USA 72nd for gender equality

Sexism is not over in the USA, sorry ya'll. Canada is doing much better than us on United Nations measures, and so are 71 other countries. See for yourself:

“The U.S. is near the bottom of the list when it comes to gender parity in office,” Souza-Rezendes said. “We’re behind Afghanistan even.” In Kabul (the capital of Afghanistan), 27.7% of parliamentary seats are held by women, in comparison to 19.4% in the U.S. Congress. So all you people who cry about Muslim countries being backwards on women's rights, think about that. (source)

Meanwhile, in Canada...Trudeau appointed 50% women to his cabinet (source). But overall, Canada has 26% women in federal government. So with 27.7%, Afghanistan still beats us both.

So, why is it so difficult for USA women in politics?

"Republican presidential candidate and former CEO Carly Fiorina was asked why she didn’t smile more after the second presidential debate by a host of conservative commentators,"(source). I guess the Presidency is just another Miss America Pageant to them. I know making a good impression in politics is important, but when's the last time you asked a man why he wasn't smiling?

USA voters also vote for male candidates they don't like all the time (the lesser of two evils, etc), but have not shown a willingness to do the same for female candidates. Women in any position of power have this problem, like the New York Times editor Jill Abramson, who won 8 Pulitzers in 3 years but still was fired because she was "polarizing and mercurial." In general, men in power are allowed to be assholes if they get stuff done, but women are expected to be friendly and easy to work with. Otherwise, you KNOW there's a special word just for us...


But to end on a positive note, that same NYT editor doesn't think women should cope by being friendly to everyone. Rather, "it is crucial for women to ascertain their own individual leadership styles and to know whom they can count on for support. Figuring out who your allies are as a leader is more important than finely calibrating how pleasant to be.” So, figure out who CAN see your true value, and nurture positive relationships with those people.

MOASIC conference fangasm

This Sunday, I attended Carnegie Mellon's MOSAIC conference, which focuses on gender. Specifically, it focuses on "promoting gender equity and to open a forum for exploration and discussion of the role that gender plays in the lives, careers, and education of men and women as individuals, and in the larger scheme of culture, society, and government." You can see more on their official site here.

This conference was small (less than 400 people total) but it was AMAZING. Maybe part of the reason it was amazing was that it was small and I felt a real sense of community, but let me cover some of the other reasons I loved it. I'm just gonna run through the day's agenda and praise in chronological order:

It was super accessible. Most conferences like this cost money, and are only open to professionals or students in certain fields. Yet this conference seemed to be open to anyone who wanted to attend, it was free, AND the dress code was very relaxed. I was worried about wearing overly casual business casual, but some people there were in denim and I wasn't the only one with blue or green hair, or gauged ears. I felt like I belonged as soon as I walked in the door...and yet still found myself sitting only a seat away from famous author Kate Bornstein as we watched a presentation together. And the presenters were diverse too; undergrads just starting to define their research interests, PhDs who did international development work, drag performers and other artists, people who ran social service programs, traveling scholars, etc.

The audience was equally diverse; at lunch I sat with people I randomly introduced myself to (always a great idea in spaces like this) and I got to talk to an international student from Portugal who was studying mechanical technology of some sort, it was completely unrelated to the conference. He was just interested in gender as a personal interest. He was wearing a kilt and it was awesome. About 25-50% of the attendees seemed to be local students, not all studying issues related to the conference. Many of the other attendees seemed to be professionals who worked or volunteered in fields relating to public safety, healthcare, social justice, etc. Some attendees were visibly or vocally LGBTQ and it was one of the few environments where I've seen many other androgynous-looking people, and one of the ONLY environments where I've seen non-binary business attire. And let me tell you, I definitely picked up some fashion ideas I will be using in the future.

