Villainous Company

August 31, 2010

Misandry Alert

Proof that women are naturally evil:

Sperm plays a more complicated role in the mating game than first thought, researchers at Australia's University of Adelaide said Wednesday.

Professor Sarah Robertson, from the University's Robinson Institute, said sperm "communicates" with the female reproductive tract and helps prepare the female body for nurturing a fetus. If the female system does not approve of the sperm's message, it could attack them.

"We have discovered that sperm doesn't just fertilize an egg," Robertson said. "It actually contains signaling molecules that are responsible for activating immune changes in women so they can accept a foreign substance in the body — in this case, sperm — leading to conception and a healthy pregnancy."

Researchers found that, similar to humans, not all male sperm is good at communicating and some female bodies have very high standards.

"The male provides the information that increases the chance of conception and progression to pregnancy, but the female body has a quality-control system which needs convincing that his sperm is compatible and also judges whether the conditions are right for reproducing," Robertson said.

I'm sure I'll go straight to Hell for finding this amusing, but I can't help it. I'm just wired that way.

Posted by Cassandra at 08:42 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

What Women Really Want

Don't have a lot of time to write today but this list of relationship hints for guys struck me (with one or two very minor exceptions) as dead on accurate. That surprised me a bit, as I usually find these lists vapid and whiny. If you don't read anything else, the last one is worth its price in gold:

When it comes to what women want from men, the little things really do matter. The items on this list aren’t particularly difficult or time-consuming, but they are, unfortunately, very often overlooked by men. This often leads a woman to feel neglected, which in turn leads to nagging and other problems. Make her feel special, and she’ll go to the ends of the earth for you; try one of these suggestions, and she’ll feel like you've already gone there and back for her.

The bolded part goes for the male of the species, too.

Posted by Cassandra at 08:04 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

August 24, 2010

Inflammatory Debate Topic of the Day

So.... is this "sexist"?

One of the United Kingdom's biggest and best-known corporate law firms has little difficulty retaining talented women lawyers as partners, reports the Daily Mail.

Allen & Overy's secret to success? Offering 82 holidays a year, in exchange for reduced pay. Men can also opt for a reduced schedule for up to eight years, although the program was put in place for the purpose of retaining women struggling to balance their work with motherhood, the newspaper explains.

"If we don't succeed in attracting more women through to partner, we will be choosing from an ever-decreasing pool of talent," says partner Geoff Fuller.

So long as they're willing to accept less pay (and perhaps a poorer position on the promotion track) I'm not seeing where this is necessarily a bad thing. I've long maintained that many women are willing to trade salary for autonomy/time with family. This arrangement makes the tradeoff explicit.

Posted by Cassandra at 04:50 PM | Comments (50) | TrackBack

August 18, 2010

"Some Things Do Not Getter Better With Time"

You all know the type of thing I'm talking about, don't you? Sure you do (wink wink, nudge nudge):

If I am not mistaken, today marks the anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment.

Make sure you watch the linked YouTube video. The other day I expressed some frustration with conservative men (and some conservative women) who indulge in the kind of wholesale, unthinking, broad brush condemnation I used to think was uniquely the province of the worst sort of Lefty. A reader commented:

I find it hard to imagine a conservative blogger or commenter being applauded for even hinting that the world would be a better place if African-Americans (who vote overwhelmingly Democratic) or American Jews (who tend to vote Democratic) couldn't vote. This is a great mystery to me: Why are comments like this acceptable when they're made about women?

I'm not sure what Williamson thought he was saying with that video. I do know that if being able to find a bunch of high school girls who are willing to sign a petition to end women's suffrage supposedly proves something about the wisdom of allowing women to vote, then Mark Dice has pretty well established that men shouldn't be allowed to vote either:

If this is what passes for wit - or worse, serious commentary - on the right, we're in deep, deep trouble. I expected better from the National Review.

Update: Hmmm.... here's one conservative who isn't unhappy that women are "allowed" to vote.

Posted by Cassandra at 04:02 PM | Comments (19) | TrackBack

August 16, 2010

Random Gender Related Rants

A lot of thoughts have been building up inside my head lately. I've mostly skirted around the edges of what's bothering me, but I'm beginning to feel like my head will explode from all the things I haven't written about. So, dear readers, though it may prove to be a mistake I'm going to put a few of them out there for discussion. Feel free to argue with me because I do value your opinions. I will ask that we adhere to the usual VC standard of civility.

Nota bene: In the following post, "you" does not refer to anyone here at VC specifically. It is a general pronoun that refers to "people who make this sort of argument". During the first 4 or 5 years after I began blogging, I often wrote about the excesses of radical feminism. I did so for two reasons:

1. Unevenly applied standards (arguing that men ought to be held strictly accountable for their misdeeds but that excuses should be made for irresponsible or misbehaving women, or that women are fully equal to men in all respects yet we need special laws that "level the playing field") will rarely if ever find favor with me.

2. I despise over broad generalizations that blame an entire class of people for the misbehavior of a few. If you don't like the way *some* men behave, take it up with those men. But don't tell me that all men suck because you'll only convince me you're an oxygen thief.

After several years of ragging on radical feminism, I simply ran out of fresh things to say about it. An odd thing happened then. About the time I got bored with complaining about the "all men suck" school of feminism, I encountered the exact same victim mentality from an unexpected source: men.

Obligatory disclaimer time. I have absolutely no problem with men or men's rights activists lobbying or seeking to change existing laws they deem unfair. If men want to change the laws, they will need to make arguments that appeal to a majority of voters (some of whom will be female). It's up to each of us - male or female - to stand up for what we believe in. Fighting for what you believe in is a healthy response and in the case of family law, arguably a necessary one. What I don't care for so much is hypocrisy and double standards. If your best argument for any policy change begins with "Women always...", "All women...", or the especially entertaining, "All American women..." (inevitably followed by an exhortation to check out ads for Russian mail order brides) I'm going to go out on a limb and say you're trading in the same unthinking bigotry radical feminists have employed for decades.

If you seek to blame every negative social development of the 20th and 21st centuries on women or feminists, you can rely on me to point out that women are only one half of the human race and none of the changes you deplore could have taken place without the active support of men.

If you argue that men are strong, hard working, principled, and rational (while women are lazy, weak, amoral, and dominated by emotion) it's probably not a good idea to claim that men only went along with Those Evil Feminists because they didn't want to sleep on the sofa. That's hardly strong, principled, or rational behavior. And you probably shouldn't try to tell me that getting laid is so important to the male of the species that men will gladly bargain away their souls for sex. That kind of weak minded and idiotic behavior doesn't inspire respect, and if men are guilty of it (your argument, not mine) then they're equally to blame for the changes you object to.

Before 1920, women possessed no Constitutional right to vote. For six decades afterwards, women voted at lower rates than men. Conservatives love to slam liberals for "giving" women the vote. The truth is that it was the Republican Party who championed women's sufferage:

Only after the Republicans won control of congress in 1919 did the Equal Suffrage Amendment pass. It found favor in the House of Representatives in May and then passed the Senate in June.

As the 19th Amendment was circulating for ratification, the states with Republican legislatures passed the amendment. Thirty-six states ratified the Amendment. Twenty-six states had Republican legislatures and easily ratified the Amendment. Nine states voted against its ratification—eight of those states had Democratic legislatures.

Even before the Amendment was part of the Constitution, twelve states, all with Republican congresses, had conferred suffrage rights on women.

Conservatives also enjoy reminding progressives that the Civil Rights act would never have passed without the overwhelming support of the Republican party. When it comes to women's rights, though, suddenly they're ashamed of fighting for equal treatment under the law. Go figure.

Here's another inconvenient fact for those who think voting Democratic is primarily a function of gender: for the first 5 decades after women gained the vote, they were more likely to vote Republican than Democrat. There's a simple reason for that. Until recently, married women outnumbered single women and married women (like married men) have always been more likely to vote Republican.

