Willa Paskin: I went into last night’s heralded episode of “30 Rock,” in which Liz Lemon marries Criss Chros, feeling optimistic. Back in Season 2, in the amazing episode where Carrie Fisher played Rosemary, an older, lonely, unhinged lady writer whom Liz might one day turn into, Rosemary yelled at Liz, “You’re never going to get married, Liz! You’re married to your job!” Liz fled Rosemary’s rat-infested apartment in terror, partially of the rats, but more because of this bit of fortunetelling. Marriage has never been antithetical to Liz Lemon’s desires or principles (such as they are), just as it's not necessarily antithetical to feminism. Her problem has always been her partners, most of whom have been people she could hardly stand, let alone stand to have sex with. But Criss is a non-threatening, sweet, goofy catch and, if they really do want to adopt a baby (a whole other story line to have feelings about) getting married makes sense. Not all women have to want a husband and a baby, but not all TV characters don’t have to want them to make a point.

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And now there's H.R. 3. The "No Taxpayer Funding For Abortion Act" is bad in all the ways that Hyde and Stupak-Pitts were bad, but it's worse, too: It seeks to make Hyde federal law. Like previous measures, H.R. 3 would have been widely decried, regardless of anything else it contained. But it just so happens to contain one clause that makes it worse than all of those previous measures. It just so happens to redefine rape.

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(updated)

Late Wednesday night, long after I'd promised myself that I would sign off the Internet, I found myself Googling Keith Olbermann's Twitter feed. He had retweeted a link to an article alleging that one of the women accusing Julian Assange of rape had "ties" to the CIA. That article also gave the name of the accuser. This, I understood to be a universally acknowledged no-no, when it came to subjects of an ongoing sexual assault investigation. So Keith Olbermann, one of the biggest names in left-wing journalism, was publishing unsubstantiated claims that smeared the subject of a rape investigation, and he was failing to uphold basic standards. I thought this was worth sharing. I found the link to the tweet, and I clicked through, and that's when I saw it: the big yellow box with the padlock.

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In a phone interview, Harper Jean Tobin, the National Center for Transgender Equality's policy counsel, explained there's a growing recognition that "hormone therapy is medically necessary for transgender people. It's not cosmetic, it's a serious medical need." That much is apparent from looking at the case: Andrea Fields, one of the plaintiffs in the case, had her hormone dosage cut in half, and reported "nausea, weakness, loss of appetite and hair growth," as the Washington Post reports.

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The ad for the National Centre of Domestic Violence, recently posted with no comment at Andrew Sullivan's blog, and with much comment at my Feministe colleague Cara Kulwicki's blog The Curvature, is meant to combat the fact that men often fear reporting their own abuse. It starts off well. "We understand how it feels to be a male victim of domestic abuse," the copy reads. "As a man, telling somebody that your partner is abusing you is difficult. You might feel ashamed, embarrassed, or worried you'll be viewed as less of a man." All good points. However, they are in relatively small proportion to the photo of a man with airbrushed-out, perfectly smooth genitals, which takes up over two-thirds of the ad space. The overall look is not so much "victim of ongoing abuse" as "somewhat hairier Ken doll." And, being a photo of a naked person with a somewhat disturbing crotch, it is far more likely to be remembered than any of the words printed above it.

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It is possible to read Sassy Gay Friend as a satire of the "sassy gay friend" stereotype, in which gay men are all extremely fabulous and do absolutely nothing with their lives but advise straight ladies. It is possible to read Sassy Gay Friend as embracing this stereotype. It is possible to deplore the broadness with which Sassy Gay Friend is acted, particularly on his catchphrase "stupid bitch," and how one skit gets a bit racially offensive. (Yes, it's "Othello." Why do you ask?) It is possible to admire Sassy Gay Friend's insight into matters of gender. It is possible to spend entirely too much time analyzing comedy skits on YouTube.

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Carol Clews, of the Center for Pregnancy Concerns, says that clients have every reason to know the centers don't provide those services: "We make our position abundantly clear."

In a way, she's right. According to a 2008 investigation of Maryland CPCs by the NARAL Pro Choice Maryland fund, the centers advertise "pregnancy testing and counseling, adoption information, parenting classes, financial assistance for baby clothes and supplies, and occasionally, sonograms and sexually transmitted infection (STI) testing." One imagines NARAL would be particularly eager to report false advertising. So, fair enough: "Abortion" isn't on that list. Neither is birth control. According to this report, they aren't promising so much as a pack of condoms.

