* “It’s embarrassing, these days, to be an American among international human rights lawyers. Or at least it was for me at the third triennial meeting of the International Lesbian and Gay Law Association,” writes E.J. Graff in “Letter from Toronto.”

On the bright side, though, Graff reports on “stories of the astonishing progress being made worldwide on LGBT rights” — from runaway lesbian brides in India winning the support of the courts, if not their families, to a same-sex marriage case winding its way through Israeli courts. There are plenty of celebrations taking place, just not so much here.

* Then I found this: “Gay Retirement Home to Open in Calif.” What’s particularly neat about this is it’s the first nonprofit senior housing facility designed for low-income gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender adults. Laura Wides of the Associated Press writes:

Expected to open in 2006, it’s part of a burgeoning number of retirement communities for older gay Americans. Others, however, are for-profit developments generally for more affluent retirees. [...]

Brian Neimark, founder and executive director of the nonprofit Gay and Lesbian Elder Housing, which is building the apartment complex, said the residence will allow gay seniors to live in a safe environment as they increasingly depend on outside care.

“What has had to happen for many older adults is that they’ve had to go back into the closet to get the care they need,” he said. “This would be an environment of tolerance and acceptance.”

The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force’s policy institute estimates there are at least 1 million gays 65 and older living in the United States.

Neimark said Encore House will not discriminate against heterosexuals.

“We will not turn someone away,” he said. “All that will happen is that we have a policy of tolerance, so at our dances you’re going to see same sex couples dancing together.”

* Natalie Portman has a new “lead role in a real-life saga: trying to get loans for women in the developing world,” reports Newsweek (thanks, Bekke). And she even speaks about the “feminization of poverty.”

* Earlier this month Rebecca Traister of Salon wondered whether it was time to abandon or reclaim the naughty “f” word: feminism. Now from the Sydney Morning Herald, Cosmopolitan magazine editor Mia Freedman finds herself “straddling a generational divide of attitudes to the f-word,” and doesn’t seem to hold out much hope for the word itself. But what’s up with Beyonce?

* Sigh. You’d think the White House would have an answer prepared on where the president stands on contraception. But then, this is an administration that doesn’t really care about the promotion of factual information about sex.

* You may have already read about the all-female village in Kenya, but if not, go do so, now. Indeed, it is “A Place Where Women Rule.”

* Sarah Vowell’s op-ed column in Saturday’s New York Times questions why the Department of Homeland Security distributed $38.31 for each Wyoming resident but only $5.50 for each person living in New York.

Vowell, who’s filling in for Maureen Dowd while the Times columnist is on book leave, wrote earlier in the week about her desire to shake the hand of Pat Robertson — now that he’s encourging the use of condoms in Africa to help stop the spread of AIDS.

* There’s been some discussion of the sexual harassment suits filed against American Apparel founder Dov Charney in the comments of this post. Sunday’s Style section of The New York Times has a story about American Apparel’s sexist work environment (thanks, Bekke, for pointing to it before the paper arrived). Business Week has a more comprehensive story that really shows Charney’s lack of charm.

* It’s only a question of when, not if, Michele Wie will make the cut on the PGA tour, writes Times sports writer David Picker. I liked what Chicago Tribune sports columnist Mike Downey wrote about why Wie deserves to play with the men, but he ticked me off a bit further down in the column:

That said, I disagree strongly with the women who demand equal prize money at Wimbledon and other tennis tournaments.”

You want equality? Fine. Go play a five-set match. Annika Sorenstam doesn’t ask to play nine holes. Danica Patrick doesn’t ask to drive an Indy 250.

Point slightly taken (though it might also be worth noting that female tennis players have brought in more money and attention than the male players in recent years). But Downey shouldn’t talk about equality and women’s sports so flippantly. The purses on the LPGA tour (which Sorenstam has won plenty of), for example, are much smaller than PGA prize money. The marginal player is the person most affected, along with women who are trying to make a decision to fight to be on the tour or not. And that goes for the WNBA — where women play on the same-size court as men — and practically every sport where competition is segregated by gender.

… and speculating when Rehnquist will announce his resignation:

* Miss America, formerly without a network to call home, has been picked up by Country Music Television and will air on the basic cable channel in January. Lisa de Moraes writes in the Washington Post:

CMT’s vice president of programming, Paul Villadolid, had this to say: “Miss America is an important institution that really appeals to heartland sensibilities.

