The hemoncology floor of Seattle Children’s Hospital performs Kelly Clarkson’s song “Stronger”
February 17, 2012
Men, Take Note: Love Her, Love Her Dog [livescience.com]
by Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience Senior Writer
Guys, if you’re dating a woman who loves her dog, you’d better be prepared to like that dog, too — or fake it.
According to new research, a woman is more satisfied in her relationship when her partner feels the same about her pet as she does. If she’s close to her dog, he’d better be, too. If she’s more aloof, it’s better if he doesn’t get too snuggly with Fido.
For men, on the other hand, a woman’s closeness to his pet doesn’t affect his relationship satisfaction at all, according to study researcher Kristen Capuozzo, a doctoral candidate at the University of Houston.
“Either they’re unaware or they don’t care,” Capuozzo told LiveScience. “It doesn’t matter to them.”
Capuozzo, herself a dog owner, decided to do the study after a couple of conversations with friends about the role their pets played in their relationships. One woman had just dumped a man she was seeing because he didn’t like her dog. [America's Favorite Pets]
“I started thinking, ‘I wonder if that actually does affect people’s relationships?’” Capuozzo said.
So she and her colleagues recruited 120 cohabitating heterosexual couples to answer online questionnaires about how close they felt to their pets and how happy they were with their lives and relationships. Each partner filled out a separate survey.
Because 75 percent of the volunteers ended up being dog owners, there weren’t enough cats and other pets to figure out how animal type might play into the results. But for pet-owning women, it was important that their men matched their own feelings about theirfurry friend. Women reported being happier with their relationship when their partner reported similar levels of closeness to their pet.
Men’s relationship satisfaction wasn’t related to pet closeness at all, probably because men tend to be less concerned with household harmony, Capuozzo said.
“Females are much more in-tune with the harmony of the household,” she said. “Is everybody getting along? Is there any kind of disagreement, any discord? If I’m super-attached to my pet and my husband isn’t, then that might cause some disharmony: ‘Why is that pet in my bed? Why are you spending so much money on that pet?’”
One twist in the results: When men perceived themselves as having a unique bond with their own pet, they were happier in their relationship regardless of how the woman felt about the animal. But when the woman perceived that the man was closer to a pet than she was, she felt worse about the relationship.
“She kind of gets jealous,” said Capuozzo, who reported her results in January in San Diego at the annual meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology.
Those results deal with perception, Capuozzo warned, so the researchers hope to take a closer look at what might be causing the dynamic. But the take-away is clear, she said.
“If you’re going to get into a relationship with a girl who has a dog, you’d best be prepared to like that dog just as much as she does or fake it,” Capuozzo said. “Because she cares.”
http://www.livescience.com/18519-women-dogs-happy-relationships.html
January 31, 2012
Love Hurts (Other People), New Study Finds [livescience.com]
by Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience Senior Writer
SAN DIEGO – The singers who croon “Love Hurts” are right — but it’s not just jilted partners and unrequited romantics who are at risk. It turns out that romantic love can also burn innocent third parties to a relationship.
People who are primed to think about how madly in love they are with a partner put down other appealing members of their own sex, and are even more aggressive toward them, compared with people who are instead encouraged to ponder sex with a significant other, according to new research presented here last week at the annual meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology.
“Love, arguably the most positive of all human emotions, also comes with a dark side,” study researcher Jon Maner, a psychologist at Florida State University, told reporters at the meeting.
Rating others
In a trio of studies involving 130 people in long-term relationships, Maner and his colleagues found that to protect their own commitment to their partner, people would lash out at potential threats. In the first study, researchers asked students at Florida State University in long-term relationships to write about either a time when they felt intense love for their partner or a time when they felt intense sexual desire for the person — both positive relationship-related experiences. Next, the students looked at pictures of either an attractive or an unattractive man or woman, followed by a picture of a Chinese character. They were then asked to rate the appeal of the character; since the Chinese character is neutral, this question was meant to gauge the participants’ leftover feelings about the real target of the study — the pictures of the men and women.
The students also filled out questionnaires about their basic levels of jealousy, answering questions such as, “How likely are you to surprise-visit your partner to see who is with him/her?”
The results showed that jealous sorts and more laid-back types rated the characters as about equally attractive when they’d thought of intense sexual desire for their partner. But when they thought about intense love for their partner, the jealous sorts suddenly became very negative about other attractive people, rating them much less appealing.
In a second study, the researchers upped the ante. They again had people in long-term relationships reflect on their love or sexual desire for their romantic partner, or some other nonrelationship-related story. But this time, the participants were told they were going to play a computer game with a partner in another room. Whoever lost got blasted with painful, but ultimately not harmful, bursts of white noise through headphones. The winner got to pick how long and how loud those blasts would be.
The researchers then showed the participants pictures of their alleged partners, who were always attractive and the same sex as the person in the experiment. Again, high-jealousy types who were reminded of their love for their partners treated this outside person harshly, blasting their eardrums with louder and longer stints of white noise.
