truTV: Not Reality. Actuality.

Complaints were lodged with the Swedish government in June against the state-run retail pharmacy Apoteket, alleging illegal sex discrimination, in that its stores stock sexual aids that benefit women (e.g., vibrators) but none that particularly benefit men. Said one complainer, "(A) woman with a dildo is seen as liberated, strong and independent, whereas a man with a blow-up plastic vagina is viewed as disgusting and perverted." The government's Equal Opportunities Ombudsman rejected the complaints.

About 250,000 women in the southern India states of Karnataka and Maharashtra are self-described "elite" sex workers whose impoverished, or devoutly pious, parents "dedicated" them as children to the Hindu goddess Yellamma, according to an August dispatch in The New Yorker. Despite the state's outlawing the practice in 1982, the women's fate as "devadasis" remains an attractive alternative to ordinary marriage (which would usually be to poor and abusive men) and provides a degree of status, in that they dress nicely and can inherit family property, while street prostitutes cannot. However, devadasis still fall victim to the region's rampant HIV rate.

The estimated one million Japanese (almost all males) who suffer from the major anti-social funk called "Hikikomori" and confine themselves inside (typically, a bedroom in their parents' home) for months at a time without live human interaction has been mentioned in News of the Weird in 2000 and 2005. In July, the Japanese software company Avex produced a video to help those men, simply featuring a series of young women staring into the lens, occasionally saying "Good morning," so that Hikikomori sufferers can practice feeling the gazes of strangers.

Wrestling in Turkey (II): Camel-wrestling is a winter celebration, but the summers are (and have been for 650 years) for Kirkpinar, the country's oil-wrestling celebration and tournament, during which a thousand men, slathering on two tons of olive oil, fight matches until one man earns the solid-gold title belt. Several months of regional tournaments lead up to Kirkpinar, which, incidentally, has recently experienced the same doping controversies as mainstream world sports.

France's Council of State turned down an otherwise-acceptable petition for citizenship by a French Moroccan woman in July, on the ground that her total submission to her husband makes her "insufficient(ly)" "assimilat(ed)" into the country's ethos of gender equality. The 32-year-old Muslim veils her entire body in public except for a narrow slit for the eyes and, for example, rejects the idea of voting, in that such matters should be left entirely to the discretion of her husband and male relatives.

While Iran's leaders saber-rattle and quote the Quran, the country's multitudes of young adults are embracing New Age self-help, as exemplified by the best-selling books and sold-out seminars of motivational guru Alireza Azmandian, according to a June Wall Street Journal dispatch from Tehran. Though young adults in Turkey and Egypt have stepped up their religious fervor, that is not so in Iran. Said a 25-year-old aerospace engineer: "Religion doesn't offer me answers anymore," but "(Azmandian's) seminar changed my life." The Oprah Winfrey-touted book "The Secret" is in its 10th printing in Farsi; yoga and meditation are big; and advertising abounds on the virtues of feng shui and financial management.