Silverman had been going through a period of intense personal stress lately – his death came just one day after he packed up his recently sold home. Just last month, he'd closed the shelter because he could no longer afford to maintain it. He had said he was struggling to keep up with his heat and grocery bills.

In his dogged efforts to help men and to raise public awareness, Silverman worked to remove the stigma that can often prevent men from speaking out because of pride and fear and misunderstanding. Yet where Silverman came up short was in perpetuating the Men's Rights movement's fiction that there's any gender equity as far as violence and victims. The Calgary Herald recalled, in its coverage of his death, Silverman's oft-repeated insistence that "men are about as likely as women to say they have been the victims of domestic abuse."

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As for me, I’ve been learning to can jam, bake bread from scratch in my Dutch oven (though my husband is better at it), and make my own tomato sauce from a bushel of ugly tomatoes I bought at the farmer’s market.

My grandmother, were she not dead (the cigarettes), would no doubt look at me like I’m crazy.

“Don’t you know that you can buy that stuff ?” she’d ask.

But it’s not about buying stuff these days, it’s about making it (if you’re middle-class, liberal, and white, that is). Homemade, from scratch, DIY, straight from the backyard, fresh baked, artisan.

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I've tried to ignore it. I've tried not to say anything. Not just to you, today, but to lots of female celebrities, for years. I want to believe that if you were to go out and get a tattoo that said "I LOVE CHEESE" across your forehead, I would support your right to do whatever makes you happy. And as someone who keeps a stock of hair color in her closet in case there's ever a Feriapocalypse, and who doesn't own an item of makeup or moisturizer that doesn't boldly feature the word "youth" on the packaging, I'm not one to espouse growing older gracefully. I'd never sell anybody on the nobility of looking like you just stepped out of a Dorothea Lange photograph.

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The decision comes after a series of clashes between female worshipers and the Orthodox rabbis who manage the Wall according to a strict interpretation of Jewish law. The rabbis' enforcement of Orthodox tradition barred women from wearing tallit (prayer shawls), reading aloud from the Torah and entering certain areas around the Wall, all of which significantly restrict women’s ability to pray. Women were often arrested for defying these restrictions.

But the court ruled on Thursday that their presence did not pose a threat and did not violate "local custom," as the Washington Post reports:

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I’ve been hearing comments like this for much all my life. Maybe someone else would have yelled at them, or shrunk inside. But I don’t get upset when this happens.

I pulled out my camera, and set up a shoot.

For about a year, I’d been taking pictures of strangers’ reactions to me in public for a series I called “Wait Watchers.” I was interested in capturing something I already knew firsthand: If the large women in historical art pieces were walking around today, they would be scorned and ridiculed.

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That's the question that has set British gym shorts in a proverbial twist in recent weeks, after a man decided to sue London's Kentish Town Sports Centre for offering 442 hours a year for women-only hours.

Writing last week in the Daily Mail, patron Peter Lloyd explained his beef with the gym, noting that "they still charge them the same full-price membership fee as women, but refuse to offer the equivalent option of male-only sessions." Jezebel promptly labeled Lloyd a "jerk," who should "give us our 442 hours a year and stop crying." Wonkette, meanwhile, less charitably referred to him as a "Limey nutsack."

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Korean children get a lot of fuss made over them, I guess because life was tough in the old country, and it was a big deal if you survived. There’s a big party thrown when you are 100 days old, followed by another when you make it to one whole year. My parents took a lot of pictures of me at these parties, although I don’t remember a thing as I was really drunk at both. From the pictures I see the cake, though — all these big multicolored rice cakes, each pastel stripe a steamed layer of pounded and steamed rice flour, not sweet like birthday cake but a delicious treat all the same. It looks like a chewy Neapolitan ice cream, or a gay pride flag made of carbs. It’s the best and I want it, but I think wanting that cake isn’t enough reason to have a baby.

