Check out this awesome documentary about gender stereotypes by some future Judith Butlers (Merlin, Rebecca, and Stella) at PS 107 in New York City:

Thanks to Gwen for the heads up.

When I was researching my book, Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters, awhile back now, one of the authors that I found most enlightened in her approach to talking about women's relationship to food, fitness, and success was Geneen Roth. Roth is widely known as the thinker who popularized the idea of "intuitive eating"; just as it sounds, it is the idea that we can be most healthy (body, mind, and spirit) if we reconnect with our organic hungers, investigate when we feel full, what our body really wants to eat versus our emotional subconscious etc.

It freaks people the fuck out, as you might imagine. What, you mean I can eat anything? What will prevent me from eating Oreos for every meal for the rest of my life? Well, your body will silly. As soon as the forbidden charge is taken out of a food it becomes an innocent food again--lard and chocolate and whatever. Not so appetizing anymore (or every once in awhile).

Anyway, Roth's new book, Women, Food, and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything, is an extension and deepening of her previous work. In this case, her main argument is that our relationship to food is a reflection of our relationship to God, or the divine, or spirit, or whatever you feel comfortable calling it. Roth takes the reader through one her retreat experiences as the narrative vehicle, dipping in to talk about meditation, emotional self-awareness, food, and, yes, God along the way.

Truth be told, the last thing on earth that I want to do these days is read another book about body image. Having written one myself, I've read enough for a lifetime. But I thoroughly enjoyed and learned a great deal from Roth's new book. She's a beautiful writer, for starters. She's also funny, and humble, and unafraid of looking at the darkest places in the human psyche. She also has an uncanny ability to take the most complex phenomenon and lay them absolutely bare until you see the shining truth underneath. An example:

There is no way back to the body; the body is the way. You leave and then you return. Leave and return. You forget and then you remember. Forget. Remember. One breath and then another. One step and then another. It's that simple. And it doesn't matter how long you've been gone; what matters is that you've returned. With each return, each sound, each felt sensation, there is relaxation, recognition, and gratitude. Gratitude begets itself, ripens into flowers, snow falls, mountains of more gratitude. Soon you begin wondering where you've been all this time. How you wandered so far. And you realize that torture isn't having these arms or these legs; it's being so convinced that God is out there, in another place, another realm that you miss the lavender slip of the moon, your own awakened presence.

Crossposted on Amplify

When the birth control pill came out in 1960, it was revolutionary because women could take charge and control their fertility. For the last 50 years, women have had numerous hormonal products available to control when they can become pregnant, and the only options for men have been getting surgery or using a condom. The challenge in creating male birth control pills is that women make one egg a month, whereas men produce about 1,000 sperm every second. So scientists have been working for about 30 years to create a male for of birth control, and they finally succeeded. 

Researchers in Israel have finally been able to create an oral pill that deactivates sperm before they reach the womb. And they’ve developed a version that means it only needs to be to be taken once every three months.

The breakthrough pill could be available in as little as three years, according to the scientist behind the discovery.

Unlike the jab form of the male pill it doesn’t use a combination of the male hormone testosterone and the female hormone progesterone to block pregnancy. The scientist behind the male pill discovery has developed a tablet that removes a vital protein in sperm that is required for a woman to conceive.

So while sperm still get through to the uterus they are unable to fertilize an egg.
Using this approach, researchers believe they have a pill that is 100 percent effective at stopping pregnancy.

Not only is it long lasting but it also has other pluses. There are no side effects as suffered by women who take the contraceptive pill. (via Telegraph UK)

So this is big news. In as little as three years, guys could take a pill once a month that makes them temporarily sterile, with no side effects. Continue reading "Breakthrough: the once-a-month male birth control pill"

Naomi Klein has a powerful analysis of the BP oil spill over at the UK Guardian. In short, she argues that the disaster and its aftermath are more than an anomalous display of poor planning and corporate greed; the Deepwater Horizon disaster is the latest and most profound in a long line of moments when the complexity of nature has re-asserted itself, and in so doing, pointed out the limitations of domination and technology. No matter how much money we pour into R&D; or fancy terminology or inspiring speeches we try to distract the public with, we just can't fix the earth once it's broken. We can't dominate nature. She writes:

If Katrina pulled back the curtain on the reality of racism in America, the BP disaster pulls back the curtain on something far more hidden: how little control even the most ingenious among us have over the awesome, intricately interconnected natural forces with which we so casually meddle.

In other words, we ain't got shit on mother nature. This is, as I see it, a very feminist analysis. We've got a bunch of highly paid, mostly male leaders--corporate CEOs and PR reps, presidents and other governmental officials, and engineers--convinced they can dominate nature rather than recognizing their interdependence with it, much less their lack of understanding about its complexity. Klein goes on:

This Gulf coast crisis is about many things--corruption, deregulation, the addiction to fossil fuels. But underneath it all, it's about this: our culture's excruciatingly dangerous claim to have such complete understanding and command over nature that we radically manipulate and re-engineer it with minimal risk to the natural systems that sustain us.

