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Fort Hood, Texas, hosts tens of thousands of men who are trained to fight for their country. But none of them stopped Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan as he blew away 13 of their colleagues Thursday afternoon. It was a civilian police officer, Sgt. Kimberly Munley, who confronted and shot him in an exchange of gunfire. For her trouble, Munley took bullets in both legs and an arm. Maybe the president will pin a medal on her.
Here's a better way to honor Munley: End the ban on women in combat.
More here.
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In other words, boys don't have to get vaccinated against HPV for the same reason they don't have to wash dishes, do laundry, buy birth control, or think about other people in general: Girls will do it for them.
More here.
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If you're a woman in a conservative Muslim country, you had better bleed on your wedding night. If you don't, your husband or his family will know you aren't a virgin. For that, you could be beaten or killed.
If you're a man, on the other hand, all you have to do on your wedding night is ejaculate. Nobody expects you to bleed or produce any other proof of virginity.
Some day, this barbaric and hypocritical tradition will end. Until then, the best we can do is fool it. You want blood on your wedding night? We'll give you blood. Fake blood.
For many years, doctors have quietly offered hymenoplasty, a procedure that restores your hymen so you can fake virginity on your wedding night. And now you don't even need a doctor. Joseph Freeman of the Associated Press reports:
The Artificial Virginity Hymen kit, distributed by the Chinese company Gigimo, costs about $30. It is intended to help newly married women fool their husbands into believing they are virgins—culturally important in a conservative Middle East where sex before marriage is considered by many to be illicit. The product leaks a blood-like substance when inserted and broken. Gigimo advertises shipping to every Arab country.
On its Web site, Gigimo explains more about the product:
Artificial Virginity Hymen is created from Kyoto, Japan at 1993. it was first introduced to the locals, then it gets famous and spread to Thailand at 1995 and now available in South East Asia, South Asia and in the Middle East countries. It is mainly made of natural albumin, medical use inflation element and water-soluble base medicinal preparation which have no side effect. Insert this artificial hymen into your vagina carefully. It will expand a little and make you feel tight. When your lover penetrate, it will ooze out a liquid that look like blood not too much but just the right amount. Add in a few moans and groan, you will pass through undetectable.
Outraged Egyptian lawmakers are demanding a ban on the kit. Freeman reports:
Sheik Sayed Askar, a member of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood who is on the parliamentary committee on religious affairs, said the kit will make it easier for Egyptian women to give in to temptation. He demanded the government take responsibility for fighting the product. ... Prominent Egyptian religious scholar Abdel Moati Bayoumi said anyone who imports the artificial hymen should be punished. "This product encourages illicit sexual relations. Islamic culture forbids these relations except within the confines of marriage," Bayoumi said. ... "If this thing enters Egypt, the country is going to go to waste. God protect us," commented a reader on the Web site of Egyptian newspaper Al-Youm Al-Sabie.
Pause for a moment to consider what these men are asking God to protect them from: a cheap, mass-produced insert that releases fake blood. It's the technical equivalent of a Halloween gag. But to them, this is no gag. It's an offense against God.
In this way, the artificial hymen serves as a useful test of religious idiocy. If a $30 item that leaks fake blood violates your faith so profoundly that you must ban it, then what you have isn't really a faith. It's a fetish. And your fetish won't survive globalization.
Sex within marriage is a perfectly good idea. It encourages commitment, structures relationships, builds a foundation for society, and secures a healthy environment for raising children. But rigid proscriptions against premarital sex are excessive, futile, and unnecessary. They breed hypocrisy and contempt for authority. In the age of the artificial hymen, you can still preach and practice fidelity. Just don't ask God to protect your sick craving for wedding-night blood. She can't and won't.
Virginity fetishism is doomed, boys. Give it up.
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Do some women fantasize about rape? Do some become aroused during rape? If so, what does it mean?
Daniel Bergner, a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine, raises those questions in the magazine's current issue. Obviously, Bergner's a guy. So am I. But the evidence and theories in the article come from women who have been researching female sexuality. For instance, Meredith Chivers, a psychology professor at Queen's University,
has confronted clinical research reporting not only genital arousal but also the occasional occurrence of orgasm during sexual assault. And she has recalled her own experience as a therapist with victims who recounted these physical responses. She is familiar, as well, with the preliminary results of a laboratory study showing surges of vaginal blood flow as subjects listen to descriptions of rape scenes.
