and whom he is going to condemn to hell. This belief derived from parts of the Bible such as Romans 9:14–18:

Are we saying, then, that God was unfair? Of course not! For God said to Moses,

“I will show mercy to anyone I choose, and I will show compassion to anyone I choose.”

So it is God who decides to show mercy. We can neither choose it nor work for it.

For the Scriptures say that God told Pharaoh, “I have appointed you for the very purpose of displaying my power in you and to spread my fame throughout the earth.” So you see, God chooses to show mercy to some, and he chooses to harden the hearts of others so they refuse to listen.

On the other hand, the Bible also contains repeated calls for people to repent and accept God’s offer of salvation:

Now repent of your sins and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped away. (Acts 3:19)

They replied, “Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved, along with everyone in your household.” (Acts 16:31)

The Spirit and the bride say, “Come.” Let anyone who hears this say, “Come.” Let anyone who is thirsty come. Let anyone who desires drink freely from the water of life. (Revelation 22:17)

If we are so fatally flawed that we are incapable of choosing God, why does God ask us to choose him? And if God has already determined who he will save and damn, why does he urge us to repent and be saved?

John Calvin responded to this dilemma with a theology that his followers eventually distilled into the above Five Points. (Calvin’s actual theological writings are much longer, more thorough, and more nuanced.) That theology ushered in modern Covenant Theology.

At this point you might be asking why all of this overly-analytical academic discussion was even necessary, since the important thing is that God does call people to himself, and they do come. The answer: scholasticism, the then-prevalent approach to interpreting the Bible, which focused on resolving apparent paradoxes in order to construct a watertight system of theology.

The idea that God might say two contradictory things could not be allowed to persist in under scholasticism, which therefore developed the habit of approaching the Bible itself as a systematic theology whose components needed to be analyzed and rationalized in order to attain cohesion. Unfortunately for all of us, this kind of hermeneutic has persisted into the present, eroded slightly along with our general capability for academic rigor of any kind.¹

I just finished A Year of Biblical Womanhood, a new book by Rachel Held Evans chronicling the 12 months she spent studying the Bible’s statements to and about women, interpreting them all as literally applicable to our time, and attempting to follow them all according to this understanding. Along the way she interviews a sister wife in a polygamist family, attends a Quaker service, corresponds with an Orthodox Israeli Jewish woman, spends the first three days of her period living in a tent, prepares and hosts a Passover meal, calls her husband “Master” and praises him at the entrance to their town, and cultivates a gentle and quiet spirit by refraining from yelling at the TV during football games. I highly recommend the book, which is both instructive and entertaining.

While Evans was primarily searching for a biblical description of what it means to be a woman, this quest involved significant Bible study, and the question of competing hermeneutics is resultingly a strong secondary theme of the book. Not content with simply reading the Bible, Evans consulted every resource she could find to inform her interpretation:

I took my research way too seriously, combing through feminist, conservative, and liberal commentaries, and seeking out Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant perspectives on each issue. I spoke with modern-day women practicing ancient biblical mandates in their own lives—a polygamist, a pastor, a Quiverfull daughter, an Orthodox Jew, an Amish grandmother. I scoured the Bible, cover to cover, isolating and examining every verse I could find about mothers, daughters, widows, wives, concubines, queens, prophetesses, and prostitutes.

This research proved the most fascinating part of the book to me, information-driven Christian that I am. I discovered early in my adulthood that acquiring new facts about the Bible significantly alters my perception of its message and meaning and, correspondingly, the expression of my faith.

For example, early in Biblical Womanhood, Evans learns from an Orthodox Jewish woman named Ahava that the Hebrew expression in Genesis 2 translated in the King James Version as “help meet” is Ezer k’gnedo. Modern Jews translate these words as “the help that opposes”. Evans further discovers that Ezer (the “help” part of the phrase) most frequently occurs in the Old Testament with reference to “God as the helper of Israel”, more than suggesting that the complementarian concept of the woman’s role as subordinate helper to her husband must look outside Genesis 2 for its foundation.

Later, Evans tells the story of Huldah, the prophetess who validated the discovery of the Book of the Law during the reign of King Josiah of Judah. I’ve always been bad at keeping biblical timelines straight in my head, so I had never realized before that Huldah lived concurrently with the prophets Jeremiah, Zephaniah, Nahum, and Habakkuk—all men. Far from being a last resort, Huldah was approached instead of four other male prophets so important they each authored books of the Bible. Yet I’ve never seen or heard her name mentioned by a pastor, professor, or writer except when reading aloud from 2 Kings 22. Although Evans does not say it explicitly, it’s hard not to feel that conservative Christians have unofficially erased Huldah from the Bible, along with the other nine female prophets it mentions.

While I probably could have figured out Huldah’s chronology with a short perusal of an Old Testament timeline on the internet, learning the background of 1 Timothy 2, in which Paul informs Timothy that he does not let women teach or have authority over men, requires more scholarship than most Christians have time for:

Of particular concern to Paul was a group of young widows who had infiltrated the church and developed a reputation for dressing promiscuously, sleeping around, gossiping, spreading unorthodox ideas, interrupting church services with questions, mooching off the church’s widow fund, and generally making common floozies of themselves (1 Timothy 5). Scholars believe these women may have been influenced by the popular Roman fertility cults of Artemis that encouraged women to flaunt their sexuality and freedom to a degree that scandalized even the Roman establishment, hardly known for its prudish morals.

Knowing this bit of historical information helps us understand Paul’s instruction that women should remain silent: concern for maintaining the Church’s reputation to outsiders and preventing paganism from contaminating the true Gospel:

“We are thus led to the conclusion that when Paul asks women to be silent… he is not talking about ordinary Christian women; rather, he has a specific group of women in mind,” wrote theologian Scot McKnight. “His concern is with some untrained, morally loose, young widows, who, because they are theologically unformed, are teaching unorthodox ideas.”

Oddly enough, as Evans points out, no one ever preaches on another verse in 1 Timothy 2: verse 8, in which Paul says, “In every place of worship, I want men to pray with holy hands lifted up to God, free from anger and controversy.” In addition to ignoring the exhortation to avoid anger and controversy among believers who worship together—probably the real point of this verse—nearly every Christian man disregards the instruction to lift up his hands when praying. Literal interpretation apparently does not extend quite that far.

Nor do you ever hear, at least in most evangelical or mainline churches, a biblical apology for polygamy, requiring women to cover their heads during church services (or possibly all the time), forcing virgins to marry their rapists, or fathers selling their daughters into slavery to escape poverty. As Evans says in her introduction:

Despite insistent claims that we don’t “pick and choose” what parts of the Bible we take seriously, using the word biblical prescriptively like this almost always involves selectivity.

Taking everything in the Bible at face value, as Western conservative Christians—still living in the shadow of scholasticism—claim to do, would result in the kind of bizarre lifestyle that Rachel Held Evans imposed upon herself for a year. No one actually interprets every part of the Bible as literally applicable to our culture and time, though; we tend to find in it the things we expect or want to find, conveniently validating the habits and values we already have.

But even to be totally consistent about interpreting the Bible “literally” would only camouflage the true flaw in our whole hermeneutic: that scholasticism, with its systematic, analytical, paradox-allergic approach to interpretation, has no business anywhere near the Bible. Our scriptures are a big, messy collection of many authors writing to varying audiences in diverse cultures at disparate points in history and in multiple genres. They are not a book of facts or list of rules written down in an orderly fashion by God so we would know exactly what he wanted us to do in every situation at every time. Jesus came (and will eventually return) for the very opposite purpose—to free us from the sort of relationship with God that survives through rigid structures and fear-based commandments. God is not interested in telling us what to do; he is interested in us, and by extension, what kind of people we are.

And fortunately, the Bible is much better at telling us what kind of people to be than it is at telling us what to do, being a story of stories about God and his interactions with us and those who preceded us. By telling us about himself, God is indirectly describing who he wants us to become. Sometimes he does this by sharing poetry; other times he tells us fantastical or shocking tales.

In both the Old and New Testaments, God often described to our spiritual ancestors exactly what he wanted them to do in their specific situations. When we interpret these parts of the Bible, slavish adherence to the exact instructions issued may well lead us in the wrong direction. Instead we ought to recognize that some, possibly many, parts of our scriptures contain more fundamental but less specific truths, and we must identify for ourselves how to best express those truths in our own lives.

I’ll finish with Evans’ quotation of philosopher Peter Rollins:

“By acknowledging that all our readings are located in a cultural context and have certain prejudices, we understand that engaging with the Bible can never mean that we simply extract meaning from it, but also that we read meaning into it. In being faithful to the text we must move away from the naïve attempt to read it from some neutral, heavenly height and we must attempt to read it as one who has been born of God and thus born of love: for that is the prejudice of God. Here the ideal of scripture reading as a type of scientific objectivity is replaced by an approach that creatively interprets with love.”

Because what better way to have a car when you turn 16 than to start building it when you’re 12?

Totally awesome.

The Mary Sue is winning this day.

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Slut-shamed and bullied because of sexual encounters with athletes at her high school—who, by the way, are doing just fine.

https://twitter.com/feliciagarcia97/status/260578979667402752

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A lady cosplayer vents about the harassment she gets from men when she dresses up in superhero costumes:

While I had been posing for the wall of photographers in front of me, apparently I had also been posing for the ones behind me.

Contains strong language.

Via XOJane.

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Tumblr at its best: side-by-side images of the male and female versions of popular costumes.

Via The Society Pages.

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The Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination (MCAD) has ruled that a gay man has probable cause for a gender discrimination case against the R.O.S.E. Fund, which provides free facial reconstructive surgery to victims of domestic violence.

This is a pretty big deal, since straight and same-sex domestic violence share a lot of the same characteristics.

• One out of four to one out of three same-sex relationships have experienced domestic violence – one in four women in heterosexual relationships have experienced domestic violence.
• The patterns of abuse are similar, often including a cycle of physical, emotional, and psychological mistreatment, leaving the victim with feelings of isolation, fear and guilt.
• No race, ethnicity, or socio-economic status is exempt.

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Trailer for a documentary about the targeted killing or abandonment of female children.

Via Hermeneutics.

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Her father, Ziauddin Yousafzai, met with a room full of reporters Friday to discuss his daughter’s condition and the events leading up to her attack.

The family’s reunion was marked by tears of joy, Yousafzai said, while admitting that he had originally feared he would be planning for a funeral instead. He described his daughter’s prognosis as a “miracle,” adding that he had not expected her to be able to talk or see.

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Just yesterday, Planned Parenthood lost a similar lawsuit when the federal 5th Circuit Court of Appeals declined to reconsider a previous ruling.

Via The Frisky.

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World Economic Forum has released the results of its recent study on the gender gap, compiling data on 135 different countries.

The U.S. should be ranked close to the top, right? Very wrong: It’s 22nd out of 135–a sad statistic for one of the top global economies. Beaten by 21 countries including Canada (ranked 21st), Luxembourg (17) and Nicaragua (8), the U.S.’s overall ranking has actually worsened over the years in comparison to other countries. In 2011, the U.S. ranked 17th; between 2006 and 2007, its rank sunk from 23rd to 31st, rising to 27th in 2008 only to drop to 31 again in 2009. That’s a lousy trend compared to countries such as Ireland and Denmark: Ireland’s rank has steadily improved, from 10 to five, between 2006 and 2012, while Denmark maintained its eighth place ranking between 2006 and 2007 before rising to its current seventh place position in 2008.

Denmark is also the happiest country on earth, so maybe they know something we don’t.

Don’t worry, though. We’re in good company among other powerful developed countries who don’t treat women well… like China.

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A very short historical survey. The question this time arises from Mitt Romney’s objectively awful fake tan, but as the husband of a lady with beautiful pale skin, I’m always wishing our culture would get over its obsession with being tan.

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The online multiplayer game League of Legends has implemented a system designed to reduce bad behavior toward other players by rewarding good behavior with “Honor”:

Honor is a way for players to reward each other for good behavior. This is divvied up into four categories: Friendly, Helpful, Teamwork, and Honorable Opponent. At the end of a match, players can hand out points to those they deem worthy. These points are reflected on players’ profiles, but do not result in any in-game bonuses or rewards (though this may change in the future). All Honor does is show that you played nicely.

Considering the widespread misogyny and other terribleness frequently rampant in online games, this seems like a great idea. John Siracusa toyed with similar concepts in his recent article for The Magazine, “Strange Game” (paid subscription required for full article).

And in case you’re already thinking that players will just end up (ahem) gaming this system, it seems like the LoL team have thought of that already.

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And that’s when he says it, just kind of casually, talking about a young lady with whom we were all well acquainted:

“Yeah, her brother-in-law doesn’t trust her with men. Says she has the ‘spirit of a harlot.’”

The words hit me like a sucker punch.

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Remember the woman who suffered burns on 60 percent of her body and had “KKK” and “N*****” written on her car? Turns out she probably did those things herself.

If this does turn out to be the case, I can only imagine that she is a very mentally ill woman.

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That was a mistake.

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Rebecca Watson, prominent skeptic, details how—shockingly—atheists are no better at being awesome to women than religious people:

I made the grave mistake of responding to a fellow skeptic’s YouTube video in which he stated that male circumcision was just as harmful as female genital mutilation (FGM). I replied to say that while I personally am opposed to any non-medical genital mutilation, FGM is often much, much more damaging than male circumcision.

The response from male atheists was overwhelming. This is one example:

“honestly, and i mean HONESTLY.. you deserve to be raped and tortured and killed. swear id laugh if i could”

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Fun review of A Year of Biblical Womanhood

Most of my female friends, and most of the women I know through church, balk at the idea of Biblical Womanhood. Even the Christians. And for good reason. Scripture (like nearly anything with any power behind it) has been co-opted by those in power to stay in power. For most of the women in the circles I run, it is easier to give up on the Bible and be the kind of woman we know in our hearts we are meant to be. The problem with that tactic (and don’t get me wrong, I do/have done that as well) is it cedes a huge chunk of territory. It is in essence saying, “Okay, patriarchy, you are right about the Bible. I give up.”

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Shannon of The Feminist Mystique is chronicling her wedding plans. This week: avoiding conflict diamonds and commercialism:

It seems like there is something inherently wrong with the idea that making life-long promises to a partner you love MUST be marked by spending thousands on a diamond, and I detest the way consumerism has become inextricably tied to the decision to spend your life with someone else. To make matters worse, this consumerism is also intrinsically gendered.

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Libby Anne crunches and re-crunches some numbers:

A few weeks ago I came upon a blog post by Sarah of Who I Am Without You comparing the number of zygotes—i.e. fertilized eggs—flushed out of a woman’s body when she is on the pill with the number flushed out when she is not on the pill. Sarah’s numbers were as follows:

Without Birth Control:

• Out of 100 fertile women without birth control, 100 of them will ovulate in any given month.
• Out of those 100 released eggs, 33 will become fertilized.
• Out of those 33, 18% will be rejected by the uterus.
• In a group of 100 women not on birth control: 6 zygotes will “die”

With Birth Control:

• Out of 100 fertile women on birth control, around 6 of them will ovulate in any given month.
• Out of those 6 released eggs, only 2 will become fertilized.
• Out of those 2, 100% will be rejected by the uterus.
• In a group of 100 women on birth control: 2 zygotes will “die”

I wondered about the numbers Sarah used, so I went looking for verification. I decided to use pro-life websites as I did this, not because I think they necessarily have the numbers correct but rather because if I use their own numbers in my analysis I can’t be accused of using biased liberal numbers.

Great data.

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However much damage Hurricane Sandy turns out to do, we’ve already got someone claiming it’s [almost] all the fault of our country’s persistent rebellion against God as exemplified by the fact that we haven’t… I don’t know… killed all the gay people?

In a wordy and occasionally rambling blog on his website, chaplain John McTernan seems to link Hurricane Sandy (and a number of other recent weather-related trends and natural disasters) on LGBT people and President Barack Obama’s recent backing of marriage equality. While most of McTernan’s wrath is directed at Obama, he has some choice words for GOP candidate Mitt Romney, too.

So I guess we can let them live as long as we don’t let them get married.

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The Supreme Court of Connecticut has overturned the sexual assault conviction of a man who raped a cerebral palsy victim, saying that even though she has the mental competence of a three-year-old she should have been able to resist by one of the above actions.

Zack Beauchamp nicely breaks down several of the flaws in this argument, but he oddly misses the most fundamental one: that it puts the onus on victims to provide non-consent rather than on rapists to obtain consent.

Via Feministing.

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Andie Fox of Blue Milk links to the results of a study by the American Political Science Review showing that “strong, autonomous feminist movements” do more to combat violence against women across the world than relative wealth, number of women in positions of political power, or left-leaning governments.

The study includes every region of the world, varying degrees of democracy, rich and poor countries, and a variety of world religions—it encompasses 85 per cent of the world’s population. Analysing the data took five years, which is why the most recent year covered is 2005.

Honest question: does the U.S. have a feminist movement that is “autonomous from political parties and the state”? Because everywhere I look, organized feminism is leftist.

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Story of a Chassidic Jewish woman’s matchmaker-facilitated marrige:

We went on eight dates. Then we met each other’s parents. Then we got engaged. Five weeks later, we married. Time lapsed from first date to wedding day: a little under three months. During those three months, we never touched each other. We didn’t hold hands. We were never even in a room alone together.

Informative and balanced. For example, her caveat toward the end:

I recognize that this method of dating works because we are members of an Orthodox Jewish community, and it only works in those communities when all of the parties—the man, the woman and their respective support systems—are on the same page and playing by the rules.

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Propounds the theory that Jesus was actually tempted by a hallucination of Satan—in other words, his own food- and water-deprived brain. Before anyone flips out:

Are you saying this wasn’t real? No. The temptation that Jesus experienced was definitely real. Are you saying the bible isn’t true? No. I definitely believe the bible—I’m just trying to figure out what Matthew meant here, based on what else I know about God and temptation and what makes sense.

I don’t know that I agree, but I appreciate people who bring their imaginations with them when then they talk about the Bible.

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Hussein Ibish, writing for The Daily Beast, gets it exactly right:

This is what anti-blasphemy laws inevitably lead to: the arrest and persecution of religious minorities, including children, in order to “protect sensibilities” of religious majorities. What it shows is that anti-blasphemy laws have nothing to do with “respect” or “sensitivity” to religious sentiments but are all about authority, control and social domination.

Freedom for one religion must mean freedom for all religions.

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Dan Griffin addresses the conflation of sex and intimacy communicated to men in our culture:

If you are a heterosexual man, how many times have you felt close to another man and held back from expressing those feelings? Said differently, how many men feel attraction to or affection for a man and recoil or instinctively distance themselves, if only momentarily, from the man because they are not able to separate the feeling of affection or closeness from sex.

I could do without the stereotyping of male and female attitudes toward sex and love in the first paragraph, but it’s hard to deny that American males typically inherit a stunted concept of intimacy.

Via The Good Men Project.

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Words are amazing, versatile, and powerful. Use with care.

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I can’t help it, guys. Todd Akin’s seeming determination to say as many dumb things as possible fascinates me. Moreover, as bizarre as are many of his pronouncements, they actually bear some resemblance to actual things actual normal pro-lifers actually say in actuality.

Actual.

“Newest” off the ticker is a 2008 speech by Akin claiming that abortion providers frequently perform abortions on non-pregnant women. Technically this doesn’t quite count with regard to the above, as he may have since learned his lesson, but I still think it’s instructive to point out the truth, which this post at XX Factor manages quite handily:

There were some clinics in the ’70s in Chicago exposed for unsafe and deceptive practices, including D&Cs on non-pregnant women, but those clinics were exposed and many closed. The Chicago clinics were an anomaly, and not indicative of how abortion is generally provided.

Of course, this is a mere assertion, but fortunately, common sense comes to our rescue:

In the ’70s, when home pregnancy testing wasn’t readily available, that might have been more plausible, but nowadays most women who call an abortion clinic know for sure that they’re pregnant and have already made up their minds. To believe otherwise is to assume that women, or at least women who get abortions, are too stupid as a class to understand even the most basic things in life.

Actually.

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The Haryana district of India has recently seen an upsurge of rapes, many of them gang rapes, many of Dalits. While truly horrific (and—trigger warning—there is some pretty horrific stuff in this article), the violence is apparently not quite horrific enough to elicit anything but nonsense from the local government, who have blamed false reporting due to “fake rape conspiracy”, unabashed public hand-holding, and female sexual desire itself for the rise in incidence of rape. The absolute best (worst), though? Diet:

One councilmen[sic] explains “To my understanding, consumption of fast food contributes to such incidents. Chow mein leads to hormonal imbalance evoking an urge to indulge in such acts.”

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Major Geek Alert, Kids. This could be some of the best or worst news Star Wars fans have heard in decades.

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The Philippine government is requesting the extradition from the U.S. of Grace Grande, a querida—a kind of unwilling “kept” woman—to Philippine Congressman Patrick Antonio.

Queridas rarely fare well in the Philippines. In the end, they are abandoned, replaced by younger queridas, and become other men’s queridas. If they have daughters, it is likely they will become queridas as well. Dispensing with a querida is the man’s prerogative. Tales abound of queridas maimed, beaten up and/or killed when they choose to forgo the relationship.

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I’ve had word from Squarespace, the company that hosts Jesus & Venus, that their servers will soon have to shut down due to flooding in New York City, where the Squarespace data centers are located. The site may not be back up until NYC’s power grid comes back online, which at present I’m hearing will be around four days.

If I don’t talk to you all soon, have a pleasant week. Consider filling the time you don’t spend on my site reading A Year of Biblical Womanhood instead.

Here’s the thing that makes someone like Rachel important for the church today: she’s putting into words the very questions and issues that many women (and men) have been asking and thinking about for years but haven’t been able to discuss openly.

• What does it look like to be a biblical woman?
• How much should a Christian marriage imitate the stories found in the Bible?
• When are the Bible’s teachings about women culturally limited?
• Why do we apply certain parts of the Bible literally and not others?

These questions tie into some of the most heated debates in the church today. And even if these questions aren’t always being asked out in the open, they are simmering beneath the surface in just about every church.

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“My grandmother taught me to play when I was in the third grade. I was really active as a child, and she wanted to find a way to keep me relaxed and get my brain going,” Ballantyne told Teen Vogue. “When I first started playing, she introduced to me the idea of being the first African-American female chess master.”

I had to look up what a chess master was, and apparently it’s a matter of opinion—an honorific conferred by one’s peers.

Via Jezebel.

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Called Tefina, it’s a testosterone gel that is sprayed up the nose about an hour before a sexual encounter (how romantic). The developers say the drug could boost female sexual arousal and satisfaction.

Worth reading just for the discussion of gender politics.

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In this video, George Lucas professes his enthusiasm for handing over the reins of the franchise to the newly-promoted President of LucasFilm, Kathleen Kennedy.

Kennedy has already had an illustrious career, and the fact that a woman may well be producing the next batch of Star Wars movies is a story somewhat lost amidst the swooning and moaning of the fans.

Via The Mary Sue.

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Plays the piano.

Very supportive.

Great with children.

An eye for decorating and good in the kitchen.

Grew up around ministry (pastor’s kid), thus knows the ropes.

Even keeps a clean house, can sing if needed, and married to a preacher.

All the qualifications are there for a terrific pastor’s wife. There is just one problem.

He is my husband.

Kyndall Rae expresses her fear of limiting her husband’s personal fulfillment.

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Being still quite new to feminism, I have a desperate need to educate myself about both the history and philosophy of the movement. Apart from reading two books pulled at random from the “Gender Studies” section of my local Half Price Books over a year ago, I have not made much progress in this direction, but part of the excitement of starting this site came from knowing it would force me to re-engage the more academic aspect of being a feminist. I decided to start with Betty Friedan’s watershed book, _The Feminine Mystique, and I will be writing a chapter-by-chapter reaction and analysis over the next few months._

I work for a company that operates group homes for at-risk boys, many of whom grew up in foster care or residential settings. Those who have spent the most time in the Department of Children’s Services’ system—many since early childhood—frequently develop a near-inability to connect their success or failure with their own actions. For example, I recently had the following conversation with an 18-year-old adult in my care who was angry with me for telling him he had to wear dirty clothes because he had no clean ones:

ME: You could have washed them yesterday, when it was laundry day.
ADULT: I know, but I forgot.
ME: Is that my fault?
ADULT: No.
ME: Seems like it was your fault.
ADULT: It wasn’t my fault, though—I forgot!
ME: Whose fault was it, then?
ADULT: No one’s.

I spent 20 minutes talking to this young man about his responsibility to do his own laundry, but he never understood the part he played in the situation. Years in programs like the one I work for have subconsciously taught him that there will always be a grown-up around to take care of him and solve his problems. He has lost agency—become institutionalized.

Reading the first chapter of The Feminine Mystique reminded me of him:

“It’s as if ever since you were a little girl, there’s always been somebody or something that will take care of your life: your parents, or college, or falling in love, or having a child, or moving to a new house.” –A twenty-three-year-old mother in blue jeans¹ (Friedan, Betty, The Feminine Mystique. Norton & Company, 1997, p. 22)

Unlike my client, though, the women of the 1960s desperately wanted to recover agency and ownership of their destiny (although they may not have had words to express this). Also unlike my client, no one offered them help or guidance—or the help offered failed to comprehend their actual needs. (19, 21–23) And whereas institutionalization of at-risk children results unintentionally from a system designed to keep them safe and healthy despite their disadvantages, the socioeconomic structures of the 1960s were themselves actively institutionalizing women:

They were taught to pity the neurotic, unfeminine, unhappy women who wanted to be poets or physicists or presidents. They learned that truly feminine women do not want careers, higher education, political rights—the independence and the opportunities that the old-fashioned feminists fought for. (15–16)

Possibly the post-WWII prosperity contributed to the backward slide of feminism; men returned from the front and resumed operation of the economy, relegating women to roles they had only just begun to outgrow in previous decades. The practice having already been established, women continued to attend college, but no longer for any definite purpose apart from husband-hunting. (16) In fact, education only increased the restlessness plaguing women of the day. Friedan summarizes the results of a then-recent study of Barnard College graduates:

A significant minority of earlier graduates blamed their education for making them want “rights,” later classes blamed their education for giving them career dreams, but recent graduates blamed the college for making them feel it was not enough simply to be a housewife and mother. (29)

In typical establishment fashion when disruption threatens, “Home economists suggested more realistic preparation for housewives”, and “College educators suggested more discussion groups on home management and the family, to prepare women for the adjustment to domestic life.” (23) In essence, the culture at large told women to more fully commit to their lot in life in order to find happiness. No one yet realized that a sea change loomed, that existing structures would prove inadequate to cope with the problem at hand.

Not having read past the first chapter I don’t know where Friedan is headed, but I wonder if what women faced in the early sixties was an erosion of the need for women to function strictly as child-bearers and homemakers in order for our species to survive, juxtaposed with a system whose successful operation depended on keeping them in those roles.

In any case, “The Problem That Has No Name” paints a bleak picture of an entire nation of women suffering from a growing malaise—a vague, restless dissatisfaction expressing itself in myriad psychological, sexual, and physical symptoms, and which Friedan labels “The Feminine Mystique”.² Looking back from the crest of the third wave it’s easy to see how the root of their problem lay in a culture that regarded them as second-class humans, making it hard to understand (empathetically, though not cognitively) how they could have endured such marginalization for so long.

But I’m sure future chapters will get to that.

She sounds pretty amazing.

Via Jezebel.

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This is infuriating:

“Here’s the thing,” he said. “The lead actor hates female directors. We only had one in the first season, and she was never invited back. He just doesn’t like them.”

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The scientists, from Kyoto University, first produced healthy mouse pups in 2011 using stem cell-derived sperm. They have now achieved the same by using eggs which were created in the same way.

Baby mice are called “pups”? Who knew? Also, science is amazing.

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Historians recently confirmed the identities of the sailor and nurse in the iconic “Kissing Sailor” photograph taken on V-J day, at the end of World War II. Interviews with the pair—who were not and are not a couple—reveal that George Mendonsa (the sailor, who was drunk at the time) kissed Greta Zimmer Friedman (the nurse) entirely against her will.

Crates and Ribbons, unlike the more mainstream outlets that covered the story, points out that this transforms the event from a burst of mutual passion on hearing joyous news to a sexual assault.

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Thoughtful, compassionate, and, above all, thorough advice from Scarleteen.

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I woke in the evening to go to my third-shift job and, as usual, rolled over in bed to read my Twitter feed before getting up. Halfway through it, I walked over to my computer so I could confirm the news through a more legitimate source.

Half an hour later, when my wife came out and curled up next to me where I was sitting in our living room, I told her, “Steve Jobs died.”

12 months later, I still got a little choked up watching this tribute to one of the greatest creative minds in history.

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Two days ago I linked to this story about Todd Akin saying something wrong back in 2008. Apparently I needn’t have worried that the age of the incident might impact its relevance, because Akin has decided to stand by his remarks:

In defense of his assertion, Akin’s campaign released a statement Tuesday from Abby Johnson, a former director of a Planned Parenthood clinic in Texas who quit in 2009 and now speaks against abortion.

“I can attest that when I served as director of Planned Parenthood in Bryan, Texas, we often scared women into getting services they did not need including abortion so we could collect the fees. This included women who were not pregnant and women who were in the process of miscarrying.”

Read for details of how Johnson has been caught in the past lying about this sort of thing. One thing I think Amanda Marcotte gets wrong, though, is her assertion that conservative evangelicals don’t care about the truth:

Part of the problem here is that, within the conservative evangelical circles that are the backbone of the anti-choice movement, “truth” is not the truth, but simply “stories that dramatically illustrate the rightness of our belief system.”

From the outside this probably seems true, but it actually runs counter to the strong Enlightenment mindset of the evangelical movement. Evangelicals love the truth… but they’re also suckers for conspiracy theories, which is why contradicting them with facts rarely works—a conspiracy theorist can always rationalize your “facts” as part of the conspiracy.

It’s a subtle distinction, but the real problem isn’t that evangelicals don’t care about the truth; it’s that we care even more about being “right”.

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Lifeway is refusing to carry Rachel Held Evans’ new book A Year of Biblical Womanhood in their stores, and as far as she can tell, it’s because she uses the word “vagina”, which her editor warned her might cause trouble with Christian bookstores.

Dianna E. Anderson points out that Lifeway carries Mark Driscoll’s Real Marriage, “which contains explicit references to anal and oral sex”.

Of course, vaginas aren’t involved in either of those things.

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Great excerpt from Hanna Rosin’s new book The End of Men: And the Rise of Women at The Guardian.

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Laura Berte said her daughter has a mental capacity of a 9 year old. She said Allie, though now 20, was in special classes at Ashley High school, but was still on the honor roll for her level. This would be Allie’s senior year of high school.

“My daughter’s not a criminal,” said Laura Berte. “She doesn’t have the mental capacity to come up with this idea on her own. This is bigger than her and bigger than most people in this community know, and it’s happening right underneath our noses.”

Even if we continue to outlaw prostitution, we have got to decriminalize prostitutes.

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Springboarding from the recent discovery of an ancient text referring to Jesus’ “wife”, John Ortberg proposes that we (including we in the Church) have still not caught up to Jesus with regard to his progressive stance toward women.

Via Rachel Held Evans.

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It was just this year that, after 100 years of placing second, women as a whole have scored higher than men on intelligence testing.

She scored a 162, also higher than Stephen Hawking.

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The law allows registered nurses to dispense hormonal contraceptives, including the pill. By allowing RNs to deliver such care—which is within their skills and training—doctors and nurse practitioners may be freed up to focus on more complex patient visits. Thus, the law promises both to increase women’s access to reliable contraceptives and reduce the costs of delivering that care.

Good move, especially considering this fact:

A public dollar invested in contraception saves roughly $4 in Medicaid expenditures—or $5.1 billion in 2008.

I wish people spent more time examining the nationwide economic ramifications of social policy.

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Great history by Yoni Appelbaum, writing for The Atlantic.

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Jessica Valenti at The Nation:

The sentiment may seem innocuous, but there’s a danger in returning to an ideal where women’s most important identity is relational rather than individual. If we want equality, women with children would be better served calling themselves people first, moms second.

I don’t think the implicit choice being offered here is “Mother first, person second”; it’s “mother first, insert job title here second”.

I agree substantially with Valenti’s point, though, and I wonder whether this would even be a problem if men described themselves as “fathers first”—which they probably should (if they’re fathers).

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I usually identify simply as a Christian, but when pressed, I’m happy to identify as evangelical. I like to tell people that evangelicalism is like my religious mother tongue. I revert to it whenever I’m angry or excited or surrounded by other people who understand what I’m saying.

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If you’d like to hear a good, old-fashioned, righteous rant from a powerful woman, look no further than this video of Julia Gillard eviscerating Tony Abbot for his hypocritical stance on sexism and misogyny in government.

Only Monday Gillard endured sexual harassment from many Facebook users during a live Q&A.

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I don’t know, guys. Color me apprehensive about this.

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A new misogynistic trend at British universities:

The process, they explained, involves driving around town with friends in the early hours of the morning and offering a lift home to a young woman they deem a “slut” (usually a woman in a “post-club state”). After asking her address, they drive as fast and as far as possible in the opposite direction before forcing the woman out of the car and using a camera to film her “standing by the side of the road as they drive away”.

What a good way to punish a woman for being brazen enough to go out in public and consume alcohol. Read to find out more about this and other exciting new ways for men to objectify and de-humanize women!

Via Jezebel.

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Malala Yousafzai, a Pakistani peace prize winner, is in critical but stable condition after shots to the head and neck. Here’s why she was such a threat to the Taliban:

Ms. Yousafzai had been targeted for her criticism of the Taliban and because it considered her human rights campaigning to be an “obscenity.”

“She has become a symbol of Western culture in the area; she was openly propagating it,” a Taliban spokesman, Ehsanullah Ehsan, said by phone from an undisclosed location. “She considers Obama as her ideal leader.”

Or more likely, those are just nonsense buzzwords the Taliban knows it can spout to provoke anti-Western sentiment among its sympathizers, and the reality is that this one young girl was threatening to destabilize their power.

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This is the second post in my chapter-by-chapter analysis of The Feminine Mystique, as I read the book for the first time in an effort to educate myself about the roots of modern feminism. You can read the first post here.

Having drawn a rough image of the problem facing American women of the 60s, Betty Friedan backs up two decades to explore the transition from the optimism and potential of the earlier women’s movement to the malaise and restrictions of her day. A journalist by profession, Friedan naturally turns to her own field for answers, analyzing magazine stories from four women’s magazines in the year 1939: Ladies’ Home Journal, McCall’s, Good Housekeeping, and Woman’s Home Companion.

In contrast to the July 1960 issue of McCall’s, whose contents Friedan handily lists (Friedan, Betty, The Feminine Mystique. Norton & Company, 1997, pp. 34–35), magazines of the late 30s and early 40s did not revolve entirely around cooking, housekeeping and child-rearing while shunning politics and world issues. What they did contain was fiction—story after story of feminist role models: tough, smart, adventurous women who put career over romance in a way that seems almost moralistic: “If she kept her commitment to herself, she did not lose the man, if he was the right man.” (38–39)

Friedan posits that these stories represent fantasy fiction for the housewives and mothers of the day:

These magazines were not written for career women. The New Woman heroines were the ideal of yesterday’s housewives; they reflected the dreams, mirrored the yearning for identity and the sense of possibility that existed for women then. And if women could not have these dreams for themselves, they wanted their daughters to have them. They wanted their daughters to be more than housewives, to go out in the world that had been denied them. (40)

Women in the 1930s saw the world opening before them, their potential expanding, seemingly without limit. But over the next decade, the narrative of “The New Woman” began to disappear from women’s journalism, to be replaced by a different set of scripts. The last such story Friedan can find dates only back to 1949. “Suddenly”, as Friedan puts it (redeeming this magical-thinking expression with only a partial explanation)[1] magazines began printing stories about housewives with inferiority complexes. (41–42)

Well-rounded but not career-driven, educated but not intellectual, obsessed with producing children and managing a household to the exclusion of all else, the Happy Housewife Heroine may doubt the significance of her station, but only so she can later repent and joyfully re-accept husband, family, and home as her chosen work. Friedan recounts, for example, the story of a woman tempted away from her “duty” by a career-woman friend. At the friend’s urging, she gives up breast-feeding and begins to ignore her baby when he cries. She even considers taking a job outside the home. Naturally, she realizes the error of her ways when her husband discovers the baby crying and shivering because the window has been left open in her room. The moment is so powerful that her mannish friend also repents and returns to her own home and child. (46–47)

The “career woman” thus put in her place, magazines moved on to stories discouraging women from too much community activity—or even having minds of their own. Friedan points out that “The end of the road, in an almost literal sense, is the disappearance of the heroine altogether, as a separate self and the subject of her own story.” (47) Life Magazine, in a June 1959 profile, quotes a housewife: “If he doesn’t want me to wear a certain color or a certain kind of dress, then I truly don’t want to, either. The thing is, whatever he has wanted is what I also want… I don’t believe in fifty-fifty marriages.” (62)

Having discouraged women from having lives or thoughts of their own, women’s magazines correspondingly grew more and more vapid and inane, leading Friedan to wonder if women were being conditioned into imbecility. (65) She notes a hopeful sign, though:

The growing boredom of women with the empty, narrow image of the women’s magazines may be the most hopeful sign of the image’s divorce from reality. (66)

By the time of Friedan’s writing, women had already begun to revolt, even if only subconsciously and without a definite goal to revolt to. As a stunt, Redbook in September 1960 asked women to write in if they felt trapped, promising them \$500 for the response. They received 24,000 responses.

Looking back over the transition, Friedan asks:

Why did so many American women, with the ability and education to discover and create, go back home again, to look for ‘something more’ in housework and rearing children?

