
By HMHM. Click on it for a better view.
STOCK: What do you say then to a young girl, I am going to place it as he said it, when a young girl is raped by her father, let's say, and she is pregnant. How do you explain this to her in terms of wanting her to go through the process of having the baby?
ANGLE: I think that two wrongs don't make a right. And I have been in the situation of counseling young girls, not 13 but 15, who have had very at risk, difficult pregnancies. And my counsel was to look for some alternatives, which they did. And they found that they had made what was really a lemon situation into lemonade. Well one girl in particular moved in with the adoptive parents of her child, and they both were adopted. Both of them grew up, one graduated from high school, the other had parents that loved her and she also graduated from high school. And I'll tell you the little girl who was born from that very poor situation came to me when she was 13 and said 'I know what you did thank you for saving my life.' So it is meaningful to me to err on the side of life.
One force is embedded feminism: the way in which women's achievements, or their desire for achievement, are simply part of the cultural landscape.
...
So the female characters created by Shonda Rhines for Grey's Anatomy, to choose just one example, reflect a genuine desire to show women as skilled professionals in jobs previously reserved for men. Joss Whedon created Buffy the Vampire Slayer because he embraced feminism and was tired of seeing all the girls in horror films as victims, instead of possible heroes. But women whose kung fu skills are more awesome than Jackie Chan's? Or who tell a male coworker (or boss) to his face that he's less evolved than a junior in high school? This is a level of command-and-control barely enjoyed by four-star generals, let alone the nation's actual female population.
But the media's fantasies of power are also the product of another force that has gained considerable momentum since the early and mid-1990s: enlightened sexism. Enlightened sexism is a response, deliberate or not, to the perceived threat of a new gender regime. It insists that women have made plenty of progress because of feminism -- indeed, full equality has allegedly been achieved -- so now it's okay, even amusing, to resurrect sexist stereotypes of girls and women.
The jokes were incessant. And Will Ferrel's ongoing drag impersonation "Janet Reno's Dance Party" on Saturday Night Live featured the nation's first female attorney general as a pathetic, love-starved nerd who threw herself at men and danced like a robot on angel dust. A giant; too butch; unloved; a freak.
When historians write about the great recession of 2007–08, they may very well have a new name for it: the Mancession. It’s a term already being bandied about in the popular media as business writers chronicle the sad tales of the main victims of the recession: men. They were disproportionately represented in the industries hit hardest during the downturn, including financial services, manufacturing, and construction, and their higher salaries often put them first in the line of fire. Men are the victims of two thirds of the 11 million jobs lost since the recession began in 2007; in August 2009, when U.S. male unemployment stood at 11 percent (versus 8.3 for women), it was the largest unemployment gender gap in the postwar era. Those numbers have improved, a bit—new unemployment figures show men at 9.9 percent and women at 7.8—but not enough to stop Larry Summers, the president’s top economic adviser, from speculating recently, that “when the economy recovers, five years from now, one in six men who are 25 to 54 will not be working.”
If they are lucky, they’ll have wives who can take care of them. American women are already the breadwinners or co-breadwinners in two thirds of American households; in the European Union, women filled 75 percent of the 8 million new jobs created since 2000.
Inquiry letter from a man:
"Do you take pitches? Should I just write something and send it? Do I have to tickle the balls? I want to write for the awl, dammit."
Inquiry letter from a woman:
"As an long-time admirer of your site (and non-too-frequent registered commenter), I've been too shy to pitch as I've never felt like my work measured up to your fine standards."
Inquiry letter from a man:
"Can you offer a word of advice regarding how submissions work, desired timetables, what you like the pitches to look like, and so forth?"
Inquiry letter from a woman:
"I'm sure I'm going about this all wrong, but I couldn't find any sort of submission area on the site. What I'm wondering is, how does one go about becoming a contributor to The Awl?"
Assure equal pay for equal work regardless of Sex.
Extend the protection of the Federal minimum wage laws to as many more workers as is possible and practicable;
Continue to fight for the elimination of discrimination in employment because of race, creed, color, national origin, ancestry or sex;
Provide assistance to improve the economic conditions of areas faced with persistent and substantial unemployment;
Over the past two years, the L.P.G.A. Tour's two biggest stars retired to devote their energies to family. The departures of Annika Sorenstam at 38 and Lorena Ochoa at 28 rocked a tour that was reeling from lost sponsors and tournaments.
In this age of million-dollar purses and million-mile travel, can the L.P.G.A. keep its superstars long enough to increase the tour's following? The players' fitness trailer is a reminder of the tour's weakened state; its sides are adorned with larger-than-life images of Sorenstam and Ochoa.
Michael Whan, the L.P.G.A. commissioner, said women's professional golf was "a tough, aggressive, highly paid career path, and people struggle with what kind of competitor they want to be and what kind of mom they want to be."
He added, "We try to make it possible to be a mom and be competitive, but we can't make it where nobody leaves because, quite frankly, that's personal choice."