Moreover,
According to an analysis of relevant studies published last year in The Journal of Sex Research, an analysis that defines rape as involving "the use of physical force, threat of force, or incapacitation through, for example, sleep or intoxication, to coerce a woman into sexual activity against her will," between one-third and more than one-half of women have entertained such fantasies, often during intercourse, with at least 1 in 10 women fantasizing about sexual assault at least once per month in a pleasurable way.
How could anyone want something done to her against her will? Isn't that self-contradictory? And if she doesn't want it, why would she become genitally aroused?
The answer, some of these researchers propose, is that women's sexuality is split. In one of Chivers' studies, for example, "men's minds and genitals were in agreement" while watching sexual videos. But among women, genital blood differed sharply from self-reported arousal: "During shots of lesbian coupling, heterosexual women reported less excitement than their vaginas indicated; watching gay men, they reported a great deal less; and viewing heterosexual intercourse, they reported much more." Even lesbians, while watching videos of men, "reported less engagement than the [blood-flow monitors] recorded."
Chivers speculates that female sexuality might be split between "physiological" and "subjective" systems. This could explain the rape data:
[T]o understand arousal in the context of unwanted sex, Chivers, like a handful of other sexologists, has arrived at an evolutionary hypothesis that stresses the difference between reflexive sexual readiness and desire. Genital lubrication, she writes in her upcoming paper in Archives of Sexual Behavior, is necessary "to reduce discomfort, and the possibility of injury, during vaginal penetration. ... Ancestral women who did not show an automatic vaginal response to sexual cues may have been more likely to experience injuries during unwanted vaginal penetration that resulted in illness, infertility or even death, and thus would be less likely to have passed on this trait to their offspring." Evolution's legacy, according to this theory, is that women are prone to lubricate, if only protectively, to hints of sex in their surroundings.
In other words, part of the female arousal system is designed for self-protection and is particularly well-suited to what we now regard as abuse. Sounds horrific, right? But Marta Meana, a psychology professor at the University of Nevada, offers an arguably more disturbing theory. She points to research suggesting that 1) "in comparison with men, women's erotic fantasies center less on giving pleasure and more on getting it"; 2) "as measured by the frequency of fantasy, masturbation and sexual activity, women have a lower sex drive than men"; and 3) "within long-term relationships, women are more likely than men to lose interest in sex." These and other findings fit her theory that female desire is driven by "being desired."
So does reproductive logic, according to Chivers:
[O]ne possibility is that instead of it being a go-out-there-and-get-it kind of sexuality, it's more of a reactive process. If you have this dyad, and one part is pumped full of testosterone, is more interested in risk taking, is probably more aggressive, you've got a very strong motivational force. It wouldn't make sense to have another similar force. You need something complementary.
And here's where it gets icky.
A symbolic scene ran through Meana's talk of female lust: a woman pinned against an alley wall, being ravished. Here, in Meana's vision, was an emblem of female heat. The ravisher is so overcome by a craving focused on this particular woman that he cannot contain himself; he transgresses societal codes in order to seize her, and she, feeling herself to be the unique object of his desire, is electrified by her own reactive charge and surrenders. ... [Meana] spoke about the thrill of being wanted so much that the aggressor is willing to overpower, to take.
Does this mean women want to be raped? No. Both theories assume the opposite. And that's a pretty safe assumption, given the logical impossibility of willing a violation of your will. The challenge is to explain the data on rape fantasies and arousal from sexual assault, given that nobody literally wants to be raped. What part of rape or the idea of rape is arousing? And what part of the woman is aroused?
The first theory, lubrication, suggests that rape-related arousal is purely physical and reflexive, leaving the will untouched. Your vagina says one thing, your brain says another, and (this is the crucial part for men to understand, morally and legally) your brain is what matters. But that doesn't explain the data on rape fantasies. Fantasies imply brain arousal. And that, in turn, implies that we should be asking not which part of the woman is aroused, but which part of the rape fantasy is arousing.