Looking at the outcome of presidential elections in the 20th Century reveals some interesting insights. Women didn't gain the vote until about 40% into the first half of the 20th century. Even after we gained the vote, women voted at lower rates than men and most of them voted Republican. Given these facts, one might reasonably expect the number of presidential elections won by Republicans to greatly outnumber those won by the Democratic party.

One would be wrong, however. For the first half of the 20th Century when men dominated the vote, the ratio of Democrat to Republican terms was roughly equal (7D to 6R):

If women voters throw the balance of power to the liberal side, shouldn't we expect to see more Republicans winning elections when men dominated the voter roles and more Democrats winning elections as the number of female voters increases? That would make sense, but it's not what happened.

During the second half of the 20th Century the number of female voters rose steadily and yet the ratio of Democrat to Republican victories holds fairly constant (changing from 7D-6R to 5D-7R). In 1964, the number of female voters exceeded the number of male voters for the first time. By 1980 the proportion of women who vote exceeded the proportion of men who vote. And yet the ratio of Democrat to Republican terms didn't change significantly. If anything, as the number and proportion of women in the electorate increased, the balance of victories tilted even more strongly to conservatives.

The trend of Republican domination of the White House continues in the 21st century with 2 Republican terms to 1 Democrat term so far - this despite record numbers of female voters and the lowest participation of male voters in recent history. Those who argue that female voters are tilting the balance of power away from Republicans and towards Democrats have some 'splainin' to do. The future may well prove them right but the past 100 years certainly do nothing to support their case.

For years I've argued that there are fundamental differences between men and women. Contrary to the arguments of identity politics groups, I believe that some of these fundamental differences merit exceptions to my usual insistence on equal treatment under the law. I've never believed men are as likely as women to want to stay at home with small children. Neither do I believe women are as likely to voluntarily go into highly technical fields. If you don't believe that lower numbers of women in these fields is prima facie evidence of unjust discrimination, it seems to me that you're on shaky grounds arguing that lower numbers of men being granted primary custody of their children after divorce is prima facie evidence of unjust discrimination.

It's impossible to evaluate the overall fairness of custody awards without asking how many men pursue sole or primary custody of their children? And it's impossible to evaluate the overall fairness of hiring (or degrees awarded) in technical fields without looking at the number of women who actively pursue jobs or degrees in those fields. When feminists trotted out horrifying anecdotes featuring evil men who victimize innocent women, both men and women properly pointed out that isolated anecdotes do not prove the existence of systematic (must less unjust) discrimination. Without unfairly presuming the outcome, I think the same logic ought to apply regardless of whether this week's victim happens to be male or female.

Men have some very legitimate complaints with regard to the excesses of feminism, but they do themselves no credit when they stoop to tactics they previously argued were unprincipled and illogical. One of these tactics is labeling everything in sight, "misandry". Misandry is hatred of men, as opposed to disagreement with a man. Feminists who accuse everyone who disagrees with them of misogyny are arguing from emotion - they can't possibly know what motivates their opponents. Simple disagreement with feminism or the goals of feminists doesn't prove hatred of women. Likewise, simple disagreement with men's rights activists or their goals doesn't prove hatred of men.

Another phrase that chaps my ass is "shaming language". As this humorous commercial suggests, men have used that kind of language to dominate each other for centuries:

The real irony here is that in the world I grew up in, men regularly used "shaming language" on each other and anyone who complained about this was viewed - by men - as weak and unmanly. The military is arguably the last bastion of traditional male standards and it's no accident that "shaming language" is more common in the military than it is in society at large. You have to admit there's a palpable irony to pining for the return of the good old days when men were men ... by men who can't stand up to the kind of abuse they were expected to take in stride during said "good old days".

My final rant involves the soft bigotry of low expectations. Via Retriever comes this case in point. The article, entitled "Why It's OK for Men to Judge Women on their Looks" essentially argues that "it's OK" because that's the way the world works.

Contrast this article in which a woman who finds her boyfriend's excess avoir du poir offputting is excoriated for not being able to see the beautiful person lurking behind her man's beer belly. The truth is that the world would be a better place if both men and women looked at the whole package rather than just the outer wrapping. The world isn't that way, though.

Biology is used all the time to excuse male behavior. I have rarely (if ever) seen biology used to justify female behavior. If normal and natural male irrationality is to be excused by a breezy, "That's just how we're wired", shouldn't the same excuse be extended to women who are just following their instincts?

The real tragedy here is that the single thing I've always found most admirable in men of my acquaintance is not biology, but the self-discipline and integrity that allows men to rise above their base instincts.

We can be no better than our worst instincts or we can choose to be something more. Something human. Which is it to be?

Posted by Cassandra at 01:10 PM | Comments (84) | TrackBack

August 15, 2010

A Few Bones to Pick

Because the blog princess is feeling a mite cantankerous this week, she's going to try something new (albeit with a bit of trepidation). Every week I read things that make my head explode. A good 98 or 99% of the time, I don't write about them - mostly because I hate blog wars and can rarely understand why so many bloggers take disagreements personally rather than viewing them as a jumping off point for discussion or an opportunity to sharpen their arguments.

When I do argue with another blogger, it tends to be someone I like and/or someone who, in my estimation, is unlikely to take disagreements to heart. In that vein, I'm going to pick on two bloggers I like this week! The first is my old friend and Cycle of Violence adversary, Tigerhawk. Earlier this week, he commented on the Laura Schlessinger brouhaha:

The lefty blogs are in high dudgeon over Laura Schlessinger's repeated use of the "N" word in an exchange with an African-American woman who called in with a genuine issue, her frustration -- which sounds legitimate to me -- that her white husband would not stand up for her when his friends and family make "racist" or at least race-based comments. Conservatives should object just as loudly. Dr. Laura's rant is brain dead stuff from beginning to end. Forget the N-word baiting. Where's the sense or compassion in advising people to avoid "marrying out of their race" if they do not want suffer the indignity of dumbshit generalizations? Huh? You do not have to be a politically-correct academic liberal to think that is both idiotic and mean. And, by the way, it is bad for America, which could use a little more interracial marriage.

Makes me embarrassed to be a conservative.

Whatever one thinks of Dr. Laura's comments (not having read the transcript yet, it sounds as though her use of the much ballyhoo'd 'n-word' was gratuitously offensive, but I agree that people who can't defend themselves against "dumbsh**", racially insensitive remarks probably should not marry outside their own race) I'm mystified by the suggestion that she in any way represents conservatism as a movement.

For whatever it may be worth, years ago I was on the other side of this woman's situation. I dated outside my own race, and it wasn't my white friends who made the racially insensitive remarks. It was his black friends.

And he didn't defend me, either. But then I never expected him to. Dating him was my decision and I was perfectly capable of defending myself.

One of the benefits of being an adult is that adults can do as we please within reason. Unfortunately, the freedom to act doesn't imply freedom from ignorance, criticism, or hurtful remarks. It also doesn't guarantee that others will approve of your choices. Adults who can't deal with ignorant remarks have two choices: stop associating with ignorant people or learn to stand up for yourself.

But I have a more serious beef with TH's reaction. Why should statements made by a radio talk show host make anyone feel embarrassed to be conservative?

What are we saying? That every utterance by a radio talk show host is hereby incorporated by reference into the core belief system of their chosen political party? Given the plethora of conflicting opinions on offer from both parties these days, that could be confusing (to say the least).

That moral people feel ashamed any time someone who shares some of their beliefs says something stupid (even if they don't share those beliefs, and even if they have absolutely no connection to that person)? If we accept that principle, then Rev. Wright's racist rants should make all progressives ashamed.

I wonder how willing the lefty sites TH links to would be to accept that reasoning? My guess is, "Not very".

