Female Talk

Not Really How It WorksThe Dallas Observer has a long and fascinating article about a relatively new initiative for the Dallas judicial system.  STAR Court stands for Strengthening, Transition, and Recovery, and it seeks to give repeat prostitution offenders the tools to turn their lives around.  Unsurprisingly, if a street prostitute is given the tool to turn her life around, she does.

Although this sounds like common sense, it isn't.  A lot of people still assume that prostitutes are less than human, or that they choose their lifestyle to satisfy their own wanton promiscuity.  The very idea of treating prostitutes like human beings is shocking to many people, if not outright laughable.
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A-Cup AliciaThe Aussies are most definitely one weird lot. I’ve always suspected as much and it was just confirmed by the recent news about the anti-porn crusanders in Australia, who seem to be even more bizarre than their right-wing American counter-parts.
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Love FeetIn what I am assuming is an Onion-style satire article (a pdf is linked about half-way down the page), the Oklahoma Partisan Real-Ass Fake-Ass News reported that a female lawmaker had backed a mandatory foreplay proposal, calling for all men to perform a minimum of ten minutes of foreplay before intercourse.  As usual, the bill was divided across party lines with one male representative claiming that the female orgasm is little more than a myth.
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Last autumn when Manuela Maier signed her children up for an all-day school program in Germany and went back to work, she was "ostracized" by everyone in town.  They called her a "Rabenmutter, or raven mother, after the black bird that pushes chicks out of the nest."  (I guess that's the opposite of a "helicopter parent.")

For over 250 years, school for German children has ended at lunchtime.  This of course required a parent at home to care for them.  As opposed to America, for example, where all-day (or most-day) schooling is the norm, and both parents can take jobs outside the home.  A single mother in Germany is in big trouble, unable to accept full-time employment because she has to be home when the kids get out of school at noon.
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Men Can Be Gamers Too!Fellow gamers, I have called you here today to discuss why there aren't more men among us.  As we all know, most gamers are female.  This is supported by statistics from both the most successful gaming companies in the world (such as PopCap) and the occasional break-out platform specific games like The Sims franchise.
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All I can say is finally.

Yes, human trafficking and slavery has been getting a bit more attention lately due to different movements and films (from documentaries to fictional movies like Taken). I appreciate that. But it seems like the general public is still in denial that modern day slavery and human trafficking—human kidnapping and sale—is still very much alive and afoot. In fact, it’s the third largest industry in the world,  generating $32 billion every year with 14,500 to 17,500 foreign nationals trafficked into the U.S. annually alone. Read more

Seems like I am not the only one who has this discussion with friends. I recently came across another conversation where someone was adamantly asking for a longer list of good female fantasy authors (yea, Ursula Le Guin was mentioned as were others but three names can't make a big list). Thing is, there have been a number of really great female authors. Just because some of them might not be as popular as the Hickman/Weiss writing duo doesn't mean that the list is small. Alright, so I didn't step up and rattle off a number of authors (what kind of weirdo do you take me for, arguing with strangers on a train in a foreign city?) but the conversation did stay with me long afterwards. Furthermore, I was somewhat mortified that modern day lists might not even include the Earthsea author: I had this nagging suspicion any well-known list would include books containing characters that … sparkle. So, here's a small list of fantasy authors, putting together a group of folks whose works, in my opinion, stand out from the rest.

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Sized 2I am a big fan of the trend of giving magazine (and possibly runway) space to plus-sized models who actually might give a realistic impression of what a woman would actually look like in a particular item of clothing. The most notable cases are the spread in Vogue with the plus-sized models and the new spread with Crystal Renn at a healthy sized 12 and her sized 2 counterpart. All I have to say is, “You go girls!”Sized 12
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Brenda LaurelThe Sociological Images blog today led me to this TED talk by games designer Brenda Laurel.  Several years ago, Laurel decided to tackle the issue of "why girls don't play video games" head on.  Unlike everyone else ever, Laurel decided to amass a great sparkling whack of empirical data.  
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Also Not A True ScotsmanFor some reason it seems that there has been an uptick in "no true Scotsman" discussions with regards to who is or isn't a feminist, and why.  For those of you unfamiliar with this little logical fallacy, it goes something like this:

Robin: No Scotsman would ever put sugar on their porridge.
Toby: But my dad's a Scotsman, and he puts sugar on his porridge.
Robin: No TRUE Scotsman would ever put sugar on their porridge.

In a literal sense, "no true Scotsman" is an issue of the category lines being drawn arbitrarily, to exclude whoever the speaker happens to dislike.  In practice, the answer to "What's a true Scotsman, then?" is "me and only me.  And maybe a small handful of my very good friends."
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