I was listening to NPR today (or yesterday?) and heard a really scary piece on child prostitution in Oakland.  There are so many bad things going on around us that it's easy to tune them out.  I mean, I know child prostitution exists, but hearing about how prevelant it is--especially in Oakland is really jarring for someone like me.  There seems to be a growing gap between the third wave feminist educated activist women and the everyday girls and women who are falling through the system's cracks.  The piece talked about how girls end up getting seduced into the lifestyle by their "boyfriends" and have been so victimized (horrible word, but nothing else seems to fit) their whole lives with crappy abusive childhoods and home situations that these girls don't see anything wrong or unusual with prostituting themselves.  Another aspect of the whole thing is that pimping is being glamorized in rap songs--the lyrics they played were just sickening--and books.  I don't really know how this situation can be fixed because although I support legalized prostitution, that wouldn't address teen girls being forced to prostitute themselves.  After all, even if prostitution were legalized and regulated, there would still be illegal prostitution and people willing to prey on girls in tough situations.  Okay, now I'm just depressed.

At least not when playing Boggle on my iphone.  Neither is "shit" or "shat".  Really?  Have I been playing regular Boggle wrong this whole time?!  Is there some rule that "naughty" words can't be used?  I imagine "cunt" isn't a word either.  How dare they!  How dare they rewrite and censor the english language to suit their needs.  Did Boggle need a pg rating for play?  Were they afraid some 10 year old would ask their parent's what a slut was (as if they wouldn't already know)?  I don't imagine anyone younger than that would be playing anyway.  Did some group of grandmothers band together and shame the makers into making their game squeeky clean?  I don't know about you, but half the fun for is spotting "bad" words.  I'll never forget the time I found "clitoris".  No idea if that word's acceptable under the iphone rules.  Just one more thing that makes me shake my head sadly.

In case you haven't heard, the web has been abuzz these past two weeks with news about an e-book catering to pedophiles. "The Pedophile's Guide to Love and Pleasure: A Child-Lover's Code of Conduct" was removed from Amazon a day after the company had defended its sale of the product, and only weeks after it had been published.

After pulling "The Pedophile's Guide," customers became irate that a similar book from 2000 entitled “Understanding Loved Boys and Boylovers” was allowed to remain on the cyber-shelves, and that book, too, was soon pulled. 

Now, if you've ever written an email or letter to Amazon complaining about the content of the book, you know that what you get in return is a form letter basically stating that Amazon does not "condone criminal acts" but "believes everyone has the right to choose" what they read, even if some may find it objectionable. What I'm wondering then, is why did Amazon cave in to pressure this time? The answer, I'm sure, has to do with the number of complaints they received, and their fear of losing cusomer loyalty. And, while I personally do not believe in media censorship, I must admit that certain things make me more than a little uneasy ("The Pedophile's Guide" being one of them). I have the same feelings about computer games in which the object of the game is to rape women--my first reaction is that these games should be banned, but then my logical side kicks in and insists that censorship is never...

Yesterday I had the privilege of seeing Dr. Rebecca Jordan-Young give a presentation on campus about her new book “Brain Storm: The Flaws in the Science of Sex Differences.” My classmates and I all agreed that she gave a superb talk about why the scientific studies that claim to demonstrate neurological “sex differences” are all very, well, unscientific.

After the presentation an audience member asked Dr. Jordan-Young if any studies have investigated the effects of so-called “cross-sex” hormone treatment in transsexuals. She answered that this is a difficult phenomenon to study because 1.) People who transition have many expectations and hopes as to what the hormones will do and who they will become and 2.) It would be nearly impossible to do a double-blind study in which one group of people is assigned hormones and the other group isn’t, because hormones have effects on the skin, hair, etc. (i.e.: testosterone makes the skin produce excess oil, so it would be rather easy for most people to tell if they were given testosterone). Dr. Jordan-Young then related a story about a man who called in to a radio show she was on, insisting that testosterone administration has profound psychological effects. The man identified himself as gay and HIV positive, and stated that after his doctor prescribed him testosterone for HIV-related hypogonadism, his personality changed...

Anyone who knows me well knows that one topic that really incenses me is genital mutilation. Lately I’ve been hearing (and reading) a lot about the circumcision/HIV trials in Africa and it has irked me enough to blog about it.

A little background: over the past decade, several studies have taken place in African nations with high HIV rates to assess if male circumcision provides protection from HIV. Basically, the researchers recruit thousands of HIV-negative male participants, circumcising half of them and leaving the other half intact. After several months the men are tested for HIV. The studies reported that, depending on the specific trial, the circumcised men had 50%-60% fewer cases of HIV than their intact counterparts, and, although they were replete with shortcomings (i.e.: they were not double blinded, and the circumcised men were told to abstain from sex for six weeks following the procedure, giving them a shorter amount of time in which to become infected), many health and HIV organizations are now promoting circumcision as a means of preventing HIV, and it seems like every newspaper and magazine in the United States has reported the findings as “promising.”

What has been left out of the medical and media reports is the curious fact that, worldwide, some of the countries that have the lowest rates of circumcision are also those that boast the lowest rates of...