Jewliebots: Teaching Girls to Code, and Subverting Gender Norms, via Jewelry

There's been growing interest, in certain quarters, in addressing the dearth of women in technology. Since one of the important roots of the issue lies in the lack of girls pursuing STEM fields as students, improving STEM education and outreach in the early years is critical. To that end, two female entrepreneurs have developed an educational toy, Jewliebots, that taps into traditionally feminine interests, such as fashion accessories and overt peer bonding, in order to pique preteen girls' interest in computer science.

http://www.dailydot.com/technology/jewliebots-friendship-bracelets/

http://www.bustle.com/articles/52546-jewliebots-friendship-bracelets-teach-girls-to-code-would-make-christmas-shopping-much-easier

Much like GoldieBlox, a comparable product engaging girls in engineering-related play (most well-known for the company's successful advertisement during the broadcast of a major sporting event), Jewliebots incorporates coding components into toys that are otherwise quite feminine (pink!) in appearance and function. It integrates engineering concepts into otherwise normal-looking toys, making this type of learning a natural element of play for young girls. I find this encouraging (and practical) on the one hand, but also problematic, on the other.

On face, the rationale for this seems obvious: bridge the gap between boys' toys that cultivate interest in engineering and girls' toys that don't, by creating toys that look like girls' toys, but encourage the same sorts of skills that the boys' toys do. However, this approach carries an unfortunate side-effect of catering to and reinforcing gender norms (i.e. pink toys for girls, blue toys for boys). It all-too-easily leads to the segregation of male and female constructive play, the idea that girls' toys ought to be distinguished by clear visual markers and are somehow inferior to boys' toys. (You'd be hard-pressed to get a boy to pick up a pink toy, for fear of schoolyard ridicule, whereas it's much easier for a girl to be a tomboy and play with masculine-looking toys; the latter is sometimes seen as an upgrade in social status, whereas the former is almost universally perceived as emasculating.) This reinforces the problematic social norm of masculinity as superior to femininity, establishing early in children's lives a secondary class of "female engineers" separate from the extant pool of predominantly male engineers. By creating engineering-related toys that cater specifically to girls, Jewliebots engenders in young and impressionable minds the idea that girls who code are somehow "other" and different from boys who code. This is the sort of thinking that very likely leads to gender discrimination and pay discrepancies in the engineering field.

It's important to note, however, the power of incremental change. There is still great social pressure (from peers and from authority figures) for girls to conform to a certain outmoded understanding of femininity. In the same way that girls are told not to dirty their dresses climbing on the jungle gym and catching insects in the park, girls often subconsciously internalize the idea that engineering-related play is "unladylike," or worse, "not for you." As girls are conditioned to be more vulnerable to social pressures, the perception of doing something wrong or unacceptable discourages them from pursuing science and engineering. If, by subversively making engineering-related toys conform to certain acknowledged stereotypes about childhood femininity, we can make it more socially acceptable for girls to play with said toys, it's a step in the right direction. At least, it gets them thinking about possibilities they may never have entertained otherwise.

So, if you're doing your last-minute holiday shopping, and there's a young girl on your list, consider buying her an engineering-related toy, like Jewliebots or Goldieblox. (And of course, be mindful and supportive about teaching gender roles and social norms the other 364 days of the year.) You may very well change her life.

Confused Cats Against Feminism, a Tumblr

I found this gem of a Tumblr some weeks ago, and am compelled to share it here:

http://confusedcatsagainstfeminism.tumblr.com/

I love adorable kitten pictures as much as the next person, but it's always more satisfying when the cuteness packs a more substantial message. And substantial messages can come in small, witty, and terrifyingly adorable packages!

Satire can be one of the most potent forms of protest and political speech. It calls attention to the absurdities of the opposing side in a manner that, unlike serious and straightforward activism, doesn't trigger immediate backlash. Rather, by provoking laughter, satire disarms.

So enjoy these cats, and while you're laughing at their grammatical and logical inadequacies, consider that an alarming number of people really do hold similarly illogical beliefs about women and feminism. Perhaps, with time, persistence, and a large enough army of kittens, we can persuade them that women deserve the same rights and protections as men currently enjoy.