The content was super useful and like nothing I've ever seen before. I was sad I couldn't go to more sessions but they ran concurrently so you had to choose. My first discussion session was on "Non-binary Individuals and Their Search for Inclusion"...it covered the lack of official terminology to describe non-binary identities, and how this has motivated us to create our own terms and spaces on social media that understand. I am including the official description below for you to see:

"This presentation will examine the emergence of new ways of discussing and naming gender identities that arose out of discourse generated by non-binary individuals on the social microblogging website, Tumblr. Non-binary individuals - people whose gender falls outside the binary of male vs. female - experience a structural erasure of their identity due to the lack of existing, widespread terminology to describe their identity. They are then vulnerable due to a lack of structural support, whether it be judicial, legislative, or social - if society is not aware of who or what they are, society cannot protect them against discrimination. To address this problem, as well as to challenge the role that gender plays in one’s identity, non-binary individuals are creating new terminology to describe their gender identity while changing how gender is discussed. This ultimately has the effect of destabilizing the notion of gender as fixed, inherent, and unambiguous. In addition to an explanation of this process, the presentation will also involve a review of the theoretical frameworks used to frame the analysis of the Tumblr posts, which draw on Judith Butler’s concept of legible versus illegible bodies, as well as an in-depth review of the analysis and categorization of non-binary ways of speaking on Tumblr. The presentation is structured to be accessible to attendees of all backgrounds, and will be followed by a question-answer session."

In contrast, the next session I went to was on international development work, and how it struggles to promote gender diversity rather than reinforce gender norms and stereotypes. The presenter had a master's in Literary and Cultural Studies, and she worked with the United Nations. From her, I learned that Pittsburgh is actually an official resettlement community for international refugees! (So are Harrisburg and Erie). Pittsburgh is actually one of the most popular resettlement communities for refugees from Bhutan, so popular that Bhutanese refugees placed as far away as Massachusetts have later moved here because they hear good things about it! But, I digress. Our presenter mentioned that international development professionals need to include more perspectives of the people they work with, so that we empower people with agency instead of just telling them what to do. She gave me hope for the future of social work, especially how interested she seemed in getting feedback from the audience on how she could do better. She had about 30 people in her audience, and sadly she said that usually only 7-8 people attend her sessions at much larger, more professional conferences. So gender equity in international work still has a long way to go, but at least some professionals are fighting for a very progressive angle on it. You can read the full transcript of her session here in the official schedule.

Kate Bornstein was the keynote speaker and she also mentioned how gender issues contribute to global welfare. (Kate is a 60-something year old author who focuses on trans and non-binary gender issues.) Kate went over her basic way to fight suicide, which is "do whatever you have to do to make your life more worth living, with one rule: don't be mean." Then she went on to explain how identity, desire and power relate to our mental health, and how kyriarchy (existing power systems based on race, gender, religion, wealth, etc) fuck with our identity, desire and power because they give us prescribed messages on who to be. She went so far as to propose a world order based on desire, rather than one based on power or identity. The world order we have now she described as power dynamics masquerading as identity-based democracy, which was kind of mind-blowing to me. A world order based on power means those who have more control others; and it's the easiest to set up, and the most painful for obvious reasons. A world order based on identity is one where everyone has a voice, but these voices group together around shared ideas and principles, (like countries, religion, workers unions etc) and in these groups, every person has a small control over the larger group. She mentioned how we used to feel this way in the USA with one person, one vote, but that system is falling apart now because the average voter controls very little of actual politics. In contrast, a world order based on desire, could be motivated to push compassion for others as the primary politic and controlling force. It is the hardest to set up, and has never been done before, but it would be something that rejects all forms of kyriarchy and tries to give people the freedom to be individuals free from prescribed behavior, except for the concept "don't be mean." Even if we can't do this on a global level, we can do it now at an individual level by giving ourselves the freedom to break prescribed rules and norms, and respecting and making space for others who do the same.

Kate also made some jokes about Doctor Who and Star Wars that made my geek heart do somersaults. This woman was already a hero of sorts to me before I saw her speak, and seeing her tied into all the other content at this conference, was like a 4 hour brain orgasm.

iHollaback & Inti Maria Fight Street Harassment, Kick Ass

(note: this happened in 2011 but is still relevant)

Inti Maria is a hero who worked with this international campaign to track and map street harassment. She was publicly threatened by a journalist in Buenos Aires for her work. Amazingly, her organization (ihollaback.org) won a petition campaign against the journalist who threatened her and got him fired, after a lot of work. Their story is amazing:

As we weighed our options, I just kept coming back to one of our core organizational values: “we’ve got your back.” We needed a response that showed Inti Maria that we had her back, and showed all our site leaders that if this happened to them, we would have their backs too.

