Ah, men. xkcd rocks!

This is going to be a very long post that catches up on things I have been meaning to post for a while and can generally be classified under the rubric of things that touch on women. I realize that is an somewhat large category and I am not, in any way, implying that these things do not affect men; that would be stupid.

The Atlantic, which I normally have a great deal of affection for has gone and published an article about all the many ways in which women should settle so that they won't get old and wrinkled before they find some man to babysit for them. Of course, all of the examples she gives of this settling are either cases that show not much more than contempt for the poor men involved or imply any realization that marriage is not always a scene out the various romantic comedies Hollywood produces is a sign that life is horrible and you might as well decide now to just deal with it. The article infuriated me and others; I'm just letting you know. Even Mistress Matisse weighed in.


Hatshepsut has this little gem about women's only cars on trains. The "loud" women in the front women's only car of a train are being blamed by the driver for a train accident where a train couldn't stop and went off the rails, injuring 34 people. She also has a link about the situation in Gaza, which is continuing and is more depressing, and a post about Zanan, an influential Iranian feminist magazine that has been shut down by the government. Daniel Levy is talking about Gaza too, and he includes some rumination on the possibility that Obama might actually change some of the US's horrid current approach to diplomacy if he is elected. I certainly hope so. I spent two hours last week trying to convince someone from outside the country that they should stick around for a little bit longer because we were going to do better. Of course, this also led to me attempting to explain how the US government and elections are actually organized to someone who was from India. I never understood quite how simple India's system is or quite how complex ours is until I had to explain the differences.

It turns out that the studies claiming that women spoke more words then men by an astronomical amount were bogus, and kids of divorced parents aren't all that bad off.

There is also an article cross-posted on Slate and the Washington Post about the incredible difficulties military spouses endure that is well worth reading.

I firmly believe that you never know when a human being, or a group of them, that would normally be written off can do something awesome. I don't often get that belief corroborated, but it happened the other day. It turns out that the Raelians, they of cloning and preparing to welcome the aliens, have decided to take a stand against female genital cutting and are sponsoring patients of the woman who has pioneered reconstruction surgery that includes clitoral reconstruction. The article is in Wired and it just goes to show that many things are possible.