She goes on to talk about other cultures, both contemporary and past, which saw the earth as a living, breathing entity (surprise, surprise, usually female) and treated it with reverence--seeing it as an puzzling, awing force that humans were beholden to. Today we let Palin lead us in chants of drill, baby, drill in Alaska, saw off the top of mountains in Appalachia, and keep driving our SUVs because it's the American way. Attempts at domination lead to uprisings that destabalize power. So think of that geyser of oil as a super loud protest chant from a very pissed off Mother Earth.

And because you gotta laugh or you'll cry your eyes out:

Related:
Reproductive health impacts of the BP oil spill
Notes for a bitch...owning disaster...

Thanks to Nicole Anderson and Jon Lundrstrom for the heads up.

Wow: Some serious evidence has been released revealing that the NYPD have been reporting rapes as misdemeanors in an effort to manipulate crime statistics -- resulting in a slew of repeat offenders.

More on police misconduct: Journalists and female protesters at the G20 Summit in Toronto are reporting mistreatment, threats of rape and possibly sexual assault by police. Thing is, there hasn't been a peep from the media. Check out this woman's account.

William L. Taylor, 78, a leading desegregation and civil rights attorney, passed away this week after complications from a fall.

The Sexist takes on Olivia Munn's Playboy photo shoot,raising questions of manipulation and consent.

A great campaign in Scotland just released a great TV ad tackling rape myths. Cara has more as to why this ad is so awesome.

The bad-ass documentary, How To Lose Your Virginity, is doing a fundraiser. There's only a day left to reach their goal, so please check out more info about the project and donate to their campaign.

The American Lung Association (ALA) has come out with a new study showing that members of the LGBT community are more likely to smoke than cis and hetero folks. While higher rates of smoking and drinking among marginalized groups have been discussed in the Feministing community before, having hard evidence is even more validating:

• Gay, bisexual and transgender men are 2.0 to 2.5 times more likely to smoke than heterosexual men.
• Lesbian, bisexual and transgender women are 1.5 to 2.0 times more likely to smoke than heterosexual women.
• Bisexual boys and girls have some of the highest smoking rates when compared with both their heterosexual and homosexual peers.

Good on ALA for doing this. They're also calling on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and all state Departments of Health to include sexual orientation and gender identity in public health surveys. Check out the details of the study. (PDF)

Not to mention create an awesome and sort of hilarious flyer...monkeys climbing up condoms. I love it!

So last year we held a free ticket giveaway to Planned Parenthood of New York City's annual Sex, Summer and Spirits event -- an incredible party for a great cause, delicious drinks and fabulous company. We wanted to extend our support and do the same for their event this year, to be held next week at the Museum of Sex.

So put on your thinking caps, New Yorkers: The first person to email me the correct answer to this question gets a free ticket to the event!

By age 25, what percent of sexually active people will have contracted a sexually transmitted disease in their lifetime?

A. 50%

B. 40%

C. 25%

We'll announce the winner shortly! Congratulations to reader Spencer for getting the correct answer, which is D. 50%. If you happened to miss the trivia, think about supporting PPNYC and enjoy the party anyway; it's not to be missed! Buy tickets here.

The amazing Aishah Simmons who created No! The Rape Documentary is calling on folks to support an inspiring program. The Girls/Friends Summer Institute is a sexual assault prevention and sex health and education program for teen girls and women in Chicago.

Last summer's program was so successful that they doubled the number of applicants and are extending the program; they just need to fundraising to get them there. Their goal is just $1800, so if you can, donate to this incredible cause. Below is a slideshow of last year's program.

Via INCITE! blog.

We missed this awesome news: Iceland has not only legalized gay marriage this past weekend, but its Prime Minister Johanna Sigurdardottir married her long-term partner on the day it took effect, making her the world's only national leader with a same-sex spouse:

Sigurdardottir, 67, married writer Jonina Leosdottir on Sunday, the day a new law took effect defining marriage as a union between two consenting adults regardless of sex.

The two had had a civil union for years and changed this into a marriage under the new law, which was approved by parliament earlier this month.

The new law was celebrated at a church service on Sunday, which was also the international day for homosexual rights.

Warm fuzzies! Sigurdardottir's statement about the new law was that it was a cause for celebration for all of Iceland, adding: "I have today taken advantage of this new legislation." Indeed.

For those who missed Elana Kagan's confirmation hearings yesterday, RH Reality Check has a quick recap of what went down.

Is there anything RH missed that's note-worthy? In the meantime, watch day three live here.