Thoughts on Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, Especially Ruth Bader Ginsburg's Brilliant Dissent

Like many of you, I am greatly disappointed, if not entirely shocked, by the recent Supreme Court ruling in the case Burwell v. Hobby Lobby. The decision was a Plessy v. Ferguson of our time, putting an already disadvantaged group, women, at the mercy of discriminatory organizations for superstitious and spurious reasons that should have no place in American public life. Unsurprisingly, all three of the female justices on the Supreme Court voted against Hobby Lobby.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg's scathing, legally scintillating dissent should itself vindicate our sex in the face of a risibly paternalistic ruling that presumes women incapable of making their own decisions about their reproductive health. I dare any of the (all-male) justices on the opposing side to produce a more compelling and well-reasoned argument than this:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/231974154/Ginsburg-Dissent

(It's worth reading the entire way through. Multiple times, if necessary.)

This ruling is a severe blow to women's rights in our country; the earlier comparison to Plessy v. Ferguson is no exaggeration. Under the guise of religious freedom, this Supreme Court decision sets a new precedent of "separate but equal" for employees of companies whose leaders believe that women ought to have less control over their sexual and reproductive lives than men do. Consider that Hobby Lobby is perfectly willing to cover Viagra, circumcision, and vasectomies -- but somehow simultaneously refuses to pay for IUDs and Plan B. This plainly demonstrates that Hobby Lobby is willing to participate in the funding of some forms of birth control and reproductive healthcare, so long as the recipients are male. The Court is essentially sanctioning corporate sexism.

The Supreme Court's majority opinion significantly undermines the credibility of the institution and the ruling, as it is laden with ignorance and misinformation about women's health, contraceptives, and even about Christianity itself. For example, intrauterine devices primarily work by preventing fertilization rather than by causing a woman's body to reject the implantation of an embryo -- which means that, even under the most conservative Christian understanding of "the beginning of life," IUDs do not negatively affect human beings with personal rights. Hobby Lobby therefore does not even have reasonable religious grounds in refusing to cover IUDs. For that matter, Hobby Lobby's 401K plans invest in some of the same medical device and healthcare companies that make the products Hobby Lobby objects to covering. This is blatantly hypocritical, and the five Catholic male justices who sided with Hobby Lobby should have seen right through it. This Economist article does an excellent job of deconstructing the hypocrisies and irrationality of Hobby Lobby's position:
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2014/07/hobby-lobby-and-religious-exceptions

Perhaps even more disturbing, though, is the majority's insistence that a corporation should be allowed to pick and choose the elements of the healthcare it is required to provide for its employees. So long as a corporation operates in this country, it ought to adhere to all of this country's laws, especially where they concern employees who are American citizens and who depend on these laws for protection. This savvy comedian, who spoke out about the Hobby Lobby case before the Supreme Court came to its decision, points out that much as citizens have to pay all of the taxes we owe even though we might not agree with every government function that our tax dollars pay for (such as the Iraq War), a company must similarly pay for everything it is legally bound to provide for its employees, regardless of its owner's personal beliefs:



Yes, I have strong feelings about this decision, as should all women and anyone who supports equal rights for women. Let's hope that, much as Plessy was followed by Brown v. Board, that a future Supreme Court will overturn this abhorrent, misguided ruling.

Three Minute Photoshop Makeover, the Music Video

I've watched this video a few times this week, in part because the music is catchy, but mostly because its message is powerful:



http://www.policymic.com/articles/79585/watch-this-woman-get-a-complete-photoshop-makeover-in-3-minutes-flat

Body image, especially that of young women, has become increasingly prominent in our social discourse over the past decade or so. There's been, at one end, greater awareness of eating disorders and related insecurities; on the other end, there's been significantly wider recognition of this country's obesity problem. The former is often associated with standards of beauty as dictated by media and peer interaction, while the latter is often a consequence of economics and the vulnerability of children who don't know any better than to consume what appeals to them in the short term (and the adults who were raised that way).

This video deals with the former problem -- that of media perpetuating impossibly exacting ideals, which millions of young women attempt to imitate in real life, without the aid of Photoshop. While a proportion of the changes depicted can be accomplished with cosmetics, other changes, such as altering the symmetry of the singer's face, is not something that women can physically achieve. And while humans are instinctively more attracted to symmetrical faces with higher contrast, one cannot expect a mathematical level of symmetry in our natural, imperfect bodies.