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Take this Washington Post article on Nancy Pelosi's role in health care reform. It quotes Pelosi saying that her good qualities are not due to her gender: "I do think that, I'm not saying this is a female trait, but I am a good listener." It then attributes her collaborative leadership style to her gender. The headline of that piece mentions Pelosi by name. The headline to the follow-up reads, "Why it took a woman to fix health care."

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Take, for example, Vanessa Grigoriadis' excellent profile in New York Magazine. Really, it is excellent! Yet, because it is a Lady Gaga profile, there is the inevitable retread: Gaga grew up scrappy and ambitious, she got weird and ambitious, and now she is super-weird, and ambitious, and a star. Gaga says things like, "I can actually mentally give myself an orgasm." Gaga says things like, "pop stars should not eat." And Gaga says things that are human and likable: "I've had to shout for so long because I was only given five minutes, but now I’ve got 15," for example, about her career. And Gaga says that if she wears a certain dress, her audience "will forget every sad, painful thing in their lives, and they’ll just live in my bubble world." And she's being Lady Gaga again.

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Registries for child abuse already exist, on the state level, though federal law doesn't mandate that states keep them. A key factor in the national registry -- which was authorized in 2006, but which has not yet been put into place (an extensive feasibility report was published in May 2009) -- is that it would centralize the information and allow child protective services easier access to it when abusers cross state lines.

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But then I read his short story, "Just Before the Black," in Esquire, and I realized that I had probably already dated James Franco -- or, at the very least, a man remarkably similar to him. I would have been 18, and a freshman at a far-left liberal arts college where the word "problematic" is frequently deployed. We would have spent afternoons on the commons, after his drum circle class. He would have said things like (actual quote from story), "I wish I was Mexican, or Hebrew, I mean Jewish, I mean Israeli, or Mexican Jewish, or Mexican Jewish gay, because it can be so boring being you sometimes, and if you were the most special thing like that, it could be really great." And I would have been like, "whoa." And then he would have said that my ladyparts reminded him of a Georgia O'Keeffe painting, and he would have made me read his Intro to Creative Writing short story in which the phrase "black gaping gap" is used to describe an open window, and I would have complimented it, because he was handsome. I would have regretted that, but not much.

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The argument is more complex than that, of course. “All those emaciated models have to be seen against the backdrop of a population that is overwhelmingly afflicted with obesity,” she writes. And later: “The fatter the general population, the thinner the idealized woman.”

It's true that fashion is about fantasy, and that includes the beauty of the models. They're hired to look better in clothing than most of us ever will. It's also true that beauty changes in response to cultural norms, and that it's always been somewhat unattainable. Victorian women who wore corsets or Medieval women who bled themselves white weren't doing so because they thought all the other women had wasp waists or naturally ghostly skin, but because corsets and paleness both signified a delicate, upper-class femininity. Whatever beauty is, it's never the norm.

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“We were in Copenhagen (at the International Olympic Committee meetings) and I asked my colleagues from other sports if they had a definition and nobody has one,” said general secretary Pierre Weiss. “But nobody [else] has had the problem so far.”

“The problem” is Caster Semenya, whose gender testing ordeal has been broadcast to the world. It's also Santhi Soundarajan, who was stripped of a silver medal won in the 2006 Asian Games after failing her gender test, Ewa Klowbuskowa, who was banned from competing after failing a chromosome test (she later gave birth to a son), and other female track and field athletes who have been outed as intersex.

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Now my first thoughts (along with pretty much everyone else I've spoken to about the sketch) were, "Wow, Kristen Wiig does a really good Madonna impression!” But, sadly, the Madonna impersonator in question was Madonna herself. And the sketch, despite being intensely unfunny – it seems as if Gaga and Madonna skipped several lines, resulting in two vaguely insulting non-sequiturs from the Lady before the whole thing devolved into latex-clad hair-pulling – has become an Internet sensation.

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Stories like the Philip Garrido case provoke legitimate anger: Why was he on parole in the first place? Why did no one see how dangerous he was? Why wasn't he being watched more closely? A recent piece in the New York Times, on California parole officers, offers something that looks like an answer. Put simply: There are too many parolees, and too few resources.

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