The second theory, which Meana frankly calls narcissism, posits a clear answer. We generally define rape as sex against the victim's will. But a woman mentally aroused by a sexual assault fantasy isn't thinking about the victim's will. She's thinking about the perpetrator's. She's imagining being wanted. That's what she wants—and the fact that she wants it exposes the fantasy, by definition, as not really rape. The imaginary act arouses her not because the woman in the scenario doesn't want it, but because the man does.
But if that's what these fantasies are—one person drawing her will from the will of another—what does it say about us? If derivativeness of will is, as some of these researchers posit, a fundamental difference between male and female arousal, what does it say about equality between the sexes? Are women, in this sense, inherently less autonomous?
(Update: My colleagues at the XX Factor, who actually have the relevant equipment, are discussing this topic right now. Meghan O'Rourke has flagged the same question about whether female sexuality is reactive. I'll be interested to see other comments from the focus group.)
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What is it with the Catholic Church and female anatomy?
The total opposition to abortion I can understand. The men in Rome believe that personhood begins at conception.
The opposition to artificial contraception strikes me as completely wrongheaded but not necessarily a guy thing. They believe that sex must be open to life and that life must arise through sex.
The misunderstanding of morning-after pills in their latest instruction to Catholics? Well, that's a bit ignorant. But even the average woman isn't familiar with the research on LH surges, luteal dysfunction, and endometrial damage.
On all these issues, I'm willing to give the men in Rome the benefit of the doubt. But then I read this report from the Vatican newspaper, via Agence France Presse:
The contraceptive pill is polluting the environment and is in part responsible for male infertility, a report in the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano said Saturday. The pill "has for some years had devastating effects on the environment by releasing tonnes of hormones into nature" through female urine, said Pedro Jose Maria Simon Castellvi, president of the International Federation of Catholic Medical Associations. ... "We have sufficient evidence to state that a non-negligible cause of male infertility in the West is the environmental pollution caused by the pill," he said, without elaborating further.
That's right: The new cause of male infertility is female urine. Specifically, the urine of women who are committing the sin of contraception.
Scientifically, the theory looks a bit wet. AFP continues:
The article was promptly dismissed by several organisations. "Once metabolised, the hormones contained in oral contraceptives no longer have any of the characteristic effects of feminine hormones," said Gianbenedetto Melis, vice-president of a contraceptive research association, quoted by the ANSA news agency. The hormones contained in the pill such as oestrogen "are present everywhere ... in plastic, in disinfectants, in meat that we eat," added Flavia Franconi, of the Society of Italian Pharmacology.
Perhaps it's a sign of the modern age that moralists feel obliged to associate their principles with health effects. Abortion isn't just murder; it causes breast cancer and psychological damage to women. Contraception isn't just a violation of God's will; it's an environmental toxin. But none of these health claims has turned out to be valid. And in this case, the claim is so perfectly consistent with the history of misogyny—blaming men's fertility problems on women's sins and fluids—that it risks not just scientific but moral discredit.
On the other hand, if it turns out to be true, I'll be really pissed.
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The female suicide bombers have struck again. And again. And again.
Yesterday morning, I wrote about a woman who blew herself up in Iraq last Thursday. The body count in that attack was eight. I don't remember what the count was in terms of how many women had done the deed this year.
Anyway, that number is already obsolete. By the end of the day, three more women had killed themselves. The body count in yesterday's attacks exceeds 60, with more than 200 others wounded. The Los Angeles Times reports:
According to U.S. Army figures, 27 suicide attacks this year have been carried out by women, compared with eight in all of 2007 ... A tally by The Times indicates that about a quarter of all suicide attacks this year in Iraq have been conducted by women.
Again, the Washington Post explains why women are delivering the bombs:
Wearing their flowing black garments, they can carry hidden explosives past most checkpoints because customs of modesty prevent male guards from frisking them. On Monday, four female suicide bombers in two Iraqi cities used this tactic to enter areas defended by hundreds of soldiers and police officers.
The New York Times adds:
Police officers interviewed at the scene said that the authorities had heard that six women would blow themselves up in the area. "We can't search women," complained Atheer Allawi, a police officer. "They are wearing abayas, and God knows what they can hide under them."
And again, Iraq failed to provide enough female security officers to do the job. The Associated Press reports:
Iraqi security forces had deployed about 200 women this week to search female pilgrims in Kazimiyah, but the attacks took place along the procession some six miles southeast of the shrine. There were too few women guards to search people in the procession itself.
