A recent study suggests that we always think smiling faces are meant for us but angry faces aren't. One explanation why:

From an evolutionary standpoint, it makes sense that we would think happy faces are directed toward us. Having such a bias would increase interactions with potential mates and lead to a higher chance of procreation. What makes less sense is the tendency to think angry faces are directed away from us. Protecting yourself from danger is nearly as crucial as mating, and therefore it would seem adaptive to overestimate the number of angry faces looking in your direction. If that big Neanderthal from the other tribe seems to be scowling at you, you should probably just assume he is and get the hell out of there. My guess would be that the tendency to think angry faces aren’t directed toward us is a result of more recently evolved emotional management skills. In the long run you’ll probably be happier if you assume all the fearful and angry faces you see have nothing to do with you.

 

Praise great Gaia for the awesome perks of being a woman!

Sure, we women may have once been second-class citizens, but ever since the radical feminists destroyed the patriarchal structure of our society and totally ended sexism forever, usurping all the levers of power in the public and private sector, it's been a non-stop gravy train of government handouts and free rides, as we enjoy our superior status in society by lording it over the oppressed menfolk. Am I right?

No, of course not, but that's the mindset of the Republican Party, as it continues to wage war against women's rights and privileges. Damn broads have too many rights nowadays, and those excessive rights infringe on the more-important-rights of Catholic bishops who think women's health care restricts their religious liberty; the rights of men who abuse their wives and girlfriends because sometimes that's the only way to keep them in line; and the rights of Republican taxpayers to ensure that their money is not spent on programs and organizations of which they don't approve. At its core, this mindset assumes that women are stupid, greedy, conniving, dishonest and irresponsible, and that's why we need the self-appointed experts in the Church and Congress to both protect women from themselves and protect defenseless men and the government from a nefarious women's agenda.

At Slate, Dahlia Lithwick perfectly sums up this mindset:

But what’s so striking about so many of the GOP initiatives that implicate women this year is that they betray not a deep suspicion of “politicians who say we should be dependent on government programs,” but rather a deep suspicion of other women. Underpinning virtually every changed rule and policy, every effort to defund and repeal, lies an argument about the ways in which women are trying to defraud the government and simply can’t be trusted.

Women can't be trusted. That's why Republicans attempted to redefine rape last year, to eliminate the "rape loophole" women were supposedly exploiting in order to obtain abortions. It's why we've seen bill after bill in state legislatures around the country to "inform" women about their pregnancies so they'll make the "right" decisions about their reproduction. It's why we've seen open hostility to equal pay laws because any wage gap can be explained away with the "truth" that women just don't care about making money and seek out lower-paying jobs. It's why we've seen attempts to defund Planned Parenthood, because despite all evidence to the contrary, it exists solely as an abortion mill for slutty immoral women to kill their babies for the sake of convenience. After all, only immoral sluts need health care.

And it's why this week we saw House Republicans fight for their version of the Violence Against Women Act, excluding protections for lesbians, Native American women and immigrants because those women don't really experience domestic violence and don't really need protection. In fact, according to Republicans and the organizations that lobbied for the watered-down VAWA, those women who claim to have been abused are just lying in order to reap the numerous benefits that come with being a victim of domestic violence. As Anna North at Buzzfeed reported:

Bill Ronan says he was "one of the fortunate ones." He says his wife falsely accused him of domestic violence in order to get American citizenship, but that a sympathetic police officer stood up for him. That's why, he says, he was never charged — but he claims that countless men in America have lost their homes and lives to fraudulent allegations of domestic violence by immigrant partners.

"We have welcomed many scam artists into our country," he says.

Ronan is now a poster child for the strange new turn taken by the debate over the Violence Against Women Act. To him and his allies, immigrant women making false allegations are the true abusers, and men like him — accused of domestic abuse — are the true victims. [...]

Ronan is part of a group called the National Coalition for Men, which calls itself "the oldest men’s group committed to ending sex discrimination" and which has endorsed the Republican-sponsored House version of VAWA Wednesday.

Right Wing Watch also reported on the coalition of so-called men's rights activists and anti-feminists who supported the Republican version of VAWA, including convicted felon Timothy Johnson, who told police at the time of his arrest, "I admit it. I hit her, that's the only way I can get her attention."

In other words, sometimes bitches just need hitting, and if you pass laws saying otherwise, you're infringing on men's right to hit them. And any woman who says otherwise should just shut the hell up. The menfolk don't need to hear what women think about the laws that affect them. Like Arizona Rep. Trent Franks, who this week held a hearing about the "Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act," which would ban all abortions after 20 weeks in the District of Columbia, and refused to allow D.C. congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton to speak. Like Rep. Darrell Issa, who held a men-only congressional hearing a few months ago about birth control, because certainly women have nothing to contribute to a conversation about their own health care.

The message from Republicans is clear: women have too much freedom, and they're abusing that freedom by taking advantage of government assistance, making false allegations against innocent men, and of course, inflicting their radical agenda on defenseless taxpayers and religious institutions. That's why Republicans must act to right that wrong by restricting those freedoms to ensure that men—and only men—can make decisions about women's lives and livelihood. Because, as Lithwick notes, women cannot be trusted to make those decisions for themselves. And now, as national media has focused on the War on Women and Republicans are desperate to claim that they are in fact the party of and for women (all overwhelming evidence to the contrary), Republicans are wrapping up their anti-woman agenda in the co-opted language of feminism, claiming that all of the draconian measures they seek to implement are actually for women's good. Nothing could be further from the truth, though, no matter what kind of language Republicans use. Their War on Women is simply a continuation of a battle as old as time to control women by denying their rights, restricting their sexuality, and demanding that they shut the hell up when they dare to speak out against it.  

As Lithwick concludes:

You can argue all you want about whether it’s better for women to have access to health care, child care, maternity leave, equal pay, and preventive medicine. But when you base those arguments on rickety old Elizabethan stereotypes about deceitful women and their lying ways, it becomes harder to call yourself the party of women.

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This week’s good, bad and ugly below the fold.

 

Prize contest entrants have to examine mug shots and align the perps with the object each is accused of wielding during their crime.

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