The 50s and 60s were great periods of discovering and expansion for mankind, but women shrank and retreated from the world. (67) The closest Friedan ventures to an explanation (in this chapter) is to tie the shift to the return of the G.I. “‘Most of the material used to come from women writers,’” says an older female magazine editor Friedan interviews. “‘As the young men returned from the war, a great many women writers dropped out of the field. The young women started having lots of children, and stopped writing.’” (54)

This editor (not identified by name) claimed that the stories of “the spirited career girl” came primarily from female writers and editors, while the fluffy housewife protagonist sprang from the minds of the men who later replaced them. No surprise, then, that the scripts being dictated to women conformed to the fantasies of soldiers returning home in hope of a comfortable domestic life. (54)

But Friedan seems reluctant to lay much of the blame for propagating The Feminine Mystique at the door of the press. Indeed, throughout the chapter she reports the frustrations of many (male) editors with the limited subject matter and points of view available to them. The editors of McCall’s claimed: “‘The irony is, what we meant to do was to stop editing for women as women, and edit for the men and women together. We wanted to edit for people, not women.’” (50)

In fact, in 1956, McCall’s tried a short article called “The Mother Who Ran Away”. It set a record in readership for the magazine. “‘It was our moment of truth,’ said a former editor. ‘We suddenly realized that all those women at home with their three and a half children were miserably unhappy.’” (50) In general, though, the editors of magazines accepted axiomatically that women were not interested, and indeed, could not even comprehend, issues or pure ideas. (50–51)

Whether from bias as an industry insider or because she accepts the sincerity of such reports, Friedan seems a little too willing to believe that the alteration in the narrative was the effect, rather than the cause, of the Mystique’s growing influence—at least at first. She admits that this attitude grew to become a self-fulfilling prophecy, citing a 1960 study that showed women to be truly uninterested in politics. (51) And even if she shows a little deference to her own colleagues, her implicit point remains valid: literature reflects culture more heavily than creates it. Friedan ends the chapter with unanswered questions:

“What gives the mystique its power? Why did women go home again?” (68)

2)

While I am reading this book more as a history lesson than for any other reason, the lackluster quality of Friedan’s storytelling abilities has proved a source of surprise and mild disappointment. She tends to ramble or editorialize without explanation, and to plant ideas that never pay off. For example, early in this chapter she draws an analogy between the Victorian repression of sexuality and the modern woman’s repression of her unmet desires: “A woman might not know what it was, any more than the Victorian woman knew she had sexual needs.” Friedan never revisits this idea, except in the vaguest and most implicit—and possibly unintentional—way. ↩

5)

If you appreciated this post, you might also like my new series of fantasy short stories featuring the immortal woman whose adventures we now know only through scattered myths and legends. Read them for free starting at the Her True Name story archives!

I recently cleared my calendar for nearly a month, deleting it all: work, meetings, appointments, dinners, movies, and even workouts at the gym. It felt at once liberating and luxurious, and a little bit scary. I had done this a few times before, twice for much longer times when our sons were born and once for a sad, open-ended time when my father was dying.

This would be a happy time. Our son and daughter-in-law had arranged to bring their first-born across the country for two separate two-week visits. They would both have work; could I take care of Jack? “He’s really active for a one-year-old!” warned our son. “You forget I raised you and your brother at the same time,” I replied.

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Swiffer’s new ad campaign focuses on getting men to do more housework:

The campaign features spokesman Rick Harrison from the popular show Pawn Stars. He opens this video by saying that some men are doing more housework, and that’s true. As this article on the campaign reports, nearly a third (31%) of men now report doing most of the housework in their homes. This is up from just 17% in 2006. That alone would be enough to justify an ad campaign aimed at this market, but in the same breath Harrison also tells us that some men need to be doing more housework, which moves this campaign from reactive to proactive.

My favorite part of this is very definitely the “How to Dust the Table” video.

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Dr. Denis Mukwege, who has treated over 15,000 women for injuries sustained as a result of sexual violence, narrowly escaped injury, death, or possibly kidnapping, on arriving home from a trip to Europe, where he found armed attackers waiting. Lauren Wolfe at The Atlantic reports on the assault, Mukwege’s ongoing work, and the surrounding political climate of The Democratic Republic of Congo.

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Yesterday I posted about the likelihood of Jesus & Venus going offline due to a hurricane-related power outage at the data center that hosts this and other Squarespace sites. So far that has not happened, due entirely to the courageous and tireless efforts of the Squarespace staff.

Here is a selection of updates from Squarespace’s running blog on the Hurricane Sandy power outage:

October 30, 2:07 p.m.

We have an understanding that when the fuel header on the roof stops refilling our tank, we will likely be in a window where shutdown will occur within 2 hours. That has not happened yet, which is good. We have fuel at the building, but cannot tap into the damaged building infrastructure yet.

October 30, 7:39 p.m.

We have been running hour by hour by manually carrying fuel to our generators (17 floors) with support from the building. As the night goes on, this is becoming a bit more difficult to sustain, as fuel trucks will appear more intermittently. For now, we remain online. Thank you all for your patience.

As before, we do not have a sustainable solution to the energy problem, but we persevere in our efforts to get more fuel on site and get a pump connected.

October 31, 1:02 a.m.

We continue to manually provide fuel to the generator, a plan which appears to be working, but is likely not sustainable. The building now has powerful pumps clearing out the basement, which we hope will expose the main pump lines — which would allow us fuel for days. Hopefully our manual efforts, joined with the building, can see us through. We have loaded enough fuel to carry to the morning, at which point we’ll provide another status update.

October 31, 12:40 p.m.

Good news and bad news.

We were able to give the crew 90 minutes off because the tank is full. That’s about 4 hours of power given daytime usage. We’ll start back up at 1:30. Our awesome teammates are hoofing lunch over the Brooklyn Bridge for us. As we’ve said before, this situation is untenable. We can’t keep manpower going 24/7 for days.

The building’s first attempt at an alternative method for pumping fuel to the 18th floor has failed, as the fuel pump wasn’t powerful enough. They believe they have sourced an alternate pump, but given the situation in New York City right now, we’re in a wait-and-see posture. Fuel- and water-pumps are in short supply.

The basement is not draining at all either, despite the large pumps that were brought in late last night. DEP and ConEd have been here for a few hours. They fear a water main has ruptured somewhere and is pushing water (and other stuff) into our basement as we pump it out. This is pure speculation at this point.

Terrific progress this afternoon.

October 31, 5 p.m.

We have a few hundred gallons of spare fuel on the roof along with a full tank, which will take us well into the night. On top of teams from Peer1, Fog Creek, and Squarespace, we were able to hire additional help from Brooklyn and Queens. Special thanks to Mike Mazzei and his team at Peer1 NYC for unprecedented dedication these past days.

We have a big crew teaming up tonight for a midnight bucket brigade, and another in the morning. Traffic is terrible with gridlock everywhere and no public transport, so we are scheduling carefully.

We are cautiously optimistic that fuel will be running to the roof by end of day tomorrow or the day after. Water is being successfully pumped from the basement at a rate of one foot per hour. Fifteen feet of water remain. We have increasing confidence that we may avoid downtime. Of course, there are no guarantees and we are working hour-by-hour.

You can also see some pictures of the Squarespace team in action.

I’m sure I speak for every other Squarespace customer when I say that this is going far above and beyond what anyone would have expected from them. No one could blame the company for allowing some “Act of God” downtime on their servers; people understand that this is one of the greatest natural disasters the country has ever seen.

Instead, though, they’ve worked themselves tirelessly in a so-far successful effort to provide uninterrupted service. Their fanatical willingness to carry buckets of fuel up 17 flights of stairs over and over around the clock just to keep our sites running exemplifies why I want Squarespace hosting Jesus & Venus.

No.

Or at least, not in a widespread, pervasive way, as this headline (and article) suggests:

In some respects, women have fought to become equal with their male peers and won. However, in others, the scales have tipped the other way, leaving men wrong footed. I can already hear the cries of ‘RUBBISH!’ now, but hear me out for a second or two.

Okay, I will. Continue.

Any male who wants to get involved in a ‘caring’ profession, or in any aspect of the beauty industry, is instantly thought of as effeminate. This male nurse has defended why he chose the profession, but why should he? This is the flip side of women taking on ‘manly’ roles, such as fire-fighters, mechanics and engineers. However, we tend to celebrate women in ‘male’ roles, while we deride men in ‘female’ roles.

This isn’t the only area where men are at a disadvantage. During custody battles, it is usually assumed women are the best carers for the couple’s children.

Nonsense. Assuming men are untrustworthy caregivers, either professionally or personally, isn’t a result of feminism’s achievements; it’s just the flip side of the gender stereotyping feminists work so hard to combat. Get back to me when someone starts discriminating against men for jobs in STEM fields.

Back in the early days on TV and cinema, men were always the heads of the household, where women had to obey them. However, in the last two or three decades we’ve seen the arrival of the ‘dumb dad’. Think Homer Simpson or Peter Griffin. They are dads who, deep down, love their families, but are also selfish, stubborn, ignorant, and just basically infantile. They are usually backed up by the loving wife character, someone who is much smarter than their husband, but who doesn’t receive the credit for keeping the family together.

This argument might hold water if Homer Simpson and Peter Griffin didn’t ring so true. Some actual men, including fathers, are boorish, irresponsible people, and those character flaws, like all others, make for good comedy. Portraying these sorts of characters in TV might present a problem if no other, more positive male role models existed. Fortunately, they do; the fact that the defenders of pure fatherhood have been using Homer Simpson as a pariah for over 20 years demonstrates the relative paucity of this particular stereotype.

It’s all too easy, as a ‘modern woman’, to do down a man just because of his gender. After all, who hasn’t heard a friend utter the phrase, ‘Ugh, men, they’re all bastards’? Imagine if that were swapped around. As a woman, would you stand for it? Of course not!

Look, as long as people exist, some of them are going to hate each other for bad reasons. Some won’t actually hate but will occasionally say hateful things they don’t quite mean. We will never fully eradicate sexism (or racism, or homophobia, or any other brand of hatred), but we can make headway, and we have. Occasional incidents of man-hatred don’t indicate a pervasive cultural misandry, and if you need evidence that the scales have not actually “tipped the other way”, I invite you to read every other post on this website.

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Giant Trigger Warning for Child Abuse/Domestic Violence

You might not want to watch this video of Texas Judge William Adams beating his 16-year-old daughter with a belt for downloading music and video games he didn’t approve. Just know that doing the above apparently does not disqualify him from public office:

On Sept. 4, the State Commission on Judicial Conduct issued a public warning against Adams. It questioned Adams’ suitability for his elected post but stopped short of recommending his removal.

After he waived his right to appeal the warning, his reinstatement was considered a formality.

Adams was not prosecuted for child abuse because the crime was seven years old when reported, meaning that the statute of limitations had run out. Why is the statute of limitations on child abuse so short in Texas?

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The libertarian in me pretty generally approves.

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Kristen of Wordgazer’s Words delves deep into Old and New Testament history and culture to analyze Jesus’ and Paul’s teachings on divorce. Even if you disagree with her conclusions, the information is fascinating.

Via Tell Me Why the World Is Weird.

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Couldn’t ask for much better than the Oscar-winning screenwriter of Little Miss Sunshine and Toy Story 3.

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Haha, I kid. But seriously, New Hampshire ladies really killed it on Tuesday:

New Hampshire, long known as the first-presidential-primary-in-the-nation state, scored another political first earlier this week: it has elected women to all of its top public offices. It’s not an accident that come January 2013, women will be installed in New Hampshire’s U.S. Senate seats, both U.S. House seats, and the gubernatorial mansion.

Alexandra Starr sketches an intriguing history of the evolution of political women in New Hampshire.

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Remember this idiot? He eventually confessed and has pled guilty to “disorderly conduct”, which carries a fine of up to \$100.

That may seem unsatisfying, but at least the incident has been resolved, unlike many other examples of misogynist behavior. Hopefully the bad PR for the university will motivate them to cooperate with efforts to combat sexual assault.

Via The Frisky.

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Maybe. I appreciate that this summary of a Journal of Women’s Health article differentiates between correlation and causation.

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Krista Dalton, a Christian graduate student of Jewish studies, only wants you to study Judaism as long as you give it the respect it deserves:

Does that mean one can understand early Christianity without understanding early Judaism? No! The same as early Jewish studies is enhanced by an understanding of Christianity. But when we begin the dialogue, it should not be from a position of “reclaiming.” Frankly, the time for that ended a little under 2,000 years ago. Since then “jewishness” and “christianness” has evolved into two large and separate religious traditions.

Thus understanding Israelite and Judean religious practice is not the equivalent of understanding modern Jewish practice.

This attempt to reclaim Judaism is foreign to my experience, but Krista knows what she’s talking about.

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At a size 10, Romola Garai (Atonement, The Hour), gets airbrushed thinner when she appears in magazines, and she feels conflicted about it:

It’s difficult because if I refuse to do any magazines at all, my work, I think, would suffer in a very immediate way. But when I appear in these magazines, I know I’m being “trimmed”. I’m being airbrushed a lot.

And I know that people are accepting those images and are under the impression that that is really how my body looks, that I’m hairless and sexless and weigh 90 lbs. That really worries me. And I really don’t know what to do except talk about it.

Did you know Jennifer Lawrence (The Hunger Games) is also too fat? We have a real actress obesity epidemic on our hands, people.

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The phrase “forcible rape,” which Akin claimed he ought to have used after his initial remarks became controversial, is just as wayward as his original phrase. Both the notion of “legitimate” rape and that of “forcible” rape fail to recognize that force shouldn’t be required to conclude that a rape takes place. But in too many courts across the land, it is.

James Warren nails it: the onus should be on sexual initiators to obtain consent, not on sexual responders to deny consent. Our sexual assault jurisprudence needs to come out of the dark ages.

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Apparently no friend to romantic comedies, Suzannah Paul nonetheless rejects the above label:

There is no emotional porn. That is not a thing. The emotional porn argument is just the same Christian legalism in a shinier package, and it’s a lie.

Unlike Paul, I am a fan—and writer—of romantic comedies (can we please stop calling them “chick flicks”?), but I agree. Anyway, the real problem with modern rom-coms is the genre’s seeming inability to reconcile its traditionally heightened sense of reality with the more cynical (realistic?) sensibilities of modern audiences.

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Libby Anne is pleased to discover that at least one element of the pro-life movement is pushing contraception as a means to decrease abortion:

What matters more, lowering the abortion rate even if that means encouraging contraceptive use among those who aren’t married, or ensuring that sex has consequences and is tied to procreation even if that in practice leads to a higher abortion rate? The pro-life movement establishment, partly because of Catholic influence, has long eschewed the former position and embraced the later. But as more people take seriously the rhetoric about “saving babies,” there may be a shift as more groups and individuals move toward the former position and reject the latter.

I’ve long agreed with the position Libby Anne ascribes to her husband Sean: that the pro-life movement is no longer really about controlling women’s bodies but about saving “people”. When this is unclear, I think it is for two reasons:

1. As Sean contends, the movement simply hasn’t shaken off its old practices and rhetoric, so it frequently does and says patriarchal things out of habit.
2. As I’ve said when discussing a different issue, people are not always completely logical, and logical people tend to forget this when they examine the beliefs and practices of others. The actions of the pro-life movement, partly for the above reason, don’t always jibe with their stated goals.

So when Libby Anne says:

If the pro-life movement’s goal is to reduce the abortion rate they should be focusing on things like contraception and a social safety net that makes raising children more affordable. When they instead focus only on overturning Roe and banning abortion—the goal of all of the major pro-life organizations—one begins to wonder if the goal really is to save “unborn babies” from being “murdered” as is claimed.

I think she is giving the movement too much credit for logical consistency.

Undeniably, though, the pro-life movement desperately needs to move past caring whether unmarried people have sex and care instead about the best proven method for decreasing the abortion rate: contraception.

If you consider yourself pro-life you really should be reading all of Libby Anne’s posts on the subject, if only to keep yourself intellectually honest.

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Christ and Pop Culture today posted a short dialogue between two ladies—Faith Newport and Erin Straza—about how much better married sex is than casual sex. Unfortunately, neither woman seemed to have put serious thought into how Christian teaching on the subject should interact with the cultural mainstream.

For example, the conversation opens by discussing the danger of false rape accusations:

It seems like all too often the anti-abortion movement accuses women of wanting to escape the consequences of casual sex—but isn’t opening yourself up to a potential rape charge just another consequence of casual sex? The guys who meet a girl, treat her right, and bring her home to their parents aren’t worried about this kind of thing—it’s the guys who are sleeping around that have to think about it. Where’s the rhetoric on that?

Fantastic. Let’s continue to propagate the trope that devious women are just lying in wait to accuse men of rape, when nearly all the negative consequences of even “forcible” rape fall on the victim, not the perpetrator.

Then Erin and Faith start bemoaning the pervasive notion of “consequence-free” sex:

Men and women should be held equally accountable for their sexual choices. (And in my mind, they are.) But the primarily private nature of sex enables partners to engage then split with no one knowing. It’s not like the consequences of getting in a car accident, when there are forms to complete and repairs to schedule and money to pay. If a man has casual sex and fails to stay involved with the consequences the woman faces, she would have to expose his shirking, and we, as society would have to “remind” him of his responsibilities.

Why? Why should anyone be held accountable for their sexual choices to anyone but God and themselves? This obsession with making sure people reap negative consequencs for illicit sexual activity needs to end.

Then we get even more disconnected from reality:

This takes us back to the fallacy of casual sex. There is no such thing. Certainly there are many cases where sexual activity does not produce immediate consequences. But the potential for long-term ramifications cannot be completely avoided (unless one of the partners is infertile)—something the casual sex movement ignores.

No, casual sex totally does exist. Some people really do just have one-night stands or repeated meaningless sexual encounters. I’m not arguing that this is healthy behavior, but it does happen, and claiming that it doesn’t just seems like wishful thinking. Further, the claim that “long-term ramifications cannot be completely avoided (unless one of the partners is infertile)” at once ignores the near 100% effectiveness of modern birth control and erroneously limits the possible consequences of sexual activity to unwanted pregnancy—disregarding the much more likely consequence of emotional confusion or disappointment.

The wishful thinking then continues:

It’s almost like you would have to approach sex with a commitment involving a socially ordained set of expectations, rights, and responsibilities… Oh, wait—that’s marriage. However, because of the shift we’re experiencing in cultural attitudes towards sex, we may find that another social institution evolves to govern casual sexual activity.

It becomes quite clear at this point that the conversation is not about concern for the well-being of society but is simply more conservative hand-wringing over the culture’s failure to reflect our own values. Proposing an institution to govern sexual mores is classic social conservatism: having realized that people aren’t following God’s (our) moral code, we seek to replace God with some sort of enforceable rule to make people behave the way we think they should.

I’ve got news for these people: nothing but knowing Jesus will make anyone act as if they know Jesus. If you want people to follow Jesus, introduce them to him.

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Dave Zirin at The Nation analyzes why Title IX—which mandates corresponding female teams for all male high school sports teams—may now actually be perpetuating inequality:

Why do we still segregate so much of youth sports based on gender? Does the practice of doing so actually stunt female athletic potential? Would ending gender segregation foster a higher level of athletic excellence? The early women’s rights activists certainly thought so. As Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote in a women’s issues magazine, The Lily, “We cannot say what the woman might be physically, if the girl were allowed all the freedom of the boy, in romping, swimming, climbing, playing ball.”

I believe this is a multi-faceted issue, with pros and cons on both sides, but I also generally believe that the prinicple of equality should win, and this seems like no exception.

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Emily Bazelon of XX Factor bypasses all the slut-shaming and titillating speculation of the Petraeus scandal and focuses on questions that matter much, much more. For example:

Did the government get a warrant to search Paula Broadwell’s email account? Conflicting reports on this one, as Julian Sanchez has noted. The Wall Street Journal says yes but Reuters says no: “The FBI investigation into the emails was fairly straightforward and did not require obtaining court orders to monitor the email accounts of those involved, including the personal email account of Petraeus.” What? Yes, the FBI can read the emails Kelley turned over to them without a warrant. But to go snooping further, shouldn’t investigators have to get one? This is not a legal nicety. Warrants are the basic constitutional check on the power of law enforcement and prosecutors to search and seize.

If we’re going to obsess over the fallout of a high-ranking government official’s sexual infidelity, let’s do it for the right reasons.

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Trigger Warning for Domestic Violence

Jessica Wakeman writes a harrowing story for The Frisky:

First I heard the screaming. He was screaming at her aggressively, almost sounding like a crazed gorilla, and she was shrieking back and whinnying. For one brief second, I wondered if it was two people horseplaying.

I looked down the block and started walking—they were at the end of the street—and could see them plainly. They were both around my age; she was all dressed up as if she was headed to work. Then I saw him, standing behind her, hold her from behind in a bear hug, lift her up into the air, and carry/drag her a few feet. She struggled like this, and he set her down, she shoved him off.

Several people watched the extended physical altercation—and did nothing.

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The best recent romantic comedy I’ve seen is The Amazing Spider-Man.

Yes, of course Spider-Man is a romantic-comedy. You must have thought it was about a comic book character or something. How naïve. For future reference, the presence of Emma Stone, the new Queen of Romantic Comedy (as anointed by me), is a dead giveaway.

Now, technically Spider-Man is a rom-com hybrid—according to the definition laid down by Billy Mernit, the man who actually wrote the book on romantic comedies. That is, the romantic-comedy component of the plot is secondary; the central question of the movie is not “Will these two people end up together?” Still, the romance between Peter Parker and Gwen Stacy forms a vital part of the story, and more importantly, it both amuses the viewer and satisfies as a narrative.

Sadly, scoring well in both those categories puts Spider-Man out in front of nearly all other so-called “romantic comedies” produced in recent years. When pressed to name a “good” romantic comedy—one that has a strong story and actually makes people laugh—I usually cite Knocked Up… which hit theaters in 2007. While I’m sure other funny, well-written romatic comedies have debuted since then (one thinks of Bridesmaids, another rom-com hybrid¹), the fact that my mind most easily flits back to a film from five years ago should concern fans of the genre. I mean, even referring to it as a “film” without being technically incorrect communicates a certain temporal distance.

The fact is, the landscape of modern romantic comedy looks pretty barren. Most rom-coms fail on one or both of the aforementioned metrics—usually both; the stereotypical, predictable, trope-filled, Katherine Heigl-starring², barely-clinging-to-reality-by-its-long-fake-fingernails romantic comedy typically provides almost zero laughs and makes almost zero sense. Even some semi-recent movies I have enjoyed (usually more than they deserved) tended to rely on tired plot obstacles that real people could easily overcome by sitting down and having an adult conversation. Moreover, the rare funny rom-com—such as 2011’s Friends With Benefits—tends to turn serious about two-thirds of the way in to focus on the disintegrating relations between the main characters, thus removing comedy and believability simultaneously. Alternatively, comedy stays alive throughout by burning rapidly through the fuel of reality, leaving the viewer dissatisfied by a resolution that feels contrived rather than earned. Couples Retreat, I’m looking at you.

I recently wrote the origin story of my love affair with romantic comedies (and feminism), and I’ve since been wondering whether the genre’s persistent detachment from reality may result from persistent attachment to the tone and sensibility of the movies I grew up watching: musicals and rom-coms of the 30s and 40s. If that sounds far-fetched, consider the following list of similarities: meet-cutes, fast-paced “witty” (rather than actually funny) dialogue, wealthier-than-average protagonists, traditional gender roles (except when subverted for effect), heightened sense of reality, overuse of coincidence to progress the plot, and a telescoped timeline that allows people to meet, fall in love, fight, split up, pine, and reunite within the space of a few days or weeks.

Of course, the romantic comedies of the 30s and 40s were actually laugh-out-loud funny in their day, not merely chuckle-worthy. And current rom-com writers are not directly copying the format; as someone who recently shot a movie that did attempt a fairly literal homage to 1930s filmmaking, I could hardly complain if they did. Rather, contemporary romantic comedies appear to be attempting a translation of the style into modern vernacular instead of inventing their own cinematic conventions.

We do get the occasional exception, like last year’s Friends With Kids, a grounded, genuine offering from Jennifer Westfeldt about two platonic friends who decide to have a baby together without getting married. Naturally, the plot centers around whether they will, despite their ill-laid plans, eventually end up together.³ While really more of a dramedy, the movie is funny when it tries to be, and more importantly, no one makes decisions for unbelievable reasons, the plot does not hinge on coincidence, and for the most part the characters act like sane—albeit flawed—adults. Right up until the last scene, that is; see this post by Dianna E. Anderson for a (spoiler-laden) analysis of the rape-culture-driven denouement. Despite this and other more minor flaws, though, Friends With Kids tells a somewhat satisfying romantic story that made my wife and me laugh.

Or consider Newlyweds, also from 2011. Written and directed by Edward Burns, an ardent admirer of Woody Allen—of whom I am not a fan—the story follows a couple, both on their second marriage, as they weather the adversities of two different family crises. While not to my comedic taste, the movie—shot on DSLRs for a production budget of \$9000—found success among its target audience, being well-done for its subgenre (awkward faux-documentary). It, too, featured very authentic-feeling characters and relationships and never relied on blatant stupidity or coincidence to drive the story.

Both Newlyweds and Friends With Kids were independently-produced films, although the latter had a substantially larger budget than the former. And therein may lie the secret to believable, relatable, genuinely (in both senses) funny romantic comedies. The major studios, even when they consent to produce a movie not based on some popular, pre-existing property, have developed a severe allergy to ideas that are not “high-concept” and hyperreal. While some might classify Friends With Kids as high-concept, Newlyweds is certainly not, and neither premise is executed in the heightened style upon which Hollywood insists. Filmmakers who aim to produce literal comedies that are literally romantic may increasingly find themselves turning to independent financing for the artistic liberty required to tell those stories.

I do realize that I am simply engaging in the kind of doomsday hand-wringing typical of not only rom-com fans but nearly all cinephiles. Claiming the indie film scene has cornered the market on quality is so common that it is now bleeding over into the general populace, along with bemoaning the absence of original ideas left in Hollywood, which I also did not five sentences ago. Every now and then the movie industry does surprise us with a Bridesmaids or a He’s Just Not That Into You—another genuinely funny romantic comedy (with a little tragedy mixed in)—but for the most part the near decade-long doomsaying of romantic-comedy lovers has not proven false. Good rom-coms are dying out, and even the crappy ones rarely perform well at the box office. If we want to keep the genre not only alive but healthy, we may need to reboot it back to its origins—small, cheaply-made, character- and dialogue-driven love stories that provide both escapism and familiarity—without adhering to the tone and cinematic style of a bygone era.

An Indian immigrant to Ireland has died from complications of a miscarriage that doctors refused to terminate because “this is a Catholic country”. Abortion is legal in Ireland in the event that the woman’s life is threatened by the pregnancy.

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Back in June Square Enix sparked quite a bit of outrage when it released a trailer for its upcoming reboot of the Tomb Raider franchise that featured the iconic protagonist Lara Croft being sexually assaulted. Months later—now released from her non-disclosure agreement—Rhianna Pratchett, lead writer of the game, explains how she developed the character and why the trailer was misleading:

According to Pratchett, the sexual assault is “absolutely not” a character-defining moment for Lara, and the trailer is not representative of the game’s story arc - “But I’m not sure it was ever intended to be.” Most of the footage was taken from the game’s first act, she explains. As the game progresses, Lara begins to transform into the strong, capable character her fans are familiar with.

“I know people are concerned we’re making her weaker, but you don’t plop out as a badass.”

Rhianna Pratchett is the daughter of Terry Pratchett, one of my favorite authors. She previously wrote for the game Heavenly Sword, which had a great story and very strong, three-dimensional female lead.

This might be the first Tomb Raider I ever care about even a little.

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Until 1984, Irish doctors occasionally cut through a pregnant woman’s pelvis with a hacksaw in order to unhinge it for difficult births. This operation was performed under a local anesthetic, and afterward the woman would still have to push the baby out.

Make sure you watch the video.

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Apparently—according to parliamentary speaker Rebecca Kadaga—the Ugandan people “are demanding it”, so it’s going to be a nice Christmas present for everyone.

In a totally unrelated note, did you know that many conservative Christians still idealize theocracy (government based on the laws of the Bible)?

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Marg Mowczko compares Paul’s views on marriage and the role of women with those of his contemporary, Roman writer Plutarch:

It struck me how different Plutarch’s and Paul’s views were about the relationship between husbands and wives. It also struck me that many Christians sound much more like Plutarch, rather than Paul, in what they think and say about marriage and women.

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Via The Mary Sue:

By “Meghan Danger”

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Michelle Parrinello-Cason of Balancing Jane on her St. Louis, MO students’ reactions to learning she has a biracial daughter.

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Today, Irish Deputy Prime Minister Eamon Gilmore urged the Irish Parliament to clarify the restrictive abortion laws that lead to the death of Indian national Savita Halappanavar in Ireland last month.

“It is time to bring legal clarity to the issue,” he said. “Although we will not know the full details until the investigation has been completed, we have heard what Savita’s husband said yesterday and as legislators we have a duty and responsibility to respond, act and deal with the issue… I do not think we, as a country, should allow a situation where women’s lives are put at risk in this way. We must deal with the issue and bring legal clarity to it.”

Too right, you must.

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Part 1 of a planned series from Ellen Painter Dollar. I don’t know that I would base any of my ideology or beliefs on this information, but it’s still interesting. For example:

Judaism does not perceive fertilized eggs as fully human in the way that the Catholic church and many other Christian traditions do. Thus, Judaism does not share Christian concerns that techniques such as IVF and PGD manipulate and/or destroy human embryos. Jewish authorities have laid out very specific timelines of fertilization, implantation, gestation, and birth, making determinations at each stage as to the moral status of the developing baby and the relationship between the baby’s moral status and the mother’s.

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30 Rock co-star Elizabeth Banks is venturing into TV producing with an untitled comedy project at CBS. Written by another actress, Elizabeth Wright Shapiro, the comedy centers on an Ivy League feminist who comes to L.A to become an assistant professor and ends up moving in with two “Playboy Bunny” type females. While they seemingly have nothing in common, all three are striving to be modern empowered women but with very different ideas of how to achieve it. Banks will executive produce with her husband, Max Handelman; Shapiro will co-executive produce for 20th Century Fox TV.

I’m amazed Fox bought this idea; it doesn’t sound anything like the sort of comedies that make it to air these day. That’s probably a good thing, and Elizabeth Banks is a smart, experienced comedian and producer, so I’ll definitely give this a shot.

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I’ve written before about how Jezebel need to fire Karley Sciortino (“Slutever”), their new sex advice columnist. Look no further than her column from yesterday, in which she answers three reader questions and manages to say something anti-feminist in every single one. Content Warning: graphic and crude descriptions of sexual acts and offensive slurs.

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I didn’t pay much attention to Mark Driscoll until I became a feminist writer, and then every other Christian feminist had to just go and draw my attention to what a misogynist tool he is. Thanks a lot, everyone.

Today Driscoll engaged in some doomsaying about the state of teen culture as exemplified by Twilight fandom. Nearly every paragraph contains something awful. Here are some examples:

This weekend, millions will flock to movie theaters for the final installment of the teen vampire saga. Tragically, many will be driven by their parents, including some cougar moms encouraging and joining their daughters’ obsession with handsome young males.

Impressive. Already he’s managed to denigrate women, and we’re only two sentences in.

Our family car won’t be driving to the theater for Twilight—or over a cliff for that matter.

Because no one would possibly go to see a Twilight movie unless they were some mindless lemming following the rest of our depraved culture to its metaphorical death.

NBC News: “Teenagers obsessed with the Twilight vampire saga, or those simply fascinated with fangs, reportedly have been biting each other—hard—and then licking or sucking the blood. ‘These are kids who think they are real vampires,’ said Dr. Orly Avitzur. […] ‘Having that thick, warm copper-tasting blood in my mouth is the best thing I can think of!’ wrote a teenager identified as ‘GothicGirl10’ this year. ‘Sometimes my boyfriend lets me feed off him. I let him feed off me as well.’”

Let me tell you something, Mark Driscoll. Anyone calling herself “GothicGirl10” did not need the Twilight series to push her into melodramatic and pseudo-vampiric behavior.

Another support page for Real Vampires appeals to outsiders with “a few words for anyone who has ever been bullied, picked on, teased or harassed because you’re different. What you have suffered is wrong. It is wrong for anyone to hit you or harass you, or to make you hate yourself for being different, whether or not you consider yourself a vampire.”

How. Dare. They.

But just so we’re clear, would Driscoll be okay with non-vampire sites encouraging teens not to give in to depression or despair?

The Week: “Lyle Monroe Bensley, 19, was arrested in his boxer shorts after he allegedly broke into the Galveston, Texas, home of a randomly chosen single woman, growled and hissed at her, dragged her down the hall, and tried to bite her on her neck… When the police arrested Bensley a short time later, he told them he was a 500-year-old vampire. ‘He was begging us to restrain him because he didn’t want to kill us,’ says Galveston officer Daniel Erickson. ‘He said he needed to feed.’”

This young man is obviously suffering from mental illness. If it hadn’t been vampires it would have been something else. This is the problem with anti-intellectuals like Driscoll: they can twist any negative behavior or event into evidence against whatever phenomenon they happen to be decrying at the moment.

I’m sure that the popularity of the Twilight series has pushed some impressionable young people over the edge into unhealthy behavior; it would be silly to pretend otherwise. But assuming that before Twilight came along these teens were completely healthy, wholesome, sunny-dispositioned Girl and Boy Scouts is equally silly. Blaming Twilight is focusing on the symptom, not the disease.

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After being unemployed for two years, Yolanda Spivey decided to attempt an experiment. An insurance professional, Spivey created a separate Monster.com resume and profile—which used her education and professional experience—with one big difference,[sic] she called herself Bianca White and claimed she was a white woman.

I wish I could say the results will surprise you.

Via The Frisky.

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If you’re an awesome dad like this guy, you grab the companion costume hanging right next to hers.

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Say what you will about whether it was advisable for this young woman to flash her breasts at a couple guys with a video camera, but she should win this suit for two reasons:

1. It does not appear that she signed any sort of release or even gave verbal consent for her image to be used in commercial products or advertisements.
2. She was 14 years old at the time and therefore probably not even legally capable of giving consent.

Of course, state laws vary, but 14 years old would be a pretty low cut-off.

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Another great post from Kristen of Wordgazer’s Words, this time about Jesus’ interaction with the Syro-Phoenician woman who begged him to heal her demon-possessed daughter:

For years I didn’t know what to think of this story. It looked like Jesus was first ignoring, and then insulting, a poor, desperate woman—for no other reason than that she was a Gentile. It looked like she obtained healing for her daughter only after submitting to humiliation by agreeing that she and her people were little more than “dogs.” If Jesus is really the compassionate Savior of all mankind, how could He be so racist and cruel?

After doing her homework, she proceeds to unwrap the story and give us all the gift of falling in love with Jesus and the Bible (again).

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A former UN division commander is trying to teach UN peacekeepers how to respond when they witness a rape in progress, because apparently the most common responses currently include walking away or pretending not to notice.

Cammaert said he also trains peacekeepers to look out for warning signs, so that rape is not just something they stumble onto but something they can actually prevent. He gave an example: “If you hear from female committees that the females are going from their IDP camps back to their village to work in the fields, but they still sleep in the forest,” he said, something is amiss. “You have to dig deeper : ‘Why are you afraid?’”

Via Fem 2.0.

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Okay, this isn’t actually a good argument against gun control, but it’s still pretty great. This woman pulled her gun on a flasher, then sicced her dog on him when he ran away.

Via The Frisky.

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I know this is begging the question, but that’s what this Crates and Ribbons post does, allowing a potentially false premise to stand in order to examine its theoretical cause.

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Some who support female bishops are against the measure because they feel it is too discriminatory because it still allows parishes to reject female bishops. While it is believed that the traditionalists do not have enough support to block the measure, those in favor of approving the measure are worried that the controversy may prevent the issue from passing.

I remember a time when the very idea of female bishops would have been laughable. Now the biggest point of contention is that allowing female bishops is not progressive enough.

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Last night at the American Music Awards Jenny McCarthy presented an award to Justin Bieber. Then she grabbed his butt and forcibly kissed him on the neck.

This might be hard for non-fans like me to remember, but Bieber is actually of age, so this wasn’t a criminal act. It was creepy, though, and not for the reason everyone is saying. All the coverage I’ve seen so far focuses on the age difference:

McCarthy is known for her wacky antics, of course, so she no doubt assumed the grope would be taken as a joke.

She was so confident, in fact, that she posted a picture of herself kissing Justin’s cringing neck, with the title “Cougar rape #poorjustin.”

Still, viewers who watched McCarthy nab Bieber mostly got a little “ick” vibe. After all, McCarthy is literally more than twice Bieber’s age, and though she may have meant her affection playfully, it came off a bit predatory.

Some—like the author of the linked article—pointed out that gender-swapping the incident makes it much more creepy, a double standard that actually favors women for a change. Um… congratulations, Ladies?

Of course, that double standard isn’t really favoring women; it’s just reinforcing the stereotype that older men hitting on young women is creepy but older women hitting on young men is awesome.

And that helps pinpoint the actual problem with McCarthy’s groping of Bieber: it was unwanted and rape-y. Despite McCarthy’s joke about “cougar rape”, no one seems to be focusing on this element of the event except either to play along with the joke or to affect indignation over the use of the word “rape”.

While McCarthy did not commit rape, she was venturing into that territory, and she knew it, which is why she made the joke. As new as I am to the concept, I have at least discerned that one of the underpinnings of rape culture is the subconscious collective belief that women’s bodies exist for men. And it cuts both ways—or should, if we really want to push for equality and a culture of consent.

Jenny McCarthy doesn’t own Justin Bieber’s body, so in the absence of his consent, she should keep her hands off it.

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It’s exactly like it sounds. Here’s an excerpt from the email sent to Michael Calleri, former film critic for the Niagra Falls Reporter, by the owner:

snow white and the huntsman is trash. moral garbage. a lot of fuzzy feminist thinking and pandering to creepy hollywood mores produced by metrosexual imbeciles.

I don’t want to publish reviews of films where women are alpha and men are beta. where women are heroes and villains and men are just lesser versions or shadows of females.

i believe in manliness.

Spelling and grammatical mistakes are the original sender’s, not Calleri’s or mine.

For the record, I’ve seen Snow White and the Huntsman. In addition to a strong female lead, it also features a strong male lead—you know… the Huntsman?

Calleri’s whole piece is worth reading, containing a short history of the Niagra Fall’s Reporter and its decline.