At a May tournament in Mobile, Ala., Kerr exchanged a hurried greeting with Karen Stupples, who was rushing to retrieve her 3-year-old son from the tour's day care center 15 miles away. Kerr glanced at her husband, and the thought that passed between them, Stevens said, was, "No way can we do that!"
When Nancy Lopez was dominating the tour in the early 1980s, such discussions began and ended with finding and affording child care.
"It's definitely different for women," she said. "Guys, they have a wife who takes care of the children. They can focus totally on golf."
The travel, which was always hard on Ochoa, grew unbearable after her December marriage to Andrés Conesa, the chief executive of Aeroméxico, who had three children with his first wife. Ochoa returned home from season-opening events in Thailand and Singapore and told Conesa she would quit in May.
"Andrés asked me, 'Did I have something to do with this?' " Ochoa said. "I told him, 'Only because I'm with you and I'm happy.' I think my retirement was hardest on Andrés. He feels some blame, I guess, because people see that I got married and now I'm quitting."
Gallagher is upset about a lot of things. Young people with their sagging pants (in faintly coded racist terms, he explains that this is why the jails are overcrowded—because "their" baggy pants make it too hard for "them" to run from the cops). Tattoos: "That ink goes through to your soul—if you read your Bible, your body is a sacred temple, YOU DIPSHIT." People naming their girl-children Sam and Toni instead of acceptable names like Evelyn and Betty: "Just give her some little lesbian tendencies!" Guantánamo Bay: "We weren't even allowed to torture all the way. We had to half-torture—that's nothin' compared to what Saddam and his two sons OOFAY and GOOFAY did." Lesbians: "There's two types—the ugly ones and the pretty ones." (Um, like all people?) Obama again: "If Obama was really black, he'd act like a black guy and get a white wife." Michael Vick: "Poor Michael Vick." Women's lib: "These women told you they wanna be equal—they DON'T." Trans people: "People like Cher's daughter—figure that out. She wants a penis, but she has a big belly. If you can't see your dick, you don't get one." The Rice Krispies elves: "All three of those guys are gay. Look at 'em!" The Mexicans: "Look around—see any Mexicans? Nope. They'll be here later for the cleanup." The French: "They ruin our language with their faggy words."
Above all, everything is gay, gay, gay to Gallagher. He leans into it with the borderline-nonsensical, icked-out, ignorant glee of a boy—or the protest-too-much vigor of a GOP senator. Gallagher delivers your Bible verse for the day: "Without God, we are nothing but dust. What is butt dust? Is that what you get if your homosexual isn't properly lubricated?" He relates a story about spilling mouthwash onto his crotch during a show: "Lucky for me, there was no homosexuals in the area—'cause my balls was minty fresh." At other points during the show, Gallagher says, "Men and women can't live in the same house" and "There's no way men and women can have a relationship." He says he can't remember why he used to feel pleasure in looking at a woman. And, "There's only one kind of homosexual guy, and that's the pretty ones—why do homosexual men have to be so good-looking?" Gallagher. Listen. Is there something you want to share with us?
* Bill and Hillary confuse America. Who has the cajones in that family? Since they're both politicians, I think they've made a deal and they each have one.
* A President Hillary would confuse state dinners too. After a meal, couples like to walk and talk. Usually the men talk and the women talk. But Hillary would need to talk to the man with power. That leaves Bill to talk to the wife and that's not smart for anybody.
* Well-known ana-wreck-sick Nicole Richie had to stop trying to breast feed her new baby when the poor little thing's cheeks collapsed and mamma' was treated for a hickie on her tittie.
...
* How does a slut feel? Whore-a-ble.
The early prenatal use of dexamethasone, or dex, has been shown to prevent some of the symptoms of CAH in girls, namely ambiguous genitalia. Because the condition causes overproduction of male hormones in the womb, girls who are affected tend to have genitals that look more male than female, though internal sex organs are normal. (In boys, in contrast, the condition leads to early signs of puberty, such as deep voice, body hair and enlarged penis by age 2 or 3.) But while the prenatal treatment may address girls' physical symptoms, it does not prevent the underlying, medical condition, which in some severe cases can be life-threatening, nor does it preclude the need for medication throughout life.
"Gender-related behaviors, namely childhood play, peer association, career and leisure time preferences in adolescence and adulthood, maternalism, aggression, and sexual orientation become masculinized in 46,XX girls and women with 21OHD deficiency [CAH]. These abnormalities have been attributed to the effects of excessive prenatal androgen levels on the sexual differentiation of the brain and later on behavior." Nimkarn and New continue: "We anticipate that prenatal dexamethasone therapy will reduce the well-documented behavioral masculinization . . ."
If, for the various reasons outlined above, general sexual motivation and heterosexual courtship and partner activity are reduced or lacking altogether, child-bearing is less likely to happen as a consequence of intercourse. However, the new (noncoital) reproductive techniques that are increasingly being used by women in the U.S., including by those, such as lesbians, who are not heterosexually active, are in principle also available to women with classical CAH. Yet, a barrier to their use may be another psychological characteristic, namely low maternalism. CAH women as a group have a lower interest than controls in getting married and performing the traditional child-care/housewife role (14, 48, 49, 50).