Animal Cruelty Syndrome: How abusing animals overlaps and intersects with abuse of human beings. Men who abuse women particularly do harm to animals as a way of exerting control over their human victims, and children who grow up in abusive houses may also abuse or kill animals in an effort to gain control over their tumultuous lives. Thanks, Alex, for the link.
There’s a new morning-after pill in town awaiting FDA approval. This one prevents pregnancy up to 5 days after sex, and is more effective than Plan B. Of course anti-choicers are again claiming that it’s an “abortion pill,” even though animal studies showed it to have no impact on established pregnancies.
“Conservative feminism” assumes that women are too stupid to know when other women are advocating for our rights and when they aren’t.
A beer for every remaining World Cup team.
Can men have it all? Sweden seems to think so. Their family-friendly policies help to make them one of the most gender-egalitarian places in the world.
911 is a joke: One of the most infuriating 911 call transcripts you’ll ever read, and detailed accounts of how women are routinely mocked and ignored by 911 dispatchers.
On gay pride, consumption and community-building. My favorite line: “We’re all silly, pointless animals, animals who dress up and walk on two legs and make funny buildings and (like some other animals) sometimes put chemicals in our bodies for recreation. There’s nothing actually to do at all on this planet but eat and screw and enjoy beautiful things and to spend our time in communities of people–now, more than ever, communities of people that we make ourselves.”
File this one under “can’t win.” Debrahlee Lorenzana is a beautiful woman who was fired from her job at Citibank. She is now suing, saying that she was sexually harassed during her time there and was fired because her looks were “distracting” to the men in the office. Elie Mystal at Above the Law put up a post basically saying that Lorenzana asked for it by having plastic surgery and wearing cute (but certainly not office-inappropriate) outfits. Of course, physical attractiveness correlates with better treatment and greater success in the workplace. If you’re female, you can be fired for not wearing make-up or for not presenting yourself as appropriately feminine and attractive. But try to be feminine and attractive and, if you cross whatever arbitrary line someone sets between appropriateness and attention-whoring, you’re asking for whatever bad treatment you get. Kate’s take is a nice counter to Elie’s argument.
Articles about The End of Men have been circulating lately, with pieces by Hanna Rosin in the Atlantic and New York Magazine (think she has a book coming out?). The always-insightful Ann Friedman texplains that, no, men are here to stay. But hopefully traditional gender stereotypes are on their way out.