We are visual creatures. When introduced to a pair of images, we all have opinions as to which one we find more aesthetically pleasing. But we, through millennia of civilization and progress, are more than our basest instincts, more than our visceral reactions. We are rational and more evolved creatures who value each other for qualities greater than appearance. While it makes sense for us to make reasonable attempts to look pleasing to others, our society now has the tools with which to project images that are unreasonable to imitate. The crucial part here, then, is to ensure that we all recognize that it would be unreasonable to expect each other, and ourselves, to look like that.

We are none of us aesthetic ideals. Even models, actors, beauty queens -- even those we have collectively deemed the most attractive specimens of our species -- have their own insecurities. We must learn, in our most vulnerable and susceptible years, that we are valued not for how closely we conform to our society's standards of beauty, but rather, for our contributions in areas deeper and more within our power to shape. In appearances, we are limited by genetics, by environment, by the hand we are dealt. In what lies beneath, we are bound by fewer and less arbitrary constraints.

Moreover, we cannot take it with us. At the end of the day, it's all transport. We keep the engine primed and the moving parts oiled so that we might achieve more, and live more happily, in our time. The parts of us that are not flesh -- these comprise what we have made of ourselves.

On another note: this video is a testament to the power of activist art. Slogans and speeches will only get us so far, after all. In order to effect change, people must want the change themselves -- and one of the most effective ways to influence somebody's viewpoint is by creating empathy and emotional connection. As much as I believe in solving problems rationally and logically, there are many situations where the visceral reaction evoked by imagery is a more powerful motivator. As Lincoln famously said to Harriet Beecher Stowe, "so you are the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war!"

BBC: Royal Pardon for Alan Turing (Finally!)

Two days ago, fifty-nine years after he was driven to suicide by discrimination and the overwhelming solitude of misunderstanding, Alan Turing finally received a royal pardon for violating the so-called "gross indecency" laws of his time:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-25495315

Though his downfall was perhaps not as well-publicized and posthumously noted as that of Oscar Wilde in the century before his, it was no less a travesty for humanity. (And to think that society had not budged an inch on homosexuality between 1900 and 1954!) Turing was one of the finest cryptanalysts in history, as well as one of the founding fathers of modern computer science, and he was just forty-one years old when he died. One can't help but wonder what great and wonderful things he might have accomplished in his later years had he lived.

I am reminded, somewhat, of the story of Johnny Gunther, immortalized in his father's memoir Death Be Not Proud. Gunther was another extremely promising young man who died even younger, as a teenager, after a valiant struggle with brain cancer. Untimely "early" deaths, like those of Turing, Wilde, and Gunther seem especially tragic because of the injustice of the situation (particularly with Turing and Wilde, whose deaths were entirely preventable) and the abruptly curtailed possibilities of their later lives. Entirely due to human stupidity and prejudice, Turing was never afforded the opportunity to reach his full potential. I can only imagine, for a person brimming with ideas, curiosity, and the drive to contribute meaningfully to the sum of human knowledge, to hold in his hand the poisoned apple and think that such an exit was preferable to the future that lay before him...

The royal pardon is too little, too late, but at least some six decades later, we recognize and regret the human cruelty that hounded Alan Turing to his death, and move forward as a society with an awareness that we did not have before.

Cover-a-Week #32: "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, Pt. 1" by The Flaming Lips

Because it was recently Ada Lovelace Day:


http://youtu.be/K0Y8pf009yo

I have a lot of friends from college who were female computer scientists and engineers. I'm very proud of them -- of what they do, what they represent, and the hard work and extraordinary talent I know it took (I was there, after all). They might not be fighting pink robots, but they are, every day, combating the societal forces that created this unequal world. They're "destroying the status quo, because the status is not quo" -- and I love them for it. This one's for you, ladies.

The Problem with Time Travel

I recently saw, and was amused by, this Abstruse Goose comic:

http://abstrusegoose.com/526

History buffs are often asked (in the process of making an acquaintance) what time period they'd like to inhabit, or at least to visit for a little while. I find that I tend to give answers as if I were white, male, and Christian (my main area of interest is pre-modern and early modern Europe). After all, the Scientific Revolution, or Republican Rome, or the Italian Renaissance are fascinating times to have been alive if you weren't being downtrodden, persecuted, or discriminated against. (I imagine that, being both female and Asian, I would have twice as much difficulty as either of the above characters. I wonder if the probability of death by persecution would increase logarithmically with each undesirable trait?) If I were to actually consider the logistics of visiting a particular time and place, I'd be largely limited to China and, well... there really isn't a good historical era in which to be female.