The bombings will continue until we get the message: Stop treating women as though they're too meek to fight and kill. They're already killing. Search women. Deploy women.
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Another suicide bombing in Iraq last week. Another female perpetrator. The bomb "killed a pro-American Sunni militia leader, an Iraqi police captain, a local politician, and five other people," according to Friday's New York Times. Apparently, it's "at least the 16th time that a woman has donned a bomb and exploded herself in Diyala Province since last year."
Why women? The Times explains:
Wearing billowy, black head-to-toe garments, the female bombers have been able to conceal powerful explosives and slip into crowded areas too heavily guarded for a male suicide bomber to ease through undetected. While men often undergo physical searches, Islamic rules do not allow male security officers to pat down women.
How many more women have to blow themselves up before we get the message? Female suicide bombing is a logical extension of suicide bombing. Suicide bombing exploits your disbelief about what people will do. Female suicide bombing exploits your disbelief about what a particular group of people—women—will do. Your biases are no longer somebody else's problem. They're your problem. Look for Arab bombers, and terrorists will send an American-born Hispanic instead. Look for men, and they'll send a woman.
Actually, I don't like the way I wrote that. These women aren't just "sent" by somebody else. We've had enough socio-babble about how women commit such atrocities because they've been "marginalized" and "exploited" by men. It reminds me of the pro-life dogma that women shouldn't be prosecuted under abortion bans because the woman is just the abortionist's pawn. Spare these women your condescension. If you're going to make abortion a crime, charge the woman. If you're handling security where bombs are a threat, search everyone. And if you don't have enough female security officers to search the women, go hire some.
But this is just a Muslim problem, right? We Judeo-Christian Americans don't have these hang-ups, right? As the Washington Post noted two months ago:
In Afghanistan as well as Iraq, female soldiers are often tasked to work in all-male combat units -- not only for their skills but also for the culturally sensitive role of providing medical treatment for local women, as well as searching them and otherwise interacting with them.
But—oops!—the Post story is about Pfc. Monica Brown, who won
a Silver Star in March for repeatedly risking her life on April 25, 2007, to shield and treat her wounded comrades, displaying bravery and grit. She is the second woman since World War II to receive the nation's third-highest combat medal. Within a few days of her heroic acts, however, the Army pulled Brown out of the remote camp in Paktika province where she was serving with a cavalry unit -- because, her platoon commander said, Army restrictions on women in combat barred her from such missions.
Enough with the sexism. We can't afford it.
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A week ago, I crunched some data and concluded that suicide bombing, despite its brutal rationality as a weapon, had not increased in recent years outside of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Many of you pointed out that this was one heck of a caveat. The number of attacks inside those countries is appalling and has been increasing.
Now there's a new twist to the trend in Iraq: Many of the people blowing themselves up are women. According to Farhana Ali, a former U.S. adviser who presented data at a Washington conference yesterday, women executed 12 suicide attacks in Iraq during the first four months of this year. That's already more than the number of such attacks executed by women in Iraq over the previous five years.
In an interview with Agence France Presse, Ali blames this trend on male violence and the invasion, which she says has widowed many women and "marginalized" others. But then the AFP story gets to the really interesting point:
Ali warned that U.S. soldiers face a cultural barrier in detecting women bombers. "A marine officer coming back from Fallujah said to me: 'How are we supposed to detect these women if we are taught before we are deployed to not even look at them?'" she explained.
And here's Ali's solution: "If you want to gain entrance into female jihadi organisations, you need female case officers. You need female police officers. You need women in Iraqi law enforcement."
Suicide bombing has always exploited common disbelief about what people will do: You don't expect somebody to walk into a market and blow himself up. Nor do you expect him to take 20 or 30 civilians with him for no apparent reason. Why shouldn't this tactical exploitation of disbelief extend to sexism? You certainly don't expect somebody to blow herself up, much less kill a bunch of innocents.
This is one of the lessons terrorism will gradually teach us: Stereotyping is an exploitable security weakness. To overcome it, we'll have to overcome our sexism about women in the military and in law enforcement, as well as our sexism about women in crime and terrorism. If the moral faults of such stereotypes aren't enough to make you push them aside, do it for your country.