Laurie and Debbie emerge from the holiday fog to say: Apparently, there just aren’t any limits to the efforts people will make to justify gendered behaviors. The parasite Toxoplasma gondii is a well-known and extremely common parasite, thought to be present in roughly 40% of the human population. It has long been known to be [...]

Laurie and Debbie say: If you love the holidays, love your family, and look forward to the next ten days, you don’t need this list. If you’re still reading: 1) To the extent possible, do as much or as little holiday stuff as you want; it’s a celebration, not an obligation. 2) Wear what you [...]

Debbie says: The newest Carnival of Feminists is up at The Imponderabilia of Actual Life (and is that a great blog title or what?). I love how we started people out on illustrating the carnivals, and the people who have followed it have done it so differently than we did, and so well! This one [...]

Laurie and Debbie say: This holiday season, many parents are up in arms about the hot new Bratz dolls, and we thought we’d check them out. (Warning: the website is a nightmare of bad design and worse navigation.) The Bratz dolls consist of eight or nine characters, all with names, nicknames, and color palettes. They [...]

Debbie says: First, Laurie is fine, she’s just super-busy this week. Jess McCabe at The F-Word points out this article on subliminal stereotype cues. Given my ever-growing crusade against junk science, I really wish that the article provided the size of the study samples, whether or not this is a metadata study, and similar information [...]

Laurie and Debbie say: We are deeply upset to learn that women are suffering significant back, neck, and shoulder pain, and even long-term physical damage … from carrying fashionably heavy bags and purses. “In the last year or so, I’ve been seeing the same kinds of issues with adult women that I’m used to seeing [...]

Debbie says: Shakespeare’s sister takes us on a very disturbing tour of the Discovery Channel website’s shopping area, wherein we discover that the first four choices for boys from 8-12 are the Whodunit Forensics Lab, the Fingerprint Lab, the Speed Detector, and the Radio Control Equalizer Stunt Car, while the top choices for girls of [...]

Laurie and Debbie say: All kinds of interesting things are going on around the blogosphere: The resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan and its effect on Afghan women (another brilliant victory of American foreign policy!) is getting some of the attention it deserves. We got this particular example from oursin. During my time in the [...]

Laurie and Debbie say: Lindsay Beyerstein at Majikthise is talking about sexual metaphors and profanity. One interesting thing about “swear words” is that they’re conventionalized. You can’t paraphrase expletives, except by substituting a culturally approved euphemism. For example, you can’t use “sexual congress” in place of “fuck” in real swearing situations. “Screw you!” will work [...]

Laurie and Debbie say: It’s not like the Japanese phenomenon of yaoi invented the idea of women reading, writing, and getting off on “boys’ love.” Joanna Russ first publicized the phenomenon of women writing hot sexy fiction based on male characters from stories and TV shows (at that time it was mostly James Kirk and [...]