U.S. History, Minus the Dead White Men

Happy Independence Day -- which, in the United States, means that we celebrate the Founding Fathers and the revolutionaries of the 1770s -- all of them dead white men. In studying Western history, it's easy to assume that anyone of interest or significance was male and white (and Christian), because those were the voices which were heard. (History is written by the winners, the saying goes.)

I happened upon this blog, which showcases the overlooked, ordinary American women and people of color who made history in ways large and small:
http://ushistoryminuswhiteguys.tumblr.com

It's inspiring, to be sure. It's also fascinating, in that members of such minorities often achieved what they did in unorthodox ways, because the establishment wasn't built to -- or in many cases, refused to -- support their aspirations. And of course, these lives often make the best stories (click through, above).

The Rise of Agriculture: the Worst Mistake in Human History?

I recently found this article by Jared Diamond, a scholar and writer I admire (famously the author of Guns, Germs, and Steel):
http://www.ditext.com/diamond/mistake.html

It's an excellent piece, and not too long, so you should read it for yourself! The gist of it is: structured, populous (agrarian) societies naturally develop lopsided hierarchies, putting a portion of the population at significant disadvantage (compared to the unstructured, sparsely populated communities of hunter-gatherers). The quality of life of the average hunter-gatherer was actually better than that of the average farmer, despite the relative sophistication of the latter's society; the reason for the prevalence of agriculture and husbandry over hunting and gathering is that "quality over quantity" doesn't apply when one population can overwhelm another by sheer numbers. (I bet Leonidas of Sparta would have something to say about that!)

Another interesting point Diamond raises is that gender dynamics tend to be more equal in hunter-gatherer societies -- partially because such conditions are less conducive to hierarchy in general (see above), and also because the practical day-to-day circumstances of the hunter-gatherer lifestyle cannot support any house-bound, "idle" population, be they women or an aristocracy. Women who had to be on their feet all the time simply couldn't bear as many children in quick succession -- especially since the children had to be as mobile/portable as everyone else. The patriarchy couldn't simply turn them into brood mares, because the women contributed valuable labor and the children had to be spaced at large enough intervals that their mothers only ever had to carry (whether in utero or on her back) one child at a time. (Methinks twins wouldn't have fared as well in these societies.)

This is actually quite relevant to our own times. Notice how, as women have become increasingly educated (on par with men, especially if we consider university completion rates) and increasingly productive in the work force (issues of equal pay aside), they tend to have fewer children, and said children are born later in the mother's life. Unchecked childbearing, it appears, has always been a way for the patriarchy to turn women into second-class citizens. (Anti-abortion/birth control Republicans, I'm looking at you!)

Baby Blanket (Knitting Project)

I should have posted this several months ago (when it occurred)...

My god-sister recently had a baby (as I mentioned in this video), and in anticipation, I knitted her a blanket:

Before:

After:

It was originally going to be 8x8 (the father is a chess player) but the squares ended up too rectangular, so I nixed the last row.

Also, the baby is a girl, but these were the nicest colors at the store. Pink is too hetero-normative!

Today

is the 55th anniversary of the death of Rosalind Franklin, an unsung heroine of biophysics (Watson and Crick got all the credit, including the Nobel Prize that she should have been jointly awarded). Women like Franklin -- like Marie Curie, like Ada Lovelace -- were among my childhood idols.

I am reminded of a blog post I wrote a few months ago, wherein I discuss feminism and dead people. Perhaps mine is not the generation in which we achieve true gender equality, but it is inevitable -- I have faith that the inexorable progress of our species is headed in such a direction -- and I hope to see it within my lifetime. Someday, female scientists, artists, leaders, and thinkers will be extraordinary for their accomplishments alone; someday, no one will even think to mention that a Nobel Prize winner was female -- that she won will be accomplishment enough.