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Marlena Graves at Her.meneutics critiques this common complaint from women about the men they’ve just dumped:

I started wondering about all the godly men who may have other spiritual gifts—just not the ones traditionally considered “male” spiritual gifts. For example, what about men who have the gift of mercy or hospitality or service or encouragement, and who are full of the fruits of the Spirit? Do we devalue them simply because they’re not at the helm or out in front but rather operating alongside their partner? Is initiating devotional activities within a relationship really what it means to lead?

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Jill Pantozzi of The Mary Sue points out that, when Lionsgate Films became the first movie studio ever to release two films in the same year that both grossed over \$125 million in their North American theatrical release, those two films both featured women in the lead.

The movies in question are, of course, Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 2 and The Hunger Games. Pantozzi hopes that this will finally get the message through executives’ thick skulls that women can carry big-budget, successful movies:

Let’s think about this for a second. Both films starred female leads and both films played for what was projected to be a mostly female audience. That’s pretty huge and a good indicator going forward for not just Lionsgate but other studios. Women action stars besides Angelina Jolie can make money, and both men and women will want to see them.

Based on Hollywood’s previous track record, I’m going to predict that they will once again totally miss this indicator. One can hope, though.

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Fr. Federico Lombardi, Director of the Vatican Television Centre, has invoked the dreaded slippery slope argument against legalized gay marriage:

In short, preserving a vision of the human person and of human relationships where there is a public acknowledgement of monogamous marriage between a man and woman is an achievement of civilization. If not, why not contemplate also freely chosen polygamy and, of course, not to discriminate, polyandry?

Rather than dissect the problems with this line of reasoning (which Jay Michaelson, the writer of the linked article, does much better than I could), I will simply say, “Yes, why not?”

This is the libertarian me talking, but the government has no business being involved in marriage at all. Let the state authorize contractual civil unions if it finds a compelling reason to do so, but validating or enforcing types of relationships is just a way for the government to insert itself unwarrantably into our private lives.

Also, polygamy is not the opposite of polyandry, polygyny is. Polygamy is a gender-neutral word. Words matter.

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No, not that one. This is about the Church of England’s rejection today of a proposal that would have allowed women to become bishops.

Sarah Moon writes of her crushing disappointment at the news, but then she urges women to live in opposition to oppression:

It would be so easy to give up, and I know that’s what they hope for. They hope for a day when the oppressed follow their rules and stop preaching and prophesying. They hope for a day when the oppressed give up trying to be human, and settle into their “roles” as sex objects.

They hope…

But we hope for something different.

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Michelle Parrinello-Cason on trying to develop healthy body-image in her daughter:

Every time I looked at a picture of myself, I no longer saw that ugliness. I saw a piece of my daughter’s beauty, and I remembered that any criticism I gave of my own “flaw” would be a criticism of hers. So what could I do instead? Could I look at a picture of myself and single out something else as a flaw. Could I decide that I weighed too much? Could I dislike my haircut? Could I wish those bags under my eyes would disappear?

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Today (November 20) was Transgender Day of Remembrance, and Jeremy C. Fox at Boston.com tells the story of the vibrant, popular Boston woman whose unsolved murder sparked the institution.

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According to , with the passage of this legislation in Syracuse, every major city in New York State has now passed similar nondiscrimination legislation protecting the rights of transgender and gender non-conforming people.

Maybe the tide is ever-so-gradually turning.

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For the rationale behind the experiment that resulted in Rachel Held Evans’ A Year of Biblical Womanhood, look no further than her piece today for CNN’s “Belief Blog” on the inconsistency with which every Christian interprets and applies the Bible:

When we turn the Bible into an adjective and stick it in front of another loaded word, we tend to ignore or downplay the parts of the Bible that don’t quite fit our preferences and presuppositions. In an attempt to simplify, we force the Bible’s cacophony of voices into a single tone and turn a complicated, beautiful, and diverse holy text into a list of bullet points we can put in a manifesto or creed. More often than not, we end up more committed to what we want the Bible to say than what it actually says.

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Jessica of Faith Permeating Life tells two stories to remind us that, regardless of our position, the abortion issue is ultimately about people.

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The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has decided that the benefits of oral contraceptives sufficiently outweigh the side effects and risks that they should be made available without prescription:

Even though no drug is risk-free, the overall consensus is that OCs are safe. There is a risk of blood clots with OC use, but it is extremely low and significantly lower than the risk of blood clots during pregnancy and the postpartum period. The College points out that aspirin and acetaminophen are both available OTC even though they have well-known health risks.

It’s about time. Pull the trigger, lawmakers.

Via Feministing.

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No exaggeration:

Pro-choicers have been accusing conservatives for decades of valuing fetuses more than actual born children (and exponentially more than post-pubescent women), and now state legislators in Michigan are considering proving them right. The legislature held a hearing on Tuesday for House Bill 5684 and 5685, which would “allow taxpayers to claim a dependency exemption for a fetus that has completed at least 12 weeks of gestation as of the last day of the tax year and that has been under the care and observation of a physician since at least 12 weeks of gestation.”

Just last year, on the other hand, the legislature eliminated a tax credit for parents.

What could possibly motivate this other than wanting to make a philosophical statement? And as Sam Goldwyn said, “If you want to send a message, use Western Union.”

By the way, the House Fiscal Agency (which is nonpartisan) estimates that this new tax credit could cost the state \$5–10 million, so fiscal soundness clearly played no part in the decision.

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Kasdan wrote not only Episodes V and VI (The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, for you non-nerds), but Raiders of the Lost Ark and some other awesome things, so it would be fantastic if this news was true.

Also rumored: Simon Kinberg to write Episode IX.

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The blog will take a short break from posting in celebration of the Thanksgiving holiday. The Stauffer clan all gather in my town for Thanksgiving, so I will be spending the weekend attempting to engage in just the right amount of feminist fury with my relatives, who are pretty open-minded but can only take so much at once.

I shall resume posting the news on Saturday. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

David Gaider, lead writer of Bioware’s Dragon Age series, tells a story that illustrates why game development teams need women:

We were sitting down to peer review a plot—a peer review being the point where a plot has had its first writing pass completed, and whoever wrote it sits down with the other writers as well as representatives from cinematic design, editing, and level art to hear critique. We’ve all read it first, and written down our thoughts, and go around the table to relate any issues we encountered.

As it happened, most of the guys went first. Typical stuff— some stuff was good, some stuff needed work, etc. etc. Then one of the female writers went, and she brought up an issue. A big issue. It had to do with a sexual situation in the plot, which she explained could easily be interpreted as a form of rape.

Via The Mary Sue.

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What a great name for the BBC’s upcoming TV drama re-telling the War of the Roses from the perspective of the women involved. 10 episodes at a budget of \$4 million, so they’re not holding back.

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Sarah Josepha Hale, that’s who. She also wrote “Mary Had a Little Lamb” and for 40 years edited Godey’s Lady’s Book, an early women’s magazine.

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If you happen to be the proud husband father owner of a Saudi Arabian woman, never worry that while your attention is elsewhere (possibly on important business matters or the selection of a younger, better model) said property may develop a will of its own and decide to abscond with what is left of its autonomy. The days when your wives and daughters could just up and run off without your accompaniment or even permission have vanished into the past.

That’s right, my friend: the Saudi government will now, for your convenience, send a text message to your phone promptly informing you when one of your female possessions has left the country, thus enabling you to quickly track down, retrieve, and properly punish the wayward vagina-haver in whatever manner you feel will best prevent further rebellion against your God-given male sovereignty.

To sign up for this convenient service, simply pick up your cell phone and dial 1–800-OH-MY-GOODNESS-I-AM-LOSING-MY-FAITH-IN-HUMANITY.

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Well, maybe. Writing for The Daily Beast, Dr. Kent Sepkowitz explains the hidden cost of making the pill available without a prescription:

Yes, your life is easier because you will be able to get the pill right this second, without calling my office. No, you don’t need to fill out forms and show insurance cards and wrangle over copay. But guess who is paying for the whole shabang? You. Yes, you.

Sepkowitz is probably right that the out-of-pocket cost for the pill may rise. But he is overlooking the cost of the preventative care appointment required to obtain a prescription and trivializing the hardship of scheduling and attending those appointments. For low-income women, who are among those at highest risk for unplanned pregnancy, those costs are significant.

In any case, I’m always going to support ease of access to contraception.

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First, a watchdog group tried to extort a monetary settlement from her father, then they alerted the police, who came to her house with a search warrant and confiscated her Winnie-the-Pooh laptop, on which she had downloaded one pirated track that didn’t play.

Virtue triumphs again.

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N.T. Wright rejects the argument from “progress” in favor of female bishops:

It won’t do to say, then, as David Cameron did, that the Church of England should “get with the programme” over women bishops. And Parliament must not try to force the Church’s hand, on this or anything else. That threat of political interference, of naked Erastianism in which the State rules supreme in Church matters, would be angrily resisted if it attempted to block reform; it is shameful for “liberals” in the Church to invite it in their own cause.

I love that “liberals” is in scare quotes, and lest you think that Wright opposes female bishops:

The other lie to nail is that people who “believe in the Bible” or who “take it literally” will oppose women’s ordination. Rubbish.

Exactly right. The scriptures themselves provide the strongest argument in favor of ordaining women, and to base our arguments on cultural norms is to cede the hermeneutical high ground to the patriarchy.

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Sarah of Who I Am Without You puts new spin on one of my favorite sermons: Bodies are for doing things:

Most people would say I have a slow metabolism. I prefer to think it is just madly efficient. It would keep me alive for months without hardly any food or water. My Irish genes are designed to withstand cold, starvation, and probably virus’s[sic], which means I will be the one saving the world during the zombie apocalypse when the rest of you are enjoying brains for dinner. So really, I’m not chubby and awkward; I’m a super hero. Why didn’t I figure this out sooner?

Via Libby Anne.

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To combat gender stereotyping of children, catalog publisher Top Toy has gender-swapped their newest Swedish publication, showing girls playing with guns and boys playing with dolls:

“With the new gender thinking, there is nothing that is right or wrong. It’s not a boy or a girl thing, it’s a toy for children,” Top Toy director of sales Jan Nyberg told TT news agency.

Personally, I enjoyed playing with my friend’s Barbies when I was little, but I think my mom objected to them on the grounds of crass commercialism and reinforcing negative body image.

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The American Academy of Pediatrics has recommended that pediatricians begin prescribing Plan B ahead of time (where by “time” I mean “intercourse”) to women under 17, due to the difficulties teen girls often face in obtaining the drug:

A 2010 analysis of seven randomized studies of emergency contraception found that having a morning-after prescription in hand did not increase teens’ sexual activity or decrease use of standard contraceptives but did increase use of the pill and shorten the time before a teenager used it after sex.

I know I say this nearly every time I mention Plan B, but it does not cause abortions or prevent implantation.

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Why is this a surprise? Even the graph shown indicates an overall trend of decreasing abortion incidence.

Who wants to guess why?

Okay, fine! It’s probably increased use of contraceptives. As if you didn’t know.

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In a move they must have thought clever and original, Fox News has published a piece called “The war on men”. This obviously infuriates me, because WHY DON’T PEOPLE CAPITALIZE THEIR HEADLINES ANY MORE?

The op-ed article is by Suzanne Venker, a real live woman, so you know that what she’s saying isn’t sexist. Or totally asinine, because women are never dumb, either.

Toward the finish, Venker calls out Hanna Rosin, author of The End of Men, who fortunately knows not to take herself too seriously. She responds over at XX Factor:

I talked to hundreds of men and pondered their stuckness, their general sense that they were ill equipped for the modern economy and didn’t quite know how to fix that. I arrived at an imperfect explanation that men were suffering from some kind of “masculine mystique,” trapped in an all too narrow set of social roles which were no longer serving them well. What I did not consider was that the true and complete answer was right under my nose, or more precisely, all over my face, staring back at me from the mirror. The reason men could not move forward was ME.

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Jenifer B. McKim profiles Asia Graves, a former child prostitute who put her pimps behind bars by bravely testifying at their trial. She now works for FAIR Girls, an anti-trafficking organization, mentoring other young victims.

As part of her work, she recounts the tale of her harrowing past and inspiring turnaround to government leaders, law enforcement officials, and media outlets. Most importantly, she tries to connect with girls who are susceptible to prostitution, or have already been dragged into the sex industry underworld.

Even my 90%-stone heart warmed a little at this story.

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70% of women believe hiding their thorough beauty regimen from their partners is paramount in maintaining the magic in their relationships. I am proudly a part of that 70% (even though I am currently single).

This saddens me. I’m not one of those “but you look prettier without makeup” guys. My wife looks pretty without makeup, and she looks pretty in a different way with makeup. And I can see that, because I’m in love with her. That’s the real magic in our relationship.

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Where “New” means “same old”. Richard Cohen of The Washington Post bemoans Daniel Craig’s sculpted physique in Skyfall, comparing him unfavorably to the likes of Cary Grant:

Contrast this new Bond to Roger O. Thornhill, the charmingly hapless advertising man played by Cary Grant in “North by Northwest.” Like Bond, Thornhill pulls off some amazing physical feats—his mad frantic escape from the crop duster, the traverse of Mount Rushmore—and like Bond he wears an expensive suit. Unlike Bond, though, when he takes it off we do not see some marbleized man, an ersatz creation of some trainer, but a fit man, effortlessly athletic and just as effortlessly sophisticated.

Wishful thinking. I very much doubt that Cary Grant retained his fit appearance without effort, and even if he did he was just lucky that his natural body shape happened to be what women found sexy at the time. Cohen is 71, so he has lived through quite a few decades and should know that tastes change, which is why looking at pictures of 1980s high-school cheerleaders makes me giggle, not blush.

Cohen goes on to disparage shapely men for being ill-read:

Every rippling muscle is a book not read, a movie not seen or a conversation not held. That’s why Sean Connery was my kind of Bond. He was 53 when he made his last Bond film, “Never Say Never Again.”

This is a little beside the point, but find me someone who thinks Never Say Never Again (which only sort-of counts as a “Bond film”) reflects well on Sean Connery.

More importantly, Cohen here betrays his jealousy more clearly: he is now at the age when the opposite sex will more likely value his intellect or sophistication than his physical appearance. That was not true of Sean Connery at 53, and it is not true of Daniel Craig at 44.

Jill Filipovic writes a great response to Cohen’s petulance:

Men should not have to do anything other than be old in order to get whatever they want. Women, on the other hand, are desirable only when they are very young, and only if they are very thin and very white and very inexperienced and probably blonde. In Richard Cohen’s estimation, that is a sexual meritocracy, because “meritocracy” apparently means “I get whatever I want without having to work hard at it and also women are things.”

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If you didn’t know we were talking about Chris Brown at all, Tricia Romano summarizes the controversy for The Daily Beast:

Jenny Johnson, who writes regularly for Grantland and has published stories in GQ, is a self-described “writer, wife, a****** and owner of 2 dogs” responded to one of Brown’s innocuous tweets with a scathing riposte. On Sunday he tweeted: “I look old as f***! I’m only 23 …”

Johnson replied: “I know! Being a worthless piece of s*** can really age a person.” (Brown was arrested in 2009 for beating up his then-girlfriend Rihanna. The two have since been rumored to be back together.)

Cue meltdown: Brown responded with a series of misogynistic tweets, each one more lurid and disgusting than the last.

Brown eventually shut down his Twitter account, and Johnson received numerous insults and death threats from his followers, along with accusations of bullying from members of the general public. Others leveled accusations of racism against anyone who too enthusiastically decried Brown’s behavior, since plenty of white celebrities have also beaten up their wives or girlfriends and behaved like pigs in general toward women.

Syreeta of Feministing quotes Roxane Gay to explain why this is (partly) incorrect, and why we need to keep misogynist behavior in the spotlight:

You can’t keep trotting out Sean Penn, Roman Polanski, et al because our cultural memory is short. If social networking were around when Sean Penn abused Madonna in 1987 or when Polanski raped a minor in 1977, the backlash would have been similar. Those examples will not work unless we’re discussing Chris Brown with the same fervor in 2042. Also, we’re still conjuring their names. Polanski still can’t return to the United States and he’s still a rapist pig. Sean Penn has always been an a****** who puts his hands on women. Charlie Sheen is irredeemable. I hold these men and all their cronies in the exact same regard as Chris Brown. We haven’t forgotten these misdeeds as much as people assume.

I don’t generally cover the “celebrity gossip” category of news, so I’ve tried to avoid giving any attention to this incident, but Gay nails it: regardless of race or color, we can’t let behavior like this go unchallenged; silence is approval.

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This won’t be the last time today you resist the urge to swear loudly:

The head of the pediatric urology department at Cornell University’s New York Presbyterian Hospital… has been operating on young girls who suffer from what he (and likely the girls’ guardians) have decided is “clitorimegaly,” or oversized clitorises.

In order to relieve these girls from what seems like little more than a cosmestic issue, Dr. Dix P. Poppas cuts out parts of the clitoris’ shaft, saving the glans, or tip, for reattachment. Poppas triumphantly calls the procedure—rebranded a clitoroplasty—a “nerve sparing” one unlike the FGMs practiced in other countries.

Alice Dreger and Ellen K. Feder, professors of medical humanities/bioethics and philosophy, respectively, don’t seem quite so excited:

“We still know of no evidence that a large clitoris increases psychological risk (so is the surgery even necessary?), and we do know of substantial anecdotal evidence that it does not increase risk. Importantly, there also seems to be evidence that clitoroplasties performed in infancy do increase risk—of harm to physical and sexual functioning, as well as psychosocial harm.”

If you aren’t outraged yet, wait until you find out how Poppas tests the intactness of his young patients’ nerves.

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Trigger Warning for Rape

The defense attorney in a gang rape case called the victim—an 11-year-old girl—a “spider”, as in, “the spider and the fly”.

Because having oral and vaginal intercourse with 20 different men in four months is something every pre-adolescent girl schemes to achieve.

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For a nice, fluffy change of pace, how’s about this adorable cartoon by webcomic artist Medéleine Flores?

!

Via The Mary Sue

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I didn’t realize how serious I was being when I related conservative Christians’ talk of theocracy to the Ugandan bill that would punish homosexuality with death. While the death penalty clause may have been removed (some confusion remains), the law would still allow life in prison for even those advocating on behalf of gay rights.

Apparently, that is A-OK with the likes of the American Family Association and the New Apostolic Reformation, while Tony Perkins of Family Research Council praised Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni for his stance on behalf of “traditional values” without mentioning the bill.

First they came for the communists, and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a communist.

Then they came for the socialists, and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a trade unionist.

Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me.

— Martin Niemöller

A threat to anyone’s freedom is a threat to everyone’s freedom.

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First he cheated on her, so she divorced him.

Then he threw acid in her face, permanently blinding and disfiguring her.

Then he went on the run but was eventually caught and jailed.

Then her mother-in-law forced her to sign an affadavit for his release, and her sons pressured her into remarrying him.

Need I comment?

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While standing around the fire pit at the Stauffer clan Thanksgiving, someone asked me if I thought women were happier because of feminism.

Because of personal history, I knew the subtext of the question was, “I think women are actually less happy”, so I responded accordingly, and in two parts. I’ll tell you part two later. Part one was, “Yes, women may be less happy now than they were before second-wave feminism.”¹

On Monday, Fox News published an op-ed piece by Suzanne Venker called “The War on Men”,² in which Venker contends that feminism has left men marginalized and angry, resulting in a waning interest in marriage among the male population. As you can imagine, it was highly inflammatory and anti-feminist, containing such straw-man statements as:

In a nutshell, women are angry. They’re also defensive, though often unknowingly. That’s because they’ve been raised to think of men as the enemy. Armed with this new attitude, women pushed men off their pedestal (women had their own pedestal, but feminists convinced them otherwise) and climbed up to take what they were taught to believe was rightfully theirs.

Now the men have nowhere to go.

It is precisely this dynamic—women good/men bad—that has destroyed the relationship between the sexes. Yet somehow, men are still to blame when love goes awry. Heck, men have been to blame since feminists first took to the streets in the 1970s.

I won’t deconstruct this or the many other problematic parts of the article; we’d be here all day. Feel free to read these excellent responses by Hanna Rosin at XX Factor, Sharon Hodde Miller at Her.meneutics, and David Sessions at Patrol Magazine. The crux of the piece for my purposes occurs near the beginning and appears to be Venker’s thesis:

I’ve accidentally stumbled upon a subculture of men who’ve told me, in no uncertain terms, that they’re never getting married. When I ask them why, the answer is always the same.

Women aren’t women anymore.

Translation: “Women aren’t women anymore according to the defined gender roles to which these men subscribe.”

Venker goes on to argue that not only men but women also are less happy because of feminism, being less likely to find a man with whom they can settle down and start having the babies we know all women crave. So, in a backwards kind of way, Venker and I agree: women are—or may be—less happy now than in the 1950s.³ Our accord ends there, though.

I think women (and men) may have been happier before the advent of feminism not because they were better off but because rigidly-prescribed roles—including gender roles—feel comfortable and safe and give people a sense of purpose and direction, provided they thoroughly believe in the underlying truth behind those roles. For example, one of the things I like about Christianity is that it tells me something about who I am—in relation to God, society, and other people.⁴ By knowing who I am, I become empowered to make ethical, moral, and practical choices, the building blocks we use to construct our lives. Similarly, patriarchy—and complementarianism, its more soft-hearted younger brother—tells men and women even more specifically who they are, based on their anatomy.⁸

When we began to abandon “traditional” gender roles, we lost that feeling of comfort and security they provided.⁵ Women must now, to a much greater extent, figure out for themselves who they are, and that can feel scary and isolating. Correspondingly, men must also define themselves without the assistance of clear gender definition; the difference in their lot from that of women is that they have, by and large, resisted doing so. The male rage to which Venker alludes, to the extent that it actually exists, results from this unwillingness to accept that society is no longer going to spot them 50% of the data they need to understand themselves and find success in life.

Of course, when men are unhappy and angry, women will be, too. We all occupy the same society, and many women would like to team up with a man for marriage and family, as well as for the “mutual society, help, and comfort” mentioned by The Book of Common Prayer. When, therefore, men respond to the disappearance of defined gender roles with recalcitrance and resentment, women suffer. Moreover, because men have for so long controlled—and continue, to a great extent, to control—our societal structures, the very systems we operate in and depend on contribute to the undermining of women’s happiness.

So: yes, it is possible that women are less happy now as a result of the advances of feminism. Let us at least assume, for the sake of argument, that this is true. That’s part one of my answer to the question posed to me on Thanksgiving.

Part two is: Even if women are less happy, it’s a good unhappiness that will ultimately give way to even greater happiness. As I said before, rigidly-defined roles only provide security, comfort, and direction if people thoroughly believe in them. In the 1960s women began to lose their belief in prescribed gender roles, and with good reason. The evolutionary need for such roles had evaporated; no longer did the survival of the species depend on the physically-stronger half hunting and killing lots of animals and protecting the weaker half (and the children) against the violence of both aggressive outsiders and the elements. Moreover, the predominant religion of the mid-century West⁶, despite popular misperception surviving to this day, has little to say about gender roles, and protestations to the contrary began to ring hollow in the face of the gut feeling that only arbitrary existing power structures were dictating the course of women’s lives.

I believe that rigid gender roles are false at a fundamental level—that both men and women should be free to choose the direction of their lives independently of their body parts. If this is true, not only is women’s present theoretical unhappiness a good unhappiness, but their former happiness was bad happiness, the kind of “happiness” people claimed on behalf of antebellum Southern slaves or serfs in the feudal system of medieval Europe.⁷

Furthermore, assuming (as I do) that feminism continues to gain ground, eventually resulting in true equality between men and women, I believe that both sexes will be even happier—each individual being absolutely free to choose his or her destiny without the constraints of anatomy and to marry and raise children—or not—for reasons that having nothing to do with societally-reinforced dependencies.

That goal seems worth some short-term—and on a historical scale, several decades or even a century are the “short term”—unhappiness for everyone.

I will not be posting today or tomorrow, as I am currently out of town supporting my wife during a family crisis. If you are the sort of person who prays, please think about her and her family.

My wife’s grandmother died yesterday, so I will be remaining out of town, unable to post regularly, until after her funeral tomorrow.

It’s interesting that no one ever seems to care about my level of education, or what I do for a living. No one cares about the fact that I work hard at building strong muscles as long as they look good in a bikini. I marvel at the look on a man’s face when something remotely intelligent escapes my lips, as if my lips serve no function beyond decoration. World, I’m not a doll.

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Not so great when it’s happening to us, is it?

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The people of the United States have, by both the popular and electoral counts, re-elected Barack Obama to be our President. Congratulations to the President on a successful campaign; I will watch his second term with considerable interest.

In other election news the Republican party lost some elections because of inaccurate and insensitive rape commentary, Wisconsin elected the country’s first openly-gay Senator, Maine, Maryland, and Washington voted to legalize gay marriage while Minnesota rejected a constitutional amendment to the contrary, and Colorado and Washington voted to legalize marijuana for recreational use.

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Meridian Hills will look at a midwestern country club during the the begining of the women’s movement in the 70s. A newly married woman joins the Junior League at the country club and meets a group of women who want to shake things up.

Kunis is only executive producing, not starring in the show. Sounds like one to keep an eye on.

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You know how when Mattel puts out a doll based on an iconic celebrity or a movie character it never actually looks like that person, but just one of Barbie’s generic friends? Portrait artist Noel Cruz has proven that an accurate recreation is simply a matter of some extra effort and a lot of talent. He “repaints” dolls, transforming them from “Well, I guess that kinda looks like Diana Ross” to amazingly realistic representations of the people they’re supposed to be.

Beautiful work. Incidentally, how much better was Jezebel’s Hurricane Sandy emergency blog than their actual website?

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Christen McCurdy at Bitch Magazine kicks off a multi-part series on “Ladies and Liquor” with a history of the Women’s Suffrage movement and its collaboration with Prohibition:

It wasn’t until the late 1960s that “the personal is political” became a feminist rallying cry, but the suffragists-cum-Prohibitionists and the Prohibitionists-cum-suffragists of the 19th century were already making an explicit connection between the two. The Women’s Christian Temperance Union – the leading temperance organization for most of the 19th century – advocated for women’s suffrage on the grounds of what she called “home protection”: if women had a voice in the way states controlled liquor, WCTU President Frances Willard argued, they’d be in a better position to keep their homes and families dry.

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Yesterday the people of California passed Proposition 35, a ballot initiative intended to combat sex trafficking. As nice as that sounds, this article by Melissa Gira Grant explains why Prop 35 spells big civil rights trouble:

There is little evidence that strengthening criminal penalties and relying primarily on law enforcement are strategies to end forced labor; in fact, advocates who work with survivors of trafficking, as well as people involved in the sex trade and sex worker rights’ advocates, have documented the limitations and dangers of a “tough on crime” approach on trafficking.

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Rachel Held Evans responds to a complementarian critique of A Year of Biblical Womanhood, firstly by clarifying her intention in writing the book:

I wanted to challenge the idea that the Bible contains a single message about something as complex, beautiful, and mysterious as womanhood. I wanted to unpack, piece by piece, what we mean when we talk about “biblical womanhood,” and I wanted to do it in a funny, disarming way that turned the laughter on myself as an imperfect interpreter rather than on the text itself. The goal was to hold up a mirror to our interpretive biases to show just how reductive and misleading the phrase “biblical womanhood” can be.

And secondly, but taking a more aggressive stance toward the supposed complementarian high ground of hermeneutical simplicity:

What frustrates me the most about complementarian conversations regarding “biblical womanhood” is not the fact that I disagree with a complementarian interpretation of the text but the fact that complementarians consistently insist that they are not, in fact, interpreting the text, but simply reading and applying its clear teachings, and that anyone who might disagree with their conclusions must simply hate the Bible and have no interest in faithfully living by it. But this idea of a simple, unbiased, and patently obvious hermeneutic is an illusion. It is appealed to, but never explained; cited, but never explored or unpacked.

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This is the third post in my chapter-by-chapter analysis of The Feminine Mystique, as I read the book for the first time in an effort to educate myself about the roots of modern feminism. You can read the first post here and the second post here.

At last.

My coverage of the first two chapters of The Feminine Mystique was very academic because the chapters were academic—not stylistically, but in that Betty Friedan was largely reporting observations and the results of research rather than expressing a theory or opinion. Based on my understanding of the book and its purpose, this seems like necessary groundwork without which her thesis would be much less compelling.

That thesis makes its appearance in this, the third chapter, and we know it to be the thesis because Friedan labels it, right there in the text:

It is my thesis that as the Victorian culture did not permit women to accept or gratify their basic sexual needs,¹ our culture does not permit women to accept or gratify their basic need to grow and fulfill their potentialities as human beings. (Friedan, Betty, The Feminine Mystique. Norton & Company, 1997, pp. 77)

In fact, Chapter 3 is Friedan’s thesis chapter. The thesis statement arrives nearly at the end, also doubling as the explanation for both the problem posed in the chapter and the rise to prominence of the Mystique itself.

Once again harking back two decades, Friedan recalls her experience graduating college and facing truly adult decisions for the first time. Starting on a fellowship that would ultimately lead her to a professional career as a psychologist, she gave it up after a year—for a boy. Years later, now having married, borne children, and moved to the suburbs, she realized that in abandoning psychology she had abandoned her identity, or at least, the quest for her identity. (69–70)

In talking with the class of 1959 at Smith College, her own alma mater, Friedan learns that the identity crisis that so afflicted her has only grown worse. Many undergraduates have no clear aspirations at all, not wanting to embark upon careers that they will only have to give up when they get married and have children. Some take the easy route by getting engaged early so they can marry straight out of college and let their husbands make all their decisions, but even these “lucky” ones seem resentful of their own choices. “They know they’re not going to use their education”, says one young lady to Friedan later on, in private. “They’ll be wives and mothers. You can say you’re going to keep on reading and be interested in the community. But that’s not the same. You won’t really go on.” (70–71)

Therein lies the root of The Problem That Has No Name. Women, paralyzed by the fear of encountering life, of making this choice rather than that choice, and living with their choices, fall back on refusing, in essence, to grow up. They marry and become childish mothers of children, secure in the knowledge that adults—their husbands—will make all their decisions and keep them safe, warm, clothed, and fed. (76–77)

And the reason women turn back from adulthood, giving up on the hard business of determining their own identity, is lack of vision deriving from poor modeling. They know they don’t want to be like their mothers: frustrated, empty women unable to have careers or lives of their own. (72) Conversely, the other most common models available to them—spinster teachers, librarians, college professors—have sacrificed love and family on the altar of career or intellectual pursuits. (75) Mass media and the culture at large tell them that their biology and anatomy determine their role; what Friedan calls the “public image” of femininity is strong and clear. (72, 79) But the “private image”, their own, personal vision of themselves, having no clear source or inspiration, remains vague and therefore seemingly unattainable. (75)

Friedan spends much of the last few pages of this chapter pointing out that this problem—the problem of finding identity—applies to men as well. This naturally resonates with my own experience, as does her point (as usual, somewhat implicit): that our society is structured so that men have little choice but to forge their own identity, whether they have adequate modeling or not. While sociologists of Friedan’s day had recognized this identity crisis in the male population, they had so far blamed the same symptoms in women on the misplaced ideals of feminism:

All this gave girls the feeling they could be and do whatever they wanted to, with the same freedom as boys, the critics said. It did not prepare them for their role as women. (75)

While possibly not in the next chapter, Friedan seems poised to soon beginning proposing solutions to The Problem, and it doesn’t take much knowledge of second-wave feminism to see that those solutions must come from women themselves rather than from culture, media, or government.

Having, so it seems, reached a turning point in the book, I feel surprised by how strongly the situation of the 60s (as described) resembles the culture in which I grew up: conservative evangelicalism. I expected to read a history lesson, to grow in my understanding of the developments that led to our present situation.² Instead, I find that I am, in many ways, reading about our present situation. The cultural tendency to define women by their anatomy may have diminished over time, but it persists still, even quite strongly in some sub-cultures.

I am excited and honored to be guest posting at the online home of the very smart and talented Kyndall Renfro on the subject of trusting God with the security of my home and possessions.

Please read, and also consider following Kyndall, who frequently has great thoughts about pastoring in general and being a female pastor specifically.

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Trigger Warning for Rape, Sexual Abuse

Patients at California’s board-and-care centers for the developmentally disabled have accused caretakers of molestation and rape 36 times during the past four years, but police assigned to protect them did not complete even the simplest tasks associated with investigating the alleged crimes, records and interviews show.

Horrifying. In one case, a severely disabled woman became pregnant and gave birth to a child she was incapable of caring for.

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Experienced, practical advice on how to respond if you witness domestic violence. I particularly appreciated this reason that giving a statement to the police can prove vital:

Please call law enforcement. Give a statement. It will take time, and you may be annoyed, and some prosecutors, like me, may subpoena you to testify, but it is worth it. If that case is prosecuted, a statement from a third party witness is valuable evidence. It often makes the difference between a trial and the defendant taking responsibility. If the case does go to trial, that statement helps juries and judges understand that what the victim told the police the day the abuse took place is really the truth, and the recantation she is trying to tell nine months later, is not. Abusers know their victims are hesitant to testify, and they rely upon it.

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One government witness testified that videos, including one of an anti-Vladmir Putin song performed in Red Square, were “a disguised call to organize mass riots.”

I assume he continued: “It isn’t at all that we’re scared of a few women and the resonance of their message. Any suggestion that the government is acting out of fear will be considered sedition.”

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A feminist raised to think of anger and aggression as relational tools tries to humanize her oppressor through prayer:

My marriage to violence had deceived me into believing that peace required payment. I spent twenty years trying to scream my abuser into submission, demanding reparations for my pain. I was a fraud, not a feminist: my actions only served to deepen the divide between war and peace.

In addition to the thoughtful, spiritual message, I also enjoyed the alliterative streak that runs through the entire narrative.

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Over the next few days, you may see occasional posts from Squarespace, the service that hosts and manages this website, who are trying to solve a low-level technical problem with the code that auto-tweets to the @JesusAndVenus Twitter account.

This will most affect those who subscribe to the RSS feed, as I have no way of deleting those posts from your RSS readers after they’ve already been downloaded. Please bear with us, and thanks for your patience.

Her father thought she was too young to get married, so he turned down their marriage proposal.

The victim, named as Gisa, was decapitated with a knife in the Imam Sahib district of Kunduz province on Tuesday, local police said. She is believed to be around 15-years-old.

A police spokesman said two men, named as Sadeq and Massoud, had been arrested following the teenage girl’s murder.

At least an arrest has been made. Read the full article for plenty of additional information not only about this particular case but about the ongoing oppression of women in Afghanistan.

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Marianne Kirby at XOJane negatively critiques the song “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” from a feminist perspective, responding to this positive critique at Persephone Magazine.

So, in the case of the Persephone Magazine piece, I know that “What’s in this drink?” was a common rhetorical question people asked to sort of blur their own responsibility for actions they wanted to take but that weren’t considered proper. But I also know that “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” was produced by a culture with a really specifically gendered power dynamic. The culture doesn’t excuse the line. The line reveals something about the culture.

Both responses to the song are thoughtful and worth reading. Personally, I’ve always (where by “always” I mean “since I was old enough to think about such things”) thought that “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” was pretty rape-y, which is why my favorite version is this playful one by Over the Rhine, who are happily married.

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This makes twice in six months that this post has been vacated by the assassination of the woman occupying it. The Taliban is likely behind the killing.

Aren’t we currently occupying Afghanistan?

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One of the side effects of reading lots of feminist news is the near-daily discovery of information that will make you temporarily miserable. Today, it’s “Ghagh”:

Gul Ghotai has bitter memories of the day her suitor proposed marriage. The reason? This was no ordinary proposal but one made under an ancient Pashtun custom called “ghagh” that entitles a man to force his marriage proposal on a woman.

Once invoked, ghagh—which means “a call”—can have various outcomes, none of them happy for the woman. She might end up being married against her will, or stay single for life, or see her family drawn into a dangerous, lingering feud.

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Despite playing a significant role in the revolution last year, Libyan women are now struggling to stay relevant, retain positions of power or influence, and further their agenda:

Each setback—from a woman presenter who, hosting a ceremony in August before the new parliament, was forced off the podium because her head wasn’t covered, to a militia in Benghazi harassing a women’s conference—prompts more women to return to private life. That’s a far cry from the heady days following the revolution when women believed they would gain widespread acceptance because of their significant roles in the uprising, from the perilous smuggling of guns and medicines to organizing media outreach overseas.

Now it seems that the committee being formed to write Libya’s new constitution will likely contain only a very few women instead of the 20 it should contain. People may have rebelled against an oppressive government, but not enough people are rebelling against an oppressive patriarchy.

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Convicted on all 59 counts. Hopefully this forces the Hasidic communities to rethink “private counseling” or at least impose strict oversight and allow police or child protective services to handle accusations like this one.

Via XOJane.

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Trigger Warning for Rape

Amelia McDonell-Parry responds to this post about rape by Alyssa Royse at The Good Men Project:

Royse goes on to emphasize multiple times throughout the piece that this friend of hers did rape this woman. She does not deny he is a rapist. However, many who have read this piece have a hard time with this being an example of a “nice guy” who “accidentally” commits rape, as there was no confusion or misread signals as to whether this woman wanted to have sex. She was asleep. She could not give consent. Period. “Nice guys” don’t stick their dicks in sleeping women.

Jill Filipovic of Feministe doesn’t want to let Royse off the hook so easily:

Even though Royse says this was rape and rape is wrong, her piece is rape apology. Because she uses the same narratives and excuses that rapists have always used to get away with raping. She says she wants to talk about our culture and how it enables rape, but then she uses the exact same cultural memes to act like rape is at all fuzzy, and rapists don’t actually know exactly what they’re doing.

Personally, I think Royse was trying to start a conversation about how even otherwise “nice” people, who don’t think of themselves as horrible people, can still do horrible things like rape. She got sidetracked, instead, into blaming “culture”, which ultimately boils down to—at best—blaming no one, and—at worst—blaming the victim. Muddled thinking and poorly-thought-out writing ended up conveying a message I have a feeling she didn’t intend to convey.

The good point I think we should draw from this episode—since “The Good Men Project Sucks” is not a real point—is that painting all rapists as horrible monsters hurts the attempt to combat rape culture. Some rapists are not (otherwise) horrible monsters, so people—including the rapists themselves—assume they can’t be real rapists. But they are.