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In an interview Friday on the "Today" show, Reece, who is married to surfing superstar Laird Hamilton, discussed her new book "My Foot Is Too Big for the Glass Slipper" and went at least a few shades of grey by declaring her submissiveness.

Reece, who was OF COURSE introduced as a "mother, model and former pro beach volleyball star" in that order, explains in the book, "to truly be feminine means being soft, receptive and – look out, here it comes – submissive."

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"We have never invested as much in public education as we should have," she says in the spot. "We haven't had a very collective notion of, these are our children. We have to break through our private idea that kids belong to their parents, or kids belong to their families, and recognize that kids belong to whole communities. Once it's everybody's responsibility and not just the household's, we start making better investments."

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And a compromise may be on its way, as Jane Eisner at Forward reports:

If implemented, the proposal, a product of months of deliberation, would mark a dramatic acknowledgement by the state of Israel that prayer at the Wall — regarded as Judaism’s holiest site and a modern-day symbol of national sovereignty — should include non-Orthodox practice in which men and women pray together. But it is uncertain whether the proposal will satisfy Women of the Wall, who for years have tried to hold full prayer services in the women’s only section and may see this compromise as a betrayal of their mission...

Under the proposal, sources said, the area now known as Robinson’s Arch on the southern end of the Wall will be greatly expanded to create a prayer space roughly equivalent to the existing men’s and women’s sections. Egalitarian prayer is currently permitted at the Arch, which is an archaeological site, but that prayer is only available at limited times and with an entrance fee. The expectation is that the enlarged space would be free and open around the clock, as the Kotel is now, but that could not be confirmed.

The plan also calls for the plaza surrounding the Wall to expand, so that visitors approaching the site in the Old City could clearly chose between praying at the egalitarian section, or the existing sections reserved only for men and for women. Still under discussion is governance of the new prayer area, but several sources said that they thought it would be run by something other than the Western Wall Heritage Foundation, the organization that currently controls the Kotel.

Women of the Wall head Anat Hoffman has signed off on the proposal while expressing her reservations about its "separate but equal" premise, but the measure still requires approval from the Netanyahu government, "where it may face resistance from Orthodox groups unwilling to share authority over the holy site," Eisner notes.

h/t Adam Chandler at Tablet Magazine

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For decades, Thatcher's gender provided some public relations cover for her most noxious politics. That was true even today in the White House's statement on her death, which included the following treacly sentence: "As a grocer’s daughter who rose to become Britain’s first female prime minister, she stands as an example to our daughters that there is no glass ceiling that can’t be shattered."

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So why does the word "feminist" scare them so? Don't they know that, per Salon's Mary Elizabeth Williams: "If you believe in the strength of women ... you’re soaking in feminism"?

A list of other high-profile, force-of-nature women who may "run the world," but won't cop to the F-bomb.

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In a new interview with British Vogue, the 31-year-old hedged when asked if she considers herself a feminist. "That word can be very extreme," she said, before acknowledging, "I guess I am a modern-day feminist. I do believe in equality." Unlike those old-school feminists who are totally opposed to equality, that's what I guess. Beyoncé went on to explain, "I do believe in equality and that we have a way to go and it's something that's pushed aside and something that we have been conditioned to accept. But I'm happily married. I love my husband. I feel like Mrs. Carter is who I am, but more bold and more fearless than I've ever been."

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First, there was the head-scratchingly nonsensical, Liz Wurtzel-level self-indulgent tantrum that the paper ran over the weekend, by high school senior Suzy Lee Weiss. Weiss' qualifications for gaining the editorial real estate for an open letter "To (All) the Colleges That Rejected Me" in the Journal? Being the "sassy" sister of former Wall Street Journal editorial features editor Bari Weiss, and having a conniption that she "failed to get into the colleges" of her dreams.