And here are some pictures of very colorful (very pretty) corn in honor of Franklin's work on the structure of DNA:
http://milkwood.net/2012/05/12/glass-gem-corn-and-other-heirloom-jewels-of-the-corn-cabinet/

BBC: Parisian Women Legally Allowed to Wear the Pants

There are a surprising number of antiquated laws in the books, in France and in any country (including the US) with a long legal history. A lot of these are along the lines of "morality" laws, faith-based laws, sumptuary laws, &c. -- laws that regulated behavior and are no longer compatible with modern notions of freedom of expression. Most of these were buried in reams of text and forgotten about as times changed and attitudes modernized, so nobody ever got around to changing them. Of course, because they seem so silly, few of these laws are actually enforced these days, which allows them to remain in the books until someone stumbles upon them, as in the case with Parisian women's pants (Trouser pants, not... underwear pants. In France, I imagine underwear might have a whole different set of laws, or lack thereof.)

Anyhow, there was apparently a ban on Parisian women wearing pants that was never stricken from the books until now:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-21329269

It reminds me of this book, which for some reason has been sitting on my sister's shelf for a good many years.

Obituaries as a Measure of Gender Equality

I stumbled upon this article about feminism and obituaries (obits can be fascinating!). It's worth reading; it certainly made me stop and think:

http://jezebel.com/5967871/major-newspapers-dgaf-when-notable-women-die

I have two somewhat opposing assessments of the situation:

1. This not quite the catastrophe for feminism that the article makes it out to be, for historical reasons. The women who have died in the past several years were in their prime decades ago, before women were really in a position to establish themselves in the way men did. Women who died in the current century were likely in their prime in the 1950s and 60s -- in the days when universities, politics, technology, culture, and high-paying jobs in general were still dominated by (white, heterosexual) men, and when feminist ideals were just becoming part of mainstream American society. It makes sense that there were more "great men" than "great women" from that era, because women lacked opportunity. It takes a long time to solve for centuries -- if not millenia -- of gender inequality. If we could see the obituaries written half a century or a century from today (our own obituaries, or those of our younger siblings and possible children), the gender ratio will reflect the progress that has been and will continue to be made.


2. There are certainly women who achieved great things fifty years ago who have not been acknowledged, and who would probably not have been overlooked if they were men with similar accomplishments. They were neglected by a male-centric culture much as ethnic, religious, and other minorities were by a WASP-centric culture. The social changes that these women fought for were labelled "women's issues;" the literature that they produced was marginalized as "women's lit;" and the doctors, scientists, lawyers, writers, and intellectuals of the day were prevailed upon to pursue specialties that could be safely (if not correctly) considered, by their male counterparts, exclusively female territory -- areas such as obstetrics/gynecology, family law, romance novels, feminist criticism, &c. The fact that these specialties affect women more than they do men does not make them intrinsically any less important or valid in their respective fields; rather, they were systematically labeled as less valuable by the predominately male elite, whose opinions shaped the views of countless others -- male and female. Ergo, the writers of obituaries might consider a pioneer in obstetrics, say, less influential than one in cardiology. They might consider a women's rights activist less important than an environmentalist, or an anti-war protestor. Changing this mentality, which still affects women today, is necessary to achieving gender equality in symbolic as well as practical terms.

It is therefore important to acknowledge, in today's obituaries of famous women, the hurdles that they overcame in accomplishing what they did, even if obit columns feature a glaring lack of gender parity. The gender ratio of obituaries published in my lifetime will still be skewed, which makes each woman's obit more significant. (Here's to hoping that there are female obituary writers helping the process along!) Society seems to be, by and large, moving in the direction of greater equality; undoubtedly the day when obituaries achieve gender parity will come.

NYTimes: What's in a Name?

Seeing as it's Thanksgiving -- a celebration of family and loved ones -- I thought that this would be an appropriate article to post; it's an observation on an inevitable quandary in naming trends, given recent (within the past several decades) developments in gender equality and increasingly diverse modern familial structures:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/24/fashion/babies-surnames-to-hyphenate-or-not.html?_r=1&ref=fashion?src=dayp

I've given this a fair bit of thought. As a heterosexual female, Western social customs would have me relinquish my surname in favor of my hypothetical husband's, if I were to marry at some point in my life. I'm not so keen on that, myself; I'm rather attached to my last name. It has a history behind it, a connection to generations of family and culture.