Update: OK, now I've read the transcript of Schlessinger's remarks and, if anything, I'm more confused than ever. Was she blunt to the point of insensitivity? Certainly, but then that's her trademark. She didn't treat the caller any differently than she treats any caller. And the use of the 'n-word' was limited to stating that black comedians use it all the time. Is that untrue?

Anyone looking for sensitivity from Dr. Laura clearly hasn't paid their attention bill. For the life of me, I can't see how the caller was treated any differently than Dr. Laura treats callers of other races. It seems to me that the underlying complaint relies on the same arguments used to justify hate crime laws. Somehow, when a person of color voluntarily consults a controversial talk show host who is famous for her bluntness and straight talk and gets... the same brand of blunt, straight talk every other caller gets ... this should make all right thinking righties embarrassed?

It seems to me that if you have a problem with the way this caller was treated you should have a problem with the way Schlessinger treats all callers.

Next bone coming up in a moment... below the fold.

Posted by Cassandra at 09:41 AM | Comments (21) | TrackBack

August 09, 2010

Do Men Work More Hours Than Women?

According to this article, the answer is "yes":

A study published this week by Dr Catherine Hakim of the London School of Economics has found that men do slightly more work than the women they live with when employment and domestic work are measured together.

Note that the exact same study is summarized by Reuters as "Men and women do the same amount of work". Got agenda? Oddly, the article provides no link to the study. Nor did it provide any information other than the general conclusion that men work slightly more hours. Curious about the study's methodology (not to mention the accuracy of this author's summary), I decided to do a little research. What I found was considerably more nuanced than the Telegraph would have us believe:

Who works hardest? Feminists have long complained about women’s ‘double shift’ – a term invented in the United States, and automatically assumed to apply equally in western Europe, despite our shorter work hours and widespread availability of part-time jobs. Indeed, the European Commission actively promotes the idea that women carry an unfair burden, working disproportionately long hours in jobs and at home as well, juggling family and work (1). However time budget studies show that women’s double shift is a myth.

I don't find the claimed debunking of the "double shift" nonsense particularly surprising. It is well documented that men perform the lion's share of difficult and dangerous jobs:

According to the International Labor Organization, an estimated 1.1 million workers are killed in industrial accidents each year, exceeding the number killed from road accidents, war, violence and AIDS.

These accidents occur primarily in mining, logging, heavy agricultural labor, construction, fishing, heavy manufacturing and various other overwhelmingly male jobs. The ILO estimates that some 600,000 lives would be saved every year if available safety practices were used. The ILO also estimates that there are an approximately 250 million occupational accidents and 160 million occupational diseases each year. The ILO doesn't keep figures by gender, but in countries like England, Australia, Canada, and South Africa, where such figures are available, the fatalities and serious injuries are usually over 90 percent male.

The gender breakdowns in the U.S. are little different. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were over 125 million workplace injuries in the United States between 1976 and 1999. Nearly 100,000 workers died from job-related injuries between 1980 and 1994 with 95 percent of them male. Of the 25 most dangerous jobs listed by the U.S. Department of Labor, all of them are at least 90 percent and are often 100 percent male. According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, more than three million workers a year are treated in hospital emergency rooms for occupational injuries and nearly 50 American workers are injured every minute of the 40-hour work week. On average, every day 17 die, 16 of them male.

It is also well documented that, whether one looks at lifetime employment statistics or average hours worked per week, men spend more hours than women at work. Again, given that women are far more likely to take time off from work to care for small children or other relatives, this is hardly surprising (and in fact, I think it's a good thing).

What interested me about this study was the odd gap between what the study actually found, what the author of the study claims it proves, and the way the results were reported in the media:

On average, women and men across Europe do the same total number of productive work hours, once paid jobs and unpaid household work are added together – roughly eight hours a day. Men do substantially more hours of paid work. Women’s time is divided more evenly between paid and unpaid work.

Hmmm... and yet both the author and the media claim the study shows that men do more work than women do. Let's read some more:

Men and women do roughly equal amounts of voluntary work – contrary to the popular myth that women do vastly more than men. Results for Britain are repeated in the USA and other countries, despite differences in the length of working weeks and lifestyles. It is only in the poorer nations that women work longer hours overall.

Again, I have no problem with the author's claim that her study refutes the feminist mantra that women work way more hours than men. That's not surprising in light of the number of studies I've cited that show the same thing. I'm just not sure how Hakim gets "men work more hours than women" from "on average, men and women work roughly the same number of hours". Perhaps it's that sophisticated Euro-weenie nuance thing again....

Indeed, in Sweden, Norway and the Netherlands, men actually do more productive work than women.

Mystery solved! Instead of looking at the overall study results, we're going to cherry pick the data! And it turns out that if we only look at British men with children at home, we can add Britain to the list!

The pattern of equality in total productive work hours is found among couples aged 20-40 and those aged 40-60, so is reasonably constant across the lifecycle. In fact, an analysis by Susan Harkness shows that British men work longer hours in total than do women when there are children in the home, largely because men often work more overtime to boost family income at this stage, while wives switch to part-time jobs, or even drop out of employment (Harkness, 2008).

Suddenly, though, an inconvenient truth rears its ugly head:

Couples with no children at home and both in full-time jobs emerge as the only group where women work more hours in total than men, once paid and unpaid work hours are added together.

Oddly enough, when we begin selectively citing data from portions of the sample, a vastly different picture begins to emerge:

Feminists constantly complain that men are not doing their fair share of domestic work. The reality is that most men already do more than their fair share, and this is most pronounced in the ‘gender egalitarian’ cultures of Scandinavia. These conclusions have long been established by Gershuny’s research, and are re-confirmed by the new time budget studies across Europe and North America. The only exceptions are Eastern European countries: under socialist governments, women did more hours in total, as they were forced into full-time jobs, and they continue to work longer hours in a few ex-socialist countries today.

What I'm seeing here is that when women work full time - regardless of whether they do so as a result of socialist political policies or because they are in a two full-time wage earner relationship - they work longer hours than men do overall. When men have small children to provide for, they often work overtime to provide for their families and thus (after helping around the house) work longer hours.

It turns out that the author has a bit of an agenda herself:

... last week Hakim put the female arts of looking appetising firmly onto the academic agenda. In a controversial new paper for a sociological journal, she suggests we may all be missing a trick by not recognising the power of “erotic capital”.

She defines the key elements of erotic capital as “sex appeal, charm and social skills, physical fitness and liveliness, sexual competence and skills in self-presentation”. She claims that men and women with erotic capital can expect to earn 10% to 15% more than those without.

In more down-to-earth terms, what she’s talking about is anything from an ability to flirt subtly with the boss to the commercial exploitation of a large pair of breasts.

In Hakim’s world, a female historian is in no way devalued if she chooses to strip off in order to publicise her book. Nor is there anything wrong with being a gold-digger.

“We live in a sexualised age: that’s the trend. Let’s just relax ... There’s not much point in swimming against the tide,” she says.

Hakim's "preference theory" (the idea that women's choices reflect women's values rather than the influence of jackbooted patriarchal oppression) makes perfect sense to me, which probably explains why I've been saying the same thing for the past 6 years. The claim that, when all things are considered, men pull their weight in most relationships is likewise reasonable.

What doesn't make so much sense to me is how she gets "men are doing more than their fair share" from "men and women work roughly equal hours once paid and unpaid work are accounted for"? At any rate, do read the entire study.

Given the well documented tendency of both men and women to respond to survey questions in socially desirable ways, I've always viewed studies that don't control for self reporting bias with a certain amount of skepticism. When the author herself claims that her purpose is to force the Nanny State to "compensate" people for cleaning their own houses and caring for their own children, my BS meter goes off big-time. This was a loony idea when feminists first suggested it, and I'm not any more inclined to support it when its suggested by a purported anti-feminist.

