In a video released last week, a precocious 10-year-old's plea for workplace protections for her two gay dads is touchingly simple.

"What I want my dads to get for this Father's Day would be job security," Florida fifth-grader Alegra says in the short clip posted to YouTube on June 14. "Please President Obama. It could help so many families like mine."

Alegra's dads, Jarrod Scarbrough and Les Sewell, are longtime LGBT advocates. The family recently made local headlines after a failed attempt to secure a marriage license in Tampa Bay in 2012. Florida does not permit same-sex marriage.

The video, which was released by national lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) advocacy group GetEQUAL, notes that Alegra's dads live in one of 29 states that do not protect against workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation and one of 34 that do not offer similar protections for gender identity discrimination.

Members of GetEQUAL are pushing for the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which would ban sexual orientation- and gender identity-based discrimination at the federal level. ENDA has been unsuccessfully introduced in Congress several times often throughout the past decade; however, a version of it was recently endorsed by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev).

While the bill awaits passage, however, GetEQUAL is advocating for an executive order.

We’ve mentioned this street art before when it popped up in Philly, although I didn’t know then who was behind it. According to NPR, these anti-street harassment posters are the work of artist Tatayana Fazlalizadeh who’s been dodging cops in the cover of darkness to put them up in her neighborhood in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn.

Fazlalizadeh says the frequent cat calls she receives inspired her. ”It happens almost daily to me,” she says, “so I wanted to express myself and speak up for myself.”

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — NASA has eight new astronauts — its first new batch in four years.

Among the lucky candidates: the first female fighter pilot to become an astronaut in nearly two decades. A female helicopter pilot also is in the group. In fact, four of the eight are women, the highest percentage of female astronaut candidates ever selected by NASA.

Monday's announcement came on the eve of the 30th anniversary of the launch of the first American woman in space, Sally Ride. She died last summer.

The eight — all in their 30s — were chosen from more than 6,000 applications received early last year, the second largest number ever received. They will report for duty in August at Johnson Space Center in Houston and join 49 astronauts currently at NASA. The number has dwindled ever since the space shuttles stopped flying in 2011. Many astronauts quit rather than get in a lengthy line for relatively few slots for long-term missions aboard the International Space Station.

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said these new candidates will help lead the first human mission to an asteroid in the 2020s, and then Mars, sometime in the following decade. They also may be among the first to fly to the space station aboard commercial spacecraft launched from the U.S., he noted. Russia ferries the astronauts now.

In case you haven’t been paying attention, the world of science fiction/fantasy writing was rocked this week by a scandal involving high-ranked members of the SFWA (Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America) behaving badly–very badly–not just in SFWA’s publications, but on their Twitter account. This scandal has been building for some time. As the British newspaper the Guardian reports:

A growing chorus of science fiction authors have been speaking out about sexism in the genre after much-criticised recent editions of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America’s (SFWA) magazine, Bulletin, which featured a woman in a chainmail bikini on the cover and the claim that Barbie is a role model because she “maintained her quiet dignity the way a woman should“….

The columnists, Mike Resnick and Barry Malzberg, responded to claims that their descriptions were sexist in another bulletin, where they wrote that “all we did was appear in a magazine with a warrior woman on the cover, and mention that a woman who edited a science fiction magazine 65 years ago was beautiful. If they get away with censoring that, can you imagine what comes next? I’m pretty sure Joe Stalin could imagine it … Even Chairman Mao could imagine it.”

That’s not all. In a related issue, Theodore Beale, a well-known SF writer, let loose with a disgusting racist screed which was posted to the SFWA’s Twitter feed. In this sickening rant, Mr. Beale likened black women to “half-savages” and made various other awful statements. I believe this is directly related to the sexism issue, as Mr. Beale’s rant (his name, ironically, evokes the “mad prophet of the airwaves” Howard Beale from the famous 1976 movie Network) exposes an undercurrent of very old guard, unreconstructed social conservatism in the science fiction community which is tone-deaf to the changes that have occurred in society since the 1960s. They’re two sides of the same coin.

I am not a member of the SFWA. Having written science fiction, I was thinking of joining, though my major recent publication credit is in horror, and I’m not sure what the SFWA rules are on horror authors. As of now that issue is totally moot. I have no interest in joining this organization, which brings dishonor to the vibrant field of science fiction and fantasy.