If we want people to become more self-aware about obtaining consent for sex, we need to help them realize that even though they are not horrible monsters, they could still rape someone. Our message should not be: “Don’t be a horrible monster who rapes people”, but “Don’t rape people.”

Focusing on bad actions instead of bad character is usually more likely to produce change.

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Research non-profit firm Catalyst finds that women make up only 14.3 percent of the executives and 16.6 of the board members at Fortune 500 companies.

“The lack of progress toward closing this gender leadership gap is, to put it frankly, troubling,” Rachel Soares, a senior research associate at New York-based Catalyst and lead author of the report, said in a telephone interview. “The companies that are taking deliberate and sustained actions to advance women in leadership are in the vast minority, and all the work that they’re doing is only providing enough momentum to maintain the status quo of women lagging men.”

Those numbers are actually higher than I would have guessed. *Sigh*

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Francine Griesing filed a $200 million class action law suit against her former law firm, Greenberg Traurig, alleging that the firm discriminated against her and other female lawyers in its Philadelphia office because of their gender. Greenberg Traurig is one of the nation’s 200 largest law firms, and Ms. Griesing was a partner there from 2007 to 2010.

Ms. Griesing claims that many women partners received less compensation than did men with similar accomplishments. According to her law suit, there was only one exception to the inferior treatment afforded female partners: “GT prioritizes, pays and promotes women who have intimate relationships with firm leaders or who acquiesce to sexualized stereotypes.”

So they do provide an equal opportunity!

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Cameron Russell, a former Fords Model who has graced the covers of Vogue and W and appeared in ads for Calvin Klein, Armani, and Yves Saint Laurent, gives a TED Talk on beauty, privilege, and what it’s like to be a model (the unvarnished version). Very worth watching.

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Big papers’ lists of significant deaths in 2012 overwhelmingly feature men. The Washington Post put 18 women and 48 men on its list. On the other side of the country, the Los Angeles Times listed 36 women and 114 men. And lest you think this is some kind of freak 2012 phenomenon, the New York Times has consistently listed many more men than women over the last five years.

So is the issue that notable women aren’t dying—or that newspapers aren’t reporting it? “We simply choose the most prominent, the most well-known, the most influential, without regard to race, color, sex, creed,” says Bill McDonald, the editor of obituaries at the Times. “It’s a rearview mirror. The people we write about largely shaped the world of the 1950s, ’60s and, increasingly, the ’70s, and those movers and shakers were—no surprise—predominantly white men.”

As the article goes on to point out, that kind of thinking merely shifts the blame to our culture at large—indicating that we have either undervalued the accomplishments of women or prevented them from accomplishing noteworthy things.

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Melissa Silverstein of Women and Hollywood is happy about the year’s take of strong female roles but wishes some of them had gone to grown-ups:

Looking at the numbers this is actually a good year for female roles at the box office. According to box office mojo as of today, three films with a female protagonist are in the top ten grossing films of the year: The Hunger Games, Twlight Breaking Dawn Part 2 and Brave.

This is all good news.

But digging a little bit deeper the one thing that I notice about all these movies and all these characters is that they are all GIRLS. So my question is, where are the movies about strong WOMEN?

If I haven’t before, let me now go on record as saying that I remain pessimistic about how women will fare on film in the near future. Most blockbusters starring strong young women are adaptations of existing properties, and development executives tend to learn the wrong lesson from those successes (i.e., “More vampires!” rather than “More strong women!”)

The notable exception here is Brave, which was produced by Pixar, a gang of notorious risk-takers. They might actually represent our best hope for the kind of movies Silverstein wants to see.

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I used to have a roommate who was kind of a slob—the sort of person who has a shoulder-high pile of junk/garbage by his door that you can tell would be higher if he didn’t have to open the door to leave his room. One day, while my parents were visiting me for a week, this person came down to the kitchen wearing what he assured me were shorts but appeared to the uninitiated to be a pair of boxers.¹ This made my mom, who was within sight of the kitchen, feel a little uncomfortable, although not—as you might suppose—because of the raw sex appeal of his man-legs.

A week ago, Emily Maynard published a piece at ChurchLeaders.com about modesty, a re-publishing of a post originally written for Prodigal Magazine called “Modesty, Lust, and My Responsibility”. The comments section of the post heated up, leading to several other posts on the subject, many of which are very worth reading. I particularly recommend “How the Modesty Doctrine Fuels Rape Culture” by Libby Anne, “On Modesty and Male Privilege” by Luke Harms, and “Women, Bodies, & Temples of the Holy Spirit” by Danielle Vermeer.

Maynard’s original post recounts the damage the modesty culture wrought on her body image and argues that women must not be held responsible for provoking lust in men:

Nothing you do or do not do can influence lust in someone else. Only Jesus can lovingly confront and heal a lustful heart through the working of the Holy Spirit. You can’t change anyone, control anyone, make someone sin or not sin, and you’re only responsible for taking your own heart to Jesus.

I agree. In the Bible story most frequently cited when discussing this issue, Jesus says nothing about how women dress. He warns people against lust. This puts the burden on the “lust-er”, not the “lust-ee”, which means that men are responsible for their sexual integrity even when a woman is showing cleavage, when she’s wearing a short skirt, when she has on high heels, or even if she walks straight into their living room wearing nothing but a thong and pasties.

But, because I am a contrarian, I always like to find the under-represented side of the conversation. Since I agree so wholeheartedly with all the above-linked articles, this is a little difficult, but don’t worry—I figured out how.²

Modesty, you see—and I am here talking about the definition of “modesty” that revolves around how one dresses, not the one about being a gracious winner and so forth—has two components. The first, covered more than competently by Emily Maynard et al, concerns whether others may sexualize or objectify someone because of his or her clothing choices. The second component, nearly never addressed by anyone except C.S. Lewis (bless his heart), is politeness—being considerate of other people and refraining from making them uncomfortable.

Politeness is all about context. So, with regard to standards of dress, San people living in the Bush who wear nothing but thongs are not being rude; their clothing is appropriate for their context. A man who takes off his shirt at the beach is not being rude; this choice is also appropriate for the context.

A guy who takes off his shirt in your kitchen—that guy is being rude. The context is not appropriate for shirtlessness; his choice of attire is probably going to make people feel uncomfortable.

From this we can see that the amount of skin people choose to show has no objective moral component; context determines appropriateness of attire. In this sense, then, women might be able to “sin” by displaying too much cleavage—if cleavage is out of place for their particular context (and if your definition of “sin” is very broad indeed). But it is probably more helpful to think not of “sinning” but of being polite.

I believe politeness is a virtue; Christians ought to be polite to others when possible. Many other, greater virtues may trump the virture of politeness, but all other things being equal, we should strive to make people feel comfortable by our behavior. How we do this changes with cultural shifts. For example, we no longer belch loudly when eating to reassure the person who cooked our food that we are enjoying it. This behavior, once considered polite, would now make other people uncomfortable.

So it is with clothing, particularly for women. Whereas displaying a liberal amount of leg used to be a great way for women to communicate to others that they were in the company of a prostitute, now most people do not find the sight of a woman’s calf discomfiting at all. To give a more recent example: I’m from the Midwest, but I lived for two years in Los Angeles, and the ladies at the church we attended took advantage of the nearly-perpetual summer to wear sundresses to the service. I had never seen so much cleavage at church before, but that was just the culture there. No one felt uncomfortable because of it (as far as I know). Let a woman throw on such a dress to attend church in Northern Indiana, though, and she would certainly receive a non-trivial number of stares.

Some of those stares would be indignant, because conservative Christian culture trains men to think that if they see too much lady-skin—especially if they receive any pleasure at all from seeing it—they must be sinning. Unfortunately for such men, human biology dictates that women, however conservatively dressed, draw the male eye. Even more disconcertingly, the little hormone rush we get when we see a sexually-appealing woman’s body parts means we’re going to like it, whether we want to or not. As Maynard assures us, this does not mean we are falling prey to lust:

God created you to desire another person for affection, intimacy, and relationship! Being physically attracted to someone is not lust. Wanting to kiss someone is not lust. Enjoying kissing someone is not lust. Those desires can be a catalyst for lust, but in themselves, they are morally-neutral, God-created, biological and chemical reactions. Your body recognizing sexual compatibility with another person is not inherently evil.

It’s hard to believe that this biological reaction is the thing Jesus was warning about in Matthew 5. Maynard is probably correct in suggesting a better definition for lust:

It is the ritual taking, obsessing, and using someone else for your own benefit rather than valuing that person as an equal image-bearer of God. Lust is forming people in your own image, for your own purposes, whether for sexual pleasure, emotional security, or moral superiority.

Unfortunately, I think many men in conservative churches conflate “lust” and the uncomfortableness of seeing a woman dressed more revealingly than what they perceive as normal. Since conservative Christians tend to be a little behind on many aspects of culture, it has become all too easy for a woman to show an amount of skin that passes the threshold of “normal” for these men. Unusual sights draw the eye; we tend to have a hard time looking away from things that are out of the ordinary for us, and this is all the more true when those things register in our brains as sexually appealing. Men may find themselves momentarily staring at a woman’s breasts because they are available to be stared at, then feeling guilty about “lust”.

But an inability to stop staring at a woman’s body does not necessarily equal lust. It is quite definitely rude, and it will probably make that woman feel uncomfortable. It may also provoke jealously or hurt feelings in the wives or girlfriends of the men in question. Of course, it may even actually be lust—if the staring turns into sexualizing or objectifying. In any case, though, no one is forcing a man to stare at a woman; we can all learn to exercise self-control, even that most pitiable slave to his hormones and biological imperatives, the human male.³

More importantly, when men see a woman dressed more revealingly than is usual in their particular subculture, the feeling they are most likely experiencing is discomfort, not lust. And because it is nice to make people feel comfortable whenever possible, women (and men) may want to consider how to dress appropriately for a given context. If you’re going to the beach, wear a bikini! If you’re going to a party, wear a cocktail dress! If you’re going to a conservative evangelical church… consider a long skirt and a turtleneck sweater.

Of course, you may have excellent reasons for disregarding the comfort of others in deciding what to wear. Maybe the memory of past abuse gives you a sick feeling whenever you imagine dressing to accommodate someone else’s morals. Maybe another person in your life is always trying to control your appearance, and you need to assert your independence. Maybe you’ve decided that your conservative church needs a push with regard to “modesty”, so you throw on your best push-up bra in the name of feminism and Jesus. Or maybe you’re just feeling down and really need to look fantastic today. I don’t know; I’m not your conscience.

The important thing is to think about it. If you can dress to fit in with the culture of your context, do so with joy. If you don’t feel like you can, it’s on that culture to treat you like a human anyway.

I’ll spot you the polite choice for one particular context: if you’re going to be around my mom, throw on a pair of pants.

It’s hard to see the departure of The Good Men Project’s resident feminist as anything but fallout from the site’s recent controversial posts about rape.

You can read Ozy’s brief announcement of departure here.

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An anonymous contributor has sent the admissions office at the University of Chicago a package containing several personal belongings of Dr. Henry Jones, Jr. Pictures accompany their Tumblr post.

Full credit to Luke Johnson for the joke (via Daring Fireball).

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So I was right.

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On Thursday Bobby Jindal, governor of Louisiana, published an op-ed piece in The Wall Street Journal (behind a pay wall, so you might have to Google it), arguing in favor of over-the-counter contraception. While full of pretty typical anti-Obama rhetoric, Jindal goes further than many in the GOP seem willing to go:

Why do women have to go see a doctor before they buy birth control? There are two answers. First, because big government says they should, even though requiring a doctor visit to get a drug that research shows is safe helps drive up health-care costs. Second, because big pharmaceutical companies benefit from it. They know that prices would be driven down if the companies had to compete in the marketplace once their contraceptives were sold over the counter.

I don’t agree with Jindal’s assessment that making contraceptives available OTC would “take contraception out of the political arena”, but it would certainly help. More importantly, it would—duh—make contraception more readily available, and any pro-life person should be in favor of that.

Via the Feminist Majority Foundation Blog.

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Krista Dalton recounts how she realized not everyone is ready to have their illusions shattered:

Once upon a time I took a biblical Aramaic class at a local seminary. Consequentially, much of our time was spent translating portions of the book of Daniel. One day, forgetting I was the only “non-seminary” student in the class, I referenced the text with the words “written by the author of Daniel.”

Cue the shocked expressions from my classmates. I had deviated from the set “as Daniel says” expression, choosing to go with the view that the author is unknown. With confusion in his eyes, one student asked me what I meant.

Generally, I prefer to favor the truth over comforting lies, and seminaries owe it to their students to force them at least to explore textual and historical criticism, but as Dalton goes on to explain, not everyone is ready to make that journey.

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The author of Fox News’ terrible “War on Men” piece wants you all to know that she didn’t really mean to be gender-essentialist. Her new article, “Let’s Call a Truce in the War on Men” (title case added, because—despite my maleness—I am not some kind of barbarian) clarifies what she was really trying to say:

Here’s what we know: Females, in general, are nurturing and relational beings. They like to gather and nest and take care of people. They like to commiserate with other females—a lot. That’s why girls can talk for hours on end. It’s why more women stay home with their children than men. It’s why the teaching and caregiving professions are still heavily female. Not every single woman in the world falls into this category, but that doesn’t make the generalization any less true.

Males, on the other hand—in general—are loners. They’re content to mill about in their man caves. They like to hunt. They like to build things and kill things. If you don’t have a son, this may sound strange. But again, that doesn’t make it untrue—nor does the fact that not every single man in the world is like this. Men also take pride in caring for their families. They can’t carry babies or nurse them, but they can provide for them. So let them.

See? Not gender essentialism at all.

Venker also wants to be sure you realize she was not telling all you ladies you have to stay home cooking and cleaning and cranking out babies; she just thinks you should de-emphasize career a little.

Just because you make your own money doesn’t mean your guy can’t pay the bill. Just because you value independence doesn’t mean you can’t take your husband’s last name. Just because you can do the same job a man can do doesn’t mean you need to let him know it.

Surrendering to your femininity means many things. It means letting your man be the man despite the fact that you’ve proved you’re his equal. It means recognizing the fact that you may very well want to stay home with your babies—and that that’s normal. It means if you do work outside the home, you don’t use your work to play tit-for-tat in your marriage.

So in this case, de-emphasizing your career just means pretending you don’t have one even though you do. Also, consider not having one but staying home and having babies instead.

Insidiously, those last couple paragraphs from Venker’s piece contain a number of quasi-truths. You shouldn’t necessarily be the one writing the checks to the utility company. You shouldn’t feel compelled to keep your last name if you get married. You shouldn’t rub it in if you have a better job or make more money than your boyfriend or husband. You shouldn’t feel compelled to keep working full-time if you would really rather have children and stay home with them. And you certainly shouldn’t foster a domestic relationship where you keep score against each other to see who wins the game of doing the most to keep the machine running.

Of course, Venker is actually implying that you should change your name, overtly or implicitly lie to your man about your career success to make him feel more “manly”, let him manage all the money, quit work or work less after you have children, and expect that if you do keep working your husband will not lift a finger to do any of that pesky “woman’s work” so you won’t turn into a crazy person.

I’d be much more cranky about this whole thing if it weren’t for one important realization:

The one calling for a truce is usually the one who’s losing.

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Scratch another mark on the prison wall for “legitimate rape”. The California Commission on Judicial Performance has voted unanimously to publicly admonish Superior Court Judge Derek Johnson, who, during the trial of a rapist (eventually convicted), said the following:

I’m not a gynecologist, but I can tell you something: If someone doesn’t want to have sexual intercourse, the body shuts down. The body will not permit that to happen unless a lot of damage is inflicted, and we heard nothing about that in this case.

Here’s some Life Advice from your pal Ryan, kids: If you have to preface a remark with “I’m not a , but…. ” you should probably, at the very least, refrain from basing important decisions on the next words that come out of your mouth.

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Ramou Sarr of Hello Giggles watched Mean Girls on MTV and was displeased to discover that the channel had bleeped out the words “homosexual”, “gay”, “lesbian”, and “vagina”.

It was particularly interesting that in a movie whose message was about the problematic ways in which young women behave towards one another, “lesbian” and “vagina” were censored, but “whore” and “slut” were not. This is sending an incredibly complicated message to viewers. We’re encouraged to not use words like “homosexual,” even if we self-identify that way, and to be ashamed to call our vaginas vaginas, but you’ve got free rein to call girls sluts and whores, folks!

I’m especially baffled by the removal of “homosexual”, which has come to be a fairly clinical word now that self-identified homosexuals prefer to call themselves “gay”.

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Remember the terrible bill that could imprison gays for life? The Daily Beast’s Jocelyn Edwards thinks it’s just a political gambit to distract from other, bigger issues:

The latest outburst of rhetoric over the bill, which lawmakers say no longer contains the death penalty but retains jail terms of up to life in prison, comes just as the government is under pressure on a number of fronts. In October, the news broke that \$15 million dollars earmarked for the recovery of parts of the country devastated by Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army had ended up in the private bank accounts of officials in the prime minister’s office.

I’d be thrilled to learn that Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has no plans whatsoever to sign the bill, but the fact that it actually could arrive on his desk through legitimate legislative process still means it has significant support from the population.

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Or, you know, don’t—because you’ll be perpetuating discrimination.

A pair of studies conducted at Carnegie Melon[sic] illustrate the problem: In one, male graduates of the school’s management program were four times as likely to negotiate their first salaries out of college than their female peers; in another, women who did attempt to negotiate were seen as overly aggressive, unless they “conformed to feminine stereotypes”—smiles and nods—when asking for more.

I’m with Amanda Hess, here: no judgment at all toward women who adopt this technique, but I feel very uncomfortable with essentially telling women to play the patriarchy’s game to get ahead.

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Or possibly, accurate reporting and diagnosis of Chlamydia and Gonorrhea are on the rise. If so, this could actually be good news. On the other hand:

The CDC believes the rise in gonorrhea cases could be due to increased antibiotic resistance.

Prevention is better than cure.

Via The Frisky.

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Results showed that women who had studied abroad were four times as likely as women who had not studied abroad to have been victims or unwanted sexual contact. Women who studied abroad were found to be three times as likely to be victims of an attempted sexual assault and five times as likely to have been raped.

Essentially, it sounds like a confluence of factors related to living in a strange country make women more vulnerable to assault and less able to cope with or report it. Support networks can be vital in these situations.

Via Jezebel.

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Sara Reedy was held up by a convenience store robber, who then sexually assaulted her. When she reported the incident, the detective assigned to the case disbelieved her and accused her of robbing the store herself.

Following further inquiries, Reedy was arrested for theft and false reporting and, pregnant with her first child (by her now ex-husband), thrown in jail. She was subsequently released on bail, but lost her job. More than a year after attacking Reedy, the man struck again, but this time he was caught and confessed to the earlier crime.

When the charges against her were dropped, Reedy sued the police and has now won a marathon legal battle and a \$1.5m (£1m) settlement against the detective who turned her from victim into accused.

I can totally buy a dishonest employee making up a robbery to cover up her theft, but what possible motivation could she have for also inventing a rape, with all the attendant tribulation that brings?

Via The Frisky.

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The harsh reality is there is no national standard or federal requirement on reporting maternal deaths and scant national data. The last national data was compiled in 2007 by the CDC’s Pregnancy Mortality Surveillance System, which uses data from 52 U.S. reporting areas—50 states, New York City and Washington, D.C.

The surveillance system indicated wide disparities in pregnancy-related mortality ratios in the U.S., with the pregnancy-related ratio for white women at 11 deaths per 100,000 live births and 34.8 deaths per 100,000 live births for black women. The ratio was 15.7 deaths per 100,000 live births for women of other races.

Shocking statistics, and the cause appears to be so multi-faceted as to defy easy analysis.

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In light of the recent shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, Jill Filipovic urges us to be careful when parsing these issues:

The terrifying truth is that sometimes, there is no easy “cure” for the mental illnesses that mean a lack of empathy and a propensity toward violence. What’s needed is ongoing treatment and enormous social support for people who are ill, because there’s often not one pill you can take to simply cure a complex problem. This mother, for example, writes about a son who has violent outbursts and who she seems to believe is actually capable of killing her. He’s 13. There aren’t many options for him—the best a social worker can offer is to get him convicted of a crime so that he’s in “the system.” But it’s pretty clear that “the system” is not a good place for mentally ill children (or mentally ill adults). At the same time, this boy is a physical threat not just to his mother, but to his siblings and the people he encounters every day. What it sounds like he needs is ongoing, regular mental health care and therapy in addition to medication (if they can ever find one that works). And he’s not the only one — as Feministe friend Kate Harding also pointed out, there are kids who fit the profile of psychopathy, whose treatment options are less than clear-cut.

I can certainly attest to this, having worked with several young men who clearly needed to be in more acute care than a group home but whose case workers or probation officers seemed to have no better solutions to offer them.

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The Jesus and Venus site is (obviously) horribly broken right now, and I’m not sure why. I have a support ticket in right now with Squarespace, the company that powers the site. Hopefully it will be back to normal soon; in the mean time, I deeply apologize for the lapse.

Update: Everything appears to be working properly now.

I’m not going to say anything; just read it.

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Today National Review published an op-ed piece by Charlotte Allen, in which she contends that a male presence in Sandy Hook Elementary School could have prevented much of the slaughter:

In this school of 450 students, a sizeable number of whom were undoubtedly 11- and 12-year-old boys (it was a K–6 school), all the personnel—the teachers, the principal, the assistant principal, the school psychologist, the “reading specialist”—were female. There didn’t even seem to be a male janitor to heave his bucket at Adam Lanza’s knees. Women and small children are sitting ducks for mass-murderers… Male aggression can be a good thing, as in protecting the weak—but it has been forced out of the culture of elementary schools and the education schools that train their personnel. Think of what Sandy Hook might have been like if a couple of male teachers who had played high-school football, or even some of the huskier 12-year-old boys, had converged on Lanza.

This is asinine. As far as I can tell, there is no evidence that Dawn Hochsprung, the principal who attempted to charge Lanza, failed in her attempt because of her feminine weakness. She failed because Lanza had semi-automatic weapons and she did not. Suggesting that a male former football player could have fared better against multiple bullets is farcical, and wishing that some of the larger school children would have physically accosted the shooter borders on sociopathic.

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Richard Beck of Experimental Theology revives the historical meaning of two great Christmas carols, beginning with “O Holy Night”:

Recall that the song and the French poem were written in 1847. The English version was written in 1855, six years before the American Civil War and eight years before the Emancipation Proclamation. O Holy Night, it turns out, was a song of political resistance and protest. Imagine Americans singing in the years leading up to the Civil War the lyrics Chains shall He break for the slave is our brother; And in His name all oppression shall cease.

“O Holy Night” has always been one of my favorites.

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I know you’re surprised.

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Remember the girl who petitioned Hasbro to stop making unnecessarily gendered Easy Bake Ovens? Looks like she succeeded:

Hasbro invited McKenna and her family to its Pawtucket, R.I., headquarters to meet with its Easy-Bake team, during which she was shown a prototype of an Easy-Bake oven in black, silver and blue.

Hasbro has been working on the new color scheme and design for about 18 months, said John Frascotti, Hasbro’s chief marketing officer.

McKenna said the company is doing everything McKenna asked, including putting boys in the ads.

Hurray for Feminism!

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Several men repeatedly raped a woman and beat her male date with an iron rod before throwing both from a bus, naked and unconscious.

The woman suffered severe injuries to her head and intestines and required multiple operations, local news media reported, indicators of an assault so savage that India’s capital on Tuesday was shaking with public outrage. Protesters encircled a local police station and blocked a major highway. India’s Parliament erupted in angry protests and condemnation.

“A terrible, terrible atrocity has happened,” Renuka Chowdhury, a member of Parliament, said Tuesday during a raucous session in the upper house. “I am not going to allow this incident to become another statistic.”

Let’s hope Parliament can follow through on using all this outrage to enforce meaningful change.

Via Feministing.

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In a statement released by the Irish health department, the government affirmed that it will draft legislation that “should provide the clarity and certainty in relation to the process of deciding when a termination of pregnancy is permissible, that is where there is a real and substantial risk to the life, as opposed to the health, of the woman and this risk can only be averted by the termination of her pregnancy.”

When making this kind of choice, saving the life of the definite person seems like a safer bet than saving the life of the theoretical person.

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Mike Maihack returns with another installment of his Batgirl and Supergirl comic strips. It’s so adorable, you guys.

Via The Mary Sue.

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Congratulations to Martha Nelson, who has worked at the company for over 20 years, including serving as the founding editor of InStyle.

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J.J. Gould at The Atlantic opens this long, thorough, and balanced article by telling the stories of Ko Lin, a Burmese man who spent months in forced labor, and Ma Moe—also from Burma—who narrowly escaped being sold as a “wife” after being tricked with the story of a job in China.

There’s a plain-language word for the horror stories that Ko Lin and Ma Moe have survived, as anachronistic as it might sound: slavery. Contemporary slavery is real, and it’s terribly common—here in Burma, across Southeast Asia, and around the world.

I suppose I understand why we use the word “trafficking” now—it’s less inflammatory and more clinical, which makes it seem less judgmental. And the U.S. government hates making value judgments. Generally, though, I favor using straightforward language whenever possible, and by tacitly deprecating “slavery” we cede a moral high ground that could fuel the outrage needed to enact change.

One consequence of this is that when people apply the idea of slavery to current events, they tend to think of it as an analogy. That is, they tend to use the word to dramatize conditions that may be exploitive—e.g., terrible wages or toxic working environments – but that we’d never on their own call “slavery” if the kind of forced labor we used to call “slavery” still existed.

You’d think I would tire of saying this, but words are important.

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Jill Filipovic of Feministe—writing this time at The Guardian—brings the story of The Good Men Project’s recent unfortunate posts about rape culture into the mainstream with a relatively balanced, unassuming explanation of what, exactly, The Good Men Project is getting wrong:

We actually know quite a bit about why men rape, and especially about the kinds of rapes that the media often calls “date rape” or “acquaintance rape”—rapes where the perpetrator knew the victim, or at least ran in the same social circles. Academics, researchers and sociologists have done in-depth studies on sexual assault and found that it’s actually a small number of men who commit large numbers of acquaintance rapes. Most of those men intentionally target intoxicated women. They socially isolate them, ply them with alcohol to incapacitate them and intentionally push their boundaries to make them vulnerable.

These repeat rapists are more likely to have rigid views of gender roles and are more angry at women than the non-rapist men. They perpetrate their crimes intentionally, but use our social narratives about rape to avoid prosecution.

So, in general, nice guys are much less likely to commit rape. This does not mean that our society is conducting a constructive conversation on the subject of rape culture; our error, though, seems on the whole to be in thinking that unknown predators attack women in dark alleys. But clarifying that most raped women know their rapists personally does not indicate that those rapists are totally normal men who just “made a mistake” or “didn’t realize what they were doing”.

I particularly encourage you to click through to the link in the quote above for more information and statistics.

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This is the fifth post in my chapter-by-chapter analysis of The Feminine Mystique, as I read the book for the first time in an effort to educate myself about the roots of modern feminism. You can read the other posts here.

Because most of my friends and family do not identify as feminists, I occasionally have conversations about gender-normative behavior or gender stereotypes. I’m sure you know the kind I mean—statements like “Women shouldn’t be in positions of power because they’re too emotional, not rational”, “Women are more nurturing, so that’s why it makes sense for them to be the primary caregivers”, “Women are more monogamous than men because ”, or even “Men and women don’t like the same movies because girls like gooey romantic movies and men only like action!” I try not to be that person who constantly corrects people when they make anti-feminist remarks, but in appropriate settings, I say what I think.

People find stereotypes seductive and hard to ignore because stereotypes nearly always have a bit of truth at their core. To take one example from above, women probably do, as a group, tend to prefer romances or dramas—essentially, relationship-based movies—more than men. But even when the kernel of truth is obvious to nearly everyone, most people still make the mistake of assuming it represents a characteristic innate to that particular gender, ignoring the possibility that cultural norms and expectations drive that particular behavior.

In chapter 5 of The Feminine Mystique, “The Sexual Solipsism of Sigmund Freud”, Betty Friedan attributes this very mistake to the titular psychologist. Despite his many insights, she contends that Freud’s theories about sexual differences essentialized cultural norms. In turn, gender traditionalists of the 1940s used a distilled version of Freudianism to reinforce the standards of their day, as women felt unqualified to argue with the findings of a revered scientist.

Friedan acknowledges Freud’s gifts and accomplishments, but he was a product of his day, and he reflected the beliefs and cultural expectations thereof. For example, although he married a strong, capable woman, he infantilized her and did not consider her his intellectual equal. Friedan quotes from one of his letters to Martha:

“You are far too soft, and this is something I have got to correct, for what one of us does will also be charged to the other’s account. You are my precious little woman, and even if you make a mistake, you are none the less so… But you know all this, my sweet child….” (Friedan, Betty, The Feminine Mystique. Norton & Company, 1997, p. 110)

Freud expected that women would be happiest and most well-adjusted if they resigned themselves to relative inactivity, being content to serve their husbands or fathers and bear children. If they harbored ambitions outside this role, they would develop neuroses and require therapy. In the Victorian era, this was actually true. Women had little opportunity to shed socially-imposed functions, so any desire to deviate led to frustration. Freud made the mistake of universalizing this fact, attributing female frustration at such limitations to the inherent nature of women and labeling this frustration “penis envy”. (118)

Freud’s theory of penis envy is probably too nuanced to discuss thoroughly in this venue, but here is a somewhat reductive summary: The first time a young girl sees a penis, she realizes its superiority to her own anatomy and desires to have a penis for herself. Whenever, then, a woman behaves as one would expect a man to behave, or displays the ambitions of a man, this subconscious desire for a penis is at the root of that behavior. Friedan quotes from Freud’s lecture “The Psychology of Women”:

“That the girl recognizes the fact that she lacks a penis does not mean that she accepts it absence lightly. On the contrary, she clings for a long time to the desire to get something like it, and believes in that possibility for an extraordinary number of years; and even at a time when her knowlege of reality has long since led her to abandon the fulfillment of this desire as being quite unattainable, analysis proves that it still persists in the unconscious, and retains a considerable charge of energy. The desire after all to obtain the penis for which she so much longs may even contribute to the motives that impel a grown-up woman to come to analysis, and what she quite reasonably expects to get from analysis, such as the capacity to pursue an intellectual career, can often be recognized as a sublimated modification of this repressed wish.” (115)

We now know that Freud had it backwards. Women have ambition because growth is a human need, and they felt envy—conscious or subconscious—toward men because society in both Freud’s and Friedan’s day prevented them from fulfilling this need. Penis envy, if it exists, is the result, not the cause, of women being treated as inferior and having their needs subjugated to men. If women had penises (that is, if they were men), they could do as men do: learn, grow, accomplish, change the world.

Victorian culture gave women many reasons to envy men: the same conditions, in fact, that the feminists fought against.¹ If a woman who was denied the freedom, the status and the pleasures that men enjoyed wished secretly that she could have these things, in the shorthand of the dream, she might wish herself a man and see herself with that one thing which made men unequivocally different—the penis. (117)

Freud knew his limits (to an extent) and believed that after his death his adherents would critique his work, discarding anything that did not hold up to scrutiny. Actually, the opposite occurred, in the short term. Freud’s followers grew more rigid and dogmatic, conforming observation to theory, not vice versa. (120) Thus, while science began to demonstrate that females were in no way inferior to males except by the measure of physical strength, Freudians, now pervading mainstream thought, continued to find women unsuited to a life of equality with men. (118) Reducing Freud’s theories to a few bullet points, the culture of the day codified penis envy into a prescription rather than a description:

It was as if Freud’s Victorian image of woman became more real than the twentieth-century women to whom it was applied. Freud’s theory of femininity was seized in America with such literalness that women today were considered no different than Victorian women. The real injustices life held for women a century ago, were dismissed as mere rationalizations of penis envy. And the real opportunities life offered to women now, compared to women then, were forbidden in the name of penis envy. (119)

Evidence against this rigid application of Freudianism began to pile up, even among psychoanalysts, who found it more and more difficult to apply Freud’s ideas to real-life women. Friedan interviews one of the last remaining analysts to have trained at Freud’s Psychoanalytic Institute:

“I had a woman patient on the couch for nearly two years before I could face her real problem—that it was not enough for her to be just a housewife and mother. One day she had a dream that she was teaching a class. I could not dismiss the powerful yearning of this housewife’s dream as penis envy. It was the expression of her own need for mature self-fulfillment. I told her: ‘I can’t analyze this dream away. You must do something about it.’” (122)

Friedan places the ultimate blame for the perpetuation of the feminine mystique not on the psychoanalysts and therapists but on the mass media and “popularizers and translators of Freudian thought into the colleges and universities”. Reductive Freudianism, prescriptively applied as an ideal, permeated the American consciousness and kept women stuck in rigid gender roles despite the recent gains made on behalf of their rights and freedoms. Ordinary women, even those inwardly seething against these culturally-imposed restrictions, retained such reverence for the “science” at the root of their serfdom that they could mount no meaningful rebuttal. (124–125)

As I concluded in my review of the previous chapter, those in power have an obligation to constantly self-evaluate and ensure that they are doing all they can to equalize the disenfranchised. Conventional wisdom is often our enemy in this endeavor, so we must give careful consideration to whether the assumptions and stereotypes we perpetuate are based on inherent characteristics or simply on cultural expectations. Maintaining intellectual honesty in this regard may surprise us.

I mean, maybe women like gooey, romantic movies because we keep telling them they’re supposed to.

Sherwood, which has received a script commitment at the network, is set in 1072 England and revolves around a young noblewoman who sets out to free her serf boyfriend, who has been wrongfully imprisoned by ruthless Norman occupiers. Seeing[sic] help from the vanished Robin of Locksley, she inadvertently reunites—and joins—the fabled Robin Hood and his Merry Men, inspiring new hope for the oppressed people of Nottingham.

For the non-insider, “a script commitment” means the network has commissioned the creator, Tze Chun, to write a script for a pilot episode. If they like the script, they’ll shoot the pilot. If the pilot tests well, they’ll make one season of the show, and so forth.

Is it just me, or is TV turning out to be way better for female starring vehicles than film?

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Yesterday the Iowa Supreme Court ruled in favor of James Knight, a dentist who fired Melissa Nelson, his dental assistant, because he found her so sexually attractive that it was causing problems with his wife. Katy Waldman of XX Factor wishes she could disagree:

On a legal level, though, Knight’s defense appears pretty airtight. His lawyers bat away the charge of gender discrimination by claiming that their client let Nelson go not because she was a woman, but because her ineffable attractiveness threatened his marriage. This is lame, but valid in the eyes of the law: Bosses are allowed to fire workers for stupid emotional/family reasons, such as to mollify one’s wife or eliminate nest-wrecking temptations. In his decision, Justice Edward Mansfield observes that Knight replaced Nelson with another female staff member, which would imply his motives were not purely sexist.

Waldman speculates that Nelson could have grounds for a harassment suit against Knight, and that would certainly be more satisfying. She’s quite right, though: as much as blaming a hot girl for your troubled marriage stinks of privilege and slut-shaming, being hot is not a protected status.

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Ozy Frantz attempts to clear up the confusion, although I still think the issue revolves around how you define “drunk”.

At a certain point of intoxication, people become too intoxicated to meaningfully consent to sexual interaction, and then having sex with them is rape. (Of course, you can give meaningful consent ahead of time, just like you can with someone having sex with you while you’re unconscious.) This is literally what every feminist I have ever talked to believes about rape by intoxication.

This strikes me as muddy. What is that “certain point of intoxication”? It probably differs from person to person, and trying to make a judgment call while intoxicated about whether another person is sufficiently aware to give consent to sex sounds like a nightmare. This, I think, encourages people to be binary in their thinking on the issue (either any sex while under the influence of any amount of alcohol is rape, or people need to lighten up and just do it, as long as both people are conscious and saying “yes”).

To be clear, this does not seem to be the feminist position, at least according to Frantz:

I’m not saying that there aren’t people who believe that having some booze to loosen up before sex is rape, you can find people who believe any stupid thing, but they are clearly not the mainstream of feminism. Seriously, the closest I’ve come to meeting the “if you have a beer and have sex you’re a rapist!” feminist is a woman who thought that we should legally define all drunk sex to be rape because people who weren’t raped wouldn’t prosecute and rapists wouldn’t get off on a technicality by fiddling around with blood alcohol levels.

Being new to the scene, I’ve never been clear about this, so this is good to know. But I am already motivated to think through these things and get them right. Other people are not so motivated, and they will take any excuse to dismiss the issue as too complicated or nitpicky. Black-and-white is easier to parse than grey.

I don’t know that there’s a clear answer to this problem. We need good messaging on this issue to effect change; people need to start being very deliberate in their thinking about consent. And maybe that itself is the message: not trying to identify a specific quantity of drinks or put a marker on a certain blood alcohol content number, but encouraging everyone to be cautious and proactive about ensuring that they have real consent before engaging.

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Almost half of the countries of the world have laws or policies that penalize blasphemy, apostasy, contempt of religion, or religious “hate speech,” according to the new analysis by Pew. Of the 198 countries studied, 32 (16%) have anti-blasphemy laws, 20 (10%) have laws against apostasy, and 87 (44%) have laws against the defamation of religion, including hate speech against religious groups.

The linked article focuses on non-religious people, but many of these laws affect adherents of a non-dominant religion as well. This is why Christians need to fight violations of civil liberties wherever we find them: the people we save could be ourselves.

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Park Geun-hye, daughter of former South Korean President Park Chung-hee, ran partly on a platform of cheaper childcare and affirmative action for women.

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The New York Times follows three low-income students whose strong academic performance in high school failed to compensate for their other disadvantages when they entered college:

Four years later, their story seems less like a tribute to upward mobility than a study of obstacles in an age of soaring economic inequality. Not one of them has a four-year degree. Only one is still studying full time, and two have crushing debts. Angelica, who left Emory owing more than \$60,000, is a clerk in a Galveston furniture store.

Each showed the ability to do college work, even excel at it. But the need to earn money brought one set of strains, campus alienation brought others, and ties to boyfriends not in school added complications. With little guidance from family or school officials, college became a leap that they braved without a safety net.