When the publication that Juan Terranova worked for – El Guardian – wouldn’t budge, Inti Maria, Violet, and Gaby worked with the incredible team at change.org to target the magazine’s two main advertisers. We organized another petition that put pressure on Fiat and Lacoste pull their advertising, and it was signed by over 1,700 people. In historic and precedent setting move for the Argentinean media, both companies pulled their advertising and publicly announced their disapproval of Terranova’s threat. Lacoste wrote, “our brand has suffered from being associated to comments we disapprove of.”

Juan was pretty mad about it, too. Apparently, he tried to claim that he wasn't a bad guy, and that his rape threat was only a misinterpreted attempt at "violent seduction." (source) Hmmm....

You can read the latest on what iHollaback is up to here: http://www.ihollaback.org/blog/category/a-week-in-our-shoes/

Career Women...So Scary!

Daily Mail.co.uk talks about women's rise in society and makes sure we all know what the word "purse-whipped" means. In case, you know, that other pu***-whipped insult wasn't bad enough...

"Women with money can go where they like and do what they please (economists call it the ‘independence effect’)." 

>Translation: OMG, is there anything scarier than a woman DOING WHAT SHE LIKES and GOING WHERE SHE PLEASES??! If that's not what they mean, then why do we even need to mention this "independence effect" like it's a thing to note?

"By the time these graduates reached the peak of their careers, ‘the entire management structure of Britain will have been transformed and feminised ...This thing is huge, and it is happening at every level, and no one seems to be thinking about the consequences’."

>Oh no...how terrible that women will be able to influence their workplaces in a way that is beneficial to themselves! What the heck would a "feminized" work structure look like, anyway?...

>Daily Mail also warns us that in this new nightmare world of the future, women will not need men and so will never settle down:

"Social life: With more women being self-sufficient, increased numbers will choose to remain single"

>Yep.  Thanks for that handy bullet point, Daily Mail!  Women who have good jobs don't need or want husbands, in fact career women are 80% more likely to become lesbians, right? And not the fun kind like Katy Perry, either!

"Men may find they need marriage more than women, and start to panic if they haven’t found a partner by a certain age."

>I don't think so, especially since men still earn more $ then women on average, and women overwhelmingly outnumber men as single parents.  Still, the image of a man panicking if he's still single before he becomes an "old maid" is kind of cute.  Cause we all know that's what women do nowadays, right?

"Man caves will become a thing of the past because the whole house will become a man cave, with men dominating kitchens: furnishing them, equipping them with blow torches and Japanese sushi knives in the effort to find something new to bring to the table."

>Ah, men must have blowtorches and sushi knives to cook dinner, I see.

"For the under-30s, there is nothing futuristic about this: the fairer sex is becoming the richer sex. More than ever, this is becoming a woman’s world."

>Hmm, I guess I didn't get my "woman's world" raise yet. And it would be nice if we could also end violence against women and stuff, but as long as the Daily Mail says it's a woman's world...guess we're all right!

So seriously, there are some HUGE PROBLEMS with the way this article is framed:
1. 46-58% women in the workforce is not "A woman's world." Statistically significantly that's just about as equal as numbers get.

2. More than a bit alarmist: "All this is especially alarming to men when you think how things were just a few generations ago." Why should it be alarming at all? If this really was as huge a social change as the article says, then men should be celebrating that the women in their lives now have new ways to be successful & fair chances at achieving their dreams, and men have more freedom to take roles in family life & less pressure to always be the family breadwinner. It's only alarming to men if they can't compete in a world where women have a fair chance, and that's NOT how all men are. Men can be happy for women's success too, rather than worried and full of erectile dysfunction, which is how this article makes it sound.

3. On the erectile dysfunction note, this article subtly BLAMES WOMEN for marital problems arising from their own success: "the world is changing, but attitudes need to change with it. And the problem may well not be with old-fashioned male chauvinism. but with female atavism." This is even after they talk about the term "purse-whipped," women having to lie about their success to get dates, and men who have ED because their spouses earn more then them. None of these problems are women's fault. And what popular journalist uses the term "atavism," really? It doesn't even make sense here as a thing to blame.

