Having removed any and all rules associated with sexual behaviour, I’m not terribly surprised then when it is reported that sexual violence is on the rise. I’m sad, but not surprised.

Read it, here:

Assisted suicide should not be legal in Canada. Vote no at the Globe and Mail’s online poll here.

A pro-life protestor was attacked while doing a prayer vigil at Bathurst and Eglinton in Toronto.

Arellano, in her late 40s, was attending a silent and prayerful Life Chain pro-life event on Sunday afternoon when she was suddenly assaulted by the man, who at first doused her with water from a bottle, then hurled the empty bottle at her face, grabbed her by the hair, slammed her to the ground, and began punching and kicking her repeatedly before drawing his knife.

I’m not sure what part of a knife attack in broad daylight for protesting abortion isn’t newsworthy.

I know what you are thinking. Here comes Miss Pro-Life, with some moralistic message. That subject heading is likely from a priest, right? Wrong.

It’s from Pitch Perfect, one of my new fave movies about college clubs going head to head, toe to toe in the ultra competitive world of…acapella singing. Yes.

When you think about the pro-life file…isn’t that all we’re asking? Know what the choice is, and make a good one. Now go rent the movie.

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Andrea adds: I have a confession to make. I posted this having seen only three quarters of the movie. In the last quarter, there’s a scene where one might say the director failed to make good choices. In any event, I thought I should add this, lest you all run out and get the movie, and then wonder what is wrong with me.

I can’t tell you how distressing it is to me that I keep encountering photos of one Miley Cyrus even when I really don’t want to. In any event, Sinead O’Connor is apparently one of Miley’s role models, so she wrote her a letter. It’s a good one. There’s some f-bombs but to be frank, when a kid is as off the rails as Miley is, I don’t think an f-bomb is terribly out of place. She talks about the fact that Miley doesn’t value herself, is being used by people who don’t care about her, and is a bad role model for other young women. I’ll say. A rare snippet below that doesn’t include a swear word (those sensitive to that kind of language probably shouldn’t click over).

Yes, I’m suggesting you don’t care for yourself. That has to change. You ought be protected as a precious young lady by anyone in your employ and anyone around you, including you. This is a dangerous world. We don’t encourage our daughters to walk around naked in it because it makes them prey for animals and less than animals, a distressing majority of whom work in the music industry and it’s associated media.

It is deeply encouraging to me to see someone like Sinead come forward with what are essentially very conservative talking points. Join the prude revolution… there are a lot of us with different beliefs, faiths or no faith at all who are weary, weary, weary of our hyper-sexual world. (There are some things she says I disagree with, to be clear, namely this: “Your body is for you and your boyfriend.” But I’m not going to quibble with what is otherwise a fine message.)

Thanks to Sobering Thoughts for highlighting this one:

Ryan Basen writes at Sports On Earth about the NFL’s “A Crucial Catch” breast cancer awareness campaign in support of the American Cancer Socitey (ACS). Basen says the month-long explosion in pink in pro football is less about charity and more about enhancing the participants’ brands:

This philanthropic effort, however, has ulterior motives besides aiding the breast cancer cause. To wit:

The NFL wants to attract and cultivate new female fans, and to enhance its image.

The NFL’s partners in this campaign — including Pepsi, Ticketmaster and Barclays — want to enhance their images as well.

ACS hopes to engender support for its breast cancer awareness programs, instead of those supported by foundations with different ideas about how to counter the disease.

In terms of the dollar amounts that the NFL donates to the cause, it is practically microscopic compared to what the NFL rakes in each year:

The league hardly donates much to “fight” breast cancer. You’d need to use scientific notation with negative exponents to express what percentage of the NFL’s annual revenues it contributes via A Crucial Catch. The campaign raised a combined $4.5 million during its first four years (2009-2012), including $1.5 million last year. League-wide revenues approached $8 billion in 2009.

What Barbara Kay said:

To cleanse our anthem of this specifically male contribution to our nation’s evolution in order to appease the ruffled sensibilities of feminists who wouldn’t in their wildest dreams ever consider taking up military combat as a career is offensive to me.

Honestly.

This post pretty much sums it up for me. I’ve long thought that comparison to others is the kiss of death for your own confidence, and she rightly points out that Facebook facilitates comparison:

I was comparing my life to hers and as they say, comparison is the thief of joy. Like I once heard an Olympic swimmer say: “I swim best when I mentally stay in my own lane.” No matter how satisfied I am with my stroke and my pace before I log on, Facebook shoves me right out of my own lane and back into the ridiculous hunch that I’m not good enough, that I’m missing something important, that I don’t have enough peace and success and that everyone else is living a more fulfilling, fabulous life than I am. If Facebook has this effect on us, we can forgive ourselves. Because all we’re doing is using it exactly the way it was intended to be used. Facebook was designed by college boys to decide how “hot” one woman was compared to another, and now we use it to decide how hot one woman’s life is compared to another’s.

Social media is neither good nor bad, but it is something to be managed and it has changed the way we interact personally with others, largely for the worse, I’d wager. Now I, like the author here, have got to go and get this post up on Twitter. Sigh.

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Faye adds: Don’t be sad, girl. #happyface #girlpower #iheartsocialmedia #youreawesomeandweknowit

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Andrea adds: Thanks for the encouragement, Faye. #wordsfail