Attention entire weirdo world: it’s Sunday and there’s a ton to celebrate! It’s also really hot out and I would rather you sit down with me and talk about good news than go outside to water the flowers.
This Sunday Funday, Hillary Clinton says amazing things and Obama nominated a lesbo for something important! Also, a reason to look deeply into someone else’s eyes.
The Sweetest Thing: Lesbian Military Engagement Photos
In a post-DADT America, it is possible for a woman to be proposed to by her girlfriend as soon as she gets back from her deployment in Afghanistan. And in 2012, it’s likely that photos of the event could become a sea of love on Reddit.
Jezebel Schools On Feminism, It’s Amazing
Judging from this excerpt I found on the Internet, How to Be a Person, The Stranger’s Guide to College by Lindy West, Dan Savage, Christopher Frizzelle, and Bethany Jean Clement might be the most amazing shit on the planet:
Feminism is simple. The “patriarchy” does “exist.” To identify as a feminist is to acknowledge that women are people, and, as such, women deserve the same social, economic, and political rights and opportunities as other styles of people (i.e., men-people). To be a feminist is also to acknowledge that the world is not, currently, a fair and just and safe place for women to exist. Because it is not. Obviously (see: everything ever). To deny these things makes you, at worst, a bad person who hates women, including but not limited to: Sarah Michelle Gellar, Jennifer Garner, Jennifer Aniston, Jennifer Lopez, your mother, Jennifer Lopez’s mother, Jennifer Garner’s Aunt Marcy, Michelle Obama, Ellen DeGeneres, Cher, Julie Andrews, Kim Kardashian, Khloe Kardashian, Kourtney Kardashian, Kraken Kardashian, Karphone Kardashian, Kickball Kardashian, Kornkob Kardashian, and THE VIRGIN FUCKING MARY. At best, it makes you a complacent idiot.
Joseline Hernandez is Bisexual
Joseline Hernandez, of Love and Hip-Hop on VH1, is bisexual.
Obama Nominates Asian Lesbian for A Thing
Pamela Ki Mai Chen is the first Asian-American lesbian nominated to serve on the federal bench.
Sunday Funday Fundraiser O’ The Week
“Whom You Love” is a two-part project looking for money on Kickstarter that seeks to educate people widely around what makes people gay:
We want to make a video documentary about the development of human sexual orientation to explain these and many other scientific findings. Our working title, “Whom You Love: the biology of sexual orientation,” comes from an old saying, “Tell me whom you love, and I’ll tell you who you are.” Most of us find ourselves attracted to certain people, usually people of a certain sex, by a process that seems outside our control. For many, the sense that we are gay or straight or somewhere in between is an important part of our identity. The title also refers to the overall theme of the documentary–without discounting the importance of culture and experience in sexuality, Nature also has a say in whom you love.
We would like to bring together the scientists who have been exploring why most people grow up to be straight, while a minority of people grow up to be gay, despite enormous social pressure from day one to be heterosexual (think of all those Disney movies!).
That scientific information is out there, if you know where to look and if you know how to separate the legitimate science from the myths, but no one has ever brought this information together in a program so that anyone, not just scientists, can understand that processes at work before we are born have an influence on whether we grow up straight or gay.
Gay Marriage Updates
+ Tasmanian Premier Lara Giddings vowed her government would pursue marriage reform, which could make it the first in Australia to allow same-sex marriage.
+ Libertarian vice-presidential candidate James Gray endorsed a gay marriage ballot initiative in Ohio.
Hillary Clinton Says Nice Stuff About Ugandan Gay Rights Activists
Hillary Clinton spoke out about Ugandan activists opposing a draft law targeting LGBT folks in the region Friday, and said she brought it up in talks with Ugandan President Yoweri Musevini. She is also my hero and the one pure love of my life.
“It is critical for all Ugandans – the government and citizens alike – to speak out against discrimination, harassment, and intimidation of anyone. That’s true no matter where they come from, what they believe, or whom they love,” Clinton said.
It’s In Her Eyes
A Reason To Make Eye Contact: I know you need one because that shit is awkward. So how about the fact that it could be the most surefire way to predict a lady’s inclination?
Let’s Quit Smoking, Read Books
The Troy Patterson method for quitting smoking lies beneath the pages of other guides, and your favorite book possibly:
Step 10: Search Google Books for a transcript of the awesomest thing in the history of celebrity endorsements—an infomercial Burroughs recorded for the 1975 edition of Bream’s book. The ending will change your life:
When you stop smoking, all habits are called into question. You begin to take a long cool look at everything you think and do. How much of your thinking and doing is predicated on a conviction that you can’t change? You have just proven to yourself that you can. So why stop with cigarettes? You can give up anything or anyone.