4. It's hard to keep funding affirmative action for women when you read things like "‘College is built for the female brain,’ she says. ‘What do you do in college? You sit. You read. You write and you talk.’"

Yep, clearly women are DOMINATING college with 58% attendance rates, and this has nothing to do with the huge social pushes to support women's advancement, nope it's only because college is FEMINIZED because apparently we don't spend enough time shooting lasers and hitting things with sticks.

Sigh...I'm happy that women are getting more freedom and are no longer outnumbered by men in the workforce, but we should celebrate that responsibly and in a positive way, instead of calling red alert and acting like women are all uber-successful dominatrixes.

Similar to the "affluent gay guy" stereotype, This kind of propaganda does the same harm. People don't try as hard to look out for oppressed groups when you make people think they are rich and successful.

On female authors

Sci-fi author Maureen Johnson tells us why more books written by women have "girly covers":

"A man and a woman can write books about the same subject matter, at the same level of quality, and that woman is simply more likely to get the soft-sell cover with the warm glow and the feeling of smooth jazz blowing off of it. This idea that there are ‘girl books’ and ‘boy books’… gives credit to absolutely no one, especially not the boys who will happily read stories by women, about women. As a lover of books and someone who supports readers and writers of both sexes, I would love a world in which books are freed from some of these constraints.”

See her Cover Challenge: more popular novels with the covers given this "girly cover" treatment: @the Mary Sue.

Norway Tidbit

"In my country there are not really any stay at home moms.. we stay home the first 1-2 years .. part time dad does, part of the time mom does.. Its our culture.. equality among genders is big for us.. also in men having the right to be equal ;) .. like equal rights to parenthood =)"

--Norway business owner, 33-year old female.

A friend said this today to me online, when I asked her if she was a stay-at-home mom.  I was really impressed by the answer.

Dear USA, why can't we be more like this?

"Norway has been, in many regards, an early adopter of women's rights, minority rights, and LGBT rights.  For example, in 1990 Norway was the first country to recognize the ILO-convention 169 on indigenous people, and in 1913 became one of the first countries to grant women universal suffrage (without conditions on civil status). It was also the first independent nation to allow women to run for elected office." (from Wikipedia)

Holy Bishop Glass Ceiling, Britain!

Many Christians were disappointed today when the Church of England voted to keep Bishop a male-only position.  Female priests currently account for 1/3 of clergy members in England, but they are still barred from higher offices in the church, like Bishop, Cardinal and Pope.

"More than 70 percent of the 446 synod votes on Tuesday were in favor of opening the church’s episcopacy to women."  But because of the way the synod is divided into voting blocks, and each block requires a 2-thirds majority to pass the vote, 6 votes in the "laity house" block kept this vote from passing.  The "laity house" is made up of non-clergy churchgoers, voted as local representatives by their home church.

The Church clergy has not expressed much support for this vote outcome, stating "We have, as a result of yesterday, undoubtedly lost a measure of credibility in our society." So it may be that the churchgoers are more against women bishops than the church leaders.


In response, a petition has started circulating, asking for the governing seats that the Church Bishops hold in the British House of Lords to be removed.  If Bishops can only be men, they they have no place in government council seats, seems to be the idea behind this petition.
Well, at least the next time someone says, "we don't need feminism anymore, men and women are clearly equal!" you'll have a nice retort.

Stop Blaming Testosterone

Today, we have some feminist critique of the viewpoint that men "can't help" oogling women. Inspired by the trendy article, "5 Ways Modern Men are Trained to Hate Women," and it's scathing response; "Mysogyny isn't caused by male horniness."

Even after reading this critique, which makes a great point that hey, maybe women and men don't act differently just because of biology, but because of what society teaches us, some guy still found the need to cry out (comment #265: mcguinty):

You’ll also notice that I never said the average male traits make the average male better than the average female. I just said it makes the average male different from the average female. Personally I would like to be able to have some of the average female traits: better social intelligence, better empathy, and so on. But I can’t because of my biology.

O. M. Gee.

Our response:
Dear @mcguinty. by assuming these male SOCIAL traits are biological, you just spit out a whole bunch of disabling sexism. " I would like to be able to have some of the average female traits: better social intelligence, better empathy, and so on. But I can’t because of my biology." What the hell? ANYONE can have better social intelligence and better empathy, all you have to do is make an effort and try to LEARN.