The state has no duty to compensate anyone - male or female - for supporting their own families. To the extent that any man or women provides value to third parties, it makes sense for those third parties to compensate these workers. That condition is not satisfied when private citizens - be they male or female - do housework for themselves, shop for groceries, or bathe Junior.

I suppose we can all count it as a Great Leap Forward that these days, Dad is just as stressed as Mom. Everyone's a victim these days.

Oops! Nearly forgot - thanks to FuzzyB for the Telegraph link.

Posted by Cassandra at 08:39 AM | Comments (20) | TrackBack

Dept. of Overcoming Confirmation Bias

I've been meaning to link this excellent post by neo-neocon:

... the entire demographic “unmarried women,” ... seems absurd to me. It’s a term used by various research groups in studies, but it describes a conglomeration of women so disparate as to be virtually meaningless as a unit.

Think about it—”unmarried women” consists of women who have never been married (mostly younger ones, who will probably become married in the not-too-distant future), divorced women (many of whom will remarry, sometimes briefly and sometimes long-term), women with children and without, and widows (mostly older, most of whom will never remarry). What do these women have in common, besides being women, and besides being at least temporarily single?

As for unmarried women voting for Obama—whatever their reasons—some of this can be explained by the fact that they are predominantly young.

I also commend to you the linked study on why women file for divorce at the end of her post.

I do research for a living and there are two things I've learned over the years:

1. People love simplistic answers, especially if they happen to affirm what they already believe.

2. It's extremely hard to control for all - or even most - factors that influence outcomes. Many people dispense with this requirement by simply pretending they don't exist. That's not a strategy for success unless the purpose of your "study" is to confirm a pre-existing bias.

There's an old saying that goes something like, "Never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity". When surfing the Intertubes, I often think to myself that this old maxim ought to have a corollary:

Never attribute to a single, poorly defined factor what could just as well be attributed to numerous other factors you haven't controlled for (or even considered). That ought to go double for anyone who just found a handy study that "conclusively proves" them right.

I'm not holding my breath.

Posted by Cassandra at 08:27 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

Divorce Insurance

The perfect wedding gift for the PoMo groom who has everything:

Here’s a new option for those worried they’ll end up on the wrong side of the statistics that show so many marriages ending over time: divorce insurance.

SafeGuard Guaranty Corp., an insurance start-up based in North Carolina, recently released what it’s billing as the first world’s first divorce insurance product. Here’s how its WedLock product works.

The casualty insurance is designed to provide financial assistance
in the form of cash to cover the costs of a divorce, such as legal proceedings or setting up a new apartment or house. It is sold in “units of protection.” Each unit costs $15.99 per month and provides $1,250 in coverage. So, if you bought 10 units, your initial coverage would be $12,500 and you’d be paying $15.99 per month for each of those units. In addition, every year, the company adds $250 in coverage for each unit.

Then, if you get divorced and your policy has matured (see below for the maturation rules), you would send WedLock proof of your divorce. In return, you’d receive a lump sum of cash equivalent to the amount of coverage you had purchased.

So how does the company prevent people who know they are going to get a divorce from signing up? To prevent that kind of adverse selection, the policies don’t mature until 48 months after their effective date (though people can purchase additional riders to reduce that maturity period to 36 months and to get their premiums back if they happen to divorce before the policy matures).

And what about other possible selection problems related to people with volatile relationships or a family history of divorce purchasing policies in large numbers? John A. Logan, chief executive officer of SafeGuard Guaranty, said the company has performed risk assessment and actuarial studies with this in mind. He notes that even in the worst case scenario, not all of those divorces would happen at once.

Interesting that the article mentions the adverse selection problem but says nothing about moral hazard:

Because insurance changes the costs of misfortune, and because people's choices depend on costs and benefits, insurance should change people's behavior. They should make less effort to avoid misfortune, and this change in behavior is called moral hazard. For example, if an accident costs a person $1000 but insurance pays $900, the insured person has less incentive to avoid the accident. If the accident costs the person $1000 but pays $2000, the person not only has no incentive to avoid the accident but may have an incentive to seek it out.

Sometimes moral hazard is dramatic. Fire insurance encourages arson, automobile insurance encourages accidents, and disability insurance encourages dismemberment. In a story in its December 23, 1974 issue, The Wall Street Journal reported this bizarre instance of moral hazard:

"[T]here is the macabre case of "Nub City," a small Florida town that insurance investigators decline to identify by its real name because of continuing disputes over claims. Over 50 people in the town have suffered 'accidents' involving the loss of various organs and appendages, and claims of up to $300,000 have been paid out by insurers. Their investigators are positive the maimings are self-inflicted; many witnesses to the 'accidents' are prior claimants or relatives of the victims, and one investigator notes that 'somehow they always shoot off parts they seem to need least.'"

The problem of moral hazard also affects government programs that insure people against misfortune. A variety of programs help people who suffer the misfortune of poverty. Aid to dependent children helps people who suffer the misfortune of having children to raise that they cannot financially support. Unemployment compensation pays people who suffer the misfortune of losing their jobs. Food stamps and public housing help the poor. Yet all these programs also suffer from problems of moral hazard. They increase children born out of wedlock, unemployment, and poverty.

Moral hazard is the result of maximizing behavior. A person weighs the costs and benefits of an action, and when benefits exceed costs, he takes the action. This does not mean that if a person has a building insured for $50,000 but only has a market value of $30,000, the owner will necessarily commit arson. There may be costs of violating one's moral code and of getting caught and convicted for arson. But some people put into this situation will find a way to torch the building because they do not find the cost of violating a moral code very high and they consider the chances of being caught small, and other people will be less careful about avoiding fires. Moral hazard does not require that people intentionally cause the misfortune. If they simply take fewer measures to prevent misfortune, the same outcome occurs.

Now here's the 64,000 dollar question. The everything-we-don't-like-is-misandry crowd love to go on and on about how no fault divorce has increased the divorce rate. It's an attractive theory (and one I was inclined to believe myself before I actually looked at the actual data on marriage and divorce rates over time).

The following chart shows normalized marriage and divorce rates from 1860 on:

Well known cautions about correlation not proving causation notwithstanding, the advent of unilateral divorce grounds (irreconcileable differences, not no fault) in the late 1960s appears to coincide with steep increases in both overall and new divorces per 1000 people. So if we were inclined to think correlation proved causation, it would appear that it was irreconcilable difference that drove divorce rates through the roof and not no fault. No fault, though popularly supposed to have increased the divorce rate, was available in only a few states in 1977 and didn't become widely available until 1983 - long after divorce rates began to rise steeply.

What's interesting to note is that the steepest increase in divorces occurs before the advent of no fault. The increase begins about 1958 and peaks about 20 years later in 1979. After no fault became widely available, both new and overall divorce rates actually declined. The data don't even show the correlation that is so often (and wrongly) used to imply causation.

Note also the peak in the marriage and divorce rates roughly corresponding to WWI and Vietnam.

I can't help wondering whether differences in the composition of marriage cohorts (age at first marriage and other demographic factors) wouldn't better explain divorce rates? As the following chart shows, the proportion of first marriages that fail during the first 25 years rose steadily from 1950 through 1979 but has fallen for couples married for the first time after 1980:

This study provides some evidence that changing demographics may explain both the increase in divorce rates from 1958-1979 and the decrease in both marriages and divorces thereafter:

First, the proportion married at each age has been surprisingly stable over more than a century; the pattern in 1980, for instance, is remarkably similar to that in 1880. Second, consistent with our earlier analysis, the 1960s were unusual, reflecting not only more marriage, but earlier marriage. Third, the data for 2000 suggest a very different pattern, with marriage less prevalent among young adults, but more prevalent among those at older ages. This trend toward rising age at first marriage represents both a return to, and a departure from, earlier patterns. The return to earlier patterns is the later age at which men first marry; in 1890, the median age at which men first married was 26, declining to 23 by the mid-1950s, and then returning to 27 in 2004.