The demise of the current higher education system can’t come soon enough for me.

Via Blue Milk.

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Women in Swaziland risk arrest if they wear mini-skirts or tops which expose part of their stomach, a police spokeswoman has said.

Wendy Hleta said police would enforce an 1889 law which bans “immoral” dressing if they receive a complaint.

She also said women in the deeply conservative kingdom make it easier for rapists by wearing mini-skirts.

As outrageous as that sounds, this next part is my favorite:

Women who wear “skimpy clothes” also draw unnecessary attention to themselves, Ms Hleta said.

“I have read from the social networks that men and even other women have a tendency of ‘undressing people with their eyes’. That becomes easier when the clothes are hugging or are more revealing,” Ms Hleta is quoted as saying.

I’m not even sure where to start with this. The phrase “undressing her with his eyes” has been around at least as long as I have, so quoting it as some kind of hip new trend sounds out of touch, to put it mildly. Also, it seems incredibly inappropriate for a police department to base its policies on anecdotal evidence scraped from social networks.

Could women spur some change in Swaziland by taking to “the social networks” in outspoken opposition to rape culture?

Via Jezebel.

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Kenya has been investing in the infrastructure necessary to develop a thriving tech industry, and this ladies’ developer collective wants to establish an early beachhead for geek girls (the “real” kind). More importantly, they’re making great apps that meet the needs of their neighbors.

Via Geek Feminism.

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Remember the dentist who fired his assistant for being too hot? He’s now getting one-star Yelp reviews because of it. Here’s one example:

This dentist fired his assistant because he was afraid he would want to start an affair with her… even though she never indicated she wanted to start an affair with him. A man who apparently can’t control his sexual impulses enough to be able to work side by side with a woman certainly doesn’t deserve the business of any women. What if you are under sedation and he finds you so pretty he can’t control himself enough not to touch your lady bits? Sexist, misogynistic pig.

The information age keeps making it harder and harder to be an oppressor.

Via Feministe.

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This is my last long post of the year. Next Thursday is January 3, 2013, so next time you hear from me (probably talking about Chapter 6 of The Feminine Mystique), we’ll be starting a new year.

I’ve been writing Jesus & Venus for over four months, which doesn’t seem like a very significant marker, but it’s the end of the year, so I feel like doing a wrap-up/state of the union post.

I’m burned out.

I know that sounds like a dumb thing to say after only four months of activity, but I read so much terrible news on a near-daily basis that it really gets me down sometimes. Even worse, such a staggering amount of blind drivel or outright misogyny comes through my RSS reader every day in the form of anti-feminist op-ed pieces, rape culture apologia, and even friendly fire, that I’ve found myself more and more frequently getting so angry that sitting down to process the news for all of you has taken every bit of determination and stamina I can muster. Good news or unadulterated awesomeness shows up far less regularly, and the victories are often small.

Anyway, as whiny as this may sound, here are by far the four greatest contributers to my burnout.

Ease of Burnout

I burn out quickly on nearly anything that isn’t going perfectly, and frequently even on the things that work out well. I’m a generalist; I have a wide array of interests, and this is only one of them. It’s all too easy for me to abandon things that don’t charge my batteries at the moment and move on to another project I’m more excited about. I also get easily bored with ongoing projects once I’ve gotten into a regular rhythm, particularly if they don’t have a foreseeable end date. 10 years post-college, I’ve come to terms with this character flaw, and I think it’s healthy to acknowledge it from time to time.

Abuse of the Bible

Many or most of my Christian friends are not feminists or egalitarians, and I read several Christian websites that are indifferent, or passively or actively hostile, toward the goals of feminism. I try to be open-minded, so I recognize that some parts of the Bible could, fairly legitimately, be interpreted in opposition to egalitarian views. 1 Timothy 2:9–15 comes to mind first, of course, and the dearth of women holding positions of spiritual or political authority—exceptions notwithstanding—could easily trouble me absent my views on progressive revelation.

But people rarely employ the strongest arguments when opposing feminism from a biblical platform, and when they do, they almost never seem interested in an actual dialogue on the subject. Instead, they tend to stick with the same three tactics: Interpreting The Curse as prescriptive for women (but not for men), universalizing and canonizing the mythologized version of the 1950s sold to them through film and television of the day, and selectively applying Old Testament law. When I (or others) disagree with these practices or try to engage them on a hermeneutical level, they nearly always respond by questioning our commitment to the authority of the Bible, conveniently ignoring the many components of the Christian feminist platform actually based on the Christian scriptures. When other theological disputes can be politely handled without these sorts of accusations, I begin to wonder just how scared of sexual equality these people must be to behave so reactively.¹

Rape. Rape, rape, rape, rape, rape, rape, rape.

I quite literally cannot read a single day’s worth of news without seeing a horrific account of a rape or a story about miscarriage of justice in a rape case or perpetuation of rape culture through legislation. Women everywhere are having their sexual autonomy taken away from them, and hardly anyone seems to actually care; the most common responses seem to be some form of victim-blaming or decrying human nature, or both. The occasional meting out of justice or positive institutional or political change brings hope for a future culture of consent, but our present reality bears little resemblance to the ideal.

Evangelicals—my people—are among the worst. We struggle to not conflate behavior we consider “sinful” with behavior that mitigates the injustice of rape; the former is and will probably always be up for debate, but the latter is a flying unicorn, and we need to stop believing in those. As much as we may not like it when young people get drunk and rub up against each other, a woman who does this is in no way at fault if she gets raped—the end, full stop.

But Evangelicals—and nearly everyone else—think that we can keep talking this way about women and still effect change. We can’t. We can’t perpetuate modesty culture without contributing to the perpetuation of rape culture. We can’t keep teaching our youth that sex is shameful and dirty without putting girls (and boys) at risk for un-reported sexual abuse. We can’t train women in rape-avoidance techniques without subtly communicating that rape, when it happens, is a little bit their fault.²

Believe me when I tell you that I struggle with empathy. I’m a cold-blooded, callous bastard when it come to anyone but my own kith and kin, but this issue still makes me—again, quite literally—scream out loud at my desk on some days.

Ideological Snobbery Among Feminists

This one is probably going to anger people, but I’m putting it in anyway. While many feminists I read and interact with online are lovely people, most are mean-spirited, flippant, or dismissive at best when encountering ideas that conflict with feminist dogma.³ While I understand that nearly everyone tires of saying the same things over and over, as a relative newcomer I have repeatedly observed that feminists are largely preaching to the choir because the congregation is tired of being harangued.

Now, some websites or individual bloggers have no interest in reaching non-feminists. Some do not even intend to persuade. I think of Sarah Moon, who has made it quite clear that her blog is an emotional outlet, not a news source or platform for debate. I also continue to derive a semi-guilty pleasure from the steady stream of snark flowing out of the Jezebel writers, who fall loosely into the category of “pundit”. On the more journalistic end of the scale, Feministing and The Feminist Majority Foundation Blog, while newsy, seem to be aimed entirely at existing converts.

I’ll cite a specific event as an example: The Good Men Project’s recent series of posts on rape culture, which many (rightly, I believe) categorized as rape apologism. You’ll notice that the link above leads not the Good Men Project website but to an article for The Guardian by Jill Filipovic, and that is because Filipovic was the only feminist writer I heard of who responded to the event with a reasoned, balanced commentary befitting a journalist.

The near-universal reaction from the rest of the femisphere boiled down to: “Screw GMP. No one should ever read them again; they’re terrible people.” An entirely legitimate reaction for writers who just want to blog about personal experience or vent their emotions, this is not at all tenable for anyone who wants to consider themselves a journalist or news source. Ignoring the opposition, even when they write something so wrong that you have to spend half an hour cooling down before you can respond, is not an option for a journalist. If, as they say, most of the feminists I follow really no longer read The Good Men Project, they are abdicating any claim to the title.

And that is fine, but where are the feminist journalists? Where are the serious, well-reasoned op-ed pieces defending our positions? Seriously: where are they? I feel like they must exist; I just haven’t found them yet. Someone point me in the right direction. Drop me a line in the comments, using the contact page, or on Twitter. For now, though, the feminist corner of the internet seems very closed off to dialogue. This alienates people who are open to feminist ideas but put off by our unbending dogmatism.⁴ I know, because I have conversations with these people. As a perpetual evangelist, this troubles me.

Why I’m Not Giving Up

Firstly, I don’t want to be a quitter. I’ve quit a lot of things in my life; I don’t want this website to be another one. In any case, it has more inherent value than most other things I’ve attempted.

Secondly, people. As much as I may occasionally (or frequently) disagree with some of them, I’ve met several wonderful people since I started collecting the feminist news. Despite never meeting any of them in person, I feel like some of my new friends could turn into lifelong friends. Their various individual brands of feminism—and Christianity—make me feel happy, and more importantly, they expand my thinking and push me to be a better feminist and a better Christian.

Finally, the goal. The Goal. Slightly expanded from the About page, The Goal of Jesus & Venus is, through a steady stream of news carefully peppered with opinion, to persuade Christians who aren’t quite sure they are feminists or egalitarians that they really are, or should be. No one else that I know about is doing what I’m trying to do, and I feel like I’m doing it well. I could do it even better, and if my readership continues to expand, I think I can achieve that goal.

I’m going to push through this period of burnout. Four months is a very short time, considered with proper perspective. 2013 is going to bring plenty of raw material, and I’ll be here to digest it into a form you can consume in just a few minutes a day. This may sound kind of hollow after all of the above complaining, but I’ll say it anyway: Thanks for reading.

A long, thorough response from Tim Chevalier at Geek Feminism to a question about hearing trans* people referred to as “unnatural”. Even if you’re skeptical about the morality or legitimacy of this issue, you should at least wrestle with the information he presents. Particularly, make sure you click through to the article linked by the word “phalloclitoris”.

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Bitch Magazine’s “Lady Liquor” series explains why, until the 1960s, American bars banned women.

Bars did employ women during the postwar era—just not to pour drinks. Instead, “B-girls” employed by the bar would show up, pretending to be nurses or secretaries on their way home from work, and charm the male clientele into buying them drink after drink. After several drinks, the woman in question—usually called a “B-girl”—would disappear, leaving her companion with an artificially inflated bar tab.

Morally reprehensible? Yes. Hilarious at a historical distance? Also yes.

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An Italian priest has provoked outrage after putting up an article that said women were partly to blame for encouraging domestic violence by failing to clean their houses and cook properly and for wearing tight and provocative clothing.

The priest, Piero Corsi, later apologized, and his bishop ordered the article taken down, but he does not appear to have been punished in any way. This is unacceptable, particularly for an organization with as many PR problems as the Roman Catholic Church. If they want us to believe they are not indifferent to oppression—or, worse, actively engaged in perpetuating it—they need to develop a much lower tolerance for this sort of thing.

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The unnamed girl who was raped repeatedly by six different men then thrown from a moving bus has died of her injuries:

Those men have now been charged with her murder and could face execution. In the 12 days following the attack, the victim was breathing with a ventilator, her intestines were removed, and she suffered a cardiac arrest and multi-organ failure. She had said she wanted to live.

Many are now calling for not only the execution of the perpetrators but an execution sentence for any rapist. I oppose the death penalty, but I sympathize with this mentality. Still, if this tragedy only results in stronger sentencing of rapists, the Indian government will have missed the point.

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Two mothers who live in a mud-wall and tin-roof slum a short walk from the maternity hospital, which is affiliated with the Nairobi City Council, told The Associated Press that Pumwani [Hospital] wouldn’t let them leave after delivering their babies. The bills the mothers couldn’t afford were $60 and $160. Guards would beat mothers with sticks who tried to leave without paying, one of the women said.

Margaret Anyoso, the woman who owed $160, typically earns $5 or less a day. You don’t have to believe in universal health care to see how wrong this is. We abolished debtor’s prisons for a reason.

Via Jezebel.

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Billy Gallagher at TechCrunch covers Stanford’s quest to recruit more female students into the Computer Science department:

In 2009, the Stanford CS department revamped its undergraduate curriculum, broadening the program so students could focus on tracks in areas that most interested them. Stanford Professor Mehran Sahami says the addition of multi-disciplinary tracks, such as collaboration with psychology, product design, and others, helped to cast a broader net for potential CS majors.

The department has seen growth across the board since the 2009 revisions, Sahami says, with female enrollment increasing faster on a relative basis. Since 2009, the number of female undergraduates majoring in CS at Stanford has increased 9.5 percentage points.

This kind of “affirmative action” (for lack of a better term) seems to me like the best way to level the ground for under-privileged groups: not necessarily lowering standards, but actively engaging and reaching out to people who might feel marginalized.

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Scarleteen answers the following question:

I’m an 18 year old virgin. A few months back, I was out clubbing with a friend, and she wanted me to make-out with a guy, because she does it all the time when we go clubbing. I started dancing with a guy, and we started kissing, which I DID want to do. But then he started putting his hand up my skirt, and then in my underwear. I kept pushing his hand away and telling him to stop and he kept putting it back. I managed to escape and didn’t see him again, but I feel kind of violated, as he was touching me sexually. Is this my fault? I did want to kiss him, but I said not [sic] when he put his hand down my pants. Was this wrong, or was I asking for it, and is it just something that happens?

This kind of question tends to trip up morally-conservative Christians, because we want to tell this girl she shouldn’t have been making out with the guy in the first place. Unfortunately, that sort of response tends to consciously or sub-consciously register as, “This was partially your fault.”

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I think this non-profit that teaches at-risk girls to build things is fantastic. In addition to battling gender stereotypes, it provides them with skills they can be proud of and maybe even leverage into future jobs. Since many at-risk kids are poorly-educated and from disadvantaged backgrounds, they desperately need to feel like they are good at something.

Via Jezebel.

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Guess which toy laptop for children is extremely gendered and provides fewer functions?

Via Tell Me Why the World Is Weird.

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Eighth-grader McKenna Pope wanted to buy her 4-year-old brother an Easy-Bake Oven for Christmas, because he loves to make cookies. But she found that Easy-Bake Ovens featuring exclusively girls in their advertising and come only in pink and purple:

“I feel that this sends a clear message: women cook, men work… I want my brother to know that it’s not ‘wrong’ for him to want to be a chef.”

Pope started a petition on Change.org to persuade Hasbro to make a non-gendered version of the product. I signed it. If you’re on the fence about signing it, first watch the adorable video she made of her brother mixing cookie dough.

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In case you haven’t heard, Kate Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge, will, in roughly 27 weeks, give birth to a daughter who will one day be by the Grace of God of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of Her other Realms and Territories Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith.

Even if Prince William later fathers a son.

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Bryce Covert, writing for The Atlantic, aggregates the results of several studies that collectively undermine the argument that lack of female ambition is responsible for the gender wage gap. Here’s a sample:

The research organization Catalyst, for example, found that among MBA grads on a traditional career track, women are even more likely than men to seek out skill-building experiences and training opportunities and to make their achievements visible by asking for feedback and promotions. Women also reported similar rates of negotiating as men: 47 percent of women and 52 percent of men had asked for a higher salary during the hiring process, and 14 percent of women and 15 percent of men had asked for a higher position. No gap there.

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Trigger Warning for Rape

A multiple-assault survivor recounts how she was raped by a college friend while high, then raped multiple times by a different friend during the interim between when she reported the first rape and when her school eventually held a hearing about the incident.

Each night, I have nightmares. I don’t remember the last time I slept more than two hours in a row without waking up; crying, shallow breaths, dreaming about being raped, being assaulted, or imagining my friends in these situations. Some people wonder why I stay up so late.

I sleep with the lights on now.

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Now that I’ve been writing Jesus & Venus for a few months, I’m starting to figure out a posting schedule that works for me and my other projects. Currently, the Colophon says that I post every day, but that hasn’t really been true in practice. I want to be predictable and deliver on what I say, so I’m changing both the Colophon and the actual posting schedule.

Henceforth, I will post linked articles on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays, and I will continue to write longer, op-ed-style original posts on Thursdays. This setup has two advantages: 1) It clears out a couple days every week for me to accomplish other things, and 2) It tells you, the Reader, on which days you should check the site for updates.

I hope (and think) that this will make Jesus & Venus a better site for all of you.

The Beheld hosts a guest post from comic artist Claire Napier on the mental turmoil produced by compliments from strangers. Spoiler alert: It is awesome.

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Thanks to everyone who joined me in starting this blog just four months ago. I’m very grateful for all my readers, and I hope 2013 brings you success, fulfillment, and joy.

You heard that right. Pope Benedict XVI met with Rebecca Kadaga, the Ugandan Speaker of the House, and gave her a blessing.

Uganda has been a target for western evangelicals who see that they’re losing the gay marriage battle in their own countries. Religious leaders and rightwing groups, including Rick Warren and the National Organization for Marriage, have gone to Uganda for years to spread anti-gay propaganda and bolster homophobia. These religious leaders position themselves as experts, telling Ugandans that gay people sodomize children, spread Aids, destroy marriage, break up families and pose an imminent threat to society—and then they feign shock when Ugandan leaders decide that the legal punishment most befitting these child-raping, society-crushing individuals is death.

In the meantime, gay, lesbian and transgender Ugandans face vigilante attacks daily, and are routinely raped, beaten, ostracized, tortured and murdered.

Do I have any Roman Catholic readers? If so, I encourage you to read Jill Filipovic’s whole piece here about the Church’s patriarchy problem. Even adjusting for her disinterest in the Bible’s take on ethics, doesn’t it seem like Filipovic has a number of solid points that Vatican leaders should really be considering?

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Nahida adamantly—and hilariously—explains exactly why no Muslim woman needs a male official to give her away and certify that her marriage was consensual.

You don’t want to start thinking about which of our modern wedding rituals have their roots in the concept of woman as property. You really don’t.

Okay, fine. It’s all of them. Give or take.

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Tom Wright at The Wall Street Journal’s India Realtime blog addresses several components of the country’s ongoing rape culture, including the above-mentioned “two-finger test”:

In the test, which appears in Indian jurisprudence textbooks and is admissible in court, a doctor inserts two fingers into a women’s vagina to determine its laxity and whether the hymen is broken, signaling previous sexual activity.

The test perpetuates stereotypes of rape survivors as loose women and often is used by defense counsels to achieve acquittals, human-rights groups say.

In case you missed it when I linked to it a couple months ago, here’s Scarleteen’s post on the vaginal corona, which should tell you all you need to know about why the “two-finger test” makes absolutely no sense.

Via The Atlantic Wire.

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It’s exactly like it sounds.

I mean, come on, everyone. We all know how bad it is when women talk, right? The elders of this Indian village have bravely decided to limit all that pernicious communication, and it turns out that the final straw came when they realized that cell phones were giving women too much freedom to choose their spouses:

Members of the all-male panchayat (an informal, but respected council of village leaders) justified their ruling by arguing that the reputation of their village has been compromised by the handful of single women who have eloped with their partners as well as some married women who have left their husbands by eloping with their current partners.

So, as a group, women are unhappy enough in their marriages that the village is seeing an epidemic of extramarital affairs and elopements, and their solution is to keep women from talking to anyone? That should totally work.

Bonus Anger Fuel: The final paragraph of the article, where we learn that Indian women get raped because they aren’t sexually satisfied.

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I simply must take a moment to celebrate the success of my dear friend Greg Francis, who—after nearly two decades of directing TV—is currently shooting his feature debut, Poker Night.

The film, a scrappy indie thriller that has taken almost 10 years and many false starts to finally be greenlit, got a mention in Deadline Hollywood today when the producers announced that Giancarlo Esposito had signed onto the picture.

In addition to Esposito—best known right now for his work on Breaking Bad, although I most associate him with Once Upon a Time—Greg gets to direct Ron Perlman, Titus Welliver, Ron Eldard, and Beau Mirchoff.

I couldn’t be more thrilled for him, and I can’t wait to see the product of all that creative collaboration.

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An unnamed minor has accused Nechemya Weberman of sexually abusing her repeatedly over the course of three years while he counseled her in private at his home. Allison Yarrow at The Daily Beast provides a thorough summary of the case:

The teen—as an alleged victim of sexual assault, she has not been publicly identified—accuses Weberman of sexually abusing her in a spare room with a triple-locked door, one lock only accessible from the inside. He kissed and groped her body, she says on the stand, forced her to perform oral sex on him, showed her pornographic films, and made her copy the acts. Sometimes, she says, his children played on the other side of the door, or Weberman’s wife might call before entering to use the very computer on which she said the community pillar forced her to watch and mimic sex. She recounts skipping sessions after Passover in 2009, but said Weberman visited her family home and entered her room while she was in bed and abused her there.

The strict Orthodox Jewish sects have frequently been able to handle accusations like this internally, without involving the police, so this case is a huge step forward.

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In addition to explaining the mechanics behind the popular morning-after pill, this adorable animation also shows how and on what timeline ovulation and fertilization occur, in case—like me—you’re a little fuzzy on the details.

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Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, has debuted a new series of anti-rape ads that focus on obtaining, not withholding, consent. Great photography and straightforward headlines, like “Just Because She Isn’t Saying No… Doesn’t Mean She’s Saying Yes.”

Let’s hope this trend picks up. We need to stop telling people how to not get raped and switch to telling people to not rape.

Via Feministing.

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Of course I hate myself for that headline, but I really am that excited about this development:

Beginning with its 2016 theatrically released feature films, new Disney, Walt Disney Animation Studios, Pixar Animation Studios, Marvel Studios and Disneynature titles will be made available for Netflix members to watch instantly in the pay TV window on multiple platforms, including television, tablets, computers and mobile phones. Also included in the agreement are high-profile Disney direct-to-video new releases, which will be made available on Netflix starting in 2013.

Separately, Disney and Netflix have reached agreement on a multi-year catalog deal that today brings to U.S. Netflix members such beloved Disney movies such as “Dumbo,” “Pocahontas” and “Alice in Wonderland.”

That Bob Iger. He does not mess around about New Media.

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Jill Peters’ Sworn Virgins of Albania project looks at women in the Balkans who have chosen a life of celibacy in order to avoid the oppressive laws of the Kanun, which forbids them from everything from voting and doing business to swearing and drinking.

Great photography. The absence of traditional Western gender signifiers like hairstyle and fashion works a fascinating transformation.

Via The Mary Sue.

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Christianity Today published a great interview with Nicholas Kristof, writer of Half the Sky. Marian V. Liautaud, who conducted the interview, focused—a little unnecessarily in my opinion—on sex-selective abortion, but she also asked Kristof about the disconnect between Christian and non-Christian women’s right’s activists. Here’s part of his response:

On a lot of humanitarian issues, people on the secular and evangelical sides have strongly held beliefs that create deep, political polarization. Each side propels itself toward areas that are hardest to find agreement on because they’re the areas that are defined as most important. Instead, we should be focusing on areas where there is common ground.

It’s a short interview, so take the time to absorb Kristof’s thoughts on the shifting landscape of gender equality in the Far East.

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You don’t need to be a huge comic book nerd (I’m not) to enjoy this Tumblr of ridiculous or anatomically-impossible poses recast with the newly-popular Hawkeye instead of the original female superhero subjects.

You will laugh. Oh yes, you will.

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The SAFER Act, a bipartisan bill, ensures better allocation of federal funds for the purpose of processing rape kits. Rep. Ted Poe (R-TX), explains the rationale behind the bill:

“As a former judge, the DNA evidence is pretty conclusive,” Poe said. “It’s better than fingerprints. It’s better than blood samples. There’s no two people with same DNA, so it’s excellent evidence to convict and also release individuals that are innocent.”

With an estimated 400,000 untested rape kits nationwide, this sounds like a pretty good idea.

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Another schoolgirl gunned down for somehow threatening the Taliban’s regime. This time it was Anisa, a 10th-grader helping with the administration of the polio vaccine at her school, and this time, she died.

The Taliban, you see, is against polio immunizations–which, of course, could save some of their own children from a lifetime of paralysis. But they choose to believe that the health campaign is a coverup for espionage, as was the CIA-backed fake hepatitis vaccine campaign that was run in the town where Osama Bin Laden was suspected of being holed up in order to collect DNA samples and locate children of the Al Qaeda mastermind.

How long?

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This is the fourth post in my chapter-by-chapter analysis of The Feminine Mystique, as I read the book for the first time in an effort to educate myself about the roots of modern feminism. You can read the other posts here.

I peeked ahead at this chapter while I was reviewing the previous chapter, so I knew in advance that Betty Friedan was not yet ready to begin directly addressing the problems of her day. In “The Passionate Journey” she re-tells in brief some of the stories of the first-wave feminists.

Easily the most entrancing chapter of the book for me (so far), chapter 4 gives me a history lesson during my history lesson, beginning in 1848 at the first Woman’s Rights Convention. The list of woman’s grievances against man, formulated at the convention, reads long and takes deliberate cues from the Declaration of Independence. Its claims amount to not a repression or diminishing but a dehumanizing of women. (Friedan, Betty, The Feminine Mystique. Norton & Company, 1997, pp. 84–85)

He has compelled her to submit to laws in the formation of which she has no voice… He has made her, if married, in the eyes of the law, civilly dead. He has taken from her all right to property, even to the wages she earns… He closes against her all the avenues of wealth and distinction which he considers most honorable to himself… He has created a false public sentiment by giving to the world a different code of morals for men and women by which moral delinquencies which exclude women from society are not only tolerated, but deemed of little account to man. He has usurped the prerogative of Jehovah himself, claiming it as his right to assign for her a sphere of action, when that belongs to her conscience and to her God. He has endeavored in every way that he could to destroy her confidence in her own powers, to lessen her self-respect, and to make her willing to lead a dependent and abject life.

No wonder relatively ordinary women felt compelled to rise up and demand redress, with no property rights, no right to education, no right to vote, and a double standard of morality that condemned as heinous in women that which was tolerated in men. (84) Friedan easily dispels the notion that the early feminists were man-eaters or man-haters; the majority of the movement’s leaders loved and married, and they fought to achieve personhood for woman, not the overthrow of man. (82) In rejecting the model of femininity dictated to them by society, though, they reshaped themselves in such a way as to be unrecognizable to the patriarchy of the day, which vilified and mischaracterized them to a degree that in hindsight seems laughable: “red harlot of infidelity”, “woman a thousand times below a prostitute”, “unnatual monsters”. (86–87)

Their actual character reads differently. Lucy Stone, whom opponents described as “a big, masculine woman, wearing boots, smoking a cigar, swearing like a troooper”, was actually small, soft-spoken, and conventionally-dressed. Although she resisted marriage for a long time, it was not through bitterness or even lack of opportunity, but from fear of losing herself as a person. Pursued across the country by Henry Blackwell (whose name she never took), she refused at first to marry him even while admitting she loved him, but at their wedding, the minister said, “The heroic Lucy cried like any village bride.” (89)

Stone put herself through Oberlin College by saving up the \$1.00 a week she earned over the course of nine years by teaching. Even there she was not permitted to speak in public, so she practiced on her own out in the woods. (88) Likewise, Elizabeth Blackwell fought an uphill battle to become a woman doctor, pushing to participate in dissection of the human reproductive system despite her gender—although she then, rather paradoxically, elected not to walk in the procession at commencement “because it would not be ladylike”. (96) Margaret Fuller and Elizabeth Cady Stanton received their education courtesy of benevolent fathers. Mary Wollstonecraft and Ernestine Rose sought out prominent philosophers of their day. (93) The education denied to them became—once they had forced their way into it—a tool used to liberate themselves and others.

This advantage highlights the most important lesson I took away from this chapter: the importance of privilege in obtaining equality. Although many of these women bootstrapped their way into their education and all faced cultural barriers to its completion, some had money that assisted them. And nearly all the pioneers of feminism Friedan mentions were white women; in fact, many of the earliest to join the movement had also worked as abolitionists. (89, 92)

The call to that first Woman’s Rights Convention came about because an educated woman, who had already participated in shaping society as an abolitionist, came face to face with the realities of a housewife’s drudgery and isolation in a small town. Like the college graduate with six children in the suburb of today, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, moved by her husband to the small town of Seneca Falls, was restless in a life of baking, cooking, sewing, washing and caring for baby. (92–93)

Of course, the early feminists would have achieved nothing without hard work and perseverance, but many started with the privileges that accompanied being white, educated, and comparatively wealthy. Without these privileges, the movement may have taken decades longer to achieve its goals, as no more privileged group came to their aid the way they came to the aid of the slaves.

Furthermore, women ultimately depended on men to enact the legislation that would give them the rights they so fiercely sought, just as the slaves depended on the whites in power to emancipate them from their owners. Short of bloodshed, every oppressed people group must persuade their oppressors to stop oppressing them. They can hold rallies, preach sermons, sign petitions, even engage in civil disobedience—effectively, annoying those in power until they give in (or at least listen with an open mind). But the privileged group have the final word, until they voluntarily give up their privilege and proactively enact equality for those they formerly dominated.

As a person born with the privileges of being male, cisgendered, straight, white, educated, comparatively wealthy, and a member of the dominant religion of our culture, I need to always remember this.

Sometimes building projects are just needed. Pews fill up. Roofs leak. And, you know, sometimes that 70s shag carpeting in the teen room just needs to go. But the idea that a building proejct is going to shake the foundations of the earth is usually a lie that pastors hype up in order to get in your wallet. That new building isn’t going to single-handedly bring about the kingdom of God.

Sarah Moon tells the story of a sticker. I’ll let you read it for yourself, but I’ll also tell you my response: the best church advertising lets people know what that church is all about—when that church is all about the right things.

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The International Criminal Court has indicted Simone Gbagbo, wife of the former president of Ivory Coast on charges of “crimes against humanity, including murder, rape, and persecution”. William Burke-White, writing for The Atlantic, explains why this could be a history-making decision:

The indictment is, therefore, an important symbol of unfortunate fact from a humanitarian perspective: women, as well as men, plan and commit horrific acts of violence. While there may be fewer examples of women committing these most heinous crimes, men are not the only ones capable of ordering such brutality. This indictment recognizes that reality and lays a marker that international criminal courts will hold any perpetrator—regardless of gender—responsible for his or her actions.

This may seem like an odd story to be posting on a feminist news site, but portraying terrorists as exclusively or near-exclusively male deifies women, and this is a form of objectification. Women are people, too, with all the susceptibility to corruption, greed, hatred, and violence that conveys.

Burke-White argues, though, that the significance of this case surpasses the gender component:

Most of the indictments handed down by international courts to date have focused on those at the top of standard hierarchies of power—military commanders, governmental officials, or the leaders of armed rebellions. In contrast, Simone Gbagbo held no official position in government; she wore no military uniform; she did not personally commit any of the crimes charged. Yet, the ICC Prosecutor alleges that Simone Gbagbo was part of “Mr. Gbagbo’s inner circle,” that she “participated in all the meetings during the relevant period,” and that she “instructed pro-Gbagbo forces” to commit crimes against individuals who posed a threat to President Gbagbo’s power.

Too many oppressors have been able to dodge justice by claiming, “I did nothing” simply because there was no actual blood on their actual hands. While the pendulum can swing too far the other way, as with the Reign of Terror, that probably should not stop us from prosecuting those who actively propelled others to commit atrocities.

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Katy Perry recently became the latest in a long line of well-known women to answer this question in the negative. Specifically, when Perry accepted Billboard’s Woman of the Year award on Friday she said: “I’m not a feminist, but I do believe in the power of women.”

Much yelling ensued.

Every few days some high-profile lady says something along these lines, and without fail every feminist or woman-targeted website posts one of the following responses:

1. How dare she say she isn’t a feminist? Doesn’t she know what feminism has done for her?
2. It doesn’t matter whether she says she’s a feminist or not; she is.
3. It doesn’t matter whether she says she’s a feminist or not; feminism is still the most awesome.
4. Fine, we don’t want her, then!
5. Oh, no! This makes me sad because I love her so much/she’s so cool!
6. People need to quit tricking women into thinking feminism isn’t for them!

I tend to incline toward the last of these reactions, but this piece by Noah Berlatsky argues for a more nuanced view of the issue:

Perry’s unwillingness to be called a feminist might… be seen as a sign, not of feminism’s failures, but of its continuing relevance. It would be better if feminism were more widely accepted. But failing that, the least a movement for radical social change can do is to freak people out a little. Feminism still provokes resistance; it still has enemies; it still makes many people in the mainstream nervous.

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Of the five people in the company’s “top-tier management,” three are women: COO Ann Daly, chief accounting officer Heather O’Connor and worldwide marketing chief Anne Globe. Founder and CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg says their pool of producers is a staggering 85% female (including those producers involved with Madagascar and Rise of the Guardians) and says he “couldn’t be prouder of their accomplishments.”

Astonishing and wonderful. In the linked article, Pamela McClintock suggests a possible reason for the success of women in the production company:

Katzenberg inspires abiding loyalty by grooming stars from within. He gave longtime in-house animator Jennifer Yuh Nelson the chance to direct 2011’s Kung Fu Panda 2 (all the way to an Oscar nom and \$655.7 million in global ticket sales), making her the first woman to direct a big-budget animated film solo.

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Sally McGraw expresses her relief at accepting that she will never look like Sofia Vergera:

I know a lot about my body. I know its strengths and its graces, its quirks and defining traits. I know that I have strong legs and an elegant collarbone, pert breasts and dainty wrists, luxurious hair and an angular little nose. I know that I’ve got a lot going for me.

I also know that there are loads of things that I shall never be, and that many of them are considered beautiful, attractive, desirable, enviable even.

As much as men aren’t supposed to care about these things, I’ve actually been thinking about this quite a bit over the last couple days.

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This is a surprising move, but the Church is not actually accepting homosexuality. Near the top of the home page is a section titled “Where the Church stands:”

The experience of same-sex attraction is a complex reality for many people. The attraction itself is not a sin, but acting on it is. Even though individuals do not choose to have such attractions, they do choose how to respond to them. With love and understanding, the Church reaches out to all God’s children, including our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters.

Even if you believe that people aren’t born gay but made gay—and there’s really no evidence about it either way—they’re made that way long before they have any agency or input about it. So no, it’s not a choice.

Via Jezebel.

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Despite Dubai’s popularity as a tourist destination, the United Arab Emirates have some pretty draconian and misogynist laws:

A British woman who was allegedly kidnapped and gang raped by three men in Dubai has been prosecuted for drinking without a licence, throwing a spotlight on the United Arab Emirates’ archaic legal system, which rights groups say does not do enough to protect victims of sexual assault.

The woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, claims she was raped repeatedly by the three men who filmed the attack after they lured her into their car as she returned from a night out with friends.

After reporting her ordeal to the police, the 28-year-old found herself in the dock because she admitted she had been drinking earlier that night.

One thing I’ll never understand about the UN is why they allow flagrant rights violations from their member nations. New proposal: periodic human rights audits with imposed deadlines for implementing changes to oppressive policies or GET OUT.

I don’t actually know enough about international politics to have any idea whether this would work, but doesn’t it sound nice?

Via Dave McCall.

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Micha Boyett of Mama Monk passes on some advice a fellow Young Life counselor once gave her:

“So few girls are touched in a tender, non-sexual, non-violent, non-manipulative way. So few girls are touched in a way that demands nothing of them. They are all craving true, loving touch.”

I agree, not only about girls but about our entire culture. We just can’t get comfortable with non-sexual physical affection.

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Thursday, December 6, was the 23rd anniversary of the Montreal Massacre, an act of terrorism perpetrated by a Canadian anti-feminist at École Polytechnique, an engineering school.

He ordered the 60 male and female students to separate by gender, forcing the men by gunpoint to leave the classroom. Only nine students remained, all female, all helplessly huddled together.

One of the nine women, Nathalie Provost, an engineering student, replied “we’re not feminist.” Bravely, she attempted to reason with Lépine, trying desperately to save herself and her fellow colleagues. We’re “just women studying engineering”, she replied, “not necessarily feminists ready to march on the streets to shout we are against men”.

Lépine shot all nine women anyway, six dying where they stood. He continued his rampage against women as he walked through the college halls, killing an additional 5 women and injuring several others before turning the gun on himself.

Kathleen Pye at Fem 2.0 commemorates the day by explaining why feminism still matters:

Sure, we’ve made improvements, but there is still much to be done, particularly in light of the following facts:

• A woman is killed by an intimate partner every six days.
• Each year half a million Canadian women have reported an incident of sexual assault. It has been suggested that this accounts for only 10% of actual sexual assaults in the country, annually.
• New Brunswick, the province that I currently call home, has the worst rates of sexual assault in the country. Fredericton, New Brunswick, the city with the third highest rates (and where I reside), has, in response, considered constructing female-only parking spots closer to doorways and lit entrances.
• Nearly 600 Aboriginal women have gone missing or have been murdered as of 2010, causing the United Nations and Amnesty International to call for governmental action.

And is it any wonder, with sites like this one, that the violence goes on?

In case you didn’t click all the links, that last one is to a fansite for Marc Lépine, the terrorist responsible for the Montreal Massacre.

I’m going to go ahead and say we still need feminism.

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Mary-Rose MacColl tries to emphasize consent and appropriate touch over “stranger danger” when she teaches her son about sexual abuse:

We embarked on what has been an ongoing conversation with our son about his body, privacy and sexual abuse. He’s now ten. We’ve moved on to sexuality, pornography and other issues he will need to negotiate in the world he inherits. At first, my rule was going to be, ‘old enough to ask, old enough to know’, but now I see the folly of that. Until I started the conversation, he didn’t ask, but once I started, and he saw me as a non-judgemental and reliable source, the questions came pouring out. They pour out still.

One of my greatest fears about becoming a parent is that my children may see me as too much of an authority figure to come to me with their scary problems and questions.

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“Rowdy” Ronda Rousey, champion in the Ultimate Fighting Championship sister organization Strikeforce, has signed with UFC, who are therefore declaring her a champion even though she has not yet won any fights in their newly-announced female bantamweight division. UFC President Dana White praised Rousey in this backwards fashion:

“No other (female) fighters have what Rousey has,” he said. “She’s nasty. She’s mean. She’d actually fight a dude if that’s what it took to get in the UFC. She’d do it… I’ve seen a lot of tough girls, but I haven’t seen a girl with the whole package until I met her.”

On February 26, Rousey will fight Liz Carmouche, another former Strikeforce contender, who also just signed with UFC to become their first openly-gay fighter.

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December 7 is a day that will forever remain etched in my memory.