“We share their core values and reflect their lifestyles,” he said, which includes “celebrating small-town sensibilities,” rooting for the underdog and “remaining very positive and optimistic.”

No word on whether those core values include increasingly skimpy swimsuits; last year the show raised eyebrows for aggressive conservation of fabric in the suits the contestants were made to wear.

* “I think that the Miss America pageant has run its course,” Lisa Ades, director of Miss America, a PBS American Experience documentary, tells the Washington Post in a separate story. “I wish I could say that the audience has waned because there are so many opportunities for women and we don’t need beauty pageants as a way to get ahead. But the truth is that interest has waned because it’s simply not sexy enough.”

* “Whether they call it a victory for porcelain proportionality, squatters’ rights or potty parity, wait-weary women — and their impatient male companions — are greeting a new [New York City] restroom-equity law here with a deep sigh of relief,” writes Lisa Anderson in the Chicago Tribune. “New York City is the latest in a lineup of several municipalities, including Chicago, and more than 20 states where problems with public privies have prompted politicians to provide facilities for women that still may be separate but, finally, are more equal. In this case, equality means making access to toilets as timely for women as it is for men.”

Don’t miss page 2 of the article, where there’s some good historical discussion of the bathroom as battleground.

* These tots are preparing early for public privies: meet the kids of the diaper-free movement.

* “While its frustrating that the burgeoning third-wave feminism of the early ’90s underground gave way to poetaster acts like Jewel and Sarah MacLachlan, and while it pains me that I have to discount everything Morissette has since said and done to maintain this belief, I still hold that Jagged Little Pill is pure feminist punk rock,” writes Jodie Janella Horn. Just don’t expect her to buy the acoustic version exclusive to Starbucks.

* Add to that “Breaking Up Is Not BreakingAway: The Pseudo-Empowerment of Kelly Clarkson” from PopPolitics.

* Did you know Pink proposed to her boyfriend? He said yes. Mazel Tov!

* Women are hot. When they grill, of course.

In response to a note I sent this morning, Catherine Redfern, editor of the F-Word, an online magazine covering contemporary UK feminism, wrote to Ms. about her experience following the bombings Thursday morning in London:

I’m fine, but was fairly freaked out this morning when I finally got to work and found the area totally gridlocked, with police shouting at drivers, buses parked up everywhere and helicopters whirring overhead. Many of us spent the morning contacting friends and family. It was a very sad day.

Discussions on the London Third Wave Feminist Yahoo Group have expressed a mixture of feelings: shock, sadness, anger, and sympathy for the victims and their families. Although there is a feeling of “Well, it finally happened,” because it wasn’t entirely unexpected, it’s obviously still shocking and upsetting.

We are also all very aware of the possibility of a racist backlash against Muslim Londoners and we’re all eager that this is avoided. London is a fantastic place to live, and as Ken Livingstone (Mayor of London) said today, one of the great things about it is its diversity.

Walking back through London this afternoon to make my way home, it was a bit weird because apart from the helicopters, it felt a little like a ghost-town due to the lack of traffic. But people were not cowering in fear. They were sad, but were just getting on with it. I’m absolutely convinced that London will just get on with it. After all, we’ve got the Olympics to plan for now.

The BBC has been on all morning in our house, except for a few check-ins at CNN. The difference in tone and narrative is startling.

The BBC website has a story about the early response from bloggers along with reaction from UK politicians and world leaders. UK Feminist Blogs has just one update so far. “The general mood is slight shock, covered by a gritty determination to get on with whatever needs to be done,” writes Natalie Bennett.

The Guardian posted updates on a news blog throughout the day. Eyewitness accounts are available here, along with images via Flickr.

From the Orlando Sentinel, Jeff Libby writes:

Elizabeth Book, the stay-at-home mom with a rose tattoo, has won the right to bare her breasts in her ongoing fight to go shirtless anywhere men can.

On Saturday at noon, the 40-something “top-free” revolutionary plans to demonstrate her right to protest by dropping her top at the Peabody Auditorium next to three statues of women nude from the waist up.

“I will be as top-free as the statues,” Book said Monday in an e-mail to the nudists and naturists who have gathered to support her cause. “This is not over until Daytona is forced to recognize the unconstitutionality of their ordinances and statutes aimed at the American woman’s breasts.”