Finally (and most inconveniently for those who believe that women's lib is destroying marriage), it turns out that the proportion of college educated women who marry has been rising for decades and that such women are less likely to divorce:

Historically, women with more education have been the least likely to marry and have children, but this marriage gap has eroded as marriage and remarriage rates for women with a college degree relative to those with less education have risen.

In fact, college-educated women now marry later, have fewer children, are less likely to view marriage as "financial security," are happier in their marriages and are the least likely to divorce.

... college-educated women are the only group of women whose marriage rates in the 21st century are higher than they were at any point in the 1950s.

Sometimes, facts are inconvenient things. I used to believe that earlier marriages (at least for women) would foster lower divorce rates. I also used to believe that no fault divorce was largely responsible for the high rates of divorce we see these days. But although those beliefs were emotionally satisfying to me (since they validated my own life experience and values), they don't appear to be supported by the factual evidence on historical marriage and divorce rates.

For men who believe marriage presents an unacceptably large financial risk, divorce insurance may be the answer to their prayers. Statistically speaking, however, the best insurance against divorce for men may well be to marry later in life and choose a woman with a college education.

Can't you just hear the heads exploding?

Posted by Cassandra at 06:34 AM | Comments (30) | TrackBack

August 05, 2010

Scientists Finally Prove A Man Grim Right....

... sort of:

According to research, women buy sexier clothes when they are ovulating in a bid to outdo their love rivals.

Scientists claim that they are driven by an unconscious desire to impress at the time they are most likely to conceive.

Perhaps surprisingly, though, they are not doing it for the benefit of men – but to intimidate other women.

Kristina Durante, of the University of Minnesota, said: ‘The desire for women at peak fertility to unconsciously choose products that enhance appearance is driven by a desire to outdo attractive rival women.

‘If you look more desirable than your competition, you are more likely to stand out.’ The study, to be published in the Journal of Consumer Research, reveals that consumer choices can be driven by hormonal factors.

In way, a study that concludes that women's fashion/grooming choices are highly influenced by the level of perceived competition from other women could be interpreted as evidence that women dress for other women.

The pedant in me, though, has to ask: who are these ovulating women really dressing for? Are they dressing to impress other women? Or are they dressing to impress men, but in deciding what will most best impress men, first assessing what they're competing against?

Discuss this important social question amongst yourselves.

Posted by Cassandra at 07:57 AM | Comments (27) | TrackBack

August 04, 2010

Blessed Relief for the Oink Cadre

Gentlemen, the gods of the Intertubes have heard your piteous cries of anguish.

The next time the Little Woman asks [batting eyelashes innocently], "Does this dress make my butt look big?", send her here.

Via David Foster

Posted by Cassandra at 08:02 AM | Comments (12) | TrackBack

August 02, 2010

Inflammatory Debate Topic of the Day

Inspired by an offline conversation I've been having by email: how desirable is a woman's virginity to a potential husband?

Religious convictions aside, I've never understood the emphasis on women going to the altar in a state of untouched innocence. I hear men raise the issue all the time, but mysteriously the exact same religious considerations they use to argue that women ought to be virgins when they marry are mysteriously suspended when it comes to the male half of the human race. I have no particular issue with believing that it's better to wait to have sex until you're married. It's just that no one has ever explained to me why premarital sex is sinful for women but natural and good for men.

You've got to love the moral relativism. The phrase, "How conveeeeeeeeeeeenient" comes to mind.

Likewise, I've also never been convinced that premarital sexual experience is - in and of itself - a net positive and I find the argument that virgins "don't know what they're getting into" particularly unpersuasive.

No one knows what they're getting into when they marry because dating and living together aren't the same as marriage. All of which makes it that much more important to get to know the person you are marrying before you take that big leap.

Discuss amongst yourselves.

Posted by Cassandra at 01:15 PM | Comments (80) | TrackBack

The Lure of the Simplistic Answer

When confounded by life's great mysteries, we yearn for a simple, one size fits all explanation.

While there's certainly nothing wrong with discussing the general characteristics of men vs. women in general, I'm becoming increasingly annoyed by the "all men" and "all women" school of unthinking gender stereotypes. I've never met "all men" or "all women". Have you?

On the other hand, I have known many men who differ a great deal in their likes and dislikes, their character and integrity, their self control and self awareness for others. Which makes me appreciate Attila's comment even more:

Guys like different things. They’re almost . . . . almost like individuals.

Which reminds me of something I once saw in a movie:

The thing is, you cannot judge a race. Any man who judges by the group is a pea-wit. You take men one at a time.

Women, too.

Posted by Cassandra at 08:16 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

July 15, 2010

Apparently, I Am Schizophrenic...

... or maybe I'm just "protean". I like the sound of that much better. It has a ring of infectiously pretentious inscrutability about it that's hard to resist. Via Retriever, I ran across alittle toy that purports to tell you which incredibly famous author your writing most resembles. I pasted in 8-10 different snippets from various posts and got a different result every time.

Ernest Hemingway (!)
Stephen King
Arthur C. Clarke
H.P. Lovecraft
I forgot to write the others down but I'd never heard of them anyway.

Only got the same result once - a writer I'd never heard of, either:

Not sure what it means that I got so many different results, or that I supposedly write like a slew of male authors I haven't read much, and who don't write much like each other. Perhaps I'm secretly a man trapped in a woman's body (which is odd because I've always felt more like a woman trapped in a woman's body). Or perhaps I just have multiple personalities.

Hopefully it's just the algorithm. Anyway, enjoy. This, also. I'm pretty sure I've posted that one before, but it seemed to fit the general theme and I thought some of you might have fun with it.

Posted by Cassandra at 02:06 PM | Comments (22) | TrackBack

July 14, 2010

Must Read Essay

Here.

I'm not going to even attempt to excerpt it because it deserves to be read in its entirety and anything I might say would only detract from it.

A truly fine piece of writing, whether or not you agree with the premise. I do, unequivocally, but I would recommend it even if I did not agree with the writer.

Posted by Cassandra at 10:33 AM | Comments (41) | TrackBack

July 13, 2010

Roissy vs. McArdle

I submit to you Roissy in DC in all of his majesty:

The cock has no interest in your feeble hate. It doesn’t believe in synthesis, or syllogism, or in any absolute. What does it believe in? Pussy. And whatever it takes to get it. It’s self-evident.

...in what warped fembot universe is successfully attracting women so that they have sex with you a sign of powerlessness? Is McArdle unaware of men’s ultimate goal? Hint: insert penis into vagina.

And here I have always respected men for their brains and self discipline. What a shame to learn I was wrong. I now consider myself to be "schooled" by someone who knows.

Posted by Cassandra at 07:17 PM | Comments (79) | TrackBack

July 08, 2010

Navy: Men Have "Duty" To Protect Women From Themselves? Really?

This is so incandescently idiotic - on so many levels - that I don't even know what to say about it. Sometimes the stupid is just overpowering:

The U.S. Navy wants commanders to "feel very uncomfortable" about sexual assaults, happening at a rate of more than one a day, military officials said.

"My goal is to make every single commander that has a sexual assault occur at their command feel very uncomfortable and wonder, 'Why is this happening in my command?'" Vice Chief of Naval Operations Jonathan Greenert said in a speech in San Diego.

Gee, I don't know. Perhaps these things happen because the men and women in your command have what is euphemistically termed a "casual attitude towards sex"?

Most sexual abuse cases at the Naval Academy are not rapes, but personal encounters that have turned sour.

Generally, documents show that three factors play a role:

Alcohol abuse.

Broken relationships.

One-night stands.

In examining roughly 3,000 pages of documents obtained by The Capital under the Freedom of Information Act, it became clear that some midshipmen - male and female - can be careless about themselves, their careers and with each other. It also seems apparent that many of these young men and women - perhaps like their counterparts nationwide - have a casual attitude toward sex.