Hey, jealousy
At this point, the researchers wondered if low-jealousy people were somehow different than jealous types. So they created something designed to really freak people out. [7 Personality Traits That Are Bad for You]
The students were told that researchers needed their help evaluating prospective daters for a new university dating site. The students then saw a number of profiles of “attractive, interesting, outgoing, fun-loving” people of their own sex, Maner said.
These photos were designed to be as threatening as possible, said Jennifer Leo, a study researcher and graduate student at Florida State. “Not only are they very attractive, and interesting, they’re on their campus, they’re single and they’re on the prowl for a mate,” Leo said.
This time, the students who were reminded of their deep, romantic love for their partner responded harshly to the potential daters, rating them as unattractive, unfriendly and other insulting adjectives. The results held regardless of students’ levels of jealousy.
“The surge of romantic love leads them to derogate these people,” Maner said. “The more love they felt for their partner, the more negatively they tended to evaluate these objectively attractive members of their own sex.”
In fact, the jealous types even said nasty things about the daters when they weren’t reminded of their love for their partners, suggesting that the threat was so strong thatlove’s dark side kicked in without help.
The takeaway, Leo said, is that there may not be a difference between low- and high-jealousy people. All that matters is the level of threat.
“Ultimately, love works in the service of protecting the relationship and maintaining it into the long term,” Leo said. “Even if that means acting out.”
http://www.livescience.com/18194-love-dark-side-jealousy.html
December 10, 2011
This orphaned baby bat is the cutest thing you’ll see all day [io9.com]
BY CYRIAQUE LAMAR / io9.com
If you’re eating pancakes right now, don’t even bother pouring on the syrup. This is the sweetest thing you’ll see all day, nay, all week. This is the tale of Lil’ Drac, an orphaned short tailed fruit bat who was raised by the folks at Bat World Sanctuary.Here’s his biography:
His mother was yet another casualty from zoo closures which are occurring across the US. She is a young mother who was stressed from the conditions in which she was kept, combined with the additional trauma of being captured and transferred to a new and unfamiliar environment. Consequently, she abandoned Lil’ Drac after he was born. He was found on the padded floor of the indoor flight enclosure at Bat World Sanctuary, curled up in a little ball.
http://io9.com/5866893/this-orphaned-baby-bat-is-the-cutest-thing-youll-see-all-day
December 8, 2011
Pro-Virginity, Anti-Feminist Folks Make The Purity Myth Trailer Terrifying [jezebel.com]
BY ERIN GLORIA RYAN
Fans of the bestselling book The Purity Myth, rejoice. The film version is now available for your viewing pleasure on DVD, and, from the looks of the trailer, its per-minute truth bomb concentration is unprecedented. Finally, a cinematic alternative to the unstoppable, metastasized Fast & Furious franchise.
Jessica Valenti, author and founder ofFeministing, penned The Purity Myth in response to cultural pressure women face to remain virgins until a handsome prince deflowers them after an elaborate, expensive ceremony.
The film visits the places the book visited, but since the antics of pro-virginity culture were captured on camera this time around, it’s now infinitely more gif-able. From the creepy father-daughter “purity balls” where young women promise their dads that they won’t let anyone’s penis inside of them until God says it’s okay to the fearmongering but charismatic pro-virginity speakers who claim a link between female sexual activity and sterility, parts of the film (like parts of the book) would be hilarious if they weren’t so scary.
Of particular interest was the scene where a riled up preacher whips himself into a terrified frenzy by saying,
It is pressed that a man marry a virgin! Young men, if you’re dating a woman who boasts of being a feminist, who uses every four-letter word in the Marine Corps manual, who wants no children, who wants to drag you around like a dog on the end of a rope, RUN!
If you could see my crest right now, you’d see that it has fallen. I do all of these things minus the no children and dog dragging part, even though I didn’t know until right this second that there was a Marine Corps manual that contained fancy government tested swearing techniques. I’m going to be a terrible wife. All the men are going to run away from me.
Valenti explains,
The purity myth is the lie that women’s sexuality has some bearing on who we are and how good we are, because really I think we all know that young women are so much more than whether or not they have sex. We really should be teaching our daughters that their ability to be good people should be based on their intelligence, on their compassion, their kindness, not what they do with their bodies.
The film’s available for purchasing, or if you prefer to watch movies in a big group so that you can yell at the screen, the film will be shown in New York and Boston in upcoming months. Stay tuned.
The Purity Myth, The Documentary [Feministing]
http://jezebel.com/5866297/purity-myth-trailer-will-make-you-want-to-cheer
December 8, 2011
10 Warning Signs of an Abusive Relationship [about.com]
From Holly Ashworth, former About.com Guide
Dating abuse isn’t always as obvious as bruises and beatings. In fact, if you don’t know any better, some of the most common forms of relationship abuse might seem like the way that boyfriends and girlfriends are supposed to act.
That’s why it’s so important that you learn the signs of abusive relationships as soon as you start dating. If any of the signs below are true for your relationship, get help.