Daytona Beach says Book’s victory in court June 21 was only temporary and probably will be appealed. [...] Volusia County Judge David Beck ended more than a year of legal wrangling last week, ruling that Book, of Ormond Beach, was within her rights when she bared her breasts as part of a political protest during Bike Week in March 2004.

The city’s anti-nudity ordinance allows an exemption for nudity that is part of a political protest or other constitutionally protected issue, Beck said, throwing out her arrest and the fine for $253. The city passed the rule in 2002 to curb indecency at special events.

All of which leads ms.musings to ask: Is there really only one stay-at-home mom with a rose tattoo?

Related: Feministing’s got the update on the Justice Department’s unveiling of “Spirit of Justice” and the “Majesty of Justice.”

Standing on Halsted Street during Chicago’s 36th annual Pride Parade makes it possible — if just for a little while — to believe that the fight for gay rights is a thing of the past.

Hundreds of thousands of people lined the parade route Sunday afternoon, toasting and cheering the almost 250 floats and organizations that passed by.

Some marchers were political, advocating issues like health care, equal rights and peace and justice, but most were simply celebratory. Street revelers shouted for beads and drank cocktails in the hot sun.

The face of Gay America is white and male, but the Pride Parade is a highly diverse event, and the diversity extended to the crowd as well. Of any progressive rally or protest I’ve attended, nothing comes close to the mix of ethnicities, ages and genders.

Businesses recognize the marketing potential. From the local Lee Lumber (”for your next erection”) to the multinational energy company BP (whose initials also stood for “beyond pride,” at least on the back of the float), all were courting the power of the progressive purse. Employees from the Jewel-Osco supermarket chain danced in a giant raised-up shopping cart. I was envious; dancing in shopping carts was fun until the carts got too small.

When I eyed a float with a better-than-backyard-sized log cabin and an American flag waving in front, I thought the Log Cabin Republicans might be approaching.

“It’s hard to picture them not wearing suits,” said a friend, craning his head for a look.

The float passed in front of us, and we realized our mistake.

The buff boys were from Campit Campground, a gay and lesbian resort in Michigan, not Washington. But we saluted.

Another story from the Chicago Tribune’s weekly WomanNews is about the consumer electronic store Best Buy wooing women shoppers.

“Retailers are finally starting to wake up to the fact that women are the chief purchasing officers in the household and that they’re not just buying diapers and food and shampoo,” says Stephanie Ouyoumjian, a director at the marketing firm Frank About Women.

Indeed, women are the primary decision makers in 80 to 85 percent of consumer-buying decisions and spend $3.3 trillion to $7 trillion annually on purchases, according to this other Trib story. But take a look at how Best Buy is transforming the shopping experience. Dawn Klingensmith writes:

The stores catering to moms are color-coded by department for easier navigation. Shopping carts with kids’ seats are available in select stores, and wider, less cluttered aisles allow for easier steering. Shorter shelves allow parents to keep an eye on newly added “kid zones,” where a greater effort is made to keep demo toys and electronics clean so they won’t be perceived as “germ farms” by protective moms, said Jen Drechsler, co-director of brand consulting at Just Ask a Woman, the Manhattan firm that advised Best Buy on its women-friendly initiatives.

Personal shopping assistants who accompany customers from one department to another are another innovation. In a regular Best Buy store, “if you wanted to set up a home theater system that streamed music from your computer, you’d need to talk to people in three different departments” for advice on each component, Brooks said.

The area where Best Buy has shown the most marked improvement is in its ability to speak to women, not just directly but also through advertising and in-store signage and merchandising, Drechsler said.

Before making a purchase, women tend to weigh more criteria than men do and are less likely to be impressed by technological bells and whistles, Ouyoumjian said.

“Men will look at a TV and think, ‘It’s got a big screen with this many inches. Yeah, baby!’ But women are thinking, ‘Will it match the living room? Are the buttons nice and sturdy so the kids can’t destroy them?’

“Typically,” Ouyoumjian continued, “men are more concerned with content, like product specs and features, whereas women care more about context: How will this product fit in their homes and enhance their lives?”

In response, the revamped Best Buy stores group products, such as digital cameras, according to capabilities rather than by brand. Accompanying signage doesn’t merely list technical specifications but also emphasizes their benefits.

On the one hand I think this is great, because Best Buy gets that women have consumer power. The need to identify some commonsense initiatives as “woman friendly,” however, reveals a patronizing fear of alienating male shoppers who are believed to be more technically sophisticated.