The endless parade of serial-killer dramas on TV today raises an uncomfortable question: What does it mean that we as a society seem to find violence against women endlessly entertaining? ”The Fall,” a BBC2 series now streaming on Netflix, forces us to take a hard look at ourselves as viewers and what we like — and makes the powerful point that killers who target women aren’t as deep or interesting as other shows make them seem.

At first glance, the show might look like “Law & Order: SVU,” or pretty much any murder series of the last decade. A man, a grief counselor, married with two adorable kids, cannot control his urges to hurt and control women. We don’t know much of his background, or his past crimes, but we come upon him in the beginning of a killing spree in which he stylizes the dead body. The police try to track him down with the help of a super-detective, one devoted solely to the job, so much so that she sleeps at work.

What makes this show uniquely feminist is the way it handles this seemingly familiar subject matter. It showcases the electric talent of a top-tier actor (Gillian Anderson) as a complex and brilliant detective solving gruesome crimes against women. It focuses on the explosive relationships between men and women, on misogyny, on the nature of violence, and it deeply cares about women, feminism and the ways in which men mistreat women, from petty judgments to torture, rape and murder.

The show is not subtle in its embrace of feminist themes. It purposefully paints male characters as both limited and flat. The hollow men, the stupid men who think largely with their cocks, the men who delude themselves into thinking that somehow they are worth more or are just better than women, are shown not as fully sympathetic human beings, but as dumb, or violent, or impetuous men. Though the serial killer on the show is indeed a male, he is a cipher with no real inner life. He is one-dimensional, and purposefully so. Anderson herself tells us so in the final speech of the season, a stunner, in which she explains to the serial killer in an indignant, but almost triumphant declaration:

You are a slave to your desires, you have no control at all, you are weak, impotent, you think you are some kind of artist, but you are not… you try to dignify what you do, but it’s just misogyny, age-old male violence against women.

There is plenty of cultural hate for vaginas and vagina bearing bodies (be they cis or trans), so no matter what he may felt when sitting down to write this, he wasn’t treading any new ground. My guess is he thought this was some much needed “real talk” and that it would be accepted because he also ran through his feminist credentials before again telling women their bodies are disgusting. There’s no bravery in affirming the status quo. And if straight men are going to identify as feminists only to dress up misogyny in a new set of clothes, then we serve no purpose.

Reading this also called to mind the much discussed Slate piece from Andy Hinds and his “woe-is-me-feminism-has-ruined-my-sexual-fantasies” screed. I’m not sure if it’s a strictly straight white dude problem, but both of these writers display an inability to reconcile both political and sexual equality among the genders. They seem to think one is ruined by the other and they are lamenting the loss. That’s bullshit. People will continue to have fantasies and there will be sexual acts in which we won’t want to participate. But if the only language we have to articulate these desires or non-desires continues to degrade women we haven’t done enough work.

I say this from personal experience: a feminist sex life can be wildly fulfilling. But it only gets to be that fulfilling if you’re constantly engaged in communicating your desires and challenging the misogyny that has informed our sexual identities since birth. Straight men (especially those claiming to be feminist) can’t continue clinging to the old dialogue that simultaneously privileges our experience and leaves many of us unsatisfied. It’s boring and predictable.

No ties, please. No cufflinks or gift certificates. No presents at all, really.

Kid, if you're struggling for some last-minute token for Father's Day, here's what I'd really like — this year and for years to come:

I want you to know there's no end game. The sports you play, the colleges you get into, the accolades you pile up, sure, yes, of course, I'll always cheer the loudest and you'll be like, "I don't know that guy," and I'll be all, "THAT'S MY GIRL!" and you may not speak to me until you're 30, but you should always know you're good enough no matter what.


I want you to find a good friend. Someone who will cut someone for you, or at the very least not talk shit behind your back.

Don't let some anonymous asshole with a keyboard determine your self worth. You are always more than a "like" count on whatever social media program happens to be popular at the time.

No, seriously, I mean it. You wouldn't go up to the crazy dude in town square or that homeless lady we see on the street and say, "Do you like my outfit?" or "Do you think I'm hot?" That's absurd, right? Who would do that? Millions of people online, every day. That's who. Your friends and future buds. It's something I never had to deal with growing up, this spotlight of petty strangers, and it scares the absolute shit out of me to think this is the culture you're growing up with. I can only hope to help guide you toward that internal strength that says: "That's just … creepy."