So far, I have not cried.

An anonymous contributor writes for Feminspire on coming out and dating her first girlfriend, then being bullied relentlessly at school and forbidden by the administration from attending prom as a couple.

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Despite my disagreement with the views on modesty latent in this post, I love the overall sentiment: Bodies are for doing things, and when they do them well, they are beautiful and worth seeing.

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Libby Anne of Love, Joy, Feminism argues that the Christian Patriarchy movement must always, by definintion (hers), engage in spiritual abuse:

Spiritual abuse involves one person telling another person or group of people what to believe and how to live, and then backing that up with some sort of coercive force, whether it be claims to divine authority or simple emotional manipulation.

(Libby Anne is a former Christian, now atheist.)

I don’t agree with the Christian Patriarchy movement, but this is nonsense. Libby Anne overlooks the fact that by this definition all of Christianity, and in fact, nearly all religion, constitutes spiritual abuse. I can speak most authoritatively about Christianity, so I will.

As much as evangelicals like to say that Christianity is a relationship, not a religion or list of rules, the Bible does contain some rules, and it backs up those rules with the authority of God by claiming to be his inspired work. Nearly every Sunday morning sermon ever preached thereby enagages in what is, by Libby Anne’s definition, spiritual abuse, when the pastor tells people how they should live based on the authority of the Bible and its divine author.

I like much better the definition of spiritual abuse given in the article Libby Anne links to from her blog:

Put most simply, spiritual abuse is the control of people by manipulation of their religious needs or sensitivities by means of shame.

This language is slightly narrower, and thus more useful. Moreover, while I’m sure the Christian Patriarchy movement frequently uses shame to control people, I have known environments that practiced patriarchy without becoming abusive.

There are plenty of arguments to make against gender inequality without resorting to broad, sweeping definitions that conveniently conform to our own opinions.

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Since I am currently reading The Feminine Mystique, I find it interesting that the 1960s represent the low point for feminine pronouns in literature.

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As small a step as this is, I have to regard an increase in education for women as a victory.

Via Jezebel.

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Sally McGraw of Already Pretty writes about still considering herself a feminist despite not measuring up to the demanding standards of feminists.

As someone who came to feminism because he wanted to be a better writer and muddled along for almost a year without really feeling like one, this gives me a little more confidence to just go ahead and say it:

I’m a feminist.

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To end the day on a happier note, I’d like to echo Jim Dalrymple in wishing a happy 10th Anniversary to Daring Fireball, my favorite website.

I’ve been reading Daring Fireball almost since John Gruber debuted the site in 2002, watching it grow from a hobby to his full-time job. Along the way, the company John covers grew from a niche business teetering on the brink of annihilation to the largest company and best-recognized brand in the world.

John Gruber is the kind of writer I want to be: thoughtful, meticulous, and sharp. He deserves every bit of his success.

Happy Anniversary to John and Daring Fireball.

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Speaking of rape, if you want to feel outraged, horrified, saddened, and trapped, you should watch this first episode of a (fictional) web series about the rape of a female U.S. Army Sergeant.

Even if that doesn’t sound like fun, here are three other reasons to watch:

1. The production values are fantastic for YouTube. The series stars Jennifer Beals of Flashdance (and more recently, The L Word) and Troian Bellisario of Pretty Little Liars and looks like broadcast-quality TV.
2. The series is three episodes long. Only the first is up on YouTube, but it clocks in at just over 11 minutes. So even if you eventually watch all three, the time commitment is low.
3. WIGS, the production company behind Lauren, makes woman-centric content with all-female leads. As such, the story takes its characters seriously and avoids objectification of any kind. This one-room, dialogue-driven scene between just two characters manages to rivet your attention with its exploration of the multi-faceted nature of rape within the ranks of our military.

You know what? You can probably scratch those first two reasons.

Via The Jane Dough

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Fantastic.

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I fear this will end up representing bureaucracy at its worst, but I’m trying to be optimistic, so: well done, Mr. President.

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Ryan Cragun, a sociologist of religion, is skeptical:

Still, Cragun does not believe the poll shows more people are becoming atheists, but rather that more people are willing to identify as atheists.

“For a very long time, religiosity has been a central characteristic of the American identity,” he said. “But what this suggests is that is changing and people are feeling less inclined to identify as religious to comply with what it means to be a good person in the U.S.”

The Sojourners article suggests other valid reasons to be skeptical of the results, but Cragun’s rationale seems out of touch with reality. The sort of person who thinks of herself as “a convinced atheist” has always put principle before pragmatism and wouldn’t think of espousing in public beliefs that she privately reviles.

The study shows undeniably, though, that the religious landscape of our culture is changing.

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Not unheard-of, but still horrifying.

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My thanks to The Fatal Feminist for linking to this post by Laura Bates at Women Under Siege.

It’s a dense and methodical read, but well worth the time if you want to understand some of the complexity of this problem.

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You could replace “Muslim” with “Christian”, and this would be just as accurate.

To an extent, you could also replace “women” with “men”.

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Stephen W. Simpson posts the second in his four-part series The Naked Truth About Saving Sex For Marriage over at The Good Men Project. The first post was more setup than content, but here he really digs in with some cold, hard facts for young couples to consider.

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Why should you care about the wrongful sentencing of a convicted murderer? Because due process and the rule of law protect not just the guilty but the innocent.

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Katie J.M. Baker:

Is it gender discrimination to separate adult men from children solely on the basis of their Y chromosome?

Of course it is, but this phrasing implies that gender discrimination is always unacceptable.

On the one hand, I can only imagine Baker’s snarkiness if we gender-swapped this situation, and at first blush it smacks a little of the sexist idea that men are always untrustworthy. On the other hand, in-flight child molestation seems like a very real problem, and I don’t doubt that most if not all of the perpetrators are men.

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If Christians have ever hurt or disappointed you, this might be good for you to read.

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I want to make one thing clear: I don’t care about Jennifer Aniston’s love life.

I’ll overlook the subtle knock to the romantic-comedy genre, because Chloe Angyal gets it so right here: constantly obsessing over Jennifer Aniston’s marital and parental status insults a talented and justly-successful lady and lowers us as a culture.

Via Women and Hollywood.

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Libby Anne of Love, Joy, Feminism gives a short history lesson based on this article at Slate about the fate of women in shipwrecks. Worth reading.

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We found four real women who negotiated for raises, and got them. These aren’t career coaches or hiring managers—they’re just ambitious, conscientious women like we are, who made things happen for themselves.

The key is in those last five words. The fact that employers ought to be the ones safeguarding pay equality shouldn’t stop women from fighting for what they deserve.

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I’ve avoided paying attention to the Kristen Stewart “cheating” scandal because I think celebrity gossip is beyond a waste of time, but also—probably more than I’d like to admit—because I just don’t care about Twilight or any of its stars. But this post from Halee Gray Scott stood out by offering a relatively balanced and feminist view of the situation from a Christian magazine (Her.meneutics is the “women’s blog” of Christianity Today).

While we wouldn’t explicitly say that Rupert Sanders or Brad Pitt (in his cheating on Jennifer Aniston with Jolie) were blameless in their sexual indiscretions, we imply this when we talk about “the other women” and call Jolie, Stewart, and other women “homewreckers.” Didn’t these men play an equal part in wrecking their own homes?

Also, earlier in the post:

Blaming women for sexual transgressions is nothing new. Studies show that both men and women often blame women for rape. Though most perpetrators of sexual crimes against children are men, mothers are often held responsible. Many believe that immodestly dressed women cause Christian men to commit sexual sin.

Scott derails late in the post by backtracking on the modesty issue and repeating smug Christian clichés about sexuality, but I’m inclined to forgive her because she frames the issue by referencing Gone With the Wind.

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In accordance with airline and FAA policy, although it seems airlines are able to offer “reasonable accomodation” to people with disabilities.

I’m not aware of any actual research suggesting that non-cell-phone electronic devices pose any threat to airline safety. It’s time for the FAA to end this policy.

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“Blue Milk”, writing for Feministe, puts a three-dimensional face on long-term breastfeeding:

I vaccinate my children, I wear pencil skirts and high heels, I ride a motorbike, I can’t sew, I like sex and violence in my TV shows (hello True Blood!), I used disposable nappies (diapers) on my babies, I am an atheist, I have never learnt yoga or meditation, and I am argumentative (so, I really should have taken the time at some point to learn yoga and meditation).

Worth reading for anyone who wants to understand the practice, as well as for people who have never breastfed (or, like me, never will). As strange as extended breastfeeding may seem in our culture, parents doing what they believe is best for their families in defiance of neither God nor government deserve only support.

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Fortunately, no one died, and only one—a security guard doing what he was hired for—was injured.

Steve Thorngate examines the slippery slope of using “hate” to describe negative behavior.

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To those of you who are considering or who are already doing unpaid internships, you need to make sure you know your rights. Here is a list of them according to the Department of Labor website.

Look out for yourself, and start doing it early.

Via The Jane Dough.

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Since the announcement of Paul Ryan as Mitt Romney’s choice for vice-presidential candidate, feminist websites have spewed considerable vitriol in Ryan’s direction, potraying him as anti-woman, anti-poor/pro-rich, anti-environment, and anti-immigrant.

All these things may be true. I have no idea.

The evidence offered is weak, though. I’ll give two examples.

On Monday, Feministing reported the announcement of Romney’s pick by listing reasons “Why Paul Ryan is bad news for women (and everyone else). Among them:

He voted against the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.¹ This isn’t a controversial issue, y’all. It simply protects women from being denied equal pay for equal work. I think we can all agree this is a no-brainer. (Except Paul Ryan.)

Then, earlier today, The Daily Beast covered Sister Simone Campbell, executive director of Network, a lobby advocating for the poor:

[Ryan] proposes reducing the federal budget deficit through substantial cuts in spending, which Sister Simone believes would hit low-income people hard. “In order to do what he says he is going to do, it takes drastic cuts,” she says, adding that Ryan does not generally go into detail about the specific programs for the poor that would be affected. “He’s trying to avoid enumerating them,” she says. “The truth is, there’s a shift of money to the top—tax cuts for the wealthy.” (Via Jezebel)

The clear intent of much of this coverage is to imply that Ryan wants women to receive discriminatory pay and poor people to continue suffering. Lest you think this exaggeration, the Feministing article precedes its list with this statement:

Paul Ryan is a potential Veep who has no interest except to disenfranchise most women — and basically everyone else except the super wealthy — in pretty astounding ways.

Now, to clarify: I will not be voting for Mitt Romney, so I don’t have to care whether Paul Ryan’s views align with my own. From the little I know of Ryan’s budget it seems at least somewhat misguided, and in his position I probably would have voted for the Ledbetter Act, but I object to the increasing tendency, even among journalists, to equate disagreement about methodology with hatred for a cause.

I’m a libertarian, and therefore not much of a fan of either major party; I can find something to disagree with about nearly everything done by our current Congress and President. I attribute no ill motives to our politicians, though. By and large, I think they are probably patriotic, well-motivated individuals who want the best for our country but disagree about the right way to achieve their mostly-laudable goals. Lacking evidence to the contrary, I’m going to assume that Paul Ryan voted against the Ledbetter Act because he thought it outside the scope of the federal government’s powers and drafted his budget proposal using principles he thought would secure the greatest properity possible for everyone. Anyone may think him incorrect, but only the small-minded assume that those who disagree with them about the best way to govern a country are selfish, hateful, or evil.

With regard to many core feminist issues I find myself in a difficult position, caught between my human, civil, and political ideals. I want employers to treat women and men equally, but I am unwilling to legislate a quota for female executives. I think women should be able to easily access contraception so they have control over their own fertility, but I don’t like federally-funded social services, even the ones that provide free birth control. Even on more peripheral issues that most feminists care about I don’t fit in. For example, I want immigrating to the United States to be easy and therefore believe we need immigration policy reform, but because I also believe in the rule of law I have no problem with deporting people who didn’t follow the correct procedure. I also opposed the Affordable Care Act, partly because I believe that everyone would be better off if we went in the direction of less regulation, not more, but also because I don’t believe health care is a basic human right the government should provide, no matter what Jesus said.

And now we circle back around to Sister Simone. Despite her contention that Ryan’s budget doesn’t fit with Catholic principles, Jesus has nothing to say about how to govern a country. He lived and spoke in a period of extensive disenfranchisement, so his audience had no paradigm for representative government. Many Christians believe that if Jesus were alive today he would, for example, tell us to enact universal health care because he cared about the fate of the poor. But Jesus was non-political, and his sermons were delivered to individuals, not legislators. Personally, I believe that even if he were walking the earth today Jesus would be almost totally uninterested in the business of running our country, preferring to spend his energy and limited resources directly on people.

For this reason, the best way our faith can inform our governance is by saying that we should exercise wisdom in everything we do. And the tricky thing about that is: everyone’s version of wisdom looks different.

Being new to the game, I had no idea who Helen Gurley Brown was until she died, although I did enjoy the movie adaptation of Sex and the Single Girl.

My wife reads Cosmo, and sometimes we share a good laugh over the sex advice columns. But as frivolous as it can be, Helen Gurley Brown’s reanimation of the magazine in 1965 was, at the time, counter-cultural:

Part of what made HGB such a trailblazer was that, unlike other feminists, she didn’t see high heels and dresses and lipstick and blow jobs as the shackles that bind us to a prison of traditional womanhood, but rather, part of what enables us to revel in the fun of femininity.

Whatever you think about the way sexual mores have developed in our culture, I don’t think women will look back in a hundred years and regret becoming more sex-positive.

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Leaving for school and realizing that my mother would not be able to get her degree felt a lot like survivor’s guilt. I was the only one on a clear path out of poverty. She threw her support behind me, and I did the only thing I could do: studied hard to make it up to her.

Sierra of The Phoenix and Olive Branch celebrates a victory that will melt any but the stoniest heart.

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The New York Times covers a recent study by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention that shows slightly less than half of teens aged 15–19 engaging in either vaginal or oral sex:

“There’s been a perception for many years that there’s some kind of epidemic of oral sex among teens,” said Leslie Kantor, vice president for education of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, who was not involved in the study. “If nothing else, this data provides a realistic sense of the numbers.”

This cautious celebration seems out of place to people with more traditional morals. While I firmly believe pre-marital sex is not the end of the world, it’s also not the spiritual ideal. Also, though I don’t have children, I’m guessing most people—Christian or not—don’t want their 17-year-olds to be sexually active yet.

More encouragingly, the study reveals that the numbers for teens engaging in oral sex are going down and that for the most part, kids are starting to engage in oral sex about the same time they begin vaginal intercourse. Dr. John Santelli of the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health thinks this is because they’re performing both acts with the same partner:

“I think what kids do is get involved in a relationship,” he said, “then at some point decide they’re ready to initiate vaginal sex, then probably engage in a whole repertoire of behaviors with that same partner.”

Via Jezebel.

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Libby Anne takes on the Christian conflation of instinctive sexual attraction with the kind of lust Jesus warned us about:

I think this creates a problem, though. You see, the more time you spend trying not to think about something, the more you end up thinking about it. Here, let me give you an example: Don’t think about purple elephants. You hear that? Don’t think about purple elephants. Now what are you thinking about? Purple elephants.

I like the idea of not demonizing sexual feelings, but its nonsense to say you can’t get your brain to think about something else. “Don’t think about elephants” only forces you to think about elephants for a second or two.

Let me give you my own example: Therapeutic Crisis Intervention advocates the use of distraction/redirection to support young people in crisis. I have co-workers who use this technique nearly every day. If a bunch of delinquent boys can ignore their emotions even when they’re just a step or two away from violence, I’m guessing the rest of us can manage it, too.

I’m currently thinking through my views on sexual attraction, lust, and infidelity, so I don’t know that I disagree with Libby Anne on this issue. But lets not surrender our agency just to prove the fundies wrong.

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Researchers follow up on an old study:

Between 1968 and 1974, about 650 4-year-olds in a nursery school at Stanford were offered a selection of marshmallows, cookies, and pretzels. After they chose one (let’s say it was the marshmallow, though I’d have picked a cookie myself), they were told they could either eat it immediately, or wait a few minutes and get two. The researcher giving the kids this choice then left the room.

Now in their 30s, the kids who were able to delay gratification for longer turn out to be better off in a number of ways.

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David Sessions writes a balanced piece on Family Research Council’s claim that Southern Poverty Law Center’s labeling of FRC as a “hate group” incited the August 15 shooting at FRC headquarters:

It seems like common sense that a lobbying group with offices in Washington is in a different category than racist groups like the Aryan Nations, which federal law-enforcement officials consider a domestic terrorist network. Though all hate groups are not equal, it remains difficult to draw a clear line where propaganda that demonizes an entire class of people—gays, African Americans, Jews, Muslims, immigrants—becomes hate.

I don’t know enough about Family Research Council to tell whether they have deliberately obfuscated facts or used pseudoscience to promote their agenda, but their methods probably deserve some criticism. No one deserves violent retaliation, though—which is why the “hate” label needs to go.

It seems outrageous to blame SPLC for the shooting; FRC is just engaging in opportunistic PR. But there’s a larger point to be made on the back of this controversy: we don’t need terms like “hate speech” or “hate crime”. Crime is crime, whether motivated by hate or not. Speech is either legal or not legal (in this country, usually legal), and you either agree or disagree with it. I can’t think of a single benefit we have derived from proliferation of the word “hate.”

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“Caperton” at Feministe compares the hobbies of fashion and coin collecting to make a point about gender-based assumptions:

Don’t waste a woman’s time talking about inconsequential things when there are consequential things that need to be discussed.

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Two years in a penal colony for “hooliganism”. Here’s the New York Times’ coverage of the original event.

I can understand Alex Epstein’s point about the nature of the crime, but as far as I can tell no one has suggested that the women entered the church illegally. Branding the crime “hooliganism” seems like an obvious smokescreen for establishment of religion. Nearly everything the court or government officials have had to say about Pussy Riot’s performance has revolved around disrespect to the Orthodox Church, blasphemy, or “inciting hate”:

The stiff punishment was handed down by a Moscow judge, Marina Syrova, who described the women as posing a danger to society and said they had committed “grave crimes” including “the insult and humiliation of the Christian faith and inciting religious hatred.”

Either way, the punishment seems egregious.

Via The XX Factor

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”The church has been sometimes accused of not forgiving them,” the bearded and bespectacled cleric said. “We did forgive them from the very start. But such actions should be cut short by society and authorities.”

Just the way Jesus would have said it.

Via Jezebel

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Katie J.M. Baker for Jezebel:

Doctors debated whether it was morally correct to start treating her cancer, given as Article 37 of the Dominican Constitution states that “the right to life is inviolable from the moment of conception and until death.”

Here’s Baker’s original coverage of the Dominican girl’s plight.

I don’t understand why it took her doctors 20 days to debate this issue. Even if the chemo would have killed her child, so would her death. Now both mother and child have died, when one of them had a shot at life.

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In case you don’t think Pussy Riot’s conviction was politically-motivated, read this account from Eli Lake at The Daily Beast of police brutality against one of the group’s prominent supporters:

The police officers, Kasparov said, began to carry his limp body into a van with others whom they had arrested. The former chess champion said he remembered screaming in agony.

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I’ve never even heard of this sort of thing. As serious as I believe the underlying misogyny is, I had to laugh at some of the archaic beliefs Amy Tennery outlines. I don’t want to ruin the fun, but here’s a taste:

Ayatollah Elm Alhuda argued that Iranian women should only bike in their backyards. “It is not a sign for a woman to sit on a bicycle saddle, provided she does so indoors or in her backyard. But if she cycles in public,” he said, according to Mohabat News. “Her movements and posture will lead to corruption and prostitution.”

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Molly Oswaks, one of two female Gizmodo writers, on the frequent allegations that she must have gotten her job by performing sexual favors:

We all use all sorts of technology on a daily basis. In fact, an argument could be made that women use more tech than men do. You know what’s a brilliant technology? The tampon. You know what else is? Condoms. The pill is a brilliant example of biotechnology. A pill that prevents you from getting pregnant! It is incredible!

Via The Frisky

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Garance Franke-Ruta at The Atlantic overviews the history of “forcible rapes won’t get you pregnant”.

As non-relevant as this is (since some forcible rapes obviously do result in preganancies), it would at least be nice to know, for the record, if there is any science at all behind this assertion. Come on, Science: give us the facts.

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Something even we cold-hearted libertarians can get behind.

Via Jezebel

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We don’t have to define ourselves as feminists merely because we’ve achieved a lot and happen to have two X chromosomes. No one has to be a feminist, and the celebrity should not be ostracized or shamed for being hesitant to reduce herself to a single word.

Exactly.

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Representative Todd Akin, who is running for Senate under the Tea Party banner, appeared on KTVI-TV in St. Louis today and claimed that it’s “really rare” for rape to result in pregnancy:

“If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”

Akin then went on to say that we’re definitively winning the War on Drugs, that Latinos are a privileged class in the U.S., and that George W. Bush was recently voted most popular American President ever by a stunning majority of Middle-Eastern nations.

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“Blue Milk” guest blogs at Feministe, relating some of the responses she received from her readers:

Sometime back in the first year of blogging I started wondering who was reading my blog, and if they were parents how they would define their feminist parenting. So, I put up a post with ’10 Questions About Your Feminist Parenthood’ and I waited to see what would happen. I expected maybe half a dozen responses, if I was lucky, but over the years word has spread and all together I have received almost 100 responses.. with more still coming in.

Obviously not at all scientific, but interesting. If you want to read her whole series of posts on the subject, I suggest starting at the end and working backward; if you start at the beginning there are no links to the later pages.

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I do not know if, in your terms, it was “legitimate rape.” Yes, I cried hysterically. Yes, I fought until my body ached. And, yes, I changed afterward in ways I could not ever imagine.

Vivid, compelling, and ultimately hopeful.

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The 79-year-old golf course, which only accepted its first black member in 1990, has invited Condoleeza Rice and South Carolina investment banker Darla Moore to join.

This is sort of off-topic, but I love Condoleezza Rice. Here’s what she said about taking up golf:

”I find that I enjoyed walking from shot to shot and deciding how I’m going to get out of this or that trouble,” she said. “I just enjoy the strategy of it.”

So great.

Via The Frisky

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Since I asked the question yesterday, here’s a response from the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists on the scientific accuracy of Akin’s claim:

There is absolutely no veracity to the claim that “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to shut that whole thing down.”

There you go. Thanks, SCIENCE!

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Conor Friedersdorf writes a light-hearted response to this Politico story about the FBI’s investigation of a few Republican officials and their staff who “disrobed” or “partially disrobed” to swim in the sea of Galilee during a privately-funded trip last summer. I won’t ruin it.

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Despite receiving complaints from viewers outraged that an advertisement would refer to a woman’s vagina as a “vagina”, New Zealand’s Advertising Standards Authority has decided that this commercial for Carefree Acti-Fresh Panty Liners does not violate their code.

Who knows whether viewers would have been as disgusted if the body part in question had been a penis (sometimes referred to as a “penis”). Beyond sexism, this incident illustrates the irrational discomfort Westerners feel with our own sexuality. When even the non-sexual functions of our sexual organs illicit such prudish reactions, we must admit we have a very real problem.

More optimistically, though, the Carefree ad (the first to actually use the words “vagina” and “discharge” together, and possibly the first to even say “vagina”) came in response to research by the company showing women wanted advertisers to stop using euphemisms for the vagina. Maybe women (or people in general) are tiring of the body-shaming that words like “hoo-ha” and “coochie” subtly reinforce.

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User-submitted stories of the kind of minor incidents that don’t matter too much in themselves but add up to a culture of oppression. Just in case you think sexism is dead.

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Some follow-up to my post from two days ago about outdated and outlandish bicycling bans for women.

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Let’s lighten it up with Katie J.M. Baker’s breakdown of the different “types” of rape. For example:

In 1990, Texas Republican gubernatorial nominee Clayton Williams told ranchers that victims should take rape in stride and try to enjoy it — like when you have picnic plans but then there’s a huge thunderstorm so you decide to see a movie instead and it turns out to be a pretty enjoyable afternoon after all!

The piece is a little exasperating but still mostly funny. As you might suppose, Baker makes a more serious point at the end.

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Dodai Stewart for Jezebel:

People who don’t understand why Rihanna keeps Chris Brown in her life just don’t get abusive relationships. This is not to say that she is to blame—she is not. But often after an assault and in unhealthy relationships, there’s fear, embarrassment, hope that the other person will change. And emotions—love—can continue to run strong and deep.

Abuse isn’t as cut-and-dried in the victim’s mind as it is (or should be) for the rest of us.

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Molly Ball at The Atlantic examines the implications of Todd Akin’s seemingly firm decision to stay in the Missouri Race:

The GOP’s unanimity on Akin shows that Republicans recognize the serious and far-reaching implications if he hangs around. Akin disagrees – he thinks the current storm will blow over and he can still win.

Where Ball errs, I believe, is in assuming that Akin cannot possibly win this election. I think she underestimates the electorate’s eagerness to believe good of those they support; I suspect that Akin’s hollow apology will actually ring true to the ears of many Republicans because they agree with him on the central issue in question.

To be clear, I’m not saying Akin will definitely win; Ball could be correct. I just don’t think this incident spells certain death for his campaign. And whether he wins or loses, Akin certainly is garnering attention for his pet issue:

”That’s the reason we are going to continue,” he said. “I believe there is a cause here. There’s something that’s missing. A lot of people feel left out of the parties.”

We’ll see whether Romney and the rest of the GOP can pivot quickly and effectively enough to keep the conversation where they want it: on the economy instead of on social issues.

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Nahida, the Fatal Feminist, posts today about how she polices her own modesty by correctly interpreting the Qur’an:

The Prophet, peace be upon him, responded, “God is beautiful and loves beauty. Arrogance is rejecting truth and looking down on people.”

The Qur’an and the Bible obviously have different things to say about this issue, but the principles Nahida espouses translate well for Christians. I love her bold and playful response to criticism of her modesty.

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Just for the sake of balance, let me say that I agree with Amy Tennery’s conclusion but not her rationale:

We can’t forgive Akin because there are people (lots of them, in fact) who still don’t understand what he said is fundamentally wrong.

Forgiveness should be based on sincere remorse (which Akin hasn’t shown, in my opinion), not on whether the effects of the offense have diminished to our liking.

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This is actual science:

NGF in the semen acts as a hormonal signal, working through the hypothalamus of the female brain and the pituitary gland. This triggers the release of other hormones that signal the ovaries to release an egg or eggs.

Our bodies are amazing and weird.

Via Jezebel

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Iranian universities have changed many of their majors to be available to men only, not even bothering to hide the sexism of the decision:

The science and higher education minister, Kamran Daneshjoo, dismissed the controversy, saying that 90% of degrees remain open to both sexes and that single-gender courses were needed to create “balance”.

Currently 65% of university students in Iran are women.

Via Jezebel

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Todd Akin needs everyone’s (or at least Missouri’s) forgiveness for his terrible, unscientific comments about rape because he is not planning to heed the calls of GOP leaders and peers to drop out of his Senate race:

“The fact is, rape can lead to pregnancy… The mistake I made was in the words I said, not in the heart I hold. I ask for your forgiveness.”

I don’t think anyone is going to believe this. Akin’s record of redefining rape extends beyond this event. If he wanted to make a believable apology, he should have said “I accept that I was wrong”, not “I misspoke”.

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Great post at xoJane about spouses who work together:

When I know my husband has a lot of work coming up in the next few weeks, I will schedule extra podcasts before he’s swamped, I will edit our webshow on my own, I’ll respond to his emails—I have no problems picking up slack for him, because I understand that my co-worker would do the work if he humanly had the time.

As someone striving to be self-employed and empower my partner to do the same, Gordon’s situation—fraught with potential pitfalls as it may be—sounds delightful.

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Great tongue-in-cheek piece from two years ago by Ben Pobjie:

I have prepared, for the benefit of my fellow man and also people who play football, a Handy Guide To Not Raping People. Feel free to print it out and keep it in your shirt pocket, men, so next time you find yourself in an awkward situation where it seems you have no choice but to rape someone, you can check the guide and gracefully extricate yourself from the sticky predicament.

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”The idea of saving sex for marriage is like a hill that every Christian person tries, at one point, to climb. Most stop trying as soon as they fall off for the first time. But I keep fighting the inertia that tells me, ‘You’ve already done it, you might as well keep doing it.’ It’s not a numbers thing, I don’t care about that. It’s more like, if I believe in this idea—which I do—then I need to keep trying to hold myself to it.”

I could scarcely support this type of thinking more. Abstinence until marriage is the Christian ideal—but so are lots of other things. We don’t shame people who fail at hospitality and tell them they’re damaged goods to any future guests they may have, so we shouldn’t do it to people who screw up by having sex before they’re married.

Virginity is a social construct, and it’s one I don’t think God cares about at all. What God cares about is purity. Read this interview for some unique, vulnerable thoughts on that subject from someone who admits to frequently missing the mark.

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Perhaps the anti-grail, the opposite of female viagra:

”This compound produces a rapid and reversible decrease in sperm count and motility with profound effects on fertility. These findings suggest that a reversible, oral male contraceptive may be possible.”

Thought experiment: how might sexual dynamics change in our culture if women expected men to always be on the pill in order to be sexually active?

Via Your Tango

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As a follow-up to something I posted a week ago, here’s a comment over at The Good Men Project about American Airlines’ new policy allowing men to be moved out of a seat next to an unaccompanied minor:

”The moment we accept one policy justifying discrimination on the basis of gender is the moment we accept all policies justifying discrimination on the basis of gender.”

Hard to argue with that.

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Suppose a man has intercourse with a young woman who is a virgin but is not engaged to be married. If they are discovered, he must pay her father fifty pieces of silver. Then he must marry the young woman because he violated her, and he may never divorce her as long as he lives.

This is a quotation of the Mosaic law from Deuteronomy 22:28–29. The practice outlined seems strange to 21st-century Westerners because it is based on an understanding of women as property that was common in the cultures of the day (and in some contemporary cultures). Women had value to their fathers only if they could bring in money from a potential husband; otherwise they were a financial drain because, unlike sons, they could not grow up to become wealthy of their own accord and support their parents in their old age. Since men wanted to marry virgins (in much the same way that everyone likes shiny new things, not tarnished used things), women who had had sexual intercourse were nearly worthless for this purpose, which is why this law was, for its day, compassionate: it prevented men from making a woman worthless on the marriage market by having sex with her but refusing to pay up, or leaving her destitute by divorcing her after a shotgun wedding.

This explains why the law does not bother to distinguish between a man who rapes an unengaged woman and one who has consensual sex with her: because the market did not distinguish. Men wanted intact vaginas, and women who have been raped don’t possess them. The preceding verses of Deuternomy make this clear:

Suppose a man meets a young woman, a virgin who is engaged to be married, and he has sexual intercourse with her. If this happens within a town, you must take both of them to the gates of that town and stone them to death. The woman is guilty because she did not scream for help. The man must die because he violated another man’s wife. In this way, you will purge this evil from among you. But if the man meets the engaged woman out in the country, and he rapes her, then only the man must die. Do nothing to the young woman; she has committed no crime worthy of death. She is as innocent as a murder victim. Since the man raped her out in the country, it must be assumed that she screamed, but there was no one to rescue her. (Deuteronomy 22:23–27)

In this case, another man has already paid for this woman, so the rapist is essentially committing a robbery for which he cannot make restitution. As with nearly every other sexual sin mentioned by Moses, the prescribed penalty is death.

The model of women as property persisted in our culture until much more recently than we would like to admit, and some of its symbolism yet lingers. Many still find it romantic for a man to ask a father’s permission to marry his daughter, and nearly every man in our culture gives his female fiancé an engagement ring—essentially a downpayment offered so she will withdraw herself from the market. Even some language that reinforces the concept is only just beginning to fade from popular use: older people still use expressions like “ruined woman” or “damaged goods” to refer to women who have engaged in sexual intercourse before marriage.

The first-wave feminists fought for women to be recognized as individuals separate from their fathers or husbands and their value as property. They wanted, and achieved, property rights (among others) for women in the eyes of the law, but the cultural shift and scientific advancements that would put women in charge of their own sexuality and fertility had not yet occurred. The concept of virginity as a valuable possession to be surrendered only to one’s husband remained prevalent, and the bearing and raising of valuable children who would assure a family’s long-term prosperity and status continued to be a woman’s primary function in society.

When, therefore, the feminists of the 1960s began to awaken and rouse others to action on behalf of the stifled and stunted women of their day, they naturally focused on sexual and domestic liberation. The battle for a woman’s control over her own fertility waged both wars simultaneously, promoting sexual activity free from the threat of pregnancy via two methods: easily obtainable contraception and legal abortion. Activists framed both issues in an idea that resonated strongly after centuries of patriarchal oppression: a woman’s right to her own body.

Of course, the United States eventually got legal abortion on the principle of a woman’s right to privacy—a concept distilled from the Fourteenth Amendment, which protects citizens from being deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process. Essentially, the Supreme Court decided that a woman’s body was her own property with which the State had no right to interfere.¹

Decades later, and in the face of renewed and more-successful efforts to limit abortion rights, debate on the issue waxes ever more vehement and personal. Feminists understandably still regard the right to abortion as fundamentally based on the principle of liberty: that a woman should be free to choose what happens with and to her own body. Consequently, they perceive anti-abortion activism as a reassertion of patriarchy—an attempt on the part of a still male-dominated legislature to take back control of women’s bodies.

Giving credence to this belief, many of the principal voices for the anti-abortion movement do, in fact, sound remarkably like the voice of ancestral male privilege. Rape denialists try to rationalize away exceptions to proposed anti-abortion legislation with junk science. The same groups that oppose abortion also oppose readily-available contraception (another important feminist achievement), even though increased use of contraception has led to lower abortion rates. Opponents of abortion rights even tend to vote against unrelated issues women feel are important.

But as progressive an issue as legal abortion once was (and still may be), in this one respect feminists are behind the times: anti-abortion activists, with some notable exceptions, are no longer out to take back ownership of women and their bodies. They just want to factor another person into the equation.

Aside: If you’re a feminist, this is probably the point at which you might be tempted to bail. I’ve invoked the much-reviled “personhood” concept, so even if you continue reading to the end of this post, you’ll probably be so angry that nothing I say will make much of an impression.

I’ve been there—trust me—but I think if you take a moment to remind yourself what a reasonable, open-minded person you are, you’ll be able to keep reading without calling me names in your head. And hopefully you’ll be able to see my point, even if you still disagree.

Opponents of abortion rights usually employ the rationale of fetal personhood as the basis for their views. The argument goes something like this: “The fetus is a person, too, and therefore it has rights, including the most fundamental right, the right to be alive. So even though the pregnant woman has a right to privacy and control of her own body, those rights do not trump the right the fetus has to continue living.”

Validation for the concept of fetal personhood usually seems to come from one of two sources: common sense, and the Bible.

Now, this isn’t the time to delve into the Bible’s reliability as a science textbook or its divine authority. The passages usually referenced to validate fetal personhood are much of the same sort; you can read a few here, here, here, and here. Ignoring also the question of how literally to interpret what are for the most part verses of poetry, what actually matters is that the Bible is not a valid basis on which to make legislative decisions. The First Amendment won’t let us get away with that.

We’ll therefore exclude the Bible. That leaves us common sense. The common-sense argument for fetal personhood goes something like this:

“Of course unborn children are people! Otherwise how could they be born so many months early and still live and develop into fully-functioning humans just like those carried fully to term? They start out as zygotes, but they must turn into people at some point. We don’t know where that point is, but to be on the safe side so we don’t end up killing any people, we should just assume that point is as early as possible.”

The problem is, the argument against fetal personhood is also an argument from common sense. “Of course fetuses turn into people at some point, but we don’t know where that point is. To be on the safe side, so we don’t infringe on anyone’s right to privacy, we should assume it’s as late as possible. After all, we know for sure that the pregnant woman is a person. We’ll focus on making sure she has all her rights.”

That, in essence, is the true nature of the debate. Obscured as it often is by extremist views on rape, religiously-based sexual ethics, conflation of the issue with contraception, and political partisanship in its rawest form, the issue of abortion rights boils down to whether we should care more about protecting the right of a potential person to live or the rights of a definite person to control her own body and destiny.

Even with this as the starting point, the debate is so multi-faceted and emotionally-charged for both sides that discourse on the subject will probably be impassioned and true consensus impossible, but let us first understand each other. And as I wrote last week, we should try to assume the best of one another, even when we disagree.

“Jill” at Feministing reminds everyone about the site’s commenting policy because people have, apparently, been pretty mean of late:

My writing is more focused on buffering against the inevitable critiques than actually writing. It’s made me a worse writer.

This resonates very strongly with me for two reasons. Firstly, I recently experienced what amounted to an attack at a different site by someone who is probably generally well-meaning, and it made me want to never participate in a conversation on that blog again. I’m guessing this is contrary to the wishes of the site’s author.

Secondly… well, you’ll probably see soon.

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Rick Warren has canceled his planned repeat of 2008’s moderated forum between the two front-running presidential candidates, despite favorable circumstances:

“The forum was praised for its unique format and fairness,” Warren said Wednesday while announcing a decision not to hold the forum. “Also, the TV networks were eager to cover it again since it garnered one of the largest viewing audiences of that election. I talked with both campaigns about the possibility of doing it again, and they were both favorable to participating.”

Warren cites a pattern of incivility that has marked the campaigns of both Romney and Obama. Props to Warren for turning down what I assume would have been significant revenue from the TV rights, but I’m not sure I like his alternate plan:

“The constitution doesn’t just guarantee your freedom to worship; it guarantees you freedom from government intervention in you daily living out what you believe. That’s why we’ve chosen to host a civil forum on religious freedom in September instead of the presidential forum. It’s a fight for the constitution, not a personality.”

On the one hand, I’m a big fan of religious freedom, and Warren does plan to invite representatives from all three Abrahamic religions, but I don’t know that I buy into his belief in “widespread attempts to redefine the First Amendment”.

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Sierra of The Phoenix and Olive Branch laments politicized Christianity (or more accurately, Christianized politics):

Since my first vote, I’ve watched America polarize. I’ve been more and more frustrated that our political parties are like football teams: you buy the merchandise, stick it on your car and scream about what losers the other side’s fans are. You posture and talk philosophy, but you don’t engage any complicated issues.