A quick sample among some guys I know reveals shocking news: At Best Buy, they have difficulty finding a salesperson able or willing to help, and it’s a struggle to navigate the store. More than one has been blown off by a clerk who doesn’t get that the buyer needs to know more than the manufacturer’s technical specs, or, conversely, that the buyer has done his homework before entering the store and knows more than the clerk.

Sounds a lot like my experiences there as well.

The fact that Best Buy thinks helpful salespeople and color-coded departments will attract more women misses the point that easy-to-navigate aisles and informed clerks just makes for a better shopping experience, period. Talking about how you might use the camera as opposed to how many megapixels it has does not equal a watered-down shopping experience for men. It’s smart business, for everyone.

Confession: I want to be a farmer. The closest I’ll probably get in this life is working the fields at the “pick your own” farmstand, but I am into expanding my veggie horizons through farm-share subscriptions and excursions to local farmers’ markets.

Reading about women who are helping to build up organic and specialty farming is, I figure, the next best thing to being there. Julia Moskin of The New York Times writes:

In 11 years, starting with a crop of chili peppers seeded in her bedroom and planted in a remote field, Ms. Rogowski has transformed Rogowski Farm, raising 250 varieties of produce and forming intimate connections to its customers and employees. For her innovations, she won a $500,000 “genius award” last year from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the first given to a full-time farmer.

“What I know about farming is this: It’s not enough to just drive the tractor anymore,” she said.

Ms. Rogowski, 43, is one of thousands of women who have changed the face of American farming. Though American farms have steadily declined in jobs and capital for years, the number of farms operated by women has more than doubled since 1978, from just over 100,000 to almost 250,000 today, according to the United States Department of Agriculture.

Almost 15 percent of American farms are now run primarily by women - a sea change from 1978, when the figure was 5 percent. On organic farms, according to the Organic Farming Research Foundation, the number is 22 percent.

The concentration is especially high in the Northeast, where a small farm near an urban area can now survive solely through farmers’ markets, restaurants, farm memberships (in which customers pay in advance for a season’s worth of produce) and other direct outlets.

“Farming has changed, and farmers now have to do things they are traditionally really bad at: marketing, educating consumers, collective action, communication,” Ms. Rogowski said. “And it can’t be a coincidence that women are traditionally good at those things.”

To expand her farm’s business and its reach in its community, Ms. Rogowski arranged for weekly deliveries of produce to centers for the elderly, mentored immigrant farmers from Mexico and Guatemala, started a catering business that uses local produce, sells vegetables at eight weekly farmers’ markets and is an activist for land use reform.

“Women farmers aren’t a special-interest group,” she said. “Our issues are the same as all American farmers - we all want to keep our farms, and we have to make money from them. But women have come up with a lot of the new ways of doing it.”

Read the rest here.

And for a more comprehensive story about women and organic farming, read Elaine Lipson’s “Food, Farming … Feminism?” — an article from the Summer 2004 issue of Ms. It’s available online, along with sidebar articles about Veritable Vegetable, the nation’s oldest distributor of certified organic produce, and Ireland’s popular chef Darina Allen, an advocate against genetically modified foods. Plus there are lots of organic resources at the end.

“Is feminism bad for your liver?” asks Gillian Bowditch in the first graph of her Scotsman.com column, “How feminism opened the alcoholic door.” A sampling:

By 2009, British women under the age of 25 are predicted to be drinking more than three times as much as young women in France and Italy (two countries with traditionally high rates of alcoholic liver disease).

So why do women, who are prepared to put themselves through all sorts of misery - from Pilates to Botox - for the sake of their looks, play vodka roulette with their health?

Women who last ate dessert in 1997 will happily down Bailey’s and butterscotch vodka by the jugful.

The pat answer is the rise of the ladette culture, but that is more symptom than cause. The obvious answer is the rise of feminism as the dominant ideology in British society. As women became more affluent and achieved equal rights in the work place, their alcohol consumption rose. The Cinzano generation brought laudable reforms. But the power of the women’s liberation movement and the blanket application of feminist ideas to every aspect of our lives meant that it became impossible to criticise any element of the rapidly-changing culture, from its detrimental effect on men and boys to the pressures it put on women themselves.

