Year: 2008

Check out this LA Times article which describes how DNA may juice up the matchmaking biz.

Several commenters have mentioned and quoted from Michael Bailey’s book, The Man Who Would Be Queen.
Click this link to read the first two chapters of the book.
The Man Who Would Be Queen is published by Joseph Henry Press.

PS – Much has gotten in the way of the second part of Danielle’s remarks on gender identity issues, but they are coming soon…

Bil Browning, majordomo at the Bilerico Project, asked me to provide a post regarding the background of the Golden Rule Pledge. The article was posted May 16 and includes a statement from Eliza Byard at GLSEN regarding the project.
You can also subscribe to a Yahoo email group about the Golden Rule Pledge that will become more active toward the beginning of the next school year.

Something like that.
Scientific American’s Mind has an article this month giving a neural tour of the brain’s sexual response. The article supports Michael Bailey’s contention that women are more flexible in their erotic responding than men, who are more channeled into either same or opposite sex responding.
Here are the bullet points for the Mind article:

-Sexual desire and orgasm are subject to various influences on the brain and nervous system, which controls the sex glands and genitals.
-The ingredients of desire may differ for men and women, but researchers have revealed some surprising similarities. For example, visual stimuli spur sexual stirrings in women, as they do in men.
-Achieving orgasm, brain imaging studies show, involves more than heightened arousal. It requires a release of inhibitions engineered by shutdown of the brain’s center of vigilance in both sexes and a widespread neural power failure in females.

Makes for interesting weekend reading…

If you get Google alerts or some similar service, you already know that the California Supreme Court has issued a ruling recognizing a right to marriage for same-sex couples. From the San Diego Union-Tribune:

The state Supreme Court struck down California’s marriage law banning same sex couples from getting married in a historic decision Thursday that declared the law unconstitutional discrimination.
The decision will surely touch off an impassioned political fight.
The 4-3 opinion is the high court’s most important civil rights decision in more than a decade, and it is an epic legal victory for same-sex marriage advocates. California is now the second state in the nation to allow gays and lesbians to be legally married.
According to the opinion, “we determine that the language of section 300 limiting the designation of marriage to a union ‘between a man and a woman’ is unconstitutional and must be stricken from the statute, and that the remaining statutory language must be understood as making the designation of marriage available both to opposite-sex and same-sex couples.”

Email alerts reactions from various groups range from “a full win” by gay groups to “a disregard of California voters” from conservative groups. The November ballot initiative will now be considered an effort to overturn this ruling.
Fallout and reactions:
Presidential candidates reactions
New York Times
Schwarzennegger
Associated Press