Women are told from day 1 that they must consider other's feelings in everything they do, and give up their own needs to support others. This is why women have these traits in wider abundance than men, not because it's "biological." You using biology as an excuse as to why you don't have them, is just making a lame excuse to justify your continued behavior as a selfish, offensive asshole. Biology is not an excuse to treat women badly, or act like an asshole in general. That is is the whole problem with this cracked article, and this why it DOES matter if men's different behavior is based in biology or not.

If it was really based in biology, then it could not be changed. (If that was actually true, then I think all men should be imprisoned and removed from all positions of power, since they "naturally" are inclined to hurt women.) But if macho, objectifying, tit-gazing behavior is LEARNED, then we can UNLEARN it, which would be a HUGE SOCIAL IMPROVEMENT. We need to stop blaming biology and recognize the social conditioning that is all around us.

So. Why is this so hard to understand? Because I have heard men who claim to be "progressive" blame their biology all the time. You almost might think, that they don't want to understand it..

Murder as Masculine

This post makes the very interesting point that men are more likely to be murder victims than women, except when those victims are a family member like spouse, parent, or child. But sibling victims are more likely to be male. What does that say about gender and murder?

Men also are more than 3x more likely than women to commit eldercide, and more likely to be the murderer when the victim is any family member or significant other. What does that say?

Sexism Makes me Facepalm.

I saw local news today about a "Milk Truck" that is patrolling the streets of Pittsburgh, giving women a special place to breastfeed in public. This is an art piece meant to raise public awareness about the unfair fact that many women have to breastfeed in uncomfortable "hideaways" like dirty restroom stalls, or use freaky breast pumps at home and then carry stale bottled milk for their infants to drink outside the home. Why do women act this way? Look at the comments by some men on this article:

"The breast is definitely over-the-top."

"The breast on the top is unnecessary. The name & paint scheme are sufficient. Also, getting rid of the breast might remove some stigma that some mothers might have about be associated with the giant tit truck and thereby help increase their business."

Stigma of the tit? These guys seem to be missing the whole message of this art, while ironically proving it's point: Breasts are not just for sex, censoring the breast unilaterally encourages women to feel SHAME about this part of their body.

This is part of a larger feminist issue; when women take ownership of their bodies it can freak people out. Like the new trend of cougars, middle-aged women with high sex drives. Sexually empowered women threaten many men, like our friend HUFF POST SUPER USER, tbot48:

"Must be something in the water were I live... The majority of the women I know talk a good game but won't sit down and play and it doesn't matter how much lobster you feed them..."

or Mr Bobo: "I think I actually spotted one of these mythical creatures recently. She was riding a Unicorn."

So, just because these guys are not personally getting laid they doubt the existence of women with high sex drives? Do they think that just because women enjoy sex and want it often, they are going to be openly out on the streets, sleeping with anyone who buys them dinner (and nekkidly riding unicorns)?

PUH-LEEZE, guys. Don't forget that women have the power to be discriminatory in who they sleep with, even if they are having sex every week. Maybe you're just not charming or attractive enough to net one of these power-cougars. For naively assuming all women who enjoy sex are indiscriminate sluts, you win a GOLD STAR AWARD.

Wax your Daughter, Save for College!

It must be confusing growing up in America these days. Sexting is illegal, yet waxing for preteen girls is now a trend. So girl-children's bodies have to look sexy, but they are not allowed to share this sexiness with anyone else in any way.

Why should a tween girl worry about primping an area of her body no one is supposed to see? Well, one salon owner informs us that "Virgin hair can be waxed so successfully that growth can be permanently stopped in just 2 to 6 sessions. Save your child a lifetime of waxing... and put the money in the bank for her college education instead!"

Eliminating future work while saving money? What American could pass on a chance like this?! After all, college IS ridiculously expensive. And it's not like there could be any downside to the procedure...

Teaching young girls that pain equals beauty and social acceptance, that's a great lesson. You're never too young to learn how to change your body to please men! Some prudes disagree, of course, like children's advocate Dr. Levin, who believes, "Girls shouldn’t be taught so early to focus on how they look and that things like money, makeup and looking good buy happiness, instead of the skills that they possess....Should parents feed into that negativity or create an environment to help girls resist it?"