1. He Constantly Checks In on You
If your sweetie’s attentive and asks you about your life, that’s fantastic. But if he constantly calls you and expects a full report on where you’ve been and who you’ve been with, then something more sinister’s going on.
2. She Lies to You
Relationships can’t survive unless you trust each other, and if your partner abuses that trust by lying to you, it’s a relationship that isn’t worth keeping. A couple of white lies are forgivable. Lying regularly, or lying about important stuff, is absolutely not.
3. He Won’t Let You Talk to Other Guys
Don’t stand for this form of relationship abuse. You’re allowed to talk to anyone of any gender you want. If your sweetie is suspicious of something, he should have a mature conversation with you about it, but he’s not allowed to control your behavior.
4. She Threatens to Hurt Herself
When someone tells you something like, “I’ll kill myself if you break up with me,” they’re using fear and guilt to manipulate you. Any threat should be taken seriously, so speak to a parent or counselor about it. But you don’t have to play along.
5. He Loses His Temper Quickly
Everyone gets mad sometimes, and that’s okay. But if your sweetie snaps at you over the tiniest things and blames you for things that aren’t your fault, then something’s wrong (and it’s not you).
6. She Embarrasses You in Public
No one who loves you (or even likes you a lot) should ever make you feel bad about yourself. Doing it in public – by calling you names or making fun of you when other people are watching – is especially cruel, and you don’t have to stand for it.
7. He Forces You to Have Sex
Sex doesn’t just mean intercourse. It can mean a whole range of sexual activity, including oral sex or even just touching. If your partner forces you to do anything physical that you don’t want to do, get out of the relationship.
8. She Keeps You Away From Your Friends
Abusers are pretty smart. They know that if your friends found out the truth, they’d tell you to get out of the relationship lickety-split. By pushing your friends away, abusers are trying to protect themselves. Don’t let them.
9. He Looks at Your Phone
No one – not even the love of your life – has the right to monitor your calls and texts. And you’re allowed to be in contact with whomever you want (even your exes). If your sweetie disagrees, he’s trying to control you, and that’s a form of abuse.
10. She Does Anything That Scares You in Any Way
This could mean physical violence, the threat of violence, harsh words or dangerous behavior of any kind. Bottom line: if you’re scared to be around someone – even someone you love – don’t be around them any more. Break it off right away. If you want additional help, check out the links below.
Get Help for Abusive Relationships Now
More Signs of Relationship Abuse
September 29, 2011
Transgender kids: Painful quest to be who they are [cnn.com]
By Madison Park / CNN
Berkeley, California (CNN) – One of the first things Thomas Lobel told his parents was that they were wrong.
The 3-year-old had learned sign language because he had apraxia, a speech impediment that hindered his ability to talk. The toddler pointed to himself and signed, “I am a girl.”
“Oh look, he’s confused,” his parents said. Maybe he mixed up the signs for boy and girl. So they signed back. “No, no. Thomas is a boy.”
But the toddler shook his head. “I am a girl,” he signed back emphatically.
Regardless of the fact he was physically male, Thomas has always maintained that he is a girl. When teased at school about being quiet and liking dolls, Thomas would repeat his simple response, “I am a girl.”
Thomas, now 11, goes by the name of Tammy, wears dresses to school and lives as a girl.
Her parents have been accused by family, friends and others of being reckless, causing their youngest child permanent damage by allowing her to live as a girl.
When children insist that their gender doesn’t match their body, it can trigger a confusing, painful odyssey for the family. And most of the time, these families face isolating experiences trying to decide what is best for their kids, especially because transgender issues are viewed as mysterious, and loaded with stigma and judgment.
September 24, 2011
Gay Soldier Heartbreakingly Comes Out to His Father on YouTube [gawker.com]
by Brian Moylan / Gawker
To celebrate the end of the military’s banagainst openly gay servicemembers, a gay soldier stationed in Germany decided to come out to his family and the world in the most public way possible: by recording a video and posting it on the internet. It’s the sweetest thing we’ve seen in a long time.
The soldier, known as AreYouSuprised, has been running a YouTube page and a Twitter account where he openly discussed being gay in the military, but wouldn’t show his face (though he showed off just about everything else). Now he’s coming out to the world.
Anyone who has ever come out—or told a parent any secret—knows the nerves and uncertainty our soldier feels at the beginning of the video before he dials the phone. When his father in Alabama answers it’s excruciating to watch him work up to telling him the big news, but when he finally does, his father’s support is enough to bring tears to the eyes of even a cold-hearted bastard such as myself. Naturally, the soldier’s dad is more concerned with his son drinking too much at Oktoberfest than that he’s gay.
This is better than most “It Gets Better” videos and is a fitting requiem to the military’s exclusionary and senseless policy. And our newly-out soldier’s inbox better brace itself for the onslaught of well-wishes and requests for dates. Back off, boys. I’m first in line.
http://gawker.com/5842137/gay-soldier-heartbreakingly-comes-out-to-his-father-on-youtube
