Evergreene Digest A Journal of Progress for the Rest of Us

Women dish on what they like men to do -- and it's not in the bedroom.

Jennifer Soong, WebMD

When I casually asked my friend Becky about secret turn-ons for women, she didn't hesitate for a second. "Doing the dishes," she responded, as her husband looked at her in disbelief. "That's hot!"

For many women, turn-ons aren't necessarily about traditional romantic gestures like getting roses on Valentine's Day or canoodling during candlelit dinners. Simple everyday rituals like pitching in with the dishes or having coffee together at sunrise can be downright sexy. (Listen up, fellas, you don't even need to spring for a card.)

"When a partner can really count on these kinds of little loving gestures on an ongoing basis, it really makes for the kind of connection that's absolutely necessary to have a relationship hang on through the good and the bad and all the crazy stuff," says Sharon Gilchrest O'Neill, EdS, LMFT, a couples therapist in Mt. Kisco, N.Y. and author of A Short Guide to a Happy Marriage.

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Feminism should realign itself with social justice and avoid reducing all questions of women's lives to issues of sexuality and sexual behavior.

Nina Power, AlterNet

I should start by saying that this list should in no way be seen as an attack on anyone actively involved in feminist politics, or on the history of the women’s liberation movement. The fruits of feminism reflect the most successful and long-term social revolution that human history has ever seen -- this should never be forgotten. The list is simply a set of personal reflections on some current dimensions of the struggle, and could equally well be applied to women in general, as opposed to just those who identify themselves as feminists.

1. Feminism should realign itself with movements committed to social justice, and reclaim its ties to other progressive movements, such as the gay rights movement and campaigns for racial equality. Feminism has sometimes allowed itself to become distracted by debates about essentialism (particularly in Britain), leading to ugly attempts to exclude trans-women from feminist debates, for example. Feminism needs to have a strategic and inclusive definition of "femaleness," which avoids compounding the oppression heaped on those who are already more likely to be the victims of violence and discrimination.

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• "We didn't expect that women would be treated differently here with regard to the high-risk insurance pool," said Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-choice America. "This is inexplicable and wrongheaded to us, and it puts women's lives in jeopardy."
• Health care reform must not be used as an excuse for right wing extremists to roll back abortion rights
• Abortion War Heats Up In The States

Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, Associated Press, in Google

File - In this Jan. 6, 2009 file photo, Rep. Kathy Dahlkemper, D-Pa., takes part in a mock swearing ceremony on Capitol Hill in Washington. Opponents of legalized abortion have won the first test of how President Barack Obama's health care overhaul law will be applied to the divisive issue.

Abortion foes have scored a victory and traditional allies of the Obama administration are grumbling about a decision to ban most abortion coverage in insurance pools for those unable to purchase health care on their own.

Although legal experts disagreed over how the rulings would fare on appeal, the judge’s decisions were nonetheless sure to further inflame the nationwide debate over same-sex marriage and gay rights.

Abby Goodnough and John Schwartx, New York Times

Submitted by Evergreene Digest Contributing Editor Ken Mitchell

A federal judge in Massachusetts found Thursday (July 8) that a law barring the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriage is unconstitutional, ruling that gay and lesbian couples deserve the same federal benefits as heterosexual couples.

Judge Joseph L. Tauro of United States District Court in Boston sided with the plaintiffs in two separate cases brought by the state attorney general and a gay rights group.

Although legal experts disagreed over how the rulings would fare on appeal, the judge’s decisions were nonetheless sure to further inflame the nationwide debate over same-sex marriage and gay rights.

If the rulings find their way to the Supreme Court and are upheld there, they will put same-sex marriage within the constitutional realm of protection, just as interracial marriage has been for decades. Seeking that protection is at the heart of both the Massachusetts cases and a federal case pending in California over the legality of that state’s ban on same-sex marriage.

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