Pacific Standard March-April 2013 Cover

NBA Player Jason Collins Becomes First Openly Gay Major American Athlete

April 29, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
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"I'm a 34-year-old NBA center. I'm black. And I'm gay." Those are the first three sentences of this week's Sports Illustrated's cover story, written by Jason Collins, a 34-year-old black NBA center most recently of the Washington Wizards. Collins played four years of basketball at Stanford and was drafted by the Houston Rockets with the 18th pick of the 2001 NBA draft. He's played for six teams over his 12-year career, scoring over 2,500 points and grabbing over 2,600 rebounds. In the essay, co-written with the help of SI's Franz Lidz, Collins talks about when he realized he was ... Read More

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Girl Scouts Add ‘Game Developer’ Badge, Video Games Still Sexist

April 18, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
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The Girl Scouts of Greater Los Angeles and Women in Games International are teaming up to create a new badge for girl scouts: video game development. From Girl Gamer: “Our ultimate goal is to create a STEM-aligned video game badge for the Girl Scouts of the United States of America,” said Amy Allison, vice president at WIGI. “Creating this badge will get young girls excited in technology and science and let them know that they, too, can have a career in the video game industry.” "STEM" stands for "science, technology, engineering, and mathematics," an area in which the Girl Scouts ... Read More

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The Evolution of Gay Sex in Comic Books

April 11, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
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Apple made more than a few new enemies yesterday—and this time the tech giant wasn't the one that did something wrong. On Tuesday, April 9, Brian K. Vaughan, creator of the popular comic book Saga, released a statement on Tumblr claiming that the newest issue of his series was blocked from the App Store because of some potentially offensive imagery. "Fiona and I could always edit the images in question," Vaughan wrote, referring to Fiona Staples, his co-creator, herself a popular comic book artist since the mid-2000s, "but everything we put into the book is there to advance our story, not ... Read More

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Too Sexy, Too Soon? Not if You Hang Out at the Barre

July 16, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
Too Sexy, Too Soon?

A 7-year-old shouldn’t be concerned about her sex appeal. But there’s increasing evidence that the pressure to look, and act, alluring is being felt by younger and younger girls. How can parents help? A newly published paper provides several possible answers, including an unexpected one: Ballet lessons. “Our findings indicate that there is reason to be concerned about the early sexualization of girls,” Knox College psychologists Christine Starr and Gail Ferguson write in the journal Sex Roles. Their study of 6- to 9-year-old girls living in the Midwest found a strong desire to ... Read More

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Transgender Issues Hidden in Same-Sex Marriage Debate

July 24, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

“As far as I’m concerned, being any gender is a drag.” — Patti Smith Same-sex marriage has been a hot item for more than a decade. It gained attention in the 1990s with the Defense of Marriage Act, which, when enacted, maintained that marriage was between one man and one woman — in other words, same-sex marriages, which were then beginning to be performed by the states, would not be recognized at the federal level. But Defense of Marriage Act’s black-and-white distinction overlooks the transgender community. The percentage of transgender Americans varies from 0.25 percent to ... Read More

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Female Pop Stars: Prepare to Disrobe

July 19, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

There is no shortage of voices decrying the sexualization of mass culture. Just last month, actor and director David Schwimmer complained to a London newspaper: “We have this real emphasis on how important it is to look young and sexual, so that’s the message we’re sending our girls. Look at the biggest pop stars around at the moment: Everything they do is about sex.” Newly published research finds the former Friends star has a point: Over the past four decades, images of female celebrities have become much more sexualized. Evidence of this trend, which troubles feminists and social ... Read More

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U.S. Seeking LGBT Health Data in Future Surveys

July 6, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

The Department of Health and Human Services last week announced a seemingly small change in the way it will collect population health data going forward. If you’ve ever participated in some of the government’s extensive efforts to track the nation’s health, such as the National Health Interview Survey, you’ve probably answered a question or checked a box about your race and gender. Come 2013, government surveys will begin asking for the first time about another characteristic: sexual orientation. And for researchers and advocates of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered ... Read More

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‘Gaydar’ Accuracy Varies With Women’s Fertility Cycle

June 20, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

Ladies: Is your “gaydar” off? Could you swear that guy was straight, only to later see him smooching with his same-sex soul mate? Don’t fret about it. It may simply be the wrong time of the month. According to a study just published in the journal Psychological Science, women are significantly better at judging male sexual orientation as they approach peak fertility. A research team led by University of Toronto psychologist Nicholas Rule also found romantic thoughts heighten women’s ability to discriminate between gay and straight men. Rule’s previous research has found men ... Read More

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Casual Sex: Men, Women Not So Different After All

February 22, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

Would you have casual sex with a stranger? How about a close platonic friend? How about with Johnny Depp? Getting more interested, ladies? If so, you’re adding to the evidence that some widely accepted beliefs regarding men, women and short-term sexual encounters may be significantly off-base. In a newly published paper describing a series of studies, University of Michigan psychologist Terri Conley asserts that “when women are presented with proposers who are equivalent in terms of safety and sexual prowess, they will be equally likely as men to engage in casual sex.” Her ... Read More

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College Guys Will Remember the Pretty Ones

December 30, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment

From the "Studies That Should Surprise No One" file: A new study in Applied Cognitive Psychology found that college-aged men were more likely to remember whether a woman showed sexual interest in them when she was deemed attractive, dressed provocatively and expressed her attraction toward them. Who'da thunk it? The guys were shown full-body photographs of collegiate women who were signaling either attraction or rejection — for instance, a frown of rejection versus a pleasant smile. The researchers found that the average young man demonstrated an excellent memory of the women's initial ... Read More

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