When it comes time to assign blame for misconduct, however, the male is nearly always the one that gets kicked out of the Naval Academy during the time frame examined, according to the documents.

Women cannot have it both ways here: either they are equally capable and intelligent (and therefore equally able to obey military regulations) or they are fragile combat flowers who must be followed around 24/7 by their employers on the off chance that they may voluntarily choose to render themselves helpless:

Assault victims are mostly women, ages 20 to 24, in the lowest four ranks of service, the Navy said. Attacks typically occur on weekends, with alcohol driving most of them.

"If you see a young lady from your ship, and she's at a bar doing Jell-O shooters, and you understand that it looks like her judgment is impaired, you have an obligation to her to step in and in a polite way and a nice way and a non-threatening way say, 'Hey, we've got early duty tomorrow,'" Jill Loftus, director of the Navy's Sexual Assault Prevention and Response office, said at a Navy "bystander intervention" seminar in San Diego, a pilot program also done in Virginia and Hawaii.

"Not only are you protecting the sailor who might be a victim, you are also protecting someone who might be a perpetrator who's using bad judgment," The San Diego Union-Tribune quoted Loftus as saying.

This type of arrant nonsense is what happens when faux diversity and politically correct doublespeak supercede the mission. If real rape is going on, commanders should be more than just "uncomfortable". Real rape isn't "bad judgment" - it's a crime. But if, in addition to being held to a stricter standard of behavior, military men are now expected to protect off duty servicewomen from their own fecklessness and irresponsibility, shouldn't men be paid more than women of the same rank?

Equal pay for equal work, I always say. I can hear Jane Harmon's head exploding already.

Posted by Cassandra at 08:07 AM | Comments (201) | TrackBack

July 07, 2010

The Pursuit of Happiness

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is strong and secure.

- Kahlil Gibran, On Children

Tony Woodlief is thinking about happiness:

Any parent will tell you children are difficult, and they wear you out, and they likely will just break your heart in the end. And who knows -- maybe when we believe we are feeling deep joy from parenthood (usually over a glass of wine, after all the little stinkers are finally in bed), we are simply sentimentalizing the whole ordeal to keep ourselves from rooting out our unused passports from the sock drawer and dashing off to Europe, never to be heard from again. Or perhaps we just feel too guilty to admit that, while we couldn't bear losing them now that we have them, we very well could have been delightfully satisfied had we never met them.

And here's where I wonder if we ought to re-examine our commitment to happiness. It seems to me that there's possibly some merit -- if we persevere and have the sense to learn from it -- in the other-orientation that is (good) parenting. It's fine to go through life happy, in other words, but I suspect we also want to go through life without becoming big fat self-absorbed jackasses. Children really help in that regard.

I am always a bit bemused by these kinds of discussions. Not so much because I disagree with Ms. McArdle in any meaningful way, but because her conclusions seem so right, so obvious that I'm surprised there is any debate at all over whether intelligent people "ought" to have children? Can't smart folks just rely on someone else to do the dirty work of perpetuating the species? Weighted against the joys of unlimited choice and mass consumerism how can the mess, inconvenience, and momentary chaos of parenting justify so trivial a goal as the survival of our present way of life?

Let the next generation take care of themselves. We've got ours.

However heartening I may find Ms. McArdle's good sense, discussions like this only strengthen my view that the evolving social compact - with the nearly universal affluence and security it makes possible despite our best efforts - may be the ultimate form of moral hazard. Our great grandparents wouldn't recognize today's world. It is, to a degree unprecedented in human history, nearly worry free (if by worry one means the fear of death, extreme poverty, starvation). Ours is a world in which technology, global commerce, and the rule of law have replaced natural scarcity with artificial abundance. Gone are the Great Famines that plagued mankind for centuries. Mass starvation has given way to the "food crisis". For competition and natural selection we have substituted mandated cooperation and the state sponsored safety net:

Through an array of birth-to-death social services that are either free of charge or subsidized according one's income, the state redistributes income widely. There is no reason for anyone in the Netherlands to be without a suitable home, to cut short his or her education anytime before senility or even to give any thought to feeding and clothing one's children. The Dutch have decided that a good society is a compassionate society, and so people should provide for one another's dignity and basic quality of life ... but only through the state. People needn't actually have anything to do with one another directly.

As we get better at insulating ourselves from the predictable results of our own freely made decisions, it is perhaps not surprising that even tragedy has been defined down to the level of an unfortunate lifestyle choice. For the vast majority of Americans the worst case is no longer starvation, disgrace and a lifetime of penury but the heartbreak of being asked to repay an adjustable rate mortgage on terms agreed to in advance. The paradoxical consequences of our national war on cause and effect are encapsulated in a nifty little theory called the Peltzman Effect:

It seems that the appearance of removing the risk, even if it’s only marginally safer makes people behave disproportionately to the added benefit of the safety net. The net effect seems to be that people feel even more detached from the consequences of their decisions. The safety nets, the ropes, and the ABS brakes may actually encourage more risk taking and be less safe.

As it turns out, human beings are a lot better at evaluating small risks than taking precautions against big ones. In blissful denial of this fact, our government appears to be engaged in the process of institutionalizing systemic risk.

There is something deeply wrong with a world in which academic theories have replaced accumulated experience to the extent that we seriously wonder whether we have any duty to future generations? The reality fairy seems to have gone missing, leaving us to debate eternal questions in a consequence free zone; a moral vacuum in which utility is defined as "what pleases me now". But what do I know? I lived my life exactly backwards so undoubtedly my priorities are all wrong.

It would be easy to see my attitude towards parenting as some sort of post hoc rationalization for having squandered every opportunity I was ever given. I was raised in an upper middle class household, graduated from an expensive and well regarded private school and gained admission to an Ivy League school I attended for less than a year before dropping out and eventually marrying the boy who invited me to my high school Senior Prom.

By 23 - an age at which most young women of my class were working at white collar jobs and dating handsome young men with "potential" - I had a high school education, two small boys, barely enough money to scrape along from paycheck to paycheck and a brand new mortgage at 13% interest. In theory at least, my life should have felt much like this:

There was a day a few weeks ago when I found my 2½-year-old son sitting on our building doorstep, waiting for me to come home. He spotted me as I was rounding the corner, and the scene that followed was one of inexpressible loveliness, right out of the movie I’d played to myself before actually having a child, with him popping out of his babysitter’s arms and barreling down the street to greet me. This happy moment, though, was about to be cut short, and in retrospect felt more like a tranquil lull in a slasher film. When I opened our apartment door, I discovered that my son had broken part of the wooden parking garage I’d spent about an hour assembling that morning. This wouldn’t have been a problem per se, except that as I attempted to fix it, he grew impatient and began throwing its various parts at the walls, with one plank very narrowly missing my eye. I recited the rules of the house (no throwing, no hitting). He picked up another large wooden plank. I ducked. He reached for the screwdriver. The scene ended with a time-out in his crib.

As I shuffled back to the living room, I thought of something a friend once said about the Children’s Museum of Manhattan—“a nice place, but what it really needs is a bar”—and rued how, at that moment, the same thing could be said of my apartment. Two hundred and 40 seconds earlier, I’d been in a state of pair-bonded bliss; now I was guided by nerves, trawling the cabinets for alcohol.

The difference between my experience and the author's is a simple one: I couldn't afford a babysitter. Ever. Grown up time was an act of will; a function of regular schedules and 6:30 bedtimes, a living room (complete with hand me down silk damask Chippendale sofa) that my boys were only allowed into on special occasions and a steely eyed determination to give my marriage top priority and relegate my small children to a loving second place in my life.

That's not to say that I didn't spend the lion's share of my time changing diapers, reading stories, finger painting and wiping little noses. Like every other stay at home mother I knew, my days were filled with escaped gerbils and other forms of barely controlled mayhem. Remembering my dating days, I sometimes longed to smell jasmine and honeysuckle instead of freshly cut grass and cherry Koolaid.