This lack of honest debate continues. These days, it remains completely unacceptable for anyone in authority to suggest that women cannot behave in exactly the same way as men. So, while medical research shows categorically that women suffer more than men from the negative effects of alcohol, no government minister would dream of telling women that they can drink only half of what men can drink. Consequently, the drinks industry has been free to target female drinkers with increasingly sophisticate marketing techniques, without having to acknowledge the increased health risks for women.

It is true that the government guidelines for safe drinking are set lower for women than for men, but the message has become so mixed and so muted that women, who can tell you the calorific value of everything from a sugar lump to an avocado, have no idea of the risks they run through excessive alcohol consumption.

Bowditch gets this week’s “Blame Feminism” award for employing logic worthy of a TownHall.com columnist. Too bad she lives so far away — otherwise I’d offer to buy her a drink.

If you’re near a TV, C-SPAN is covering live the National Press Club address by Wangari Maathai, the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize. It starts at 1 p.m. EST, though you can probably find it later on C-SPAN’s website.

Here’s a story about Maathai and her work from the Winter Issue of Ms.

Really, wouldn’t life be simpler for these fussy parents if they just picked green? Or yellow? Or anything other than blue or pink???

From the Chicago Tribune:

“If a man can lie about [oral sex] with Monica Lewinsky and [get impeached] and another man can lie about weapons of mass destruction, start a war, kill thousands of people and get elected, then I don’t have much hope for the election in Iran, which is a dictatorship.”

– Iranian graphic novelist Marjane Satrapi’s response when asked if she had high hopes for political reform in Iran at a recent Public Square forum sponsored by the Illinois Humanities Council at the Chicago Cultural Center

“At 9 p.m. Mr. Excitement here is asleep and I’m watching ‘Desperate Housewives.’ Ladies and gentlemen, I’m a desperate housewife!”

– Laura Bush at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner (via Washington Post).

Update 5/2: “Desperate White House Wife, Episode 1: The Ranch Hand,” in which George W. Bush is “humanized” through his wife’s humor.

Some thoughts on this Washington Times story, ‘”Hold the quiche: Manly men are back,’” listed in no particular order of frustration. I can’t find the actual Harris survey online, so all survey references are from the WT:

1. Did manly men ever fall out of vogue since 9/11? I mean, I know Brawny softened the look of its lumberjack man, but come on, he’s still wearing flannel, not toting a BlackBerry.

2. ‘”72 percent of women said their ideal man spends his free time doing home-improvement projects.’” My ideal man would spend every waking moment on home-improvement projects and not step where I just painted.

3. ‘”Ninety-two percent of women said dependability is a desirable characteristic in an ideal mate.’” Only men in our culture can get away with dependability being optional.

4. ‘”47 percent of women said their ideal man spends his money on electronics, compared with 9 percent who answered ‘”designer clothes.”” I don’t think it’s a stretch to say well-groomed, designer-clothes-buying men also buy electronic items. But I’d certainly prefer the money go toward electronics. I mean, gadgets are cool, and it’s not like I can wear his designer shoes.

5. ‘”41 percent of women said their ideal man spends his time watching sports.’” Only President Bush claims that something like 41 percent is a mandate. Sounds to me that the great majority of women are interested in men also spending time in conversation, hiking, reading, etc — and — judging from the crowds and ratings this past weekend — catching a NCAA tournament action on the side.

6. ‘”90 percent of women said they prefer low-maintenance, easygoing guys.’” The only thing that’s shocking here is that a full 10 percent want divas.

7. “Peoples’ values that are reflected on TV often don’t translate into how people view the world. Despite MTV and the New York City culture being hyped in mainstream media, it’s not how most American women view life and the opposite sex,” says Carrie ‘”it’s feminism’s fault’” Lukas. What — According to Jim, King of Queens, Everybody Loves Raymond and Yes, Dear aren’t homogenized enough for you?

8. Survey sponsored by ‘?¦ Dodge Trucks — which has oh, just a wee interest in promoting rugged masculinity.

As Detroit News columnist Laura Berman pointed out last month, Chrysler, Dodge’s parent company, once thought it could boost sales by sponsoring the ill-fated Lingerie Bowl. That didn’t go over so well. Now it’s moved on to promoting patriotic songs.

Patriotism. Flag waving. Rugged men. Dodge might be on to something.

P.S.: Thanks to Rebel Dad for the reminder that the cycle of rugged/sensitive men stories is on schedule.