It’s kind of been a shitty week. Yeah, that’s all I’ve got to say right now. But here’s some non-shitty things for you to read.

A Thai Region Where Husbands Are Imported – NYTimes.com

While the title of this article might make you think of gender role reversal, its contents are profoundly disappointing for anyone with a gender justice streak:

Mr. Davis, 54, did not take his wife home with him, choosing instead to settle down in northeastern Thailand, a region known as Isaan. […] “Thai women are a lot like women in America were 50 years ago,” said Mr. Davis, before they discovered their rights and became “strong-headed and opinionated.”

“The women now know they are equal,” said Mr. Davis, a retired Naval officer who has been divorced twice, “so the situation is not as relaxed and peaceful as it is between an American and a Thai lady.”

For those that wonder what nostalgic memories older white men long for, Mr. Davis paints a clear picture. The same picture, differently expressed, as the unease many frat boys express: that their loss of privilege feels, to them, like discrimination, not equality.

Male Submission Art – One man licks the stomach of another whose hands remain at his sides…

In theory, I wanted to surface content created by others, not me. But content is content and I've been getting the impression my out yet technically fragmented online presence may make it hard for all but the technically proficient or the mean-spirited crusader to easily see the whole of me. So I'm taking the opportunity to link to a post I'm particularly fond of.

Reversing assumptions is a precious skill; compassion and empathy are circumscribed without it. Although I first assumed submissiveness in the man whose face we can see because of the way he is licking the other model, once I understood the alternative possibility, I noticed that the man doing the licking is the active partner here. And […] since the man doing the licking is in the stereotypically submissive position, if he is the submissive partner, then it’s his activeness itself that queers this image.

Dear Abby « alphafemme

I wrote a thing as part of this month's Scarleteen blog carnival, and in it I tried to convince people that supporting Scarleteen is important. But my argument, valuable as I hope it was to some, pales in comparison to this one:

unable to talk to her parents and lacking knowledge or awareness of any other resources at her disposal, she wrote to Dear Abby. Asking if she was pregnant. So every day, 11 years old, she read Dear Abby, hoping for a response.

And she got one. Dear Abby printed her letter, and wrote a warm and kind response explaining exactly what would’ve had to have happened for her to be pregnant, affirming that no matter what he’d done, it was wrong and not her fault, and telling her about some books that she could check out at the library for girls about their bodies and their sexuality.

Scarleteen is important. If you want to hear about the kinds of lives it saves, and how, then you want to read this.