But although I sometimes felt restless and often felt exasperated and exhausted, I don't ever remember being unhappy. I also don't recall feeling as out of control as parents of small children seem today:

“I’m going to count to three.”

It’s a weekday evening, and the mother in this videotape, a trim brunette with her hair in a bun and glasses propped up on her head, has already worked a full day and made dinner. Now she is approaching her 8-year-old son, the oldest of two, who’s seated at the computer in the den, absorbed in a movie. At issue is his homework, which he still hasn’t done.

“One. Two …”

This clip is from a study conducted by UCLA’s Center on Everyday Lives of Families, which earned a front-page story in the Sunday Times this May and generated plenty of discussion among parents. In it, researchers collected 1,540 hours of footage of 32 middle-class, dual-earner families with at least two children, all of them going about their regular business in their Los Angeles homes. The intention of this study was in no way to make the case that parents were unhappy. But one of the postdoctoral fellows who worked on it, himself a father of two, nevertheless described the video data to the Times as “the very purest form of birth control ever devised. Ever.”

“I have to get it to the part and then pause it,” says the boy.

“No,” says his mother. “You do that after you do your homework.”

Tamar Kremer-Sadlik, the director of research in this study, has watched this scene many times. The reason she believes it’s so powerful is because it shows how painfully parents experience the pressure of making their children do their schoolwork. They seem to feel this pressure even more acutely than their children feel it themselves.

The boy starts to shout. “It’s not going to take that long!”

His mother stops the movie. “I’m telling you no,” she says. “You’re not hearing me. I will not let you watch this now.”

He starts up the movie again.

“No,” she repeats, her voice rising. She places her hand firmly under her son’s arm and starts to yank. “I will not have this— ”

I don't think I was three sentences into that vignette before I thought, "For Pete's sake, you're the parent. You're supposed to be in charge."

"Turn the *&^% computer off!".

For some reason I found myself thinking of a 20th century sociologist named Emile Durkheim. Durkheim's work focused on the relationships between individuals, culture and society: the thousand ties that bind us together and shape both our inner lives and our responses to external events. The modern world is preoccupied with individual happiness and identity. We're taught that the path to self fulfillment lies in avoiding the confining traps of other people's expectations, but Durkheim's genius was his ability to show how much our individual happiness depends on our connections to those around us. The very things we're told are antithetical to individual happiness - overcoming hardship, duty, responsibility, community, commitment, the confining presence of societal norms and expectations - turn out to be be the things we need to feel fully alive.

All these things - the things that matter - are why we have children. Children are both a repayment on the debt we owe our parents and an investment in the future. They bind and connect us to the past as they begin to shape a tomorrow none of us will live to see. Children are - quite simply - the infrastructure of civilization and no civilization of any worth can continue to exist if the current generation fails to build upon the contributions of their ancestors. Why would we ever expect otherwise?

The seductive lure of aggressive individualism ignores one of the most basic of human desires: the need to belong to something larger than ourselves. This is something religion used to provide but faith has been replaced by an oddly disconnected form of humanism that seems to place the seat of happiness firmly in the human belly button.

Over the past year I've been organizing and scanning old family photos. It began with our own collection - over 30 years and several generations. I've watched our children grow up, get married, have children of their own. My parents' and in laws' hair has slowly turned from sable to silver. Recently I began scanning boxes of slides from my parents' basement.

My childhood, and my brother's. Our wedding back in 1979. Ancient history.

And as the parade of faces has slowly passed in review I've been reminded of the thousand connections: memories, the ghost of my grandfather in the faces of my father, eldest son' and now grandson. The echoes of my mother in the way I brought up my own two boys.

My pesky little brother's elfin grin in my niece and nephew.

And then there's the photo I like best so far: a little girl practicing her mothering skills.

There are so many things that little girl could have been: a lawyer, a college professor, a cop, a doctor, a writer. Unlike generations of women before her, she had choices.

Many of them were sacrificed on the altar of marriage and motherhood. The feminism I grew up with would consider my life to have been wasted - a sad tale of unused potential and outdated, stifling gender roles. But when I look back on my life, any regrets I feel will be because I spent too little rather than too much time with the people I love most. They - and not the lofty prizes I was urged to strive for during my youth - have brought me the deepest contentment, the fullest sense of pride, the most lasting joy.

In a few weeks I'll be going to the beach. The house will be full of parents, grandparents, great grandparents, brothers and sisters in law, nieces, nephews, sons, daughters, wives, husbands, grandchildren and no doubt crying babies. I'm sure it will be too crowded and too noisy and not terribly relaxing. We'll probably get on each other's nerves a lot.

There in one little house will be my life and my life's work. My family.

I can't wait.

Posted by Cassandra at 07:14 AM | Comments (22) | TrackBack

July 01, 2010

Women, II

It's got to be rough being a man in a world where women are either manipulating you or condescending to you (13th paragraph, peoples).

I blame feminism and an uncaring, gyno-normative societal construct.

Posted by Cassandra at 10:41 AM | Comments (47) | TrackBack

June 28, 2010

Daft Post Feminist Hand Wringing Alert

"The mind is a terrible thing."

- John Milton

Apparently, in addition to all our other troubles America is now suffering from sexual malaise.

I read it in the NY Times so of course it must be true. The bright side of all this latest crisis is that it offers the ChangeMeister in Chief a social problem worthy of his prodigious community organizing talents. Just think! If we all join hands we can solve the burning heartache of female sexual disinterest - in our lifetimes, no less!

WILL women soon have a Viagra of their own? Although a Food and Drug Administration advisory panel recently rejected an application to market the drug flibanserin [Ed. note: ?!?] in the United States for women with low libido, it endorsed the potential benefits and urged further research. Several pharmaceutical companies are reported to be well along in the search for such a drug.

The implication is that a new pill, despite its unforeseen side effects, is necessary to cure the sexual malaise that appears to have sunk over the country. But to what extent do these complaints about sexual apathy reflect a medical reality, and how much do they actually emanate from the anxious, overachieving, white upper middle class?

In the 1950s, female “frigidity” was attributed to social conformism and religious puritanism. But since the sexual revolution of the 1960s, American society has become increasingly secular, with a media environment drenched in sex.

For one brief, shining moment before Paglia plunged headfirst into the fever swamp of highly regrettable historical, academic and pop culture allusions I cherished the forlorn hope that something sensible was about to be written on the topic of sex. Then I remembered that I was reading the Times, where "How can I get my baby to eat/my toddler to mind/my husband to pick up his socks?" articles regularly make the Most Read list.

There is a vaguely forehead-shaped mark on the wall of my office that owes its existence to this type of journalistic fare.

Why are we worrying about the sex lives of affluent, educated, upper middle class white folks? In a world where Reuters makes money selling crotch shots of underaged girls, I'm having a hard time ginning up sympathy for the tragically limited sexual options of the New Age Male.

And in a world where women have more - and more varied - choices than at any time in history I can think of, I'm likewise blissfully unconcerned about the tragically limited sex lives of modern women.

Freedom is problematic. Given an expanded range of choices, people don't always make smart decisions. They freely make bad bargains and then freely whine when the the prize at the bottom of the Cracker Jack box doesn't meet their expectations. But if there's one thing they hate worse than being held responsible for their own decisions, it's being told what to do. Because that's judgmental, and the New Age ego wilts at the faintest whiff of a value judgment whether it be sartorial or sexual.

With or without the Times, people who stop wanting or having sex will eventually be replaced by people who never stopped wanting or having it. Maybe if we put away the egg timers?

There's a lot to be said for not over complicating life.

