Since this is Mother’s Day in the US, let’s note that the NGO Save the Children has created an index of the best and worst places to be a mother. Also check out their great multimedia presentation. It’s a great resource. Save the Children based their index on the following criteria:  Read more 

I know a lot of Hillary supporters refer to her speech at the UN Women’s conference in Beijing in 1995. So, today, I decided to take a closer look at the whole speech, especially in the context of Senator Obama’s remark on abortion and the need to respect the anti-choice position (just like we should respect and understand anti-LGBT positions). Again, remember, this speech was delivered 13 years ago, on one of these trips that Hillary took where she just shook hands with officials and watched little girls dance (snark). The audio is embedded below, otherwise, I selected a few excerpts (the full text is here, with video as well).

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CBS Poll: Gender Matters More than Race:

Voters are slightly more likely to say that a woman candidate faces more obstacles than a black candidate when it comes to presidential politics even as they see racism as a more serious problem for the nation overall, according to a new CBS News poll. Thirty nine percent of registered voters said a woman running for president faces more obstacles while 33 percent said a black candidate does.  Read more 

So I had a nice afternoon with an area blogger who went with me and a friend to see the Josephine Baker exhibit at the Smithsonian. I had a couple of thoughts while there.

Inky Oceans have been spilled on the woman, and I’m no expert by any stretch of the imagination. But I came away from the experience feeling very much “la plus ca change…” First off: so did she enjoy some gay sex or not? You wouldn’t really be too clear on that from the exhibit, which made little sense to me in this very gay town and with all the gay people who were there (like, 70%). They mentioned how she was a “groundbreaker” in terms of race, gender and sexuality, but left out the details for the last part. Um, why?  Read more 

I’m on the road this week, forgive the light posting. But just to inflame some readers: what do you think? Are women smarter than men? Would you hate me if I said, “yes” most of the time? In all seriousness, I’ve never seen a poll unlike this one. For some reason, women seem to dislike war and pillage more than men. Why is that?

70 percent of women and 58 percent of men now oppose the war in Iraq.

That’s outside the moe. Tell me why you think this should be.

I found this interesting. I don’t have an opinion about the validity, but for what it’s worth she doesn’t sound like a winger.

“Women have an eight-lane superhighway for processing emotion, while men have a small country road,” she writes. Men, however, “have O’Hare Airport as a hub for processing thoughts about sex, where women have the airfield nearby that lands small and private planes.”  Read more