Ergo, one of my goals in life is to achieve a level of "success" (definition variable) such that if the time comes, it would appear to be logical (rather than vain or self-serving) to keep my surname. It's rather sad that society is still at a stage where a woman needs a reason to keep her maiden name, while a man may do so merely by virtue of his Y chromosome. I hope that someday, English-speaking society will have progressed such that women keep their own names as a matter of course, and some equitable system exists whereby children's surnames are evenly distributed between their sire and dam.

I'm not sure about hypothetical children (haven't given them much thought -- I'm many years too young for that!) but I imagine it would depend a lot on the ethnic origins of their father. Surnames in some languages lend themselves more readily to hyphenation than those in others. I'd want them to have a Chinese name, too. If the father were non-Chinese, I'd like to give them my own Chinese family name to use in contexts that would require it; phonetically deriving one from the father's surname seems a little cheap, next to a name with history and family.

Interestingly, in Chinese society, women retain the use of their maiden names throughout life; it's only when referring to them specifically as "wife of so-and-so" that they go by the equivalent of "Mrs." Gender equality is, in some respects (this is a pretty significant caveat), more apparent in modern Chinese society (i.e. beginning with my generation). I think it has a lot to do with the One Child Policy, in that if parents have only one child, they will give it the best they can in the way of opportunity and attention. There is much less opportunity for parents to favor sons over daughters (after the birth of the child; female infanticide is still a problem in some areas), because they typically only have one child to dote upon. The surname given to the child is still the father's, so it's not a perfect system, by any means, but in this specific practice, it's a bit closer to gender equality than in English-speaking countries.

BBC: Saudi Women Gain Right to Vote!

Breaking news from yesterday: 
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-15052030

Tangible fruits of the Arab Spring!

NYTimes: New York Legalizes Same-Sex Marriage!

Happened just yesterday:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/25/nyregion/gay-marriage-approved-by-new-york-senate.html

Needless to say, it's a triumph for my home state. I'm still a little shocked that it happened in New York before it did in California (that Prop. 8 fiasco, and all). But mostly, I'm proud. I'm proud that after the long, hard-fought struggle, they -- we, the people -- made it happen.

A brief history of said struggle: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/26/nyregion/the-road-to-gay-marriage-in-new-york.html?ref=global-home

I have to hand it to the governor, to those Republicans who voted in favor of the bill despite their party line, to the Democrats (all but one), to the donors and organizers and everyone who worked so hard for the dreams and natural rights of a downtrodden minority. I wish I were here, then. But that's small potatoes.

NYTimes: Senate Repeals "Don't Ask, Don't Tell"

A major victory for civil rights -- on the order of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, some have said:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/19/us/politics/19cong.html?_r=1&ref=global-home

At long last, military honor. It's something to celebrate this season.

Al Jazeera: The Many Problems Caused by China's One-Child Policy

China's one-child policy has been a subject of much controversy, both within China and in the international community. In the years when it was first implemented, most people agreed that it was an economic and social necessity; now, thirty years later, it is likely creating more problems than it is solving. Al Jazeera reports:

http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2010/05/2010519111922223452.html

The two most pressing issues, as analyzed in the above article, are that there is an increasing gender imbalance, due to the cultural preference for sons, and that a decreasing working-age population is expected to support an increasing population of retired elders (the oft-cited 4-2-1 problem).

Even if the policy is retracted today, the problems will still persist for decades. One can only imagine the lasting consequences if it remains in place for another few decades, or if it is never retracted. The current system was a fine stop-gap measure; it is unsustainable, and it doesn't take a genius to recognize it. It boggles the mind -- what is the government thinking?

BBC: (Mental) Gender Test

Basically, gender (as a psychological rather than a physical concept) is a sliding scale, rather than two discrete categories. The BBC website provides a very comprehensive test comprised of multiple components, like spatial recognition, EQ (emotional quotient), learning and lifestyle preferences, &c., which, when combined, yield a pretty good estimate of where the subject's mental gender falls on the scale. To wit:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/sex/add_user.shtml

I scored a 0 (that's a zero). Yes, exactly in the middle. I first took this test a few months ago, and I'm still trying to formulate a good comeback.

NYTimes: Can Animals Be Gay?

Yes they can! And herewith is evidence of such:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/04/magazine/04animals-t.html?src=me&ref=homepage

I feel vindicated in the face of all the homophobic Evangelicals and such in the world. Now we just need to get Congress on board.