When resources are inequitably distributed in a longstanding, historically institutionalized fashion, as has been the case with the underfunding of women's athletics, then the only way to remedy the situation is to redistribute some of those resources. This is not so much a case of "taking away" something that male athletes are entitled to have but recognizing that it was never just for them to have it in the proportion they did in the first place. It is not a pleasant feeling to lose one's sense of entitlement, but it is also necessary if we are to create a more just society.

On the other hand, I don't think that most serious people are snickering over the uncomfortable situations that this process can create. If you are a member of any privileged group in this society (male, white, heterosexual, upper or middle class, English speaking, protestant Christian, etc), then you have probably experienced some growing pains over the redistribution of resources for the sake of ending longstanding, historical oppression. As a white woman, it would be hubris of me to hurl contempt at the men who are experiencing these problems, because I must also confront the areas in which I have enjoyed unacknowledged and unjust privileges. I have been guilty myself of feeling resentment about such things, but I recognize it for what it is in me: the howling of a beast fearing that she is losing her place on the social foodchain. I choose wrestle with that beast.

As for the number of women showing interest in athletics, do you think perhaps the unequal potential for scholarships, endorsement revenues, and employment opportunities for women in this field might just have something to do with that?

Trying to discern this guy's sexual orientation from that one comment is futile.

It's futile because, though we may like to think that there is an inerrant script for heterosexual men in our society, there are also men who (for whatever reason, usually developmental) never learned it or (for whatever reason, usually cultural) learned some very different version of it or (for whatever reason, usually personal) choose not to follow it. Admittedly their numbers are much smaller than the number of women who can step out of our gender's narrowly-prescribed social roles (and the sadness of that is the subject of another post entirely). But they do exist. I've met plenty of 'em.

And much as some of us might like to think of sexual orientation as a certainty, there are also men who are questioning and sorting through their desires, even into midlife and beyond. And speaking as a bisexual myself, it is entirely possible that some of the folks in the LW's workplace who are ambiguous about their sexual orientation are doing so because they don't expect acceptance or understanding from either their heterosexual or homosexual coworkers. Instead they approach coming out warily, seeing what kind of reaction they get to their tiny and sometimes rather awkward feelers. The only way to sorta know is to ask the guy directly what is going on, and even then, who knows how much of his desires he will be willing to expose in an answer. He seems awfully coy, either out of shyness or ulterior motive I don't know.

Still, it's a romantic thought, isn't it, just a little, that this man could suddenly have been jolted out of his own presumed heterosexuality and compelled to make such a bold statement of physical appreciation to another man? Insert soaring string melody and a deep sigh here. Sadly, though, I think that's an extremely unlikely scenario.

The most relevant statistic to me would seem to be a comparison of the murder rates for pregant women versus demographically similar women who are not pregant. Otherwise it's hard to make much of this information because there are too many potentially confounding variables.

You know, it occurs to me upon reading this article that conservative Muslim countries are just as focussed on sex as we are. They just do it in a different, almost inverted way. How else to explain the expectation that at any minute, a woman's body might spark illicit sexual activity? That's a pretty extreme degree of attunement to sexual possibilities, if you ask me. The culture in fundamentalist-controlled countries seem very aware of sexuality at ever turn even as it makes a public show of avoiding its expression. Though perhaps that is a misperception of my own highly sexualized American mind looking in from the outside.

I recall hearing that the American Puritans were similar: lots of prohbitions and rules about sex, and lots and lots and lots of unofficial, unsanctioned sex going on as well. The very prohibitions were, in a way, titillation.

This is probably not a revelation for most of you, but it just struck me like an "aha" today.

I really wish that there was a bit more scrutiny given to the studies cited on this blog. The pregnancy murder statistics, at least the way they are being presented here, are alarmist and virtually meaningless. I'm open to the possibility that there are increased murder rates for pregnant women, but so far that does not seem to have been substantiated. In fact, the stats cited don't even address that issue becuase they make no comparisons to a control. Even if it were to be substantiated as a bonified social trend, we couldn't draw conclusions about the cause based on statistics that only represent frequency. Such a phenomenon, were it to exist at all, could be interpreted many different ways.

Serious social science research has clear standards for reliability, validity, and generalizability. We weaken our arguments when we rely on bad studies or bad reporting of good studies. This is a tactic that our political opponents use all the time. We don't need to use it and I'm sad to see it (wittingly or unwittingly) showing up here.