Except for Sierra’s belief that both parties are not equally bad, I agree wholeheartedly.

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There are Christians who claim to be committed to inerrancy and the literal truth of the Bible, but the two inevitably conflict, and when they do, it is the latter that is sacrificed at the altar of the former.

The example given doesn’t exactly work because two conflicting versions of Jesus’ genealogy can’t possibly both be “literally true”. Maybe the Bible doesn’t need to be “literally true”, though; maybe it just needs to be True.

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The Comma is bitter, but that’s not going to keep her from showing up to work everyday; she’s practical, too. She loves dogs and makes really good brownies, with nuts in them.

For the Grammar Nerds. Adorable.

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Great profile of two extraordinary women.

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August 27: That’s Monday, People!

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The fantastic Amy Mebberson has posted Pocket Princesses #27.

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The governor of Arizona has signed into law The “Women’s Health and Safety Act”, which defines pregnancy as beginning two weeks before conception.

That’s right, kids: rather than stopping at a mere outlawing of abortion during all trimesters of pregnancy like those pansies at the RNC, Jan Brewer is paving the way for preventing women from aborting the babies of men they haven’t even had sex with yet.

I don’t think Jan Brewer realizes the dangerous ground she’s treading on here. You know what I’m talking about: paradoxes. What if a woman gets an abortion before she has sex—you know, as a precautionary measure—but then doesn’t hook up with the guy after all? Can the baby be said to be both aborted and not aborted at the same time?

You can’t be too careful with Schrödinger, is all I’m saying.

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So maybe I was wrong.

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Shauna Prewitt, writing for CNN on the appalling state of laws restricting a rapist’s custody rights:

It would not be long before I would learn firsthand that in the vast majority of states – 31 – men who father through rape are able to assert the same custody and visitation rights to their children that other fathers enjoy. When no law prohibits a rapist from exercising these rights, a woman may feel forced to bargain away her legal rights to a criminal trial in exchange for the rapist dropping the bid to have access to her child.

My thanks to Nahida, The Fatal Feminist, for the link.

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Women don’t take birth control to have sex. They take it to control their lives. Because that is to what our worth has been reduced.

This is the pivot paragraph of a very confusing piece by the aforementioned Nahida, connecting, if I understand her correctly, the negative effects of her choice to stop using contraception with a patriarchal attempt to control her body by reducing the availability of cheap contraception through attacks on the Affordable Care Act.

I don’t understand the connective tissue of her thoughts in this post, so I can’t follow her logic at all. What starts out as a vivid and engaging explanation of the costs and benefits of choosing abstinence over contraception devolves rapidly with the above quote into essentially an extended rant. I very much appreciate Nahida’s writing, but in this post I think she goes wide of the mark.

Take, for example, this quote from Sari Weintraub:

“The bottom line is that before the ACA insurers legally discriminated against women who purchased health insurance. Women’s premiums were higher because insurance companies claimed that women use the health care system more often and incur higher total health care costs. It’s called ‘gender rating,’ and it’s used to charge women more than men for the same policy. There are also particular health services specific to uterus-owners, such as Pap smears, pregnancy and prenatal care, and childbirth. For insurance companies, being female is a risk factor in determining coverage costs.”

I’m betraying my libertarian/capitalist bias here, but this statement seems even internally consistent, not to say disingenuous. Weintraub complains about charging higher fees to women than men “for the same policy”, but acknowledges in the very next sentence that women use more services than men. She uses the expresssion “legally discriminated”, but by her description, insurance companies were not discriminating at all; they offered women more services and thus charged them more.

Nahida offers this paragraph without comment, so I feel we can take it as accurately expressing her own sentiments, but apart from anger at the perceived regulation of her vagina, it’s hard to tell what those sentiments are.

I’m with her, though, in her response to this piece of rhetoric from Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.):

“I know in your mind you can think of times when America was attacked. One is December 7th, that’s Pearl Harbor day. The other is September 11th, and that’s the day of the terrorist attack… I want you to remember August the 1st, 2012, the attack on our religious freedom. That is a day that will live in infamy, along with those other dates.”

This is asinine, no doubt about it. But it seems like quite a leap from pointing out the idiocy of comparing mandatory contraception coverage with terrorism to assuming that anyone opposed to said coverage must be seeking an overthrow of women’s rights:

If you don’t have that control, someone else does, because you are a thing to be controlled. Make no mistake of it. You have always been. And when they think they can control your uterus, they will believe they are entitled to control your First Amendment rights. Because this is a mentality, and it lives on reducing women to the sex class.

Someone else, please: read it for yourself and help me out.

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According to David Frum, analyzing a graph from, of all sources, The National Right to Life Committee: prosperity.

Wow, their website is terrible.

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Now here’s something that really smacks of patriarchy: an art exhibit of live “sleeping beauties” where audience members participate and may end up married to the sleepers.

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Or maybe not. Molly Ball revisits her earlier analysis of Todd Akin’s chances.

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Five women participated in the stunt that landed three of the band in prison. The other two were never caught or identified.

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Nahida, The Fatal Feminist, contends that abortion is an inalienable right on the level of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. While I’m glad to see her return to a (for the most part) reasoned and measured approach to the subject, a major part of her argument rests on a very untrue premise:

When a woman who is 8 to 9 months pregnant arrives at a doctor’s office and says, “I don’t want to be pregnant anymore. Make me not pregnant anymore,” the doctor who agrees to abort the pregnancy, whether by triggering an early birth or by surgically removing the baby from the mother, is obligated to abort the pregnancy in such a way that does not interfere with the inalienable right to life of this (newly) independent life-form. The baby can be placed in an incubator and may survive. If it does not, the woman is even less responsible for its death than the doctor. She merely separated the fetus from her body, the same way a doctor can decide not to provide resources to sustain the child’s life if, for example, finances are inadequate.

While this seems like a laudable attempt to answer the pro-life camp on it’s own terms, this statement is only true if intended as an ethical prescription rather than a description of actual United States law and practice. Since Nahida so prominently references the Declaration of Independence in her post and uses it to frame the discussion, I think we may take the above as descriptive, not prescriptive.

In that case she is incorrect: the common abortion procedures definitely harm or outright kill the fetus. Planned Parenthood’s description of the Dilation & Evacuation process makes this quite clear:

In later second-trimester procedures, you may also need a shot through your abdomen to make sure there is fetal demise before the procedure begins.

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Brian Earp analyzes the efficacy and value of responses to Todd Akin’s incorrect remarks regarding the rate of pregnancies resulting from rape. He particularly focuses on the medical correction issued by the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, which labelled Akin’s words “offensive” and “insulting”:

If Akin is mistaken on his facts, then provide evidence of his confusion, so that your audience is equipped to rebut him (and others who make the same false claims) when debating difficult subjects such as rape and abortion. To declare that the man’s remarks are “offensive” and “insulting” detracts from the factual dispute, which is the arena in which ACOG is best poised to make a useful contribution.

Earp then extends this logic to argue that the way forward in this and all debates lies through understanding of the opponent’s premises, flawed though they may be:

Todd Akin is not (simply) an idiot who hates women. I don’t know Todd Akin, so I cannot say what’s in his heart. He clearly does have a motivated moral reasoning system, as each of us does, whose operation extends from certain—arguably objectionable—premises, to mistaken (even dangerous) factual conclusions, through the mechanism of something like Liu and Ditto’s “moral coherence.” My point is that we should try to understand what is going on in his mind, so that we can more effectively combat the garbage that comes out of his mouth.

I couldn’t agree more with this. Or, sadly, with this:

Unfortunately, this sort of fair-minded effort to understand how it is that an otherwise intelligent person could fall so far afield of reality is rare when it comes to political hot-topics involving moral disagreement.

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Jenn LeBow blogs for Rachel Held Evans about her earliest best friend—a 75-year-old-lady she met at the age of 3:

As a 26-year-old woman, she married Neil Foster, but she firmly insisted that she would not give up teaching her beloved Sunday School class. She would not switch denominations to attend church with her husband. He didn’t press the point. Maybe that doesn’t sound like a big deal to me or to you. In 1924, though, only four years after women received the right to vote, and living in small-town Texas, it’s thrilling to think of her convictions and his support. (emphasis hers)

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The women of Togo, a small African country, are staging a sex strike calling for the resignation of Togo’s current president.

How’s that for controlling women’s bodies?

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Part 3 of Stephen W. Simpson’s excellent series “The Naked Truth About Saving Sex for Marriage” addresses impotence for men and difficulty orgasming for women. You can read read part 1 here and part 2 here.

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Arg. While I couldn’t care less about the fate of the Republican Party, how can anti-abortion activists and apologists expect anyone to engage in reasoned discourse when they spew nonsense like this?

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Congratulations to Lydia Ko, winner of the Canadian Women’s Open at the age of 15.

Sounds like she has her priorities straight, too. Next stop: high school diploma.

Via Jezebel.

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Kay Bailey Hutchison, a soon-to-be-retired Senator from Texas, defends the GOP against accusations of misogyny. She hasn’t persuaded me that her track record of championing the cause of women extends to her entire party, but she’s right about this:

Women make up half of the most diverse country in the world. We are represented ethnically, socially, racially, economically, religiously and ideologically across the spectrum. To say that there is a set of concerns that can be labeled “women’s issues” is absolutely true. To assume that we all feel the same way about them—or that we must feel the same way about them to represent our gender legitimately—is inherently sexist.

There’s more than one way to be a feminist.

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Pens made just for women but priced higher than otherwise identical gender-neutral pens.¹ Every bit as stupid as it sounds. The Amazon reviews are wonderful:

I will never use BIC products again after seeing the blasphemy of BIC for Her pens. I pray that each of you keeps your daughters locked away until she is suitably married lest she comes under the influence of these harlot pens. Remember what the Bible teaches us on women’s learning!

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Hanna Rosin reports on a few stupidly-obvious solutions Google has implemented in order to hire and retain female employees. For example:

Women recruits were more likely to turn down a job if they only talked to men during the hiring process. So Google made sure every woman candidate also talked to another woman.

The company also hiked maternity leave to five months from three and made it fully paid when they found out that new mothers were leaving the company at twice the rate of other employees.

Rosin spins this sort of behavior as stemming from Google’s data-driven, analytical DNA. But these solutions are common sense; anyone could think of them, if they really wanted to. Want new mothers to stay with the company? Make it easy for them to do so. Want to make female recruits feel comfortable in a male-dominated field? Introduce them to some women in your company.

Businesses themselves are best able to solve the problem of gender inequality and wage gaps, if properly motivated.

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Interesting pair of posts on the Sojourners website: a husband and wife arguing about complementarianism v. egalitarianism.

The wife is nice enough to ask that we read her husband’s post first. She then takes the opposing side. The identity of the complementarian will probably surprise you not at all.

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A crowdsourced movement to end street harassment through information-gathering, shared storytelling, and strategic mutual empowerment:

We believe that everyone has a right to feel safe and confident without being objectified. Sexual harassment is a gateway crime that creates a cultural environment that makes gender-based violence OK.

My wife could scarcely walk to school in downtown Los Angeles without being hit on or physically harassed, or enduring comments about her vagina.

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When I adore the aesthetic of a brand or store and cannot squeeze into anything they offer, I feel heartbroken and hurt. And, perhaps more importantly, I’m inclined to blame myself. I mean, obviously if my hips can’t be jammed into a single pair of those pants I’m a disproportionate, repellent eyesore.

A friendly, reassuring post from Sally McGraw. Your body doesn’t need to fit your clothes; your clothes need to fit your body.

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Meet Detroit prosecutor Kym Worthy, the woman who’s been leading the charge to sort through more than 11,000 untested police “rape kits” since 2009.

Worthy and her cohorts have already identified 20 serial rapists. Click through to the original Daily Beast article to read more about Worthy, her mission, and the high stakes involved.

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In this new series co-hosted by from two to one and The Feminist Mystique, we will be profiling an array of individuals and couples about their last name decisions upon marriage or what they expect to choose if they marry.

The first story is from Anne, a professor of communication studies.

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I’m with Nahida; I could almost become a Republican just for this.

Oh, and also: Mitt Romney is now officially the Republican nominee for President. Whatever.

Via The Fatal Feminist.

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Not the reactionary sniping I was expecting:

So how does Ann Romney get away with this? Because she framed it not as a problem to be fixed but a trial that women have to endure. She put a positive spin on it, claiming that these extra struggles make us women extra good. Instead of demanding equality, she encouraged her female audience instead to take their payment in martyrdom.

I’m not sure I agree with Amanda Marcotte’s characterization of this message as “refreshing”, but I’m at least happy to see some part of the Republican Party not engaging in denialism.

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I didn’t learn to be a feminist from Margaret Atwood or Simone de Beavoir. I learned to be a feminist from Jesus.

Rachel Held Evans contrasts her experience of discrimination inside the church with the implicit feminism of the New Testament.

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If you want to feel alive again inside, read this story about a man exploring the entire world of music, courtesy of his new hearing aids.

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I wish some feminist writers would make it easier for me to agree with them wholeheartedly. Today’s exhibit is a piece by Soraya Chemaly for The Huffington Post that opens with this story:

Today 27-year-old Sonali Mukherjee will have surgery to help reconstruct her face. It melted nine years ago, leaving a painful mask in its place, after three young men poured acid on her while she slept. This was their response to her fending off their relentless sexual advances as she made her way to school every morning.

Chemaly extends the moral of Mukherjee’s heartbreaking story to our own country by linking to several reports of men in the U.S. setting women (usually their girlfriends) on fire. The accounts are all horrific. At least we can have the satisfaction of knowing that each of these crimes is being investigated or prosecuted, and some of them have resulted in actual convictions—facts that I had to discover for myself, since Chemaly fails to mention them.

Chemaly then transitions to indicting the concept of “family privacy”, and this is where she completely loses me:

“The family’s right to privacy” is a specific code for certain male heads-of-households’ exercise of traditionally held privileges of male domination that allow the violation of the human rights of the women and girls they are intimate with. It doesn’t matter where in the world the girls and women are. This family, in which a man made his young children videotape 51 minutes of his verbal and physical abuse of his wife, had a right to privacy.

Reading the news coverage Chemaly links to reveals that the man in question is now serving the longest-ever sentence for domestic violence that didn’t result in the death of the victim. I’m not sure how a severely-punished crime indicates that the United States has implemented a “family privacy” policy destructive to women’s bodily rights. The only other evidence Chemaly provides for this assertion is “our inability to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act”. But The Violence Against Women Act of 2012 passed the House earlier this year, and while partisanship and social conservatism have held up reconciliation of the House and Senate versions of the bill, it is still expected to eventually pass and be signed into law.

And here Chemaly gets to what seems to be her real point: Republicans are evil. She offers plenty of evidence, much of it by this point news to no one. While I continue in my belief that most Republicans, like most people, are decent, well-motivated, and humane, the GOP has certainly given women some shoddy treatment of late. And that’s what is so irksome about Chemaly’s entire article: if what she really wanted to do was point the finger at The Right for perpetuating gender stereotypes, limiting access to women’s health care, and engaging in slut- and victim-shaming, she had plenty of tools at her disposal. There was no need for this series of shaky connections subtly attempting to blame conservatives for perpetuating a culture of violence against women that extends all the way to India.

She raises an interesting question at the end, though:

For men, the ability to be successful and pursue their individual destinies in traditional ways might require the government to be small and go away. This tenacious idea has meant that women’s rights were subsumed. For individual women, in order to offset systematized sexism, misogyny, and violence (most of which takes place at the hands of individual men in a domestic context), it may mean that government has to intercede in new and different ways.

Chemaly and I would probably disagree about exactly how and when the government should intercede, but I’ve been thinking about this very issue for several weeks now.

Via Fem2pt0.

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I reckon that if put up to the task, a random American on the street could not explain step-by-step ovulation, production of sperm, fertilization, and implantation of the zygote in the uterus and the subsequent stages of pregnancy and childbirth. Isn’t it odd that we can put people on the moon, yet we can’t accurately describe how we reproduce ourselves?

If we teach kids finance, we should probably teach them how their bodies work. Practical education has its place.

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Charming and heartening story. This girl sounds totally rock-and-roll, but maybe my favorite part of the story:

“You’d think the other team would want to know why I’m there, but other players have been great. After the game, they shook my hand and said it was great I was playing football.”

Generally, people are nice. I’m sure Erin DiMeglio will face harassment during her football career, but my guess is most of the boys she plays with and against will welcome her.

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Powerful, disturbing, and yes, funny.

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Last week The Hairpin published “Interview With a Lapsed Christian Virgin”, an ambiguously-titled but thoughtful and fair-minded discussion with “Clara”, a twenty-something Christian woman who engages in frequent sex with her boyfriend but still values and strives for the ideal of “purity”.¹ Probably only our ongoing collective outrage against Todd Akin prevented the feminist blogosphere from just exploding on the spot.

In fact, the piece did not get much attention, except from this site and from “Jill” at Feministe, who laments:

Don’t get me wrong: I appreciate Clara’s insights, and I think she’s very brave for sharing her perspectives… It’s a great interview and this isn’t meant as a critique of it, or even of sexual abstention. If people want to abstain from sex until marriage (or abstain from sex until forever, or whenever) that’s great—your body, your choice. I don’t have a problem with choosing to be abstinent until X date or event (your wedding, college, your 18th birthday, your 40th birthday, whatever); I do have a big problem with the Christian language and theory behind the “purity” rationale for waiting until marriage to have sex.

The biggest is the concept of “purity” itself, and the idea that sex somehow makes you impure if you aren’t married. Sex is not sullying; sex is not “dirty”….

Certainly, the use of the word “purity” does a disservice to both believing and non-believing audiences, and Jill understandably draws the conclusion that Christians view sex as dirty. Compounding the confusion, many conservative churches and movements do treat sex as shameful and taboo in their attitudes and practices, even when their actual words acknowledge its beauty and sanctity. Words are important, so trying to redefine “purity” as “chastity” (a much more robust, meaningful word) may turn out to be a losing battle; the Church would do well to simply change our messaging. But I didn’t come here to talk about PR.

The tone of Clara’s remarks on her sexual experiences and their intersection with her beliefs and spiritual aspirations struck me as healthy, honest, and very Christian. Apart from repeated use of “purity” and “pure”—which words probably represent the convention of her upbringing—nowhere in the interview does she suggest that she thinks sex is dirty or even that the church of her youth taught her so. She acknowledges the black-and-white, guilt-based thinking of many evangelical sub-cultures that believe sex outside of marriage to be sinful, but even with regard to this unhealthy attitude she faults the expression, not the doctrine:

I do think that this one of those issues where the church tries very hard to get inside a girl’s head. They spend so much time telling you to wait until marriage and no time helping you to deal with the fact that you probably didn’t.

So then girls end up fabricating all these justifications and not really coming to terms with what they do with their bodies, or fixating on marriage as like, “If I can only get there, I’ll be safe at home plate.” When I broke up with my high school boyfriend, the church was definitely in my ear, telling me that I should have married him because we did what we did.

No doubt this ideology has its roots in the Old Testament law, which mandated marriage for any young man and virgin who were found to have engaged in intercourse.² Founded as it was on the concepts of women as property and virginity as a valuable commodity, we must surely regard this teaching as superseded by New Testament sexual and relational ethics. Clara clearly agrees, as she describes her relationship to her Christian boyfriend not with certainty that marriage will result from their sexual union but in terms of mutual struggle to remain “pure”:

Despite the fact that we’ve had sex, it’s nice to recognize that I’m finally on the same page with someone in terms of purity — we both want it, we both know it’s not easy. So now, the debate isn’t just an internal one that eventually gets silenced by my own desire to do what I want to do. This is an external debate that the two of us can feasibly act upon. We don’t feel guilty about having sex, but we do try to curb it, to keep from having it. We don’t want to make that the central focus of our relationship.

But this struggle toward chastity also draws Jill’s criticism:

Not making sex the central focus of your relationship, sure, great. But going around and around in the circle of “We shouldn’t be doing this because it’s impure and bad!” and then doing it, and then trying not to do it again, but then doing it again, and then saying you don’t feel guilty except obviously you kind of do? Not a healthy relationship dynamic.

This echoes an oft-repeated criticism, not just of Christian views on sexuality, but of Christianity itself: that ours is a guilt-based religion that keeps people living in a vicious circle of transgression, shame, repentence, and re-offense. Again, this is an understandable misconception based on the reality of much unbiblical teaching from churches and individual Christians who care more about decrying sin than about the Gospel’s message of liberation from guilt. Far from advocating slavish adherence to draconian rules in fear of judgment, though, the teachings of Jesus and the New Testament writers focus on joyful pursuit of an ideal: Jesus himself.

And this embodies the fundamental disconnect between secular feminism and modern Christian sexual ethics. Where feminists see unhealthy, shame-based, and counter-productive sexual abstinence, Christians see an ideal—counter-cultural and difficult to achieve, but worthy and significant for both practical and spiritual reasons. The Church may wrongly over-emphasize sexuality, particularly for youth and the unmarried; we may sometimes engaging in slut-shaming and reinforce a culture of repression; we may fail to recognize (as do many outside the church) that virginity is a counter-productive social construct never addressed by the sexual teachings of the New Testament; but our failures do not change the truth expressed in our scriptures: that God created us sexual beings with the ability to use our sexuality for intimacy, mutual pleasure and edification, and the expression of deeper spiritual mysteries.

If we make these wonderful, true concepts the focus of our discussions on sexual ethics, rightly de-emphasizing the shame that accompanies failure to attain our ideals but emphasizing consideration and justice in romantic and sexual relationships, we will surely not escape all criticism. Christian doctrine will always be offensive. But let us offend for the right reasons.

So maybe I did come here to talk about PR.

Warning: graphic language and depictions of intoxication and sexual behavior in the linked post. I think it’s worth it, but you’ll have to make your own decisions.

I thought that by agreeing, I would be permitted a kind of safety and privacy wherein I could secretly disagree with the men and hate the hand and hate myself for having agreed with them. It seemed I wanted to be turned against myself, and I was—I was so against myself that I could not help anybody else.

Via The Beheld.

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Canadian actor/director Sarah Polley recently discovered something about her lineage:

I flew to Toronto that night to tell my father the news. He was not my biological father. This had been confirmed by a DNA test with a man I had met a year earlier. I had met my biological father almost by accident, though I had long suspected based on family jokes and rumours that my mother may have had an affair that led to my conception.

Her [step-]father’s reaction may surprise:

His chief concern, almost immediately, was that my siblings and I not put any blame on my mother for her straying outside of their marriage. He was candid about his own lack of responsiveness towards her and how that may have led her to the point where she sought out the affection of another person.

Rather than introducing strife, the truth seems to have strengthened Polley’s relationship with her father and given her the opportunity for a meaningful relationship with her biological father.

Her post at the National Film Blog is worth reading, as are the remarks of The Good Men Project’s Noah Brand at The Globe and Mail.

Via The Good Men Project.

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Kate Fridkis, writing for The Frisky about a conversation she overheard on the train:

Suddenly, I was much younger, much less sure of myself, and I was thinking that I didn’t know how big around my waist is but I am positive it’s bigger than 24 inches. And I was thinking that my breasts will probably never fill a C cup, and that my rib cage is too big for a 34, and so I have both a larger frame and smaller breasts than this guy’s ideal woman. Which, in that misguided, flash of a moment, felt like I was failing. I am not an ideal woman, I thought. (Emphasis hers)

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Ms. Magazine profiles three women who write on the intersection of feminism and athletics. My favorite is Caitlin Constantine, speaking here about the objectifying coverage of female Olympians:

Here you have all of these driven, focused women pursuing their moment of glory, a moment that comes around once every four years, and all anyone can talk about is what they look like! And then, of course, that sparked a reaction in which people criticized the criticism, and meanwhile I’m like “But what about the sports!?”

Women doing extraordinary things advance the cause of feminism more than legislation or activism ever can.

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One rape survivor, in testimony before the Louisiana Senate Committee on Health and Welfare, described her son as “a living, breathing torture mechanism that replayed in my mind over and over the rape.” Another woman described having a rape-conceived son as “entrapment beyond description” and felt “the child was cursed from birth”; the child ultimately had severe psychological challenges and was removed from the family by social services concerned about his mental well-being. One of the women I interviewed said, “While most mothers just go with their natural instincts, my instincts are horrifying. It’s a constant, conscious effort that my instincts not take over.”

Whatever your views on abortion, I dare you to read this without your heart breaking a little.

Via Feministe.

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#1 on the list is “Believe Her”:

One out of every six American women will be sexually assaulted in her lifetime. If you look at that statistic (and we all know how under-reported sexual assault is), is it truly possible that all rapes happen in dark alleys? If it were, we’d be seeing knife-wielding maniacs everywhere.

The terrifying truth is that perpetrators of sexual abuse can be anyone—a family member, a coach, a spouse, a babysitter, a friend—and the scariest thing is, they’re not all evil people. They can be accomplished, otherwise law-abiding citizens who seem perfectly normal. So if your best friend tells you she was raped by a regular guy you both know, you can’t immediately turn away from the idea just because it doesn’t fit your notion of what rape looks like.

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“We should just do a better job of supervising.”

This was what the director of my division said when my boss proposed moving the cabinet containing all our medications to a different room never accessed by our clients.

I work in a group home for at-risk boys. The suggestion came on the heels of an incident in which, because of lax supervision by staff, a client nearly died because he was able to steal and swallow a large quantity of Benadryl. Our building keeps its medications in a room that also contains the phones on which our clients call their families, so we are used to granting them access to that room. Unfortunately, we have also developed a habit of letting them in at times when their presence is not at all necessary or advisable. My boss thought we might help to avoid a similar situation in the future if we moved all the medicine to a different room.

His boss, the director, correctly pointed out that the more fundamental problem was not which room we used to store medications but the fact that we were doing a poor job of supervising our clients. Even moving the medication cabinet would not totally prevent future incidents if our practices did not improve.

A recent Reddit thread solicited the stories of rapists, and the anonymity of the internet allowed many to tell their stories, which are chilling. Katie J.M. Baker covered the story for Jezebel. Her article is thoughtful and worth reading, especially if you would like to avoid the grueling perusal of the entire Reddit thread and just want some relevant quotes.

Where Baker misses, in my opinion, is near the conclusion:

We have to acknowledge that the people telling these stories and making these decisions are the men (and women) next door, not necessarily inhuman savages. Otherwise, anti-rape campaigns will continue to tell victims to dress and act differently as a matter of “prevention…” (Emphasis mine)

I’m with Baker (and the many other feminist writers who erroneously equate caution with victim-blaming) in believing that rape is only the fault of the rapist and never in any sense the fault of the victim. But I don’t agree that encouraging women to act cautiously constitutes shifting responsibility from the perpetrator.

Our culture must continue to take other steps toward rape prevention; de-objectifying women and teaching healthy attitudes toward our sexuality would be great first steps. But until rape goes the way of church-burning—an aberration rather than a frequent occurrence—refusing to be cautious because it’s not your responsibility to avoid rape seems to me very similar to my boss’s ultimate decision not to move the medications.

Was it the supervising staff’s fault they failed to prevent the client’s theft and eventual hospitalization? Absolutely. Was it my boss’s fault for not moving the medications to a different room? Absolutely not. But would moving the medications help prevent a similar incident in the future. Probably.

Women (and men) will have to make their own decisions about how much time they want to spend thinking about precautionary measures. I advocate avoiding fear-based decision-making whenever possible, so I don’t think people should let the possibility of rape shape their entire lifestyle. But refusing to give any consideration to the matter because “people just shouldn’t rape” is putting principle before pragmatism.1

1. Which, to be fair, I strongly incline toward doing. ↩

Angela Shah, writing for The Daily Beast, tells the inspiring story of a female Afghani entrepreneur:

Here is a woman less than a decade older than they are who runs her own company and flies in from Kabul on her own for ribbon-cutting ceremonies like the one on this day. She, they can see, has a position of power. Once the men have left and the formal festivities are concluded, the girls congregate around Mahboob in packs of threes and fours asking to take pictures with her.

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Two women, one Christian and one not, discuss their dissatisfaction with the fate of Susan Pevensie in The Chronicles of Narnia.

Many good points on both sides, and the discussion certainly highlights the flaws of C.S. Lewis as both a thinker and a writer. Since I tend a little toward hagiography when it comes to Lewis, this is healthy for me.

I still love those books, though.

Via Love, Joy, Feminism.

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Savannah Dietrich, the 17-year-old rape victim threatened with a charge of contempt of court for violating a gag order about her case’s settlement by tweeting the names of her rapists, may get some real justice after all. According to the judge currently in charge of the case:

The very idea that a young victim of sexual assault would find the courage to tell her story and come to court, only to have no one listen to her, explain to her what is happening and then have the parties reach some type of deal without her input is abhorrent.

Via Jezebel.

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This according to Mark Driscoll, whose list of silly things to say about the book of Esther doesn’t end with accusing her of sexual immorality:

She’s simply a person without any character until her own neck is on the line, and then we see her rise up to save the life of her people when she is converted to a real faith in God.

Sarah Moon sees the story the other way around:

The book of Esther contains a powerful message. Women disobeying men and saving the world. Women asserting their bodily autonomy. Women who are brave and strong and active and anything but submissive. It’s a message so powerful that some male Christian leaders have to undermine it because it threatens the control that they have over women.

It’s fun to think of Esther and Vashti (the queen dethroned to make way for Esther) as feminist heroes, but Rachel Held Evans quite correctly dismantles both lines of thinking:

Like it or not, this story is not about sex, it’s not about gender roles, and it’s not about marriage (though these themes are present and should certainly be discussed). At the end of the day, this is a story about Jewish identity and heritage. It’s a story about what it means to be Jewish in the context of diaspora. It’s a story about God’s preservation and providence to a scattered people.

This is why it’s so important to learn not only the text of the Bible but the history and culture behind it as well. Viewing Esther through a modern—or feminist—lens may feel satisfying or meaningful, but when we do this we’re really just putting words in God’s mouth.

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Florida publisher Blue Toad, which builds digital products for publishers, has told NBC News’s Kerry Sanders and Bob Sullivan that the leaked data came from its servers. Following the hack, Blue Toad downloaded the info and compared it to its own database, finding 98 percent correlation. “That’s 100 percent confidence level, it’s our data,” Blue Toad CEO Paul DeHart said.

So I was wrong to be suspicious of the FBI’s denial.

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Megan Reynolds of The Frisky dismantles this oddly sexist post on Jezebel.com.

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Reads sort of like a badly-written Onion article:

The woman told the court she did not want to return to her husband. But the judge’s response was to suggest that the husband take his wife and son out for lunch.

Terrible.

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Gregory Gilderman writes for The Daily Beast on how the internet has revolutionized prostitution:

While critics have charged classified sites with facilitating sex trafficking, for women like Brittany, who have freely chosen prostitution and whose clients freely choose them, the Internet has made the transactions fast, simple, and discreet. New research suggests it hasn’t merely moved online and indoors those who once worked the street, but done something more transformative: created a different sort of sex worker—more educated, younger—and a bigger market of women selling sexual services in the United States and men purchasing those services.

“Brittany’s” final word on the subject, though? “I would honestly never recommend this to anyone.”

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Autumn Whitefield-Madrano rather nostalgically critiques the time-worn “sagging” test:

I’m not trying to make some “everybody is beautiful” argument or say that there aren’t certain characteristics (or people) that we tend to find more beautiful than others; I’m just looking at the very nature of beauty—which is about bringing pleasure and enchantment to the viewer—and seeing its inherent incompatibility with the idea of standardization. There are few questions surrounding beauty that have strict, easily ticked yes/no answers. Beauty is the essay portion of the test, not the multiple choice.

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An escort theorizes about why so many young women find her career alluring:

Girls aren’t bombarded with messages telling them that their mental power is urgently needed to address issues like global warming or infectious diseases, or that their athleticism could be parlayed into a life as a professional athlete or coach. Instead, we’re told over and over again that we earn a place at the table—any table—by being polished and well-dressed, with glossy hair and a slim figure. The girls who e-mail me are not lacking internal resources. They’re educated, sensitive, observant, and they have the complex sentences and insightful wording to prove it. But they are living in a world where a woman’s worth is constantly equated with her sex appeal. Is it any wonder that many women might find it compelling to take that equation to its logical end?

You don’t need to a be a libertarian to find her thoughts intriguing and challenging.

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Collectors Weekly investigates the history of literal and figurative “pink” products, like the recently-released BiC “For Her” Pens:

Mid-century manufacturers realized that if you take an ordinary object, turn it pink, and put the word “Lady” in front of the name, then you’ve created a product “for women” that can be sold for more money.

Contains some great photo illustrations of old “pink” products.

Via Ms. Magazine.

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Sally McGraw of Already Pretty wrestles with the tricky issue of giving compliments for non-controllable traits.

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Vanity Fair’s profile of Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski features a photograph of the two co-anchors—he suit-clad and lounging in a chair, she apparently table-dancing with her legs in the air. Because that’s what you do with any intelligent, powerful woman, right? You trivialize her by focusing on her body instead of her brain.

As nice as those legs are, I’m guessing she earned her job through talent and hard work.

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Around 50 armed men killed J. Christopher Stevens and three other U.S. citizens in an assault on the temporary U.S. Consulate in Libya. Intelligence and analysis from several separate sources suggest al-Qaeda orchestrated the attack and took advantage of an unrelated protest as cover.

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(Potentially) good news. I don’t think this demonstrates belated concern for civil rights, though, and neither does the AP:

By being the one to call for the women’s release, Medvedev, who has cultivated the image of a more liberal leader, could allow Putin to put the uncomfortable case behind him while not appearing weak.

Via The Mary Sue.

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Dana Goldstein takes us back to the 1830s, when, for several very good reasons, free public education was just taking off:

The inescapable reality, however, was that schools were expensive, and Americans, then as now, didn’t like high taxes. So in order to rapidly open many more schools, states, cities, and towns made the conscious choice to hire mostly female teachers, who were cheaper to employ.

Goldstein provides important context to the current strike without engaging in partisanship. This is more than I can say for the post on The Frisky that linked me to Goldstein’s site with the lede: “Why the teachers’ strike in Chicago is a feminist issue” without providing any explanation of why feminists should feel compelled to care about the strike.

Is this where we are now—a place where any issue that touches on ground beloved by certain feminists must be “a feminist issue”? I understand how teachers’ unions have feminism at their roots, but why does that have any bearing on the current conflict?

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Great trio of vignettes by Danielle of From Two to One on the subject of truth in politics:

“Oh, that’s great! We need more Christians in politics.”

My throat begins to itch. I manage a polite, vague “yeah.” The conversation trickles off, both of us in our separate worlds, living with our conflicting worldviews.

Being a closet optimist, I haven’t quite reached the breaking point of withdrawing from the political discourse, but I have strong sympathy with Danielle’s reaction:

As someone raised by parents who taught my siblings and me to be honest above all (and to have proper grammar), the abandonment of truth-telling, let alone civility, is all but an assault to my worldview that people are rational creatures and that they will seek the truth.

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Cora Harrington, proprietor of The Lingerie Addict, writes for Jezebel on the lingerie industry’s disregard for diversity of skin color:

I’ve been told that I’m “pretty for a dark skinned girl.” I’ve been told that I’m “too dark to date.” I’ve been told that I’d be prettier if only I was “less black.” And though I think we can all agree that there is something seriously wrong with those kinds of statements, that messaging is constantly being reinforced by the industry at large.

That sound you hear is my jaw hitting the floor. I can’t believe people in a civilized society think they can talk to others this way.

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A former church staff member writes about struggling to find a place after deciding to take a step back from active ministry:

The obvious answer was to find a church with a singles group, since I am single, but I truly wanted to be a part of an entire body, not segregated to a group of people who were placed together solely because of their marital status, or lack thereof.

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This post is the third in an unintentional three-part series on sexual purity. In the first post I discussed criticism of the Church’s “purity culture”, and in the second I explained why I think Christians should stop talking about virginity and focus instead on love as the basis for sexual ethics.

In high school, my youth pastor would sometimes talk to us about sex. He always pre-announced it, and everyone would get excited because teens like sex, even if they’ve never done it and have no expectation of doing it any time soon. Just the prospect of hearing it talked about was cause for anticipation, although, of course, we would inevitably feel a little disappointed afterward because the actual conversation never turned out to be at all titillating.

But that Wednesday night (every youth group I ever attended in the 90s met on Wednesday nights at 7 p.m.), gathered together in our shiny new dedicated youth room under the trendy exposed black ductwork and fluorescent lights, we would wait patiently through announcements and prayer time to hear all about that magical experience we were not allowed to have, and every single time Tim, the youth pastor, would say the same things:

1. Sex is a wonderful gift God gave us.
2. You shouldn’t do it until you’re married.
3. You should stop asking questions like “How far is too far?” or “Is french kissing a sin?” because you shouldn’t be thinking about how much you can get away with but about how you can be as holy as possible.

As you might imagine from the comparative number of words used to express the above three points, the third one took up the bulk of the time. I have no idea how Tim decided that his messaging on sex for teens should revolve around holiness. Maybe the other, hotter, more popular kids for whom sex was actually on the table asked him questions like that all the time and he got tired of parsing out all sexual activity into “good” and “bad” for them. Possibly it was brilliant way for him to avoid a fear- or guilt-based approach to teen sexuality but still say true things that would keep him out of trouble with both protective parents and morally conservative congregants. In any case, he was the only adult in the evangelical community I ever heard talk like this; other messages on the subject revolved entirely around pregnancy, STDs, the sinfulness of impurity, and saving sex for marriage so your future spouse wouldn’t be angry and disappointed with you.

Obviously, these tactics have proven ineffective. Christian marriages aren’t better than anyone else’s—divorce rates in the Church are, if anything, slightly higher than the norm. And teen pregnancy in the more religious red states outstrips that in blue states. Our kids are having sex, regardless of the potential consequences or how guilty they may feel about it.

