Women are assumed to be knowledgeable and confident about their sexualities and bodies. Women today are equal to men. We seek sex. We know what we want!

But have we really achieved such equality? Although movies, porn, music, fashion, and glossy magazines fixate on the sexualized woman, giving advice on how to be more attractive, how to give great blow jobs, and how to be good in bed, sexuality and sexual pleasure are still defined on male terms: Sex is over when the man ejaculates.

Blow jobs are less gross than “carpet munching;” and sexually experienced men are virile, whereas experienced women are sluts.

Under such slanted expectations and double standards, women are seen not as autonomous sexual actors but as passive sexual objects.   more »

Paul Wolfowitz has often been blissfully unaware of the full extent of his unpopularity. That was evident recently when he walked into a lift at the World Bank headquarters in Washington with another member of staff.

Making small talk, he asked her the significance of the blue ribbon she was wearing. The employee bravely told him it was being worn by staff seeking his dismissal or resignation. The lift ride continued in silence.

Mr Wolfowitz has been a controversial figure at the bank since his appointment in January 2005.

Some at the bank and representatives of foreign governments, in particular in Europe, were queasy that the bank was to be headed by a leading neo-conservative, one of the main advocates of the Iraq war.   more »

Can't someone just shut him up? I know I'm not the only person who is sick of Dick Cheney's blustering belligerence.

Hell, by now you would think that even some of his allies in the GWOT are tired of his Darth Vader-like presence issuing threats to nations and groups opposed to his posse's designs for world domination.

Threats, mind you, that when they have come to fruition have cost him nothing in terms of power, money, or blood. Threats, mind you, that have cost many others plenty of all three.

I suppose we can consider ourselves lucky that when Dick Cheney stood on the deck of that aircraft carrier and issued his latest threat to Iran over Middle Eastern dominance he spared us the pilot costume worn by his boss a couple years back on another aircraft carrier.   more »

It was a bittersweet parting for two leaders who will be forever linked by the Iraq war.

Their dream of remaking the Middle East has turned into a nightmare. Their popularity has evaporated. Their places in history hinge on the outcome of the colonial debacle that forged their unlikely friendship.

There was the usual "no regrets" as the defiant pair bid fond farewell.

In the end, as so often, they seemed two men against the world. Yesterday's joint press conference by Tony Blair and George Bush was surely the last time they would stand together here as leaders of their countries.

Predictably it was short on substance. Instead, two old friends mused publicly and defiantly on the slings and arrows of what they plainly saw as outrageous fortune.   more »

Falwell was an evil son of a bitch. Over his long career as a vile televangelist building an empire of bigotry from the donations of poor people, Falwell has supported South African apartheid, called AIDS an invention of Jesus to punish gays, attacked Martin Luther King and U.S. civil rights, and blamed 9/11 on feminists and homosexuals.

Falwell referred to gays as "deviants" and "sodomites," and played a leading role in the backlash against the first wave of gay rights legislation.

He joined Anita Bryant in 1977 to repeal an equal rights law in Dade County, Florida, and participated in a similar effort in California the following year.

Over the course of his public life, Falwell devolved from the effective political power who had played a significant role in the election of Ronald Reagan as president, to the absurdity of his 1999 warning to parents that the Teletubby Tinky Winky was a subversive part of the homosexual agenda.   more »