Inaugural post

So I'm going to get this blog rolling by posting links to a couple stories I've come across in the last couple days that some of you might find interesting.  I might do that on occasion.  Post stories and stuff.  Because we all have our "things."  Like pretending to jog, eating cookie dough, and high waist anything.  (Read all the awesomely creative blogger bios if those references don't make sense!)  Me?  My thing - or one of my things - is reading articles that get posted online about sex and gender, particularly (but not always) as they relate to the media.  I hope you find some of them interesting; feel free to post a response if you do!

To start: I came across this shortly after our class discussion on Tuesday about Anderson Cooper's decision to come out.  It's a response written by a self-identified queer woman to both Anderson Cooper's decision to come out and the response to his announcement from what she characterized as "heterosexual progressives."

And then this popped up on my Facebook feed today.  It's a summary of an article published by some researchers in the psychology department here at UM that argues, in short, that most of the gender differences in sexuality that we tend to ascribe to biological causes can in fact be explained by socialization.  The blog post is especially class appropriate because it opens by talking about media portrayals of women's sexuality.  In fact, it starts the same way we started class today: by talking about Magic Mike!