Posted by Cassandra at 07:10 AM | Comments (17) | TrackBack

June 16, 2010

Dads Matter

Science casts doubt on the conventional wisdom:

Reporting in the current issue of the journal Animal Behaviour, Dr. Fischer and her co-workers describe how male Barbary macaques use infants as “costly social tools” for the express purpose of bonding with other males and strengthening their social clout. Want to befriend the local potentate? Bring a baby. Need to reinforce an existing male-male alliance, or repair a frayed one? Don’t forget the baby.

It doesn’t matter if the infant is yours or not. Just so long as it has the downy black fur and wrinkly pinkish face that adult male macaques find impossible to resist. “They will hold up the infant like a holy thing, nuzzling it, chattering their teeth,” Dr. Fischer said. “It can be a bit bewildering to see.”

Just in time for Father’s Day come this and other recent studies that reveal surprising, off-road or vaguely unsettling cases of Males Behaving Dadly — attending to the young with an avidity and particularity long thought to be the province of the mother.

...In 90 percent of mammalian species, promiscuity is common and paternity uncertain; females gestate the young internally and then provision them with breast milk, and males rarely have any evolutionary incentive to play Ward Cleaver. Yet in that remaining 10 percent, the daddy decile, we find most of the world’s primates.

Imagine that. More grist for the mill:

While adoption is often the center of controversy, it turns out that sperm donation raises a host of different but equally complex—and sometimes troubling—issues. Two-thirds of adult donor offspring agree with the statement "My sperm donor is half of who I am." Nearly half are disturbed that money was involved in their conception. More than half say that when they see someone who resembles them, they wonder if they are related. About two-thirds affirm the right of donor offspring to know the truth about their origins.

Regardless of socioeconomic status, donor offspring are twice as likely as those raised by biological parents to report problems with the law before age 25. They are more than twice as likely to report having struggled with substance abuse. And they are about 1.5 times as likely to report depression or other mental health problems.

As a group, the donor offspring in our study are suffering more than those who were adopted: hurting more, feeling more confused, and feeling more isolated from their families. (And our study found that the adoptees on average are struggling more than those raised by their biological parents.) The donor offspring are more likely than the adopted to have struggled with addiction and delinquency and, similar to the adopted, a significant number have confronted depression or other mental illness. Nearly half of donor offspring, and more than half of adoptees, agree, "It is better to adopt than to use donated sperm or eggs to have a child."

Posted by Cassandra at 07:22 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

June 10, 2010

Men of VC: You're on the Menu This Week

Aye, chihuahua.

On the Intertubes, tendentiously announcing "The End Of..." this that or the other thing never seems to get old. The only thing more reliable than Barack Obama blaming Bush for everything is the knowledge that some fool is about to tell us that something is deader than a doornail.... usually right before it rises up and bites him or her in the ass.

A few years ago we were told it was "The End of Liberalism". After the 2008 it was "The End of Conservatism". Brace yourselves - this week it's The End of Men:

Earlier this year, women became the majority of the workforce for the first time in U.S. history. Most managers are now women too. And for every two men who get a college degree this year, three women will do the same. For years, women’s progress has been cast as a struggle for equality. But what if equality isn’t the end point? What if modern, postindustrial society is simply better suited to women? A report on the unprecedented role reversal now under way— and its vast cultural consequences...

[yawn]

Why does no one ever tell me these things?

I don't know about Ms. Rosin but I kind of like men. I like working with them, and talking to them. And I kind of like sex with men. Therefore I see little use in a future wherein women have "evolved" to the point where we produce offspring in the manner of paramecia. Though certainly some women seem to have the right personality for it.

It's a weak sort of woman who builds herself up by wallowing in the misfortune of others (temporary or otherwise). Ms. Rosin seems to look forward to the day when she can grind men beneath her heel. She is welcome to try it - I suspect she may get more than she bargained for.

Posted by Cassandra at 11:36 AM | Comments (58) | TrackBack

June 04, 2010

Can This Marriage Survive?

Years ago in some women's mag there used to be a feature that went by that name. I couldn't help thinking of it when I saw this:

Dear Carolyn:

My husband and I have been married 2 1/2 years. We have a good marriage, but this winter, during a casual conversation in front of the TV, I was fishing for a compliment, and he responded that he considers me "an eight" (out of 10) in terms of looks.

I got really upset. He claims that he was trying to make an unsuccessful joke and that he thinks I look great. I have a hard time seeing the humor.

I told him he needs to make it up to me. He's done nothing. It's been over four months, and I'm having a really hard time with this. I've been taking it out on him by being extremely critical lately. I'm not a very secure person to begin with (thus the fishing), though I definitely consider myself attractive. I don't know how I'm supposed to live the rest of my life with someone who could tell me I'm an eight to him, even as a joke.

He's otherwise a great husband, and he's been making an effort to compliment me a lot lately, but I have a hard time believing him.

Dear. Sweet. Jesus. I don't have much of a problem with a young wife fishing for compliments. Sometimes husbands aren't terribly good at the whole affirmation thing, especially when they're first married. But then there's no real reason they should be. It's nice to be appreciated for one's finer qualities (and I've never met a man who didn't very much need to be respected, admired and appreciated by his wife) but in the final analysis people need to take responsibility for their own happiness. Husbands or wives who can't do that for themselves usually find that no amount of affirmation is enough to fill the gaping hole in their character.

I had to laugh a bit - the letter reminded me of an embarrassing incident that occurred about 25 years ago. After reading some daft essay in [wait for it...] a woman's mag, I asked the spousal unit what it was that made him fall in love with me?

The deer in the headlights look flashed briefly across his face, but he manned up and waded into the combat zone, guns a blazin'. He's usually pretty good about humoring my pointless woolgathering. That's one of his best qualities - for a man who suffers fools poorly (if at all) he can be amazingly gracious when I make a complete ass of myself.

After thinking for a moment, he replied, "You are a very kind person."

This, of course, was a compliment. So naturally, being an inexperienced, twenty something female, it crushed my ego flatter than a bug. I had *so* hoped he might say something like, "You are just fascinating to talk to... I could listen to you go on about spit up and changing diapers all day..." or "I love when you tell me what Oscar the Grouch said on Sesame Street when I walk through the door after a grueling day oppressing Lance Corporals", or "It was your sterling personal qualities that first won my heart, Dearest One".

The thing is, though I was pretty disappointed not to be told that it was my scintillating intellect or personality that drew him into orbit around my incandescent radiance, I didn't get mad.

Really. Why are you all laughing?

I did learn an important lesson: we have no control over how other people see us, what they value, or even why they love us. Nor should we. Love is just one of those things that comes unbidden. It doesn't need to make sense.

At any rate, the letter reminded me of something else I read recently:

We all contain Narcissistic tendencies and vulnerabilities. Our current zeitgeist encourages those who do not appreciate the distinction between the surface and the depths of a person. Ava Gardner's comment would be taken as a post-modern insight of great depth were she a celebrity alive today prattling on during some day time talk show.

When young we all tend to be at our most Narcissistic; adolescents, almost by definition, suffer from Narcissistic Personality Disorder, where their moods and self esteem depend on the state of their social life and their standing in the hierarchy at any given moment. Americans have a special proclivity to becoming trapped in extended adolescence. (And apparently we no longer even expect 26 year olds to be able to survive on their own; eg, Obamacare.)

*snort*

Posted by Cassandra at 02:55 PM | Comments (38) | TrackBack

May 29, 2010

The Tyranny of Permissiveness

The so-called new philosophy, ‘permissiveness’ if you like, seen from the right perspective, is only a new puritanism, whereby you’re accused of being repressed or unenlightened if you happen to object to infidelity, promiscuity, and so on. You’re not allowed to mind anything any more, and so you end up denying your instincts again—moderate possessiveness, say, or moral scrupulousness—just as the puritans would have you deny the opposite instincts.

- Martin Amis

Posted by Cassandra at 09:02 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

May 25, 2010

Looks, