Just links this week folks . . . ran out of oomph to provide commentary.

Can You Get Sexuality Info at the Library? | Charlie Glickman @ the Good Vibrations Blog.

Sexually Confused | Zoe Margolis @ The Guardian.

But Women Don’t Rape (about female-on-male sexual assault) | Rachel Hills @ Feministe.

When Rapists Graduate and Victims Drop Out | Amanda Hess @ The Sexist.

“A Culture of Indifference”: Report on Campus Sexual Assault Reveals Inaction Taken by Schools, Education Department | Vanessa @ Feministing.

Our Addiction to Tiger Woods’ “Sex Addiction” | Marty Klein @ Sexual Intelligence.

How *not* to write about sex addiction | Amanda Marcotte @ Pandagon.

Surrogacy: The Next Frontier for Reproductive Justice | Miriam Perez @ RhRealityCheck.

Worried About Women of Color? Thanks, But No Thanks, Anti-Choicers. We’ve Got It Covered | Miriam Perez @ RhRealityCheck (’cause why not link the Radical Doula twice when you can?)

How childbirth caused my PTSD | Taffy Brodesser-Akner @ Salon

“What does a feminist mother look like?”: 2 of 2 | Molly @ first the egg.

Our Labia Look Just Fine, Thanks: Part III | BeckySharper @ The Pursuit of Harpyness.

Is Saying “I’m Gay” Offensive? | Toni Infanti @ Feminist Law Professors.

Gay Relationships & the US Census | Charlie Glickman @ the Good Vibrations Blog.

Gay Mafiosi and Group Marriage Monotheists: Sex, “Caprica,” and a Changing World | Greta Christina @ The Blowfish Blog.

Lady Gaga sports a strap-on | Jessica @ Feministing.

Cyndi Lauper & Lady Gaga Go Off Script, Discuss Safe Sex On GMA | Margaret Hartmann @ Jezebel.

which leads for obvious reasons to…

Homophobia and the Olympics & Johnny Weir, you’re awesome | Amanda @ Feminist Musings by a Christian Woman.

*image credit: Figure Skating Johnny Weir 2009 NHK Trophy made available by ando.miki @ Flickr.com

The award for best critical book review this week goes to Ashley Sayeau @ The Guardian writing on Laurie Gottleib’s Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr Good Enough. She gets points for historical analysis (“The book’s jacket claims this is all new – the author, it states, has said “the unthinkable” – but of course nothing could be farther from the truth”) as well as attempts at finding a kernel of worth in an otherwise painfully anti-feminist screed (“This is frustrating for many reasons, but especially because Gottlieb’s subject – the question of compromise in modern relationships – actually deserves attention, just not of the sort she gives it”).

Bianca M. Velez @ RhRealityCheck wonders about the wisdom of consent laws which dictate to young women whom they can and cannot consent to sexual relationships with in Consenting to Sex: Yes, No, Maybe?

PhDork @ The Pursuit of Harpyness blogs about how olympic “human interest” reporting has subjected female athletes to shaming comments about their body weight and health in Female Olympians are Fat!(TW).

Ann Bartow @ Feminist Law Professors highlights the official opening of the Feminist Theory Papers at Brown University’s Pembroke Center. I seriously considered applying for a year-long processing position with the FTP a couple of years ago, and they are definitely on my watchlist as an Archive I would love to work with/at someday.

My “new blog” discovery of the week (well, one of them: the list of feeds on Google Reader is getting scary long!) was Sex and the Ivy, authored by Lena Chen. On said blog, I found this delicious analysis of a talk given last November by faux feminist Christina Hoff Sommers on why modern feminism has supposedly failed. I have a sick fascination with people who look at the world and see the things I believe are amazingly awesome as a sign of deep pathology.

Kinda like this guy (and his audience), posted by Melissa McEwan @ Shakesville who seem to believe that courses in feminist theory that incorporate issues of race and class are . . . antidiversity?

(Speaking of Melissa McEwan @ Shakesville, this week she also posted a thoughtful critique of the assumption that it takes having kids to become a family.)

Thanks to Sex and the Ivy I also discovered a couple of older (2005) blog posts on the subject of sex-positivity and pornography which I enjoyed reading. One is by Susie Bright @ Susie Bright’s Journal in which she responds to a Slate.com book club discussion of Pornified and Female Chauvinist Pigs which took place in 2005 involving Wendy Shalit (another faux feminist whom I find it easy to fixate upon), Meghan O’Rourke, and Laura Kipnis. The other is one of Laura Kipnis’ contributions to said bookclub discussion in which she points out that “people may like making their own preferences into norms, but that’s a bit monstrous in itself.” Well said, Ms. Kipnis. Read the whole thing over at Slate.

MandyG @ Feministing Community cross-posted an op-ed by Nancy Willard, Sexting: A Rational Approach, which discusses the adult hysteria over adolescents engaged in the exchange of self-created sexual images online.

A Georgia bill revives tired stereotypes about connections between family planning and eugenics. Planned Parenthood’s Kelley Robinson @ RhRealityCheck points out that, far from “targeting” minority women for abortions, clinics like Planned Parenthood are often the only sites where minority women are offered affordable reproductive healthcare.

Cara Kulwiki (of The Curvature) comments @ The Guardian on the results of a recent study showing that women are more likely then men to blame victims of rape for their assault. “When we say that women are less “forgiving” of rape victims, we ignore that being raped is not something for which one needs to be forgiven. And while being blamed for your own rape is an incredibly traumatising experience, we forget in this discussion that there would be no victim to blame if there wasn’t a rapist committing assault first.”

And just so we’re not ending on that important yet not exactly uplifting note, I will end this thread by introducing you to the mind-bending concept of cupcakes for men. You didn’t know cupcakes were a girly thing? Click through and gwen @ Sociological Images will enlighten you.

*image credit: Life Drawing by henrybloomfield @ Flickr.com. Thanks to Hanna this week for selecting the featured picture.

Here’s a shorter-ish links list this weekend; anyone who can name all the musicals quoted here (without using the interwebs as a reference!) gets special mention in next weeks’ installment :). Leave your IDs in comments.

Marry the man today / and change his ways / tomorrow. Vanessa @ Feministing draws our attention to the publication of a new book urging women over thirty years of age to “settle” for “Mr. Good Enough.” While I’m 150% for not holding human beings to inhuman expectations, I find this idea insulting no matter what the age and/or sex of the parties in question. Who wants their life-mate to turn to them and say, “Gee, honey, I thought about it and decided you were adequate as a spouse…”

My white knight / not a Lancelot / nor an angel with wings. Kjerstin Johnson @Bitch Blogs also tackles the Gottlieb Question, concluding that the “take-home message isn’t that successful relationships (and yes, even those recognized by the government) rely on compromises; but that it’s your fault for being too picky to settle down.” Sarah Menckedick @ Women’s Rights Blog adds pointedly (in The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough) that media coverage is only “reinforcing the feminism vs. Gottlieb and feminism vs. marriage dichotomy, setting up feminists as reactive raging crusaders attacking the poor Gottlieb — who was only acknowledging the truth after all.”

Everything you can do / I can do better / I can do everything / better than you. Charlie Todd @ Urban Prankster posts a video and photo of counter-protesters who showed up outside Twitter headquarters to butt heads with protesters from Westboro Baptist Church (the group that tours the country virulently protesting homosexuality). This confirms my hypothesis that one of the most effective ways to combat hate and fear is through humor.

Princes wait there in the world, it’s true / Princes yes but wolves and humans too. Jessica Valenti @ her personal blog that anti-feminists over at the beatifically-named Network of Enlightened Women (NeW) hold feminist activists responsible for the commodification of female virgin status. As Jessica points out, methinks they need to do a little homework on the long history of commodifying women’s sexual status.

You wait, little girl, on an empty stage / For fate to turn the light on /Your life, little girl, is an empty page /That men will want to write on. BeckySharper @ The Pursuit of Harpyness blogs about a “Miss Manners” column in which a young man wrote in asking advice about following up on a meeting he had with the father of a prospective girlfriend.

I’ll teach you what shoes to wear / how to fix your hair / everything that really counts to be / popular! Roxann Mt Joy @ the Women’s Rights Blog reports on the deceptive use of imagery by a conservative Focus on the Family affiliate in Florida to oppose gay parenting. Short version? 1) only straight folks who conform to our current definitions of optimal beauty can be parents and 2) women who conform to those current definitions can’t possibly be non-straight (’cause apparently everyone “knows” what lesbians look like). The mind boggles.

I need a place / where I can hide / where no one sees my life inside / where I can make my plans and write them down / so I can read them. Harriet Jacobs @ Fugitivus points out the monumental fuck-up that was Google’s roll-out of its new networking feature “Buzz” this weekend. Really, Google, please please please do not EVER automatically enroll me in a social networking site again. (Update: Fugitivus now requires a WordPress account to login; if you wish to read about the story without creating an account or logging in, you can visit TechCrunch, which covered the story in Google Buzz Privacy Issues Have Real Life Implications.)

Sentences of Amys / paragraphs of Amys / filling every book. And finally, totally “for the win” this week comes this proposed word-centric condom campaign from Durex as mst’d by Amanda Hess @ The Sexist. I can’t answer her question about what my boobs would say if they could talk, but I find myself mesmerized by the people made of words and what their boobs are saying.

*image credit: Lookout II by rivergalleryartist @ Flickr.

“Turkish police have recovered the body of a 16-year-old girl they say was buried alive by relatives in an “honour” killing carried out as punishment for talking to boys.” Robert Tait @ The Guardian wins for “most horrific sexuality and gender related story of the week” with his story of a Turkish teenager who was killed by her family for transgressing their expectations of appropriately feminine behavior. I wish to point out that, rather than demonstrating some yawning chasm between “West” and “East,” this sort of action should be seen as a symptom of our global preoccupation with the purity and virginity of girls and women.

“It’s maddening that the people who want to take away women’s right to choose have annexed “choice” to their own cause. If the law compelled women like Sarah and Bristol Palin and Pam Tebow to continue problem pregnancies, there would be no heroism in doing so–you don’t get much credit for taking the difficult path if that’s your only option.” Katha Politt @ The Nation vents about the current politics of abortion in her latest “Subject to Debate” column.

“One of Blankenhorn’s leading concerns is with the well-being of children. He has argued, citing solid studies that corroborate this, that children raised by single parents are, as a group, at a disadvantage, and that having two married parents is a boon to children. But surely this raises the question: wouldn’t same-sex marriage help the children of same-sex couples…?” Margaret Talbot @ The New Yorker News Desk wonders why the pro-gay-marriage side in the Prop. 8 case hasn’t pushed the antis harder on the question of how gay marriage will hurt families in Gay Marriage and Single Parents.

And further, Talbot suggests that “You sometimes hear it said that a courtroom is not the best venue for playing out battles in the culture wars [yet] a courtroom can also be a great and theatrical classroom, where the values of thoroughness, precision in speech, and the obligation to reply have a way of laying bare the fundamentals of certain rhetorical positions.” See The Gay-Marriage Classroom.

“I’m not sure. Can your partner be your best friend? If so, can you still have other best friends? And if they can’t be your best friend, then what are they?” Essin’ Em @ Sexuality Happens muses about the delicate line between “friend” and “significant other” in My New Best Friend.

“When I close my laptop and head to work, I’m not exactly sure what’s going on in the world, but I do kind of question whether I’m pretty or young-looking enough to navigate it.” Christina C. @ the Women’s Rights Blog argues that science reporting on “studies” supposedly determining optimal human attractiveness are as biased as the advice columns in women’s fashion magazines in Sexy Science: From Lips to Hips to Cheeks, Studies Rank Women.

“Recent hopes that Apple was about to unveil an electronic device that could do absolutely anything were dashed when it became obvious that the iPad cannot in fact locate the G-spot. Nor can it fit in your handbag, which is another reason why women are disappointed by it.” The Independent weighs in on the kerfluffle about women’s sexual pleasure and “the geographical whimsy with which the mystical G-spot appears to operate (or not)” in Yes, Yes, Yes, No, Yes!

In other sex-meets-science news, Jill Filopovic @ The Guardian comments on the latest study on abstinence-until-marriage propaganda in sex education. “If there is one thing that has proven true throughout human history, it’s that people like – scratch that, love – to have sex…Of course, for a lot of us, the ‘going forth’ part is more desirable than the actual multiplying, and so human beings have also spent centuries trying to separate one from the other.”

And finally, for your “weird but true” story of the week: “Senator Saxby Chambliss, the Georgia Republican, warned [in Senate hearings] that ‘the presence in the armed forces of persons who demonstrate a propensity or intent to engage in homosexual acts’ would be likely to create an atmosphere susceptible to ‘alcohol use, adultery, fraternization, and body art.'” Lauren Collins @ The New Yorker News Desk reports on the Senate hearings about the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy concerning sexual orientation and kindly alerted me to the hitherto under-reported link between same-sex attraction and the desire for ink.

Note to self: must really see about getting that tattoo I keep talking about.

*image credit: Victoria – Nude woman painting at Whitebird Cafe by Tarjin Rahman @ Flickr.

“I tried to give them an explanation that might actually sink in, something a little deeper than ‘Don’t say that.'” Pandanose @ Little Lambs Eat Ivy reflects on discussing the importance of language with her students in Out of the Mouths of Boys.

“Even in the relationships I had that didn’t have permanence as part of their raison d’être, I have regrets about too-free-sex.” Candelaria Silva @ BlogHer writes about her own coming-of-age during the mid-century Sexual Revolution in Rethinking the Sexual Freedom of My Youth.

“We have laws in place to prevent the exploitation of the vulnerable by the powerful. In other words, there’s a non-reciprocal relationship involved that heightens the risk of exploitation. So far so good. But in sexting cases, the non-reciprocal, exploitive relationship is posited to exist between the child and herself (or himself). And here’s where things start to become nonsensical.” Rachel @ The Feminist Agenda muses about the thought process that lies behind the prosecution of young adults discovered to have distributed naked or sexual photographs of themselves via the internet.

“‘It’s hard to sit and read the dictionary, but we’ll be looking to find other things of a graphic nature,’ district spokeswoman Betti Cadmus told the paper. Alison Flood @ The Guardian reports on a California school district that is pulling the Merriam-Webster Dictionary from its shelves in “Oral Sex” definition prompts dictionary ban in US schools.

(As of Wednesday, LIS News reported the book was back on the shelves.)

“These cynics are missing the point, because few things retain the ability to shock like the idea that a woman doesn’t necessarily float off on an iceberg of chastity after her 35th birthday.” Hadley Freeman, also @ The Guardian considers social outrage (and apparen terror) that still descends upon women in relationships with younger men.

“A pro-life, anti-abortion, pro-reproductive rights, pro-choice person joins the rest of the reproductive rights movement in trying to reduce the need for abortion, through actions such as increasing accessibility to birth control, addressing economic constraints, or supporting adoption.” Alex DiBranco @ the Women’s Rights Blog has a brilliant assessment of why pro-life and anti-choice are not synonyms, and why you can be pro-life and pro-woman but not anti-choice and pro-woman.

“If you’re opposed to porn, to the point where you’re not willing to be involved with someone who ever watches it, you need to seriously rethink whether that’s a reasonable thing for one adult to ask another.” Greta Christina @ The Blowfish Blog writes about porn, relationships, and what’s reasonable to ask of another partner regarding the enjoyment of erotic material.

“Basically, it’s classing a certain normal female body type as obscene. It’s declaring all flat chests to be automatically juvenile, something that should not be viewed by anyone.” In what might be the award-winning story of the week when it comes to blind panic and idiocy, Courtney @ Feministing linked to a story about Australian efforts to make pornography that depicts smaller-breasted women illegal on the grounds that small breasts = children and therefore people who enjoy watching small-breasted women be sexual beings are all pedophiles. Mike @ Someone Think of the Children! (an Australian-based blog) has more. May I just say: W.T.F.

“Yesterday at the Perry v. Schwarzenegger trial was the day you got to see David Boies set loose on a witness, and, to judge by the transcript, his cross-examination was a little like watching your cat play with his food before he eats it.” Margaret Talbot @ the New Yorker News Desk blogs about the latest from the Prop. 8 circuit court trial.

“For the Olson and Boies side, the key point was that whatever either woman actually did, what they felt inside was fundamental. ” Earlier in the week, Talbot also blogged about one of the core philosophical questions that faces both sides: is human sexual identity immutable?

“A trial that should have been a straightforward reinforcement that murder is the deliberate taking of human life instead will be remembered in part as the forum for justifying why a person’s life can be sacrificed to save a fetus.” Emily Bazelon @ Slate explains what went wrong at the trial of Scott Roeder, the man who murdered Dr. Tiller.

“I dread them getting sick not only because I want them healthy, but also because I have so little sick time.” Rachel @ Feministe blogs about a new series from Fem2.0 that tackles the work/life balance in America; meanwhile, Rachel @ The Feminist Agenda shares the good news coming from the UK that fathers in Britain are now eligible for six months paternity leave if the mother of their newborn goes back to work.

And on a final and fluffy, note, Hanna and I have been following with great amusement the story of a English woman who has been charged with an Anti-Social Behavior Order (or ASBO) for disturbing her neighbors with bouts of noisy sex. While on first blush the case seems like an outrageous infringement of the woman’s right to privacy, officials apparently put decibel meters in the building to test for sound levels and found her in violation of noise ordinances!

*image credit: Female nude from Channel 4 life drawing series by carolekeen @ Flickr.com.