Why do we want our youth and the unmarried to abstain from sex, anyway? The reasons I’ve most frequently heard correspond roughly to the messaging of my teen years:

1. Avoiding negative consequences (pregnancy, STDs)
2. Emotional safety
3. Promoting healthy marriages
4. The sinfulness of sexual activity outside marriage

I think nearly everyone would agree about avoiding disease or unwanted pregnancy, and people should certainly be careful about managing their emotions. There is some circumstantial evidence that abstinence before marriage has a positive effect on marital happiness, for practical reasons easy to identify with a little thought. As I explained in my previous post, though, I do not think it is at all clear that God condemns pre-marital sex. In any case, guilt and shame are poor motivators of behavior, while the binary view of sexual purity as something that can be lost but never regained communicates to those who have already become sexually active that they may as well continue. For those who consider abstinence before marriage biblical and important, therefore, we need to replace our current, ineffective guilt-based reasoning with a more positive, aspirational image.

Moreover, both because of the Bible’s relative silence on the issue and due to ongoing cultural shifts, more and more Christians will likely believe quite sincerely that Biblical ethics do not preclude sexual activity before marriage. The Church’s current approach to teaching on sexuality has nothing to say to these people except “stop sinning”. While I believe in healthy dialogue and the obligation to challenge my Christian friends about their beliefs and practices when necessary (commensurate with our relationship), I also believe that I should be willing to continue in community with others even when we disagree about issues on which the Bible is not clear.¹ And if we are going to welcome into our congregations believers who are unmarried but sexually active or potentially sexually active, we ought to be able to engage them on the subject of sexual ethics with more than just a unilateral command.

What, then, can replace our current negative discourse on pre-marital sexual ethics, allowing us to support those struggling to remain celibate and dialogue with those who view sexual activity before marriage as acceptable Christian behavior?

Holiness.

I’m going to adapt my youth pastor’s message for my own time and purposes: we should not think about far we can go with our sexual liberty but about how well we can embody God’s call to be set apart for himself. My belief—based heavily on nuance and summation in interpreting the scant biblical evidence, but still my belief—is that the best and most rewarding kind of Christian spirituality involves only being sexually intimate in the context of marriage. Many people still share this belief—although they might not frame it in exactly the same way—and for those among them who are unmarried and find celibacy difficult, the concept of celibacy as a component of holiness provides a positive goal as motivation to continue doing the hard work of sexual abstinence. It can also guide those currently in romantic relationships—whether they consider abstinence a command or not—as they determine their sexual boundaries, the call to holiness dictating that, unlike the world, we must make love for one another, rather than our own desires, the rubric of our decision-making.

This is all extremely abstract language, so let me suggest three more concrete (albeit very idealized) situations.

1. A high school boy and girl who are dating but want to remain abstinent.² Endeavoring to control their raging hormones but also starting to get serious, they want to be able to express their affection physically without sacrificing their idea of holiness by becoming too sexually intimate. They have agreed that the cuddling and closed-mouth kissing they currently do represents the farthest they can go in their physical relationship without violating her conscience. He thinks they ought to be allowed to kiss open-mouthed, but another girl from their youth group reminds him that it is more Christ-like to put his girlfriend’s needs above his own. From then on, every time the heat of the moment takes them in that direction he voluntarily backs off because he values her beliefs about appropriate intimacy more than his own sexual desires.
2. A couple in their 20s who have been together for nine months and believe in abstinence before marriage but have recently had sex several times. Their relationship has become more serious, and they want to keep seeing each other, but they also view sexual purity as important and would like to remain celibate from now on. They decide the issue is so important they should bring it up to their small group at church. After some dialogue, the group helps them realize they should no longer spend time alone together in either of their homes, thus eliminating the kind of situation that could easily lead to another slip-up.
3. A college-age couple who do not see celibacy before marriage as a biblical command but do think the decision to become sexually intimate should be taken very seriously. After they have been dating for two months she feels they have reached a point where sex would be appropriate, but he wants to wait. One night, while making out in her apartment, he begins touching her inner thigh. She tells him that she is becoming aroused and would like to stop, since he is not ready to take her all the way to orgasm. Remembering a conversation with a morally-conservative friend from church about sexual purity and consideration for others, he agrees that they should find some other activity to occupy the rest of the evening.

Are real people always going to find it so easy to practice sexual ethics that revolve around justice and consideration toward others? No. These are ideals. Real life will be much more messy and difficult. People will repeatedly fail to live up to their ideals and require forgiveness of each other much more frequently than they will immediately identify the right course of action and follow through with it every time. And this is fine. God is not keeping score against us any more. If he thought he could expect a spotless record of us, he would not have sent his Son to be spotless on our behalf. If he thought he could demand perfect adherence to a law, he would have given us a new law.

Instead of a law, though, he has given us as guides of behavior the Holy Spirit and the command of love. When the Church teaches sexual ethics—or any ethics—we must shun constructed codes of conduct, which can only reinforce legalism, leading to a life of guilt, and distinguish ourselves from the world by basing our relationships and actions on our identity as God’s holy people, called to a life of incarnation and love.

This asinine post by Joanna Schroeder for The Good Men Project about Free Speech and the recent terrorist attack on the U.S. Consulate in Libya has so many problems I could spend all day enumerating them. Leaving aside the likelihood that the killings were pre-planned by al-Qaeda and the film itself merely provoked riots that served as a convenient cover, I’ll start with her belief that KKK-sponsored lynch mobs are an appropriate analogue to making an anti-Islamic film:

The fact is, we protect the KKK’s right to spew their hate, but if they were to say, “You need to go lynch John Jones on X street in Y city” we would arrest them, right? You can’t tell people to kill other people and get away with it.

I’ve seen the film in question. It’s terrible on nearly every level you can imagine, but it never promotes violence—against Muslims or anyone else. Here’s a more apt analogy: “The fact is, we protect people’s right to criticize the KKK, but if a black man made an anti-KKK film, and the KKK killed his neighbor, we would arrest that filmmaker, right? You can’t provoke people who might kill other people by criticizing them and get away with it.”

Now on to my favorite part: victim-blaming (sort of). Schroeder quotes an Op-Ed piece by Qasim Rashid for The Washington Post:

To think this vicious cycle can stop simply if extremists stop being extremists is an extreme view itself.

Schroeder’s commentary:

While the extremists are wholly responsible for their deplorable actions against others, we are all responsible for our roles in this deadly cycle.

Nope. Sorry. You can’t have it both ways. Either the extremists are wholly responsible and no one else is responsible at all, or we share responsibility with the extremists.

I’d compare this to warning a woman that while a rapist is wholly responsible for raping her, she is also responsible for dressing revealingly—but that’s actually a poor analogy. No one attacked the people responsible for this awful, bigoted film. A better analogy would be warning a woman that while a rapist is wholly responsible for raping her, her cousin is also responsible for dressing revealingly.

The appropriate response to an act of terrorism is not to blame the people who exercised their right to free speech, regardless of how objectionable we find their particular speech. Don’t blame the First Amendment.

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The District of Columbia has launched a series of ads promoting acceptance of transgender or non-gender-conforming people by portraying them as… well, people.

Regardless of your opinion on the ethics or theology of gender reassignment, everyone deserves courtesy and respect.

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Sister Megan Rice and two other activists broke into the Highly Enriched Uranium Materials Facility, which contains enough enriched uranium to make 10,000 nuclear bombs, with a pair of bolt cutters. The guards failed to even notice until the intruders began hitting the wall of a storage vault with a hammer. Terrifying read.

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Laura Donovan of The Jane Dough clarifies how not to respond to the publication of nude photographs of Kate Middleton:

Let’s not joke that Kate is a “bad” girl or liken her to Harry because of this. She has been thrust into a scandal merely for trying to avoid tan lines, and the only thing scandalous here is the publication’s poor journalism ethics.

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At the Values Voter Summit yesterday a group called Modesty Matters was handing out pamphlets encouraging women to be ashamed of their bodies instead:

“My men’s bible study group talks frequently about controlling our lust, thoughts, and eyes. Yes the problem and responsibility are ours, but is it really reasonable for the women of the church to make it THIS difficult for us?”

You can’t cry “victim-blaming” when the clear victims here are teh menz. What does this have to do with voting or politics, anyway?

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This article on the dialogue between the Church and science accomplishes the incredible feat of never referencing C.S. Lewis, but it makes one of his arguments quite well:

I’m not interested in arguing here about the age of the earth, and I am not really interested in arguing about that with a naturalist. What we are really arguing about is whether or not there are miracles. It is as absurd to the naturalist for me to claim that Jesus rose from the dead after three days as it is for me to claim that the earth is young.

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Great research from The American Academy of Pediatrics, giving statistics about menstruation and menarche that parents and doctors can use to assess overall health and watch for the onset of disease in young women.

Via Ms. Magazine.

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The Anarchist Reverend focuses in on one of the most-overlooked aspects of the Church’s nature:

It’s a place that strengthens us for following Jesus every day. Now, I understand following Jesus to be about radical social change and so when I think about being equipped and strengthened for that journey, I’m looking for serious encouragement and support. I need people to remind me that I am living in an Empire and I need to not capitulate.

I’m not going to cite Derek Webb again, but I could.

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Soon, you probably can. Jody Allen Crowe, founder of Healthy Brains for Children, is installing them as a means to prevent fetal alcohol syndrome:

At \$3 a pop, the vended test costs a fraction of the price many drug stores charge. Mr. Crowe’s goal to install the dispenser in other public places – gas stations, fitness centers and malls – aligns more squarely with those perks. And with pregnancy tests often cited as the most shoplifted retail product, a case can be made for providing a new acquisition venue.

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From her memo that went out this week:

“We’d like our employees to have devices similar to our users, so we can think and work as the majority of our users do.”

Since Yahoo seems to have had its many hydra-heads stuck in the sand for a while now, it seems like a good idea to try to actually understand their users.

Incidentally, I love how nearly every picture of Melissa Mayer depicts her laughing or smiling broadly. Maybe that’s just a way trivialize her, but it seems more like she just smiles a lot—a welcome change from captains of industry who take everything too seriously.

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Not just a home run, but a grand slam, from Rachel Held Evans in the second post of her series on Esther:

Many of the characters, particularly those of the Persian court, are so hapless and exaggerated, you can’t help but laugh. Nearly every major plot development unfolds at some kind of banquet. The text includes colorful details and dramatic twists and turns. It’s a story fit for the stage. And yet the text also includes disturbing details: a young virgin drafted into a harem with hundreds of other women to be used at the perverse discretion of a powerful and impulsive king, a queen deposed for refusing to flaunt her body before a room of drunken men, ethnic tensions and violence, a genocidal plot, an impaling, and an ending that depicts with some detachment the violent revenge of the Jews.

I’m a sucker for new information about (not from, but about) the Bible, particularly information that changes my perspective on it. My brain almost shut down from overload when I read this piece.

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The fbomb’s Emily Jane G proves why some people stereotype feminists as incapable of taking a joke:

The thing is, when you make a joke about a serious issue, in this case, sexism, you trivialise it. By turning it into something that is meant to be laughed at, you take away from the seriousness of it. When someone tells you feminists can’t take a joke, it’s time to point this out to them and it always helps to have a genuinely funny joke up your sleeve as well, to demonstrate you do recognise humour when you hear it.

I would laugh at this if it wasn’t so serious. (See what I did there?) Nearly all humor is about serious things. We don’t need to make jokes about trivialities; our work is already done for us. To claim that feminism should be above humor is supremely arrogant. And no one means, “You can’t take a joke” literally; they mean, “You can’t take a joke about your own pet issue.” That isn’t a feminist problem; it’s a human problem.

Feminists are probably no more humorless than any other category of person. Very few people can endure humor aimed at something they consider part of their core, and Ms. G obviously ranks among the many. In fact, I’m a little skeptical that she has a sense of humor at all. Responding to “You can’t take a joke” with “Oh, yeah? Let me tell you this joke!” may be one of the surest indicators of a humorless person.

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That’s the response of Sierra Harr—a high-school golfer who joined the boys team because the girls team no longer had enough players—to opposing coaches’ unfair attempt to get her kicked out of her athletic association (probably because she kept winning).

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Susan Jacoby, in her recent article for The Humanist, quotes Elizabeth Cady Stanton in contending that religion is detrimental not only to humanity in general but to women’s issues in particular.

You may go over the world and you will find that every form of religion which has breathed upon this earth has degraded woman…What power is it that makes the Hindoo [sic] woman burn herself upon the funeral pyre of her husband? Her religion. What holds the Turkish woman in the harem? Her religion. By what power do the Mormons perpetuate their system of polygamy? By their religion. Man, of himself, could not do this; but when he declares, “Thus saith the Lord,” of course he can do it.

Even a lifelong atheist like Jacoby can’t deny the good religion has done, but we’ve lost our edge. Christianity—at least in the West—is no longer the religion that elevates the marginalized or succors the oppressed.

I say we get to being incarnational, as the Church should.

Via XX factor.

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Women in Technology Sharing Online, or WitsOn, an open online initiative, seeks to connect women interested in pursing careers in Science, Technology, Engineering, or Mathematics with successful, more experienced women who can provide information and support. And here’s why:

While women now earn more college degrees than men over all, they lag in STEM fields — particularly computer science and engineering, where they earn less than 20 percent of all undergraduate degrees.

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Tristan Bridges of Inequality by (Interior) Design recounts his trip to the local big-box hardware store, where a nice lady made him feel only slightly less of a man:

Now, up to this point, I hadn’t thought much about Carla being a woman. The small projects I have taken on around the house have often been in the company of women (my mother, my sisters, my wife, friends, etc.). But, I did start to think about gender with what happened next. Men in Lowe’s uniforms (which is basically a fishing vest with a Lowe’s patch over anything you want to wear) came from all over the place to watch Carla work. The first was a younger man, maybe 20 years old. He walked up and Carla quickly gave him a task. “Go get the next size up in spline. This one’s too little,” she said as she positioned the screen over the frame.

Great story about gender dynamics in typically gendered occupations.

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Profile of a 101-year-old lady who has been driving since she was 12. Teaser: she knew Henry Ford personally.

Via Relevant.

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Among possible culprits mentioned: lack of clear definition for the word “Protestant” and disproportionately high media coverage of religious minorities.

I’ll add my own: the evangelical obsession with feeling oppressed and seeing persecution around every corner.

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The problem:

The separate personal laws for Bangladesh’s Muslims, Hindus, and Christians discriminate in overlapping but distinctive ways. Each erects barriers to divorce and economic equality during marriage and after, and none of the laws provides for women’s equal right to marital property.

And just in case you’re in favor of religious beliefs governing things like marriage and divorce, consider a case like this:

Namrata N., a Hindu, worked in a hospital and gave her life savings to her husband to start a business. He misused the money and turned violent when she demanded he return the funds. Eventually he tricked her into drinking acid, and absconded. With a burned food pipe and stomach, Namrata is dependent on a feeding tube connected to her intestine. She has not eaten in over two years and the smell of food depresses her. Namrata wants to divorce her husband, but cannot under Hindu law in Bangladesh.

Via Feminist.org.

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The Episcopal Diocese of Missouri is investigating the Rev. John Blair upon discovering his hobby of nude and erotic photography:

Blair was not hiding his art. In fact, he could hardly have been more public about it. The 40-year-old priest declined to be interviewed, but he describes himself in several places online as an artist. Much of his photography is of adult female models in classic nude poses; his work has been shown in local galleries and art shows.

Unless you categorically consider nude or erotic art immoral, this is the worst anyone has to say about Blair:

Blair became a priest in the Episcopal Church in 2000. In 2004, he became rector of All Saints’ Episcopal Church. He resigned in 2007 after being accused of what diocesan officials called “an impropriety,” though the diocese found no evidence to support the accusation.

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At first I was skeptical of this “engineering toy for girls”, but its creator—Debbie Sterling, a Stanford-educated engineer—seems to be taking the problem of appealing to gender stereotypes pretty seriously.

We need to keep in mind, by the time they’ve reached the age of five (the youngest age GoldieBlox is recommended for), many girls will already have well developed gender identities, and oftentimes that identity will be quite, for lack of a better word, girly.

The Kickstarter project has a great video that explains more.

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Anna Broadway, writing for her.meneutics on chastity before marriage:

Why does sexual patience so easily slip into the territory of religion, whereby waiting becomes a means of manipulating and using God to get what we want?

Years back, when working on my memoir (of “reluctant chastity,” yes), I spent an evening babysitting the daughter of some friends. After the baby had gone down, I picked up a volume of collected C. S. Lewis writings they had out, which included advice I’ve never forgotten. The gist was that it’s all too easy to slip into preaching the gospel on the grounds that it’s good for you rather than simply that it’s true… truth ultimately has to stand on its authority, not its efficacy.

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Deadline.com reports that The CW is developing a contemporary adaptation of Alice in Wonderland:

The drama project centers on a young female detective in present-day Los Angeles who discovers another world that exists under the surface of this ultra-modern city.

Seriously, everyone. My brains splattered all over my computer screen.

Update: I simply must echo the first sentence of The Mary Sue’s coverage of this news.

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Nearly all the numbers in the report are higher than I would have expected, so this is not just good news but a pleasant surprise.

Via The Mary Sue.

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Rep. Todd Akin’s wife recently invoked rape as an ill-advised analogy for the Republican Party’s disassociation from Akin:

“Party bosses dictating who is allowed to advance through the party and make all the decisions – it’s just like 1776 in that way.”

That was when colonists “rose up and said, ‘Not in my home, you don’t come and rape my daughters and my… wife. But that is where we are again.”

That analogy doesn’t even make sense, Lady. Here’s something to consider: apparently every time you or your husband mention the word “rape”, you’re going to end up regretting it.

My thanks to the Monty Python gang for suggesting the mantra I think the Akins should adopt from now on.

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Peter J. Leithart of First Things analyzes the morality of the nude in art:

We no longer have a visual idiom that enables us to depict the beauty of the human form without arousing lust. Combatting pornography requires not the suppression but the revival of the nude.

Via Christ and Pop Culture.

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If she’s in an abusive relationship, she can get divorced.

When he came into money, it was “his.” When I took out college loans and grants, those were “ours.” His argument was that my money should be used to support the household because his was intermittent.

Whatever you think about divorce, financial imbalance should not be the thing keeping women stuck in abusive situations.

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There are plenty of things to hate about Mitt Romney. In the case of yesterday’s “47 percent” statement, though, inaccuracy is apparently not one of them.

Alex Klein, writing for The Daily Beast:

In late August, when a certain Republican presidential candidate said that “big business” was “doing fine” due to “offshore tax havens,” I coined it a “Romney gaffe”—a slip of the tongue that’s embarrassing, but painfully accurate.

My most important takeaway from Klein’s article? I really hope “Romney gaffe” embeds itself in our cultural vernacular.

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Safer, more maneuverable, and more comfortable. Sounds like an easy decision to me.

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Or a wife-to-be, at any rate. Eleanor Barkhorn reminds us why the discovery of an ancient Coptic document that quotes Jesus talking about his wife doesn’t tell us anything:

If Christ is the groom, then who is his bride? The Gospels don’t really answer that question, but the rest of the New Testament does. And the answer probably doesn’t offer much help to people hoping Jesus’ marital status could shift the debates over women in ministry or the definition of marriage.

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Which is more than I can say for the men on “Morning Joe” in this clip where her co-host Joe Scarborough calls her black-leather-based dress “Anne Hathaway action”. The other two men present join Scarborough in talking over Brzezinksi’s attempt to explain that her choice of attire was merely in keeping with fall trends.

You have to watch the clip to understand how unprofessional and sexist the whole thing is.

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Great historical perspective on the conflict over gender equality in the Eastern Orthodox Church between “cradle Orthodox”—first-generation immigrants and their children—and recent converts:

The rich mystic theology of Eastern Christianity preserves a complicated understanding of gender that even postulates a God who is beyond gender. In liturgical practice too, the Orthodox Church offers glimmers of light to those who would seek greater equality. For example, women throughout Eastern Christendom were routinely ordained to the diaconate (the first order of the priesthood) well into the 11th century.

Most importantly, however, in many Orthodox cultures tradition has given women a great deal of de facto spiritual authority within the home and the wider community. This was certainly the reality of my childhood. It was my mother, grandmother and aunts who had dreams, spoke to saints at night in candlelight prayer and whispered the meaning of the liturgy and the secrets of the universe into my ears.

The politicization of American Christianity is shackling the Church. Read to find out why.

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I’ll bet you never thought you’d read a post about the importance of institutional Christianity framed by the thoughts of a Hephaistos worshiper.

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Remember the female astronaut who saved the International Space Station with a toothbrush? She’s up to more of the same type hijinks.

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Rachel Marie Stone for Her.meneutics:

Because birth is for most Americans an event that takes place in the hospital—and, increasingly, in the operating room—there are simply fewer opportunities for women to see other women give birth. By contrast, in early America, as in virtually all traditional cultures, to attend another woman’s birth was expected and routine, more or less like attending a baby shower today.

Stone bookends the topic by addressing the question of “modesty”:

We might do well to reclaim birth and breastfeeding as a few of the very few times when supposed immodesty serves purposes far higher than titillation or voyeurism.

Bodies are for doing things.

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Totally unsurprising, but the solution to this problem seems easy to implement, for organizations that care about equality.

Via Jezebel.

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For all you Tolkien nerds out there:

By Aaron Diaz

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It turns out that Rimsha Masih—accused of burning pages of the Qur’an—was most likely framed by a local official as a ploy to disperse area Christians from the community.

Chishti has been outspoken about his dislike of the hundreds of Christian families who live in the area, even appearing on a popular national television show to complain that the noise made by Christian worshippers had disturbed Muslim residents.

He also welcomed the departure of most of the Christians from the area following the furore surrounding the arrest of Rimsha last month. With passions running high in the community – hundreds of people demonstrated outside her house, reportedly demanding the right to burn the young girl to death – most Christians fled the area.

Via Jezebel.

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If you don’t know what “The Kilns” is, you can probably skip this one. If you do, and you want to be insanely jealous of someone, read on.

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This post is also part of The Feminist Oddyssey Blog Carnival. If you’re visiting courtesy of the Carnival, welcome!

I credit Fred Astaire with starting me on the path to feminism. When I was growing up, my mom and I would go every week to the library (and later, to three different libraries, one being insufficient for our demanding multimedia requirements), returning home with crates of audiobooks and VHS movies.¹ We rarely failed to consume all of them by their due dates.

Between housework, which my mother probably delegated to me much more judiciously than I remember, and improvements to our neverending string of fixer-upper homes, there was always some kind of mindless work to be done in my family, and we filled the mental space with books on tape.² In the alternate universe created by the myopia of memory, my audiobook selections fell neatly into four categories: Tolkien, Dorothy L. Sayers, P.G. Wodehouse, and everything else. Movies were even simpler, with only two categories left after “everything else”: WWII films, and 1930s musicals.

My mother has never once actually sat down and watched a movie all the way through. Nearly every film she has ever seen has been viewed from behind an ironing board, the volume of laundry for a three-person household somehow dictating that the ironing would never actually finish. I can only assume that families in the 80s and 90s who had more than one child hired out their laundry so the homemaker of the family could occasionally eat a hasty meal standing over the sink. In any case, since you can’t keep both eyes on the TV while ironing without burning holes in your clothes, Mom needed movies familiar enough to be intelligible from sound only, and her go-to sub-genre was the RKO Astaire-Rogers musical.

In case you’ve never had the pleasure… um, spoilers? Every single one of these films involves a meet-cute between Astaire and Rogers, followed by some kind of falling out, the singing and dancing of many songs and dances, farcical but witty comedy, and an eventual reconciliation. In other words, romantic comedies.³

We homeschooled, which meant that I spent lots of one-on-one time with Mom, who taught me everything except math. (My dad is the math brain of the family.) Most days we stayed home, but frequently we rode a circuit of thrift shops and grocery stores that took all day to complete. (Despite never having a “job” while I lived at home, Mom stayed busy by stretching every dollar we had to within an ace of shredding, and she accomplished this by never buying new clothes if at all possible, obsessively coupon-clipping and price-comparing food, and canning or freezing massive quantities of fruit and vegetables that filled every one of our successive garages and basements. When I tell you that, combined with my father’s supernatural ability to never buy anything at all, Mom’s thriftiness has enabled my parents to pay off three different mortgages over the course of their marriage, you might be able to imagine what I’m talking about and why “homemaker isn’t a real job” will never make sense to me.)

Those shopping trips form my strongest memory of middle school education. I remember sitting in the front seat of our big conversion van, getting a stiff neck from slouching over my books while Mom was inside the Half Price Books store planning the next phase of my education, better than I remember actually studying at home. And as soon as I think about studying in the car, I remember talking in the car, because having your teacher right next to you while you read is the best thing about being homeschooled. My mother’s model for education, especially once I hit the middle-school years, was to assign me a bunch of reading on a topic, then make me discuss it with her until she was satisfied I knew what I was talking about. And because neither of us is very good at staying linear, those discussions branched out in every direction imaginable.

My family was pretty conservative—in case you didn’t get that from the homeschooling and strict diet of black-and-white movies—and we attended an evangelical church in the Anabaptist tradition whose model for the family I have referred to elsewhere as “semi-benevolent” patriarchy.⁴ While I was living at home, my mother always stuck to the party line on things like wifely submission in marriage, traditional gender roles, and a woman’s place in the church. As I neared graduation, though, cracks began to show—subtle, self-corrected off-message rants and sentences that started with “I know the Bible says X, but….” Despite being (I think) generally happy in other ways, Mom was no longer satisfied with what the church was telling her about herself, and as accustomed as she’d become to dialoging with me about everything else, she couldn’t keep that conflict contained all the time. I left high school with several seeds of doubt about the Christian teaching on gender taking root in my mind.

I won’t detail the myriad steps that brought me to the place where I believed in egalitarian marriage and equality for women in the church. They happened in my college and post-college years—that glorious time when you re-think everything you believe and come to believe you know everything—and early in my marriage. I don’t even remember most of them, inconsequential as each incremental change seemed in its time. I’m sure working for three years on the staff of my local church contributed in some way, but apart from the realization that evangelicals treat their unmarried like second-class citizens, I don’t know how.

I do know that I fetched up in Indiana, where I went to college, back from a two-year residence in Los Angeles, where my wife did. Some years earlier I’d decided to be a screenwriter and film director, so I spent those two years working in the entertainment production business and writing a series of screenplays that no one wanted to buy. Despite assuming at the outset that I would write supernatural or fantastical thrillers (the genre of movie I most enjoy), nearly every idea I had somehow turned into a romantic comedy, so I decided to embrace my identity and not only write another rom-com but also produce it myself. It starred a high-school girl—with a single mom—who solved a murder using her photography skills.⁵

I’d recently realized that writing strong female characters fascinated me, a fact that took the writing time of eight rom-com scripts to sink in. Since I was about to go into pre-production on the movie, though, I knew it would be a while before I wrote another screenplay. I decided to make the most of that time by teaching myself as much about women’s issues as my old pal Half Price Books would allow. I remember thinking, “I’m going to be the romantic comedy screenwriter who knows all about women’s issues!” Armed with absolutely zero research to guide me, I bought two books: The Chalice and the Blade, by Riane Eisler, and Promiscuities, by Naomi Wolf.⁶ I read them both within two weeks.

And suddenly, I was a feminist.

That was almost two years ago. I’m still very early in my feminist education, but I feel like growing up the only child of a homeschooling mom who didn’t recognize the concept of subjects being taboo to children (and also liked Astaire-Rogers musicals) has given me a bit of a boost—as backward as putting “30s musicals”, “homeschooling”, “evangelical church”, and “feminism” together may sound to many feminists. Fortunately, I’ve been blessed with a wife, a number of close friends and family, and a church who don’t think those things sound strange at all. Even more fortunately, while many non-religious feminists behave skeptically or contemptuously toward people of faith—particularly those from traditionally partriarchal religions—I know that the God I worship feels nothing but compassion for honest questions and loves to elevate the marginalized, be they slaves, the disabled, Gentiles, or—more recently—women.

It’s nerd day here at Jesus & Venus. Next up is this “Extended First Look” at the forthcoming Les Misérable movie, focusing on the director’s (Tom Hooper, The King’s Speech) decision to have the actors perform all their songs live on set.

Note to anyone who thinks Anne Hathaway’s “pretty version” comment sounds pretentious in this video: try being, or even working with, an actor.

Via Jezebel.

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A new study shows that science faculty (both male and female) display significant bias against female scientists. The graph showing the disparity in starting salary is particularly damning (even taking into account the adjusted scale of the graph).

Via Jezebel.

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The American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology is now recommending that doctors offer long-term contraceptive methods as a first option to teens. In addition to their many other benefits, such methods might, you know, prevent some of the 750,000 teen pregnancies we have in the U.S. every year:

“It’s such a common thing,” said Dr. Rachel Phelps, medical director of Planned Parenthood’s Rochester/Syracuse Region. “I see teens and women every week who are pregnant because their doctors aren’t well educated in contraception.”

Phelps told the story of one young woman who had her IUD removed when she broke up with her boyfriend because her doctor said IUDs could only be used by women in monogamous relationships. The woman became pregnant and had an abortion.

Via Jezebel.

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The culprits in the Amish beard-cutting incident have been convicted of federal conspiracy and hate crimes and could face decades in prison. I’m not a fan of the “hate” category for crimes—if something is a crime, it’s a crime; we don’t need to invoke hatred to make it illegal or bad. In this case, though, I wonder if prosecutors applied the hate crime law to bridge the gap between the crime’s intrinsic damage and its psychological damage.

A long prison sentence seems like overkill for the crime of cutting off someone’s beard and hair, but to the Amish people, the humiliation that results is extreme. I don’t like the idea of the U.S. justice system incorporating religious ideology into its decision-making, and the prosecutors would probably agree. But it also seems clear that the offenders committed a grave injustice against their victims that outstrips the bare physical effects. If I grabbed a random person off the street and gave him a forcible haircut, my crime would be much less severe.

Charging Samuel Mullet and his followers with hate crime maintains the delicate balance between remaining religiously neutral and meting out justice in proportion to the offense. Of course, we have yet to see what justice the court will mete out: sentencing is scheduled for January 24.

And I still don’t like “hate crime”.

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Last week the LA Times published a story detailing how the Boy Scouts of America repeatedly covered up for troop leaders and scoutmasters who sexually abused the boys in their care. I found the following particularly telling:

In 1982, a Michigan Boy Scout camp director who learned of allegations of repeated abuse by a staff member told police he didn’t promptly report them because his bosses wanted to protect the reputation of the Scouts and the accused staff member.

I imagine that many Catholic officials employed the same type of thinking when they decided to cover up similar behavior by priests, and I can picture how those conversations might go. People can trick themselves into believing they’re doing what’s best for their institution long-term by sacrificing justice in the short term, but in both cases—the Scouts and the church—an even longer view has shown that to be false.

You see this “not-quite-long-enough” view at work in all sorts of collective decision-making, and it never seems to end well. Maybe ethical standards exist for a reason—not just because they’re right, but because they work.

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Sierra of The Phoenix and Olive Branch explains why we need sex education by repeating a few of the myths about sexuality that her fundamentalist church taught her. I hadn’t heard of most of these, but #3 is my favorite:

People can tell whether or not you have ever masturbated by the way you smell (pheromones).

If we have to lie to our youth so they’ll behave the way the Bible says they should, maybe we have a more serious problem on our hands.

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Steven Crowder of Fox News wrote an entire column about how awesome he and his new wife are for being virgins when they got married, and he doesn’t care what you think about it:

Feeling judged? I couldn’t care less. You know why? Because my wife and I were judged all throughout our relationship. People laughed, scoffed and poked fun at the young, celibate, naive Christian couple.

I feel a little ambivalent about this (a very little). On the one hand: my wife and I were virgins when we got married, and I’ve heard enough responses to that piece of information to feel a little defensive about it when it comes up in conversations with non-evangelicals. On the other hand: I don’t act like a jackass about it.

Christianity is already counter-cultural and offensive enough by its nature; we don’t need to add offensive behavior and attitudes to our faith. Let the world hate us because the Gospel is hateful to them, not because we are.

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Madeleine Davies’ second paragraph contains exactly the right response. As a long-time lover (and writer) of romantic comedies, I find this… interesting. But it really shows how crazy life would be if we all behaved like rom-com characters.

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This would be even better if one of the games wasn’t a stereotypically “girly” game, but on the other hand: Gabby Douglas!

Via The Mary Sue.

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Dr. Christopher Benz, co-leader of the study:

“We’re going to move farther and farther from the practice of classifying cancers by where they arise and more and more by what their molecular composition and wiring is all about.”

Amazing findings.

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A bride-to-be on a budget chooses the color of her gown:

I thought a quick search of “white vs. ivory wedding dresses” would give me a good idea of which color would look better on me, but instead it led me into a universe where brides had to be reassured that choosing an ivory wedding dress was not equivalent to wearing a big scarlet A on their big day

I know I speak for my bridal-designer wife when I say it’s time for wedding dresses to branch out beyond white, ivory, and pink as color options. And don’t bring me this “white = virginity” nonsense. Wedding dresses are white because of Queen Victoria.

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Jennifer Bleyer covers the same ground as Cord Jefferson but doesn’t refer to pedophilia as “a sexual orientation”, so maybe people won’t attempt to demonize her.

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On her show this morning, Katie Couric disclosed her previous struggle against bulimia:

“I’d have a piece of gum that wasn’t sugarless and then say, ‘Oh! I’ve been bad,’ and then feel so terrible that I would eat and throw up. It was awful.”

We need more such openness about eating disorders in our culture.

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Today the feminist corner of the internet is very much in love with this piece by Jill Filipovic for The Guardian debunking the exclusive morality of chastity before marriage. Despite my interest in reframing the conversation about pre-marital sex, particularly within the church, I found it riddled with unfounded assertion and the assumption that correllation equals causation. Here’s an example:

So here it goes: having sex before marriage is the best choice for nearly everyone.

How do I know? Well, first of all, nearly everyone has sex before marriage – 95% of Americans don’t wait until their wedding night. And that’s a longstanding American value. Even among folks in my grandparents’ generation, nine out of ten of them had sex before they wed.

Data? Not in evidence.

I see this type of ill-considered writing (and speech) all the time from evangelicals, too. It’s what happens when your culture becomes so insular that you start mistaking your conclusions for valid premises.

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A raw, immersive, and scary account of a young woman’s discovery of her own mental illness.

Via Feministe.

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Andrew Cohen writes for The Atlantic on federal lawyers’ employment of circular reasoning in the motion to dismiss a lawsuit filed by the family of a Supermax inmate who committed suicide after not receiving treatment for his mental health issues:

The prison staff’s repeated failure or refusal to treat Vega for his obvious mental illness now is being used as evidence by the government that Vega didn’t need to be treated for his obvious mental illness.

While the U.S. penal system is still heavily based on the concept of retributive justice, we must mete out that justice humanely, and that includes looking after the health of our inmates.

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The Princess Bride turns 25 today. Why not celebrate by watching this hilariously bad theatrical trailer?

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It’s too late in the day to do anything about it, but let me provide a somewhat flawed echo to The Feminist Law Prof: Vote!

Unless you can’t find anyone on the ballot you feel you can vote for in good conscience. Then: Don’t Vote!

It’s not your Christian or civic obligation to vote if no one running matches up with your ideals to your satisfaction. If you perpetually feel like you’re voting for “the lesser of two evils”, maybe you shouldn’t vote. In that event, though, maybe you should be running for office yourself, or encouraging someone worthy to do it.

I probably shouldn’t have used the word “echo” anywhere in that first sentence.

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First in 103 years. Better late than never, though.

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This new extended ad—more like a very short art film—for Lolita Lempicka perfume stars Elle Fanning, dressed in clothes that match her skin tone and gazing into the camera with her mouth open.

It’s hard to see it as anything but a deliberate Lolita reference, and since Fanning is only 14, a much-too-literal one.

Via my friend Joe, who doesn’t get a link because he doesn’t exist on the internet in any meaningful sense.

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I’m trying very, very hard to maintain moral indignation with regard to this unnecessarily violent response.

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The New Yorker profiles J.K. Rowling in advance of her new, non-magical, non-YA novel. Great read.

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…. which is the title of her latest book. Most feminist critics have reacted with derision or outrage, but Wolf says their criticism is unfounded:

“This book was absolutely written without proscription. The only proscription in this book is for men who live with women to treat them nicely”

I’ll admit to having a soft spot for Naomi Wolf, because her book ushered me into feminism, so I’m predisposed to believe in her good intentions and intelligence. I think this comment by Amanda Hess hits the mark (or very nearly):

Vagina is a little late to the game. If the Beauty Myth[sic] was released just before beauty-industry deconstructions blew up, Vagina is hitting shelves, asking us to accept our vaginas, well after we already have. Then again, yesterday’s radical feminism is today’s mainstream revelation—the book has been a hit with Kathie Lee Gifford, who had trouble even pronouncing the term “vagina” when Wolf visited Today, and Joy Behar, who used it as an opportunity to discuss how she gets turned on when her husband swats at bats in the attic.

Exactly. It’s easy for a sub-culture to become insular and forget that not everyone shares their assumptions or core beliefs. Maybe Naomi Wolf was aiming for the mainstream of non-feminist women… again.

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Good for the President:

The order, which came as part of an effort Obama announced in remarks on Tuesday to the Clinton Global Initiative in New York, bars federal contractors, subcontractors or their employees from engaging in trafficking-related practices such as misleading recruitment, charging recruitment fees or destroying an employee’s identification documents.

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GQ, of all places, managed to slip questions to Pussy Riot in prison and reports their responses here. A must-read.

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30 Rock ends this season, but Fey’s new deal may give NBC another smart, witty comedy to collect Emmys instead of viewers.

If we’re lucky.

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Last week Ann Romney spoke out against the people criticizing her husband’s campaigning with: “Stop it. This is hard. You want to try it? Get in the ring.”

Last night, on The Tonight Show she wondered aloud to Leno whether she should have been more circumspect, but I had the opposite reaction: finally one of the Romneys exhibits signs of being a non-robot!

It’s probably too late now, but I wonder if all along Ann Romney could have been the key not only to giving Mitt some personality and warmth but also to unlocking the female vote he’s definitely not going to get.

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Rookie profiles legendary costume designer Edith Head. Anyone who put iconic clothes on Audrey Hepburn, Ginger Rogers, and Grace Kelly is pretty OK by me.

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I know it’s not surprising, and I know I’ve covered several other stories like this, but I think we all need frequent reminders: no matter how irrelevant feminism might seem in the modern era, we still don’t actually have equality… yet.

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