I don't know what's going on this week but I've found myself sucked into a wormhole of long, interesting articles on gender, masturbation, feminism and more... if you want a little non-light summer reading, check out these articles:From The Atlantic, an article on how women are taking over in terms of school and the workplace:

In feminist circles, these social, political, and economic changes are always cast as a slow, arduous form of catch-up in a continuing struggle for female equality. But in the U.S., the world?s most advanced economy, something much more remarkable seems to be happening. American parents are beginning to choose to have girls over boys. As they imagine the pride of watching a child grow and develop and succeed as an adult, it is more often a girl that they see in their mind?s eye.What if the modern, postindustrial economy is simply more congenial to women than to men? For a long time, evolutionary psychologists have claimed that we are all imprinted with adaptive imperatives from a distant past: men are faster and stronger and hardwired to fight for scarce resources, and that shows up now as a drive to win on Wall Street; women are programmed to find good providers and to care for their offspring, and that is manifested in more- nurturing and more-flexible behavior, ordaining them to domesticity. This kind of thinking frames our sense of the natural order. But what if men and women were fulfilling not biological imperatives but social roles, based on what was more efficient throughout a long era of human history? What if that era has now come to an end? More to the point, what if the economics of the new era are better suited to women?

From Scientific American, of all places, an article on Masturbation. Turns out, sperm are better, well, fresh. If that wasn't enough, humans masturbate because we, unlike most animals, have the ability to form pictures in our heads...

So why don?t monkeys and apes masturbate even nearly as much as humans? It?s a rarity even among low status male nonhuman primates that frustratingly lack sexual access to females?in fact, the few observed incidents seem to be with dominant males. And why haven?t more researchers noticed such an obvious difference with potentially enormous significance for understanding the evolution of human sexuality? After all, it?s been nearly 60 years since Alfred Kinsey first reported that 92 percent of Americans were involved in masturbation leading to orgasm.The answer for this cross-species difference, I?m convinced, lies in our uniquely evolved mental representational abilities?we alone have the power to conjure up at will erotic, orgasm-inducing scenes in our theater-like heads ? internal, salacious fantasies completely disconnected from our immediate external realities. One early sex researcher, Wilhelm Stekel, described masturbation fantasies as a kind of trance or altered state of consciousness, ?a sort of intoxication or ecstasy, during which the current moment disappears and the forbidden fantasy alone reigns supreme.?

What is radical homemaking? Could you do it? This author had some trouble..

But the work. Oh, the work! Not spending money is an incredible amount of work. I had considered -- sometimes seriously -- canning produce as a way to keep costs down. Canning is a common theme in Hayes' book. Just thinking about putting up a winter's worth of green beans and apricot jam, though, made me want to take a nap. Even baking all of my own bread sounded dreadful. For me, kneading dough was the physical manifestation of pushing and pressing all of life's ambitions into one yeasty ball of carbs.

Lastly, this article is a couple of years old, but if you've been meaning to read up on what it means to be a transgender child, then this is worth it.own. Canning is a common theme in Hayes' book. Just thinking about putting up a winter's worth of green beans and apricot jam, though, made me want to take a nap. Even baking all of my own bread sounded dreadful. For me, kneading dough was the physical manifestation of pushing and pressing all of life's ambitions into one yeasty ball of carbs.Lastly, this article is a couple of years old, but if you've been meaning to read up on what it means to be a transgender child, then this is worth it.