-Virginia Woolf

There’s a hoary old cliché about male nerds that they’re perennially afraid of women, clamming up whenever one begins to talk, scoffing through their retainer at the thought of one intellectually matching them on matters of science and technology. You know it’s nonsense, I know it’s nonsense—it has no cultural value other than to bolster tension in a particularly poor episode of The Big Bang Theory.

Yet, the Star Wars trilogy, the Lord of the Rings trilogy and Star Trek—inarguably three of the most popular franchises in the sci-fi/fantasy canon—have each failed the Bechdel Movie Test, the benchmark test for examining how well a movie represents women[1]. And it’s not just the so-called “nerd culture”; big 2013 releases like Pacific Rim, Oblivion, and This is the End have all failed the test. So who’s to blame? Is it true, that the pop culture populace is wary of accepting well-rounded women characters? Or is it the production companies, looking to green-light only movies they know will sell, being too lily-livered to take a chance on strong women? Whoever it is that’s perpetuating it, I’ll tell you who’s not putting up with this shit: Sweden.

Four Swedish cinemas last month launched a feminist ratings system for their movies, based on the Bechdel test. To receive an “A” grade, the movie must pass all three of the following:

1. It has to have at least two women in it,
2. who talk to each other,
3. about something besides a man

You’d think that’d be easy, right? Well, it’s surprising how many well-known films don’t make the cut. “The goal is to see more female stories and perspectives on cinema screens”, says Ellen Telje, the director of Bio Rio, one of the four theatres. According to a study by the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film, in the U.S.’s top 100 releases in 2011, only 11 percent had female protagonists.

The ratings system is unlikely to put a feather in the cap of gender equality and call it solved, but, as with most things FTW, it’s the gesture that matters. Awareness of any kind on this issue—since it is an issue that, sure, people just don’t realize when they’re being entertained—is a move toward critical thinking, which is itself a move toward change.

We’re not saying don’t keep making Star Wars films (or at least I’m not, not yet) just give us an intelligent woman. Even a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I’m sure they existed.

In case you’ve been living under a rock this year, a presidential election in the U.S. is fast approaching. That means all decorum is lost and the shit hits the fan—or, in the case of some political “art,” the bathroom.

A Republican Party convention in Montana this weekend featured highlights such as Newt Gingrich, a gun/shovel/duct tape raffle, and—oh, right! an outhouse fondly called “Obama’s Presidential Library.”

The portable creative work featured a fake Obama birth certificate stamped “Bullshit”, in reference to the racist and tiresome “debate” over whether he was born in America. Every outhouse has a little graffiti on the walls, and this one was no exception. On the side of the bathroom was written, “for a good time call 1-800-Michelle Hillary Nancy.”

Also, the outhouse was painted to look like it was hit with a slew of bullets.

“That’s So Gay”: Now Okay!

Surprise! It’s apparently okay to use the word “gay” to mean “stupid” or “weak” according to the Broadcast Standards Council.

The response has been split: on the one hand, it’s disappointing that a group of people can agree that “stupid” and “weak” are acceptable synonyms for a queer identity, and not see a problem there. At the same time, censorship has been a tool that often targets the queer community, so it’s generally something to avoid. Besides, people have said awful things on talk radio for a while now, much of which manages to “fit into” broadcast standard—so maybe we should be focusing on changing social norms, instead of policing people’s words.

After all, if we were to write up a “clean language” test, I’d definitely fail—I was just debating whether buying my dad a plant for Father’s Day was “too gay” this weekend.

Speaking of censorship, Google is reporting an “alarming” rise in censorship in the past half-year. The search engine has received more requests to remove political content—including from Western governments like Canada, the U.S., U.K. and Spain.

Question: Can men and women be friends?

Apparently the question is some matter of debate, according to NPR.

After all,

Some of the research indicates that men, in particular, are somewhat likely to both report some level of attraction to their female friends and to believe their female friends feel some level of attraction to them.

I’m not really sure what to say to that. So… we’re not allowed to be attracted to our friends? If we do find our friends attractive, how exactly does that render our bonds disingenuous, anyway? I particularly like Faith and Mario’s “but he’s gay!” argument as to how they maintain their friendship. Right, because no straight girl has crushed out on her gay friend ever.

Either way, I’m counting down the seconds until noon—I just have to hear this one for myself.

@Sweden… Well that was awkward.

Shortly after @Sweden got boatloads of New York Times buzz, the current Sweden started tweeting some very strange screeds. Check out the storify for the whole rundown.

Today I woke up and read that ex-gay therapy is still being presented as the way to “help” kids who are dealing with homophobic harassment and thoughts of suicide. Oh man, guys, I’m so vexed about this I can’t even find something witty to write.

Ex-gay therapy is promoted as solution to teen depression. Actually.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hey now. ThinkProgress reports that Focus on the Family is promoting ex-gay therapy as a solution to depression in LGBT teens.

As lots of scientists and clients/survivors have said, ex-gay therapy doesn’t work. The model of connecting depression to homosexuality, however, might.

I spoke to an ex-ex-gay once named Tyson Skriver. Tyson didn’t do the whole hog of ex-gay therapy, but he did attend Exodus workshops and conferences, and bought their books, hoping to pray his gay away, he says. As a Christian, he was sure that it was his sexuality that was making him so depressed—so he wanted to get rid of it.

“I was like, ‘This is what I want,’ because everything that everyone told me about being gay, I found in my own life. They say that — I was actually told this straight to my face — that gay people are unhappy,” he said.

“I thought … of course if that’s what’s causing me to be unhappy, then I don’t want that in my life.’ So I felt that Exodus would be the way out of my sadness, of my grief for being the way that I was.”

Ex-gay therapy capitalizes on a black-and-white model of religion built by religious fundamentalists and well-meaning secularist gay activists alike. But gay kids aren’t just gay—many of them also live rich spiritual lives in their churches and faith communities.

For Tyson, a good-doing missionary type from rural Alberta, the church was his entire life. “Of course I’m going to choose community over this other thing, because this other thing, it would seem, just popped into my head.”

Since then, Tyson’s worked with his local United Church to make gay-friendly policy. “That was such a good feeling… because growing up I always thought these people would never accept me,” he said.

Making church a good time doesn’t have to be on the top of every gay activist’s list. But safe, affirming, queer-positive religious spaces are worth fighting for.

Vatican discussing nun crackdown on Tuesday

You may have heard that the Vatican has been getting some flak as of late, particularly because of their crackdown of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious—the major umbrella group of U.S. nuns—for being too “feminist.”

Now, Associated Press reports that the Vatican is seeking “reciprocal understanding” over the event. Does that mean they’re backing down? Well, the nuns aren’t: they say the decision was “flawed.”  They’ll be meeting tomorrow with the head of the Vatican’s doctrine office to discuss their concerns.

Sweden is cool, though.

How’s this for participatory nation-building? In Sweden, a new citizen takes on the nation’s twitter account every week. The New York Times reports,

The @Sweden program, known as Curators of Sweden, came about when the Swedish Institute and Visit Sweden, the government tourist agency, sought to develop a plan to present the country to the world on Twitter. They hired an advertising company, Volontaire.

“Sweden stands for certain values — being progressive, democratic, creative,” Patrick Kampmann, Volontaire’s creative director, said in an interview. “We believed the best way to prove it was to handle the account in a progressive way and give control of it to ordinary Swedes.”

The first tweeter, Jack Werner, became known as the “masturbating Swede” for his brutal honesty about his leisure activities. Right now, the account’s under the wing of Sonja Abrahamsson, a 27-year old single mother of two living in Gothenburg.