Women continue to close the gap in politics

Tuesday's primary elections did not bear out the predicted anti-incumbent fervor, but they produced another story: women won some important races, including the Republican primaries for governor and senator from California!

Over at CNN, however, Jennifer Lawless makes a point that I have made before: we are still nowhere near parity in political representation.

Referring to the victories of Meg Whitman, Carly Fiorina, Sharron Angle and Blanche Lincoln, CNN.com ran the headline, "Women Win Big in Tuesday Primaries." MSNBC.com followed suit, flashing across its homepage, "It's Ladies Night at the Ballot Box." The Washington Post ran a story entitled, "Women Triumph in Races Across the Country." And the Daily Beast summarized last evening's events by concluding that "Women Rule Primary Night..."

These women, however, represent only a fraction of the total number of candidates seeking positions of political power. Yet their famous faces tend to obscure, at least in part, women's severe numeric under-representation in U.S. politics, as well as their prospects for major political gains in November.

Femonomics reads the internet so you don't have to: homophobia, evolving lab rats, and the politics of pretty

Mike Huckabee is homophobic, but you knew that already. (He compared gay marriage to incest and drug use, and said gay couples shouldn't be allowed to adopt because children aren't puppies.) In other terrible person news, Ben Roethlisberger...oh man.  I really hope he is disciplined for his behavior by the NFL, and that his team and his sport support the ongoing criminal investigation.

Olivia Judson reports that laboratory animals are evolving in ways that could jeopardize experimental validity--in as little as ten generations!  You hear that, people who love to speak of how there's no way evolution could come up with an eye?  I love Judson, and her book Sex Advice to All Creation is a great, witty primer on the endless mysteries of evolution.

I Blame the Patriarchy says we can't be pretty and be feminists.  It's an important thing to think about--the way focusing on physical attractiveness buys into norms about feminine-ness and appropriate female behavior, but I must say I respectfully disagree.  I think the key thing is to be conscious of the way we pursue physical attractiveness and our reasons for doing so (i.e., not couching our gym obsession in "health"), and be judicious about how much time and effort to devote to these things.  But to say that doing them is anti-feminist?  That's both judgmental and unrealistic.