Odds 'N Ends

1) Lilith Fair 2010

One event I'm excited about for 2010 is the return of the lady-music fest that is Lilith Fair. Yes. I'm that gay.

Funnily enough, I was involved in a conversation at another LGBT blog a while back where a gay guy bemoaned how unfair it was that women got to have their own special concerts that excluded male performers. (I wonder how he feels about the fairness of male-only bathhouses/sex clubs that exclude women?). Anyway, perhaps because the default Real Musician is still largely envisioned as a dude with a guitar, some people are blind to the extent to which "mainstream" music events are, actually, sausage fests.

The 2009 Lollapalooza lineup, for instance, had a tiny handful of female artists out of over 100 bands. In fact, if you took the Lilith Fair lineup and added like 6 male bands, it would sort of be the reverse of Lollapalooza.


2) Lady Vets

This article was interesting as it highlighted the struggles of female American vets who return from war. Once you get past the annoying first sentence that immediately minimizes these struggles ("Nobody wants to buy them a beer," really? That's their worst problem? I doubt it) the article does a decent job of highlighting how the public doesn't always understand the contributions of female soldiers on the battlefield.

I'm not sure what most Americans imagine when they think of modern warfare, but I sometimes wonder if people appreciate the extent to which women also put their lives on the line:

"The Defense Department bars women from serving in assignments where the primary mission is to engage in direct ground combat. But the nature of the recent conflicts, with no clear front lines, puts women in the middle of the action, in roles such as military police officers, pilots, drivers and gunners on convoys. In addition to the 120-plus deaths, more than 650 women have been wounded."

3) In Other Lady Warrior News

Sharon Lubinski has become the first openly-gay US Marshal. She will be serving the Minnesota District, and is the state's first female marshal. Hurray for lesbian visibility!