Women Need More Sleep Than Men As Fighting the Patriarchy Is Exhausting

The Sleep Research Center at Loughborough University in Leicestershire, England recently found women need more sleep than men. About 20 more minutes of sleep per night, to be precise.

Why? According to the New York Post, the director of the Sleep Research Center said:

“Women’s brains are wired differently . . . so their sleep need will be slightly greater. Women tend to multi-task – they do lots at once and are flexible – and so they use more of their actual brain than men do... For women, poor sleep is strongly associated with high levels of psychological distress and greater feelings of hostility, depression, and anger. In contrast, these feelings were not associated with the same degree of sleep disruption in men.”

Caption under the picture says, "Dreamin' of a matriarchal society."

http://nymag.com/thecut/2016/03/study-finds-women-need-more-sleep-than-men.html 

Death of Hierarchies Has Been Coming a Long Time

"Donald Trump isn’t the destruction of the Republican Party; he is the fulfillment of everything the party has been saying and doing for decades. He is just saying it louder and more plainly than his predecessors and intra-party rivals," according to Neal Gabler on billmoyers.com.

"The real story – one the popularity of Trump’s candidacy has revealed and inarguably the biggest political story of the last 50 years — is the decades-long transformation of Republicanism from a business-centered, small town, white Protestant set of beliefs into quite possibly America’s primary institutional force of bigotry, intellectual dishonesty, ignorance, warmongering, intractability and cruelty against the vulnerable and powerless."

Hierarchies have been in a death struggle for decades, and now it has caught up with them enough that the death struggle is obvious to most people, even if they haven't been following it for years like we have been doing. We live in fascinating times. 

 http://billmoyers.com/story/blowing-the-biggest-political-story-of-the-last-fifty-years/

Colin Powell: Actions Belittling to the Office to which They Are Striving

Colin Powell, once a rising star in the Republican party until George W. Bush sent him to the United Nations to plead the lie about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, has even come out saying the Republicans are acting inappropriately. He also served as Ronald Reagan's national security adviser.

Referring to the "civility" and "lack of any nastiness" he saw in Ronald Reagan, Mr. Powell decried the tone of the current Republican presidential campaign. "To stand there and do junior high school tricks on one another is belittling the country and belittling the office to which they are striving," he said.

Here in the death struggle of hierarchies, the ground is shaking and unfamiliar to those at the top, and we can predict we will continue to see efforts to stabilize back to life as it used to be.

http://www.npr.org/2016/03/06/469420705/colin-powell-gop-candidates-belittling-the-country-and-presidency

Women on the Supreme Court – Speaking for People Like Them

In the opening day of arguments at the Supreme Court in the landmark abortion case, "Whole Women's Health v Hellerstedt," Dahlia Litwick reports in Slate that "it felt like, for the first time in history, the gender playing field was finally leveled" and the women justices "were emboldened to just ignore the rules...There was something wonderful and symbolic about Roberts losing almost complete control over the court's indignant women, who are just not inclined to play nice anymore."

In a just and equal diverse society, we must have people represented by others of their own group, and not be subject to decisions made by those who are placed on top our hierarchies. Men do not, in general, clearly represent the views of women. Men, being at the top, have historically been clueless about women, and act accordingly, and instead make decisions that keep men in power.
 
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/supreme_court_dispatches/2016/03/in_oral_arguments_for_the_texas_abortion_case_the_three_female_justices.html

Trump – His Size Makes Him Qualified

For centuries our hierarchies dictated that having a penis is a qualification for leadership. For many people, that requirement hasn't changed.

But Donald Trump assures us that not only does he possess that qualification, but in his case, he is sufficiently endowed. On national TV no less.

 http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/03/donald-trump-talks-about-his-hands-and-manhood

Caitlin Jenner – She Still Doesn't Get It

Talking about clueless at the top, Caitlin Jenner, whose very existence as a woman was supported by not Republicans, but progressives who work for an inclusive society, has come out in favor of Ted Cruz. Ted Cruz – a man who works against probably every effort of those who have worked hard to create a social climate that could accept a transgendered person like Jenner.

Some people are just determined to support hierarchies, even if life experiences try to educate them otherwise. Apparently Jenner is one of those. Looks like the effects of being an able-bodied, heterosexual, celebrity, white, wealthy, famous male were just too large to overcome in her case.

http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/caitlyn-jenner-s-presidential-preference-i-ted-cruz-n531311

Ghostbusters – Now Women On the Job

In an article entitled "5 Times the New 'Ghostbusters' trailer destroyed the patriarchy," USA Today brings us the trailer for the all-female version of the classic movie, to be released this summer.

Who you gonna call? The all-female new Ghostbusters team.

"Goodness gracious it is everything we hoped and dreamed for. In addition to being incredibly hilarious and visually on point, the trailer is also unabashedly proud of its four female leads and the feminism it is espousing."

With Hollywood feeling the pressure to move away from believing that good movies have to be about young white heterosexual men and their fantasies of violence, here is one alternative.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/entertainthis/2016/03/03/ghostbusters-trailer-destroys-patriarchy-melissa-mccarthy-paul-feig-kristen-wiig-leslie-jones-kate-mckinnon-chris-hemsworth/81258406/