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Nothing transformed American lives in the last century more than the gender revolution. The empowerment of women redefined courtship, sex, marriage, and child-rearing. Women’s entry into the paid workforce, in particular, upended the bourgeois Victorian family model in which he battles in the marketplace and she nurtures in the home. In 1950 about one in five married women went off to work; in 2000 about three in five did. Now, after decades of such astonishing change, the gender revolution appears over—before its completion.

Last summer, Anne-Marie Slaughter, a former high-flyer in the State Department, wrote a declaration of dependence, “Why Women Can’t Have it All,” which stirred up blogo-pandemonium. She argued that the gender revolution will never be completely won, because the emotional tug of family on women is too great, and the domestic urge of husbands is too slight. Then Marissa Mayer, the new head of Yahoo, returned to the office only two weeks after giving birth. “The baby’s been way easier than everyone made it out to be,” she proudly announced, signaling, to the outrage of struggling mothers that, for her at least, the revolution had already succeeded.

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As reported by the Associated Press:

The Al-Yawm daily on Monday cited an unnamed official from the powerful religious police as saying women can ride bikes in parks and recreational areas but they have to be accompanied by a male relative and dressed in the full Islamic head-to-toe abaya.

Saudi Arabia follows an ultraconservative interpretation of Islam and bans women from driving. Women are also banned from riding motorcycles or bicycles in public places. The newspaper didn't say what triggered the lifting of the ban.

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Lean In. It seems like everyone is talking, blogging or arguing about it. Sheryl Sandberg’s well-written, chatty, and informative book purports to give useful advice for women of all age brackets, “from those who are just starting out to those who are taking a break and may want to jump back in.” However, Sandberg seems to miss the mark for a certain segment of the female population: my demographic, the 50- to 60-ish mom who either gave up her career to stay home with her kids or reduced her workload during their formative years, and is now looking to re-enter the workforce or ramp up her job.

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Two weeks after we had sex for the first time, he and I and his best friend got drunk — me for the first time in my life — and I ended up having sex in a park with both of them. It was somewhat miserable for me to have sex consecutively with two young men, ages 17 and 19, and to hear the second one ask, in the midst of intercourse, “Are you using birth control?” and quickly add, “Oh, who cares — if you get pregnant, it’s your fault,” and to have my bra and panties left behind on the grass when they drove me home. I was shaken both by the degrading nature of the incident and by the fact that I had allowed it. But allow it, I did.  Was I raped? No. Did I ever for one second think that maybe I had been raped? No.

Many would disagree.

* * *

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According to a report from the Salt Lake Tribune, women are currently scheduled to offer invocations or benedictions at the church’s April conference -- a first for the faith.

The activists behind "Let Women Pray in General Conference" called on LDS members to write letters to six high-ranking church officials, asking them to remember former church president Spencer Kimball's edict that “there is no scriptural prohibition against sisters offering prayers” and it is “permissible for sisters to offer prayers in any meetings they attend” when scheduling the opening and closing speakers for the General Conference.

Women have been regularly asked to speak at the conference over the last two decades, but there is no record in the church's history of a woman leading the opening or closing prayers. Church spokesman Scott Trotter wouldn't confirm the speaker lineup, but told the Tribune that "decisions on speakers and prayers at General Conference were made many weeks ago."

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Nancy Pelosi is the first woman in history to serve as Speaker of the House, aka the next person in the Presidential line of succession after the Vice President. She was Speaker from 2007 until 2011, and is now the Minority Leader.

Before she was Speaker, a role in which she was crucial to the passage of the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”), she was also the first woman in history to serve as Minority Whip. She also served on the House intelligence and appropriations committees. She’s been in electoral politics longer than I’ve been on the planet, and she has five kids. She’s pro-choice, has a 0% rating from the NRA, and doesn’t take any shit from anyone. She’s a 72-year-old badass. Oh, and she loves chocolate milkshakes.

We spoke earlier this week, a few hours before President Obama signed the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act into law.

This woman barely needs an introduction, which is why this one is so short, so now, without further ado, the Feministing Five, with Nancy Pelosi.

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