Well, that’s your kicker. Now start an essay. Now finish it. File to your editor and celebrate with a cigarette. In anticipation of this moment, you’ve switched to buying swank Nat Sherman MCDs, so rip the filter from one of those and duck out and light up. Watch the pretty wisps of poison disappear beyond the streetlamps. Breathe in. Breathe out. Move on.
Olympic Bodies
The good news? They stopped wearing t-shirts in women’s beach volleyball in London.
The bad news? Everytime I watch the Olympics I talk about the bodies of Olympians over the entirety of the program. So thank God for this gallery of them.
Dogs in Sunglasses
Stop everything. I need to buy Eli sunglasses immediately. Here’s the rest of the gallery.
re: the eye contact article: Thanks for reporting bisexual women’s results. Oh, wait, actually, that’s the only group you studied and didn’t bother mentioning agin.
The typo at the end means that I just read that comment in an angry, angry Scottish accent.
DONT YE BE FORGETTIN TO WRYTE ABEWT OTHAR GROUPS YA WEE BASTURDS.
I was gettin’ some big soapy, sexy lady eyes last night! Does that mean I’m gay?
I don’t know. Were you sharing a bath with the lady with the sexy eyes? If yes, I would definitely say yes. ;)
re: eye contact article: Does it make anyone else uncomfortable that they have a theory that straight women become aroused by men and women equally because women are raped? Am I being overly sensitive about this? It feels very victim-blame-y and hand-wavey.
Yeah and it’s also really weird… Because they wouldn’t typically be raped by other women? And also lesbians have the same chance of getting raped as straight women? So… … … … … Yeah it really doesn’t make any sense.
Yeah I think that it has potential as a hypothesis, but it doesn’t make sense in the context this journalist put it, especially since there was no mention of lesbians’ eye response to men. If they’re “similar to straight men” then that hypothesis is out the window. There needs to be a study on that for anyone to report it >.<
It’s undeniably shuddersome, and it reminds me uncomfortably of the way armchair evolutionary biologists so often like to say that everything is explained by ultra-gender-determinist, ultra-traditional biological destiny.
And why do they brush so glibly over the more awesomer explanation, namely “all straight women are secretly bisexual”? Hmm? What’s wrong with that one?
Also, did they consider the obvious possibility: that the women were *identifying with* the women they were watching, thinking, “Hmm, if I weren’t sitting here in this silly psych lab, I could be off doing that?…”
“‘Some people just don’t want to be involved in research that involves their genitals,’ Savin-Williams said.” Prudes, all of ’em.
Also, there needs to be a caption contest for that Hillary Clinton photo. Fuckin’ fierce
‘Introducing new Pantene. Let the democrat in you shine through’
Democrat: Because you’re worth it
Look at the photo of Hillary and the photo directly below her,
I’m half expecting to scroll back up and see Bill with his thigh slung over her shoulder stroking her hair.
somebody please tell me its not just me who thinks she looks as if she replacing the brunette in an awkwardly captured daydream.
Bahahaha. I see it too now!
the thing is that, usually, theories of evolutionary biology are irrelevant to conversations like this b/c we live in a modern day society with birth control and many other things and reasons that men and women should be equal.
but the modernization happened too recently to be accounted for on the timescale of evolutionary time, so in measuring something like subconscious sexual response, problematic theories about rape may well play a role
This research does make me very uncomfortable. It seems dismissive and simplistic that scientists are like “I don’t care what you say or feel or that we don’t really understand female sexuality, I know when you are turned on and you don’t” … especially since, as they mention, pupil dilation stems from any fight/flight/stress situation
(both of the above comments were supposed to be replies to lauren… I’ll stop now)
Re: Olympic Women’s Bodies, how about Olympic Women and their Gaying Bodies. There’s a wonderful gallery here http://themostcake.co.uk/we-like/lezlimpics/
Those proposal photos are so sweet!!
Also, I’m not sure I really want them to try and discover the “cause” of being a sexual or gender minority, because that information could later on be used as the basis for a lot of discrimination – for example, attempts to “cure” people on the basis that if there is a cause, there must be a solution, terminating pregnancies to avoid having children of sexual/gender minorities, discriminating against people who raise their children a certain way (even though a few of these already happen)… gaah. IMO, that can of worms does not need to be open.
Rather than focusing on why people are the way they are, we should just accept that and focus on teaching everyone that it’s OK. In my opinion, anyway, obviously there’s going to be valid arguments to the contrary.
I have taught you well, my Young Padwan.
Regarding that “new” research that eye-dilation is a sign of arousal: read any and all fanfic, and they’d have a field day with that notion.
Yeah, remember the one where Rachel thought Quinn was on drugs because Quinn’s pupils were always blown whenever Rachel saw her?
That is literally the story I was thinking about while reading that article lol
I’ll be the arsehole who points out that “Whom You Love” is grammatically incorrect.
That photo of her combined with the fact that your feelings on Hillary are essentially my feelings on Hillary…feelings, I have some.