These 17 men — who called themselves "The Jedi Council'' because they're total and complete assholes and also don't know anything about movies — allegedly sent around videos of themselves having sex with women who didn't know they were being filmed. What a bunch of fucking weirdos, and I mean that in the worst and saddest way possible. Seriously — what kind of loser texts his buddy a video of himself having sex and is like "Here's a cool video I made of me having sex — check it out, bro!" If one of my friends did that to me, I'd take ten thousand scalding hot showers and then burn everything they'd ever touched in my apartment.

At least five women — female soldiers, public servants, and others — were victims of the ring, according to Morrison. Three of these Council of Scumbags have already been suspended, and it sounds like the other should watch their backs.

''These are actions by men who have been in the defence force for in excess of 10 years. This goes to the heart of what I said about systemic problems with culture inside the army," said Morrison. Holy shit, this guy is fucking great. He gets it, and you know what? I would not cross him. Would you cross him? You might, but you would not live to tell that tale of your stupidity.

Boobs, brews, bros, boats, balls, Borat, baldness, and breadwinning. Now that I've weeded out all the ladyreaders with that completely testosterone-soaked sentence of man related B words, I'm going to share an important man fact with all the dudes out there: your brains are better than lady brains. Says who? Says Maine's Republican House Minority Leader/brain expert Ken Fredette, during a debate on the House floor on Wednesday. Bonus: he supported his argument using a widely-derided book from 21 years ago. Too bad Fredette's manbrain didn't understand how video cameras or the internet work. Or, uh, public record, for that matter.

Fredette's heroic application of gender essentialism came in the context of a discussion of — you guessed it (actually, you probably you didn't) — application of Obamacare's federal funding for the Medicaid expansion at the state level. I'd explain it, but it would be easier for me to just step aside before my yogurt addled chickbrain ovulates all over Ken Fredette's turgid, rock-hard logic and let a man explain. Fredette's floor soliloquy, per ThinkProgress,

As I listen to the debate today and earlier debate on this bill, I can’t help but think of a title of a book, Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus. And it’s a book about the fact that men sort of think one way in their own brain, in their own world. And women think another way in their own brain and in their own world. And it really talks about the way that men and women can do a better job at communicating. Because if you listen to the debate today, in my mind — a man’s mind — I hear two fundamental issues. From the other side of the aisle, I hear the conversation being about: free. ‘This is free, we need to take it, and it’s free. And we need to do it now.’ And that’s the fundamental message that my brain receives. Now, my brain, being a man’s brain, sort of thinks differently, because I say, well, it’s not — if it’s free, is it really free? Because I say, in my brain, there’s a cost to this.

Conferences, Difference by Stephanie Zvan
This is a long post. It’s a very, very long post.
There’s this meme going around that it’s really just a handful of noisy bloggers who are talking about sexism in the secular and skeptical movements. So I took about a dozen threads where I’d seen women in these movements talk about the sexism and harassment they’d experienced and observed and often how that affected what places in these movements, online and off, in which they were willing to participate. I grabbed the relevant excerpts of those comments to put in one place.
This is a very, very long post, with roughly 90 women represented.

TheLady: PZ occasionally posts super sexist stuff on his blog, and the antifeminist shit storm I’ve reaped in trying to highlight it and make it stop has more or less put me off commenting on there for ever. And then you’ve got guys like Hitchens and Maher, not to mention lesser antireligionist luminaries like Martin Amis. There’s a lot of penis inches invested in the cleverer-than-thou stance of New Atheism; as a sub-culture it’s very heavily weighted towards the Smart Guy(tm) crowd, and is rife with antifeminist landmines.

catgirl: Bill Maher is yet another example of women being asked to “take one for the team”. The idea is that atheism is so important that it’s OK to support a raving misogynist to promote it, and “don’t worry ladies, we’ll worry about you after we take care of the important stuff, honest.”

catgirl: Along with feminist blogs, I also follow a lot of skeptical blogs. When I try to bring a feminist perspective to an issue in the comment thread, it is often met with hostility. I was recently surprised how bad it really is.