But if parents learned to teach their daughters that we can be worthy of love without cosmetic procedures, how would the beauticians feed their own children?

America is Pro-Life...and Pro-Unplanned Pregnancy?

LifeNews has a wonderful way with statistics. They can take data that shows 76% of Americans support legal abortion, 50% of Americans favor the current legal status of abortion, and come back with a headline that says AMERICA IS PRO-LIFE.

How do they do this? Well, it's all based on a Gallup poll that can be viewed directly here. Originally Gallup asked people to support 1 of 3 categories; abortion legal in any circumstances, abortion legal in some, and abortion legal in none. When split this way, 27% favored legal in all, 49% favored legal in some, and 22% favored legal in none. So only 22% were for banning abortion.

Gallup then fixed the stats by splitting the middle category into those who wanted abortion legal in most circumstances, and those who wanted it to be legal in only a few. In this way they got 10% of voters wanting legal abortion "under most circumstances," and 39% wanting it to be legal in "only a few circumstances." So now they can say that 39% + 22% = 63% of Americans support no or severely limited abortion.

Does this mean America really is Pro-Life? Well, you can split the stats anyway you want. You can say that only 22% of Americans favor banning abortion completely. 50% of Americans DO want to allow abortion in "some circumstances." And this is what we already allow (our circumstance being abortions up until the third trimester.) So half the country wants NO change to our abortion policy.

Even when looking only at the extreme views, MORE (27%) Americans favor always allowing abortion rather than never allowing abortion (22%). So any way you cut it, most Americans don't favor a change to our abortion policy. But Gallup biased the results by splitting up the middle group. The lesson: If you split up the majority of a group, you can transform their consensus into a series of conflicting categories, hiding the true majority opinion.

So most Americans want to allow abortion under some circumstances. But most Americans also support severely limited abortion. Can all of this be true while America is still Pro-Life? Rest assured, it can all be true. It's just that we have to really think about what "Pro-Life" means.

Remember, we can hide the true majority opinion if we split up a group into conflicting categories. In America, we have "Pro-Choice" and "Pro-Life" categories. Both positive sounding terms. But they're not really that clear and distinct, because pro-choice people could also be pro-life in many circumstances. The difference is that pro-life on a political level means everyone has to be pro-life, all the time, or be criminally responsible and morally wrong. So really, we might rename the Pro-Life position "Pro-Forced Birth" or "Pro-Unplanned Pregnancy."

I wonder how THAT would bias the statistics? If Pro-Life means abortion is NEVER legal, under any circumstances, that would mean only 22% of America supports it (according to this poll). America is not THIS kind of pro-life. But if we allow pro-life to mean allowing abortion only under a few circumstances, without defining exactly WHAT those circumstances are, it's much easier to include the majority of Americans as pro-life.

So it seems no one really wants to have abortions, but most people feel it should be allowable in certain circumstances. There is our general consensus. Now if we could just leave the law to allow for that, American could move on from this whole issue.

Men Experience Discrimination

Men are now targets for profiling all around the globe, as the Wall Street Journal reported last month.

Men everywhere claim they are being treated as predators, pedophiles and rapists when they have done nothing wrong! Things such as changing a baby's diaper, stocking underwear in a store, and rescuing a child in danger have earned men beatings, dirty looks, and even legal attacks. When it is not legal for a day care center employee to change a baby's diaper, simply because the employee is a man, how is this helping anyone?

This is blatant discrimination and it's totally unfair. Treating all men like they are criminals, before they have done anything wrong? Why are we making innocent people suffer just because of their biology?

...Oops, wait a second! I forgot that this attitude is totally outdated in America, and NOT politically correct. My TV already told me that profiling is ok, and even recommended for public safety! We need to profile American males to protect ourselves from attacks just like we need to profile Middle Eastern Americans to protect ourselves from terrorism. Thereby if you protest the profiling of men in America, you are helping the terrorists!

Bridalplasty Wins A Gold Star

America, the land of opportunity, freedom and...free plastic surgery? Well, only if you defeat your rival brides-to-be on public TV! Keeping the same body you got engaged with is for losers! For teaching us this, the show Bridalplasty wins a Gold Star straight from my heart.

