The Mounties (proper name Royal Canadian Mounted Police) have recorded the latest It Gets Better video. "The video features adults who share their stories of their struggles, with the aim of building a bridge of understanding for youth undergoing similar experiences," the video's description notes. While the U.S. sees big electoral gains in same-sex marriage rights and growing acceptance among citizens, it's nice to see this message from the country's neighbor to the north.

October was National Domestic Violence Awareness Month. President Barack Obama issued a proclamation stating, “Let us renew our efforts to support victims of domestic violence in their time of greatest need, and [to] realize an America where no one lives in fear because they feel unsafe in their own home.” It is essential to go beyond the statistics to place Domestic Violence within a larger societal framework.

The pictures and stories of lives lost and shattered by Hurricane Sandy are breaking our hearts. Beyond the immediate tragedy, the long-term economic toll Sandy will have on these communities is also staggering. And digging deeper into the overall economic fallout of natural disasters reveals one consistent truth: natural disasters tend to make low income and poor people—the majority of whom are women—even more vulnerable to physical assault as well as to greater economic challenges in the years that follow.

Free To Be… You and Me, the early 1970s groundbreaking project for kids that challenges gender stereotypes, is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year. Dan Kois of Slate recently wrote a great retrospective three-part article about the project titled Free To Be (parts 1, 2, 3). In it, he describes its history, its legacy and how feminists (headed by Marlo Thomas with the Ms. Foundation for Women) “wanted to change … everything.”

A new infographic from the 4th Estate (tagline: visualizing the social influence of media and newsmakers) looks at diversity on newspaper's front pages this election season. The graphic shows that "every 2012 election topic lacks reporter diversity" in terms of race. Perhaps surprisingly (or perhaps not), stories about immigration were the least diverse, with nearly 95% of stories written by a white reporter.

A new video from the ladies behind EmotiStyle shows young women that there's more to dressing up for Halloween than being near-naked. "You can just be a nurse, you don't have to be a sexy nurse. You can just be a nun, you don't have to be a skanky nun," the song goes. It goes on to list all kinds of things you can be for Halloween besides naked: Bill Cosby, Louis CK, toast, the Color Purple. The not-naked options are endless!

According to a new infographic from Face the Facts USA, a service of George Washington University's Center for Innovative Media, average retired female Social Security recipients receive some $300 a month less than their male counterparts. Why? It makes perfect sense, really: on average, women earn less than men for performing comparable jobs in the work place, so it stands to reason that that wage gap would carry over to the realm of Social Security as well.

An infographic from the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers's (IEEE) Women in Engineering program offers a timeline of great women engineers throughout history. The "women in engineering hall of fame" starts with Ada Lovelace (1815-1852), referred to as the "first computer programmer" and the namesake of an October holiday honoring women in science, and ends with Marissa Meyer, the 37-year-old CEO of Yahoo.

by Kristin Maschka

When children come along, couples must reevaluate their marriage contract.

The group A Call to Men has produced a powerful video on why men should care about the issue of violence against women, and how they can stop it. The video notes, "If we continue to treat women and girls as if they are of less value, the property of men, and sexual objects, we continue to maintain a culture that reinforces discrimination, and abuse towards them." It's a common sense message, but one we don't see too often in our victim-blaming culture.

By Natalie Kon-yu

A new Tumblr created by the anti-street harassment organization Hollaback uses one of the internet's favorite devices -- cats -- to further its cause. Check out some of our favorite entries after the jump (spoiler: "The only legit catcall... is when my person says 'dinner's ready'"), and email your submissions to holla@ihollaback.org.

Given that the average age of a first-time mother in America is about 25 years old, and the average American man becomes a first-time father at around the same age, the question posed by Feministing.com founder Jessica Valenti in her new book is one that I (along with many other millennials) may have to ask sooner than I think — Why Have Kids?

A story has been going around the internet this week that might just warm your heart. Recently a Reddit user who uses the username european_douchebag posted a photo of a Sikh woman with visible facial hair under the Reddit group "Funny." Naturally the photo got tons of hateful comments, but soon something wonderful happened: the woman in the picture (username balpreetkaur) posted a thoughtful response. And THEN, the original poster wrote an apology.

The following infographic looks at the language of men and women. Or, in the words of the graphic's creators, "Gender differences in spoken language: the frequency and type of words used by men and women." According to the data, women tend to use more pronouns and "references to sensory processes" than men, while men tend to use more words that contain at least six letters. View the whole thing after the jump.