It’s an open thread! Pleeeeease feel free to chat, blogwhore, and link-share in the comment thread…

So below is what my cartoon sockpuppet Bookworm Bob & I have been looking at so far this week.

• Philadelphia Inquirer‘s Cross-dressing stylist sues salon:

A hair stylist has filed a federal suit contending that he was fired from his salon job because he wears high heels and women’s clothes and does not “conform to stereotypes regarding how males should appear and behave.”

Daniel Brant worked at the Chop Shop on the Temple University campus and the salon’s South Street branch. The sex-discrimination suit, which seeks unspecified damages, was filed last week in U.S. District Court.

Chop Shop owner Kathy Thomas described the suit as “unfair.”

“I can’t believe he’s going through with this,” Thomas said.

Me neither. The stigma attached to crossdressing usually means these kind of suits don’t often take place.

• RedOrbit‘s Female Supervisors More Susceptible To Workplace Sexual Harassment:

Women who hold supervisory positions are more likely to be sexually harassed at work, according to the first-ever, large-scale longitudinal study to examine workplace power, gender and sexual harassment.

The study, which will be presented at the 104th annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, reveals that nearly fifty percent of women supervisors, but only one-third of women who do not supervise others, reported sexual harassment in the workplace. In more conservative models with stringent statistical controls, women supervisors were 137 percent more likely to be sexually harassed than women who did not hold managerial roles. While supervisory status increased the likelihood of harassment among women, it did not significantly impact the likelihood for men.

“This study provides the strongest evidence to date supporting the theory that sexual harassment is less about sexual desire than about control and domination,” said Heather McLaughlin, a sociologist at the University of Minnesota and the study’s primary investigator . “Male co-workers, clients and supervisors seem to be using harassment as an equalizer against women in power.”

…The sociologists found that, in addition to workplace power, gender expression was a strong predictor of workplace harassment. Men who reported higher levels of femininity were more likely to have experienced harassment than less feminine men. More feminine men were at a greater risk of experiencing more severe or multiple forms of sexual harassment (as were female supervisors)…

Having been a living as male and being a supervisor in the U.S. Navy, I personally experienced sexual harassment as a someone perceived to be a feminine male. It seems pretty weird to me to see an study indicate my personal experience was something which is more common than I thought it was.

• Examiner.com‘s Defining Genderqueer:

Also found under the Transgender Umbrella–besides Transsexuals–are Genderqueers. As defined by Wikipedia Genderqueer is a “catchall term for gender identities other than man and woman. People who identify as genderqueer may think of themselves as being both male and female, as being neither male nor female, or as falling completely outside the gender binary. […] Genderqueer people are united by their rejection of the notion that there are only two genders…” Since Genderqueer has such an open-ended definition I decided to interview six people from different backgrounds to learn what being Genderqueer (or even toying with idea) means or has meant to them.

Adrienne, 24, defines genderqueer as a term that “defies gender roles…it means I play with gender, that I don’t conform to what a man or woman or even an andro person is ‘supposed’ to look like. It means that my gender is queer.” Though Adrienne no longer places herself under the Trans Umbrella she used to. “I identified as a boy for a while, I think because I liked it, and it fit for that time in my life. I also think I was more genderqueer–and less trans–but didn’t have the language at the time, so I thought I just identified with trans. Today, I basically pass as a straight girl. But that doesn’t mean that I won’t ever go back to being andro. I see gender as something fluid and as performance which sums it up.” Adrienne currently identifies as a femme genderqueer queer.

19 year-old ‘Cornelius Frost’–sophomore at University of California Santa Cruz– identifies as an Adrogyne who goes by male pronouns. For him being under the Trans Umbrella is about “transcending gender […] It means your gender is odd, it’s queer and not what people expect it to be like having both or more than one gender.” He also clarifies that as an Adrogyne he identifies as neither male nor female. “No dictionary can give you a set definition of what words mean […] It is up to us to mold the language that defines us.” …

Very interesting read. Recommend reading the whole piece at Examiner.com for an educational piece about genderqueer people.

• Los Angeles Times‘ Sugar shock: Prices roar to 28-year high:

With too little rain in India and too much in Brazil, sugar production forecasts have been slashed, deepening concern about global shortages.

With all the sugar hidden in processed food, expect sharp rises in food prices soon.

• Wiener story of the day: NBC New York‘s Hot Dog Vendors Priced Out, By $310,000:

A hot dog vendor who normally sells his tube steaks in front of the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art has been evicted, and he’s not the only one suffering a cash crunch on Museum Row. But this isn’t the usual tale of woe in a tough business climate. His rent on the spot was $53,558 a month.

…Somehow the sales of hot dogs and bottled water to tourists didn’t nearly add up to the $648,000 annually the vendor owed the city, and the 51-year-old Queens man was behind by $310,000 on his rent, reports the Daily News. Another vendor at the steps told the News that he brought in about $1,000 a day, and he too was packing in his buns…

Egads! I can only imagine how much a hot dog would cost at a cart that has rent of $1000.00 a day!

So anywho…It’s an open thread! What are you reading or thinking about today?