Bridalplasty also wins because it encourages women to run with syringes and uses the phrase "injectable party!" That sounds fun for all the wrong reasons.

Major Kudos to Modern Lady for effectively mocking this show. I can't give any better feedback than what she says here:


Cosmetic surgery compared to an angel's voice? Great, now I have to worry about this movie becoming a reality, too.

Mastectomy Fever Sweeps Iran

Fashion update: Breasts are officially an undesirable feature in Iran!

The Vice Police ordered the chop-chop for these mannequins while cracking down on "Un-Islamic" practices in Tehran.

In America I get annoyed just looking at super curvy plastic buttocks in the store window. Obnoxious and over the top for sure, but at least it's a cheerful image. Meanwhile, these dolls are frowning and shutting their eyes, more dismal than a dead nun. You can practically hear the sighs of all those plastic ladies wishing they didn't have awkward inhuman stumps showing through the front of their thawb.

How can this possibly attract women to shop at the store? "Oh yes, see how modest these dolls look in our clothes. With a robe like this you would never attract the attention of a man! So even though the ideal of not having womanly assets may be a bit out of your reach, our clothing is the next best thing."

Yep, breasts are totally disgusting. I mean, people might look at you and be reminded that you are a WOMAN! So keep them out of sight until you need them for the only thing they're good for:

feeding newborns, of course!

the Future of Afghanistan under President Hamid Karzai

You may have heard that Afghanistan canceled their upcoming election, granting the Presidency to the remaining candidate Hamid Karzai. Even without an election, the US has backed his new term.

Becoming President without an election seems bad enough, yes? BUT did you know the "new" President also supports stripping women of their human rights? Last August his office passed a law known as the "marital rape" law. It allows husbands to starve their wives if they refuse sex. It also requires a wife to get her husband's permission before taking any jobs and makes it impossible for a woman to have custody of her own children.

How did a law like this ever pass? Well, apparently the public did protest the original version heavily. That version removed a women's ability to consent to sex in marriage and simply stated that she MUST have sex with her husband every 4 days.

I guess the Afghan public now feels lucky the law was toned down. Just like they feel lucky that their President supports drug traffickers, standing armies of warlords, and bringing some of "the wonderful people in the Taliban" back into government.

Japanese Career Opportunity

The NYTimes just published an article on the glamorous life of hostesses in Japan. In this career, women can "earn money just by drinking with men" and make anywhere from $100,000 a year to $300,000. A hostess would work at a Gentleman's club, where her main responsibilities are pouring drinks, offering attentive conversation, looking elegant in an evening gown, and flirting in a nonsexual manner. Hostesses at each club are ranked according to popularity, and the top hostess at each location is awarded star status. But, it's not all glory. The main risk is "exhaustion from a life of partying."

So, on one hand we have an easy and fun way to strike it rich, open to any attractive young woman in Japan. On the other, we have a society where a woman's attention has now become a publicly accepted commodity.

French Fashion vs. the Burka

France is considering banning the Burka in public. French president Nicolas Sarkozy says, "[The burka] is not the idea that the French republic has of women's dignity... It will not be welcome on the territory of the French republic." It only makes sense that France, as a leader of global fashion, would be considering laws to make sure all its women dress in ways representative of the state ideals.

And so, while we're making law on how women should dress, I have a few other suggestions for France:

* ban Crocs
* ban Uggs
* ban socks with sandals
* ban panty lines
* ban orange fake tans
* ban muffin tops

An Office for Unborn Children

Today, I am writing to thank Senators Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma) for jumping to protect our children, even before they are born!! Together, they are working to pass policy that will guarantee healthcare to unborn children, and create an Office of Unborn Children’s Health, to stand up for the rights of unborn children everywhere. As Senator Hatch says, " America itself is built on the foundation of unalienable rights which we receive from God. Government exists to secure those rights." Yes, aren't we lucky in America, to have a government there to promote God's will!

You'd think that giving healthcare to the mother would be just as important, that we could have an Office of Mother's Health too, and someone to stand up for what the mothers need in all of this. But wait...who does God love more, adult women, or unborn babies? Why, there's nothing more pure and free of sin than an unborn baby, while the mothers are just women who got pregnant, and so...I guess we can see why this policy is a good idea.