Link Pack

Just a few links from around the web that I found interesting:

Some thoughts on the phrase, "Real men don't do x." Following on from the Ray Rice story:
"Saying “real men don’t do (x)” is a feel good, self centered mechanism that men use to relieve themselves of critically examining the world we live in and how their roles as both beneficiaries and agents of misogyny sustains a world where such violence is possible."

How gender stereotypes affect biologists' interpretations and discoveries:
"[S]perm turned out to be feeble swimmers... The last thing you’d want a sperm to be is a highly effective burrower, because it would end up burrowing into the first obstacle it encountered. You want a sperm that’s good at getting away from things... The team went on to determine that the sperm tries to pull its getaway act even on the egg itself, but is held down against its struggles by molecules on the surface of the egg that hook together with counterparts on the sperm’s surface, fastening the sperm until the egg can absorb it. Yet even after having revealed the sperm to be an escape artist and the egg to be a chemically active sperm catcher, even after discussing the egg’s role in tethering the sperm, the research team continued for another three years to describe the sperm’s role as actively penetrating the egg."

Heartbreaking article on Rape Culture in the Alaskan Wilderness:
"In the late 1830s, small pox wiped out a third of the Native population in southern and western Alaska. In 1900, a flu and measles epidemic did the same—or worse, by some estimates. Some villages were decimated; in others, there weren’t enough left alive to bury the dead."
"Then, shortly after the second pandemic, many Native Alaskan children were shipped off to boarding schools—some as young as 6 years old—and many were beaten, sexually abused, and urged to forget their languages and cultures. In a few villages, multimillion-dollar lawsuits were filed against Catholic priests and church workers for molesting almost an entire generation of Alaska Native children..."
"...This is further exacerbated by the fact that traumatic experiences can lead to alcohol and drug abuse, and alcohol and drug abuse can lead to further traumatization. "It’s like a circle, you can’t take just one; they’re all linked together," says Cynthia Erickson. "You’re born, you’re molested—kick another domino down.""

A great challenge regarding the statistics on collegiate rape:
""The price of a college education should not include a 1 in 5 chance of being sexually assaulted." – Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand."

And finally, Immodesty All Over the Map, an exploration of different cultural modesty standards and how they should make us slow to judge others:
"A fixation on our own definition of modesty threatens to warp our perceptions and hurt our interactions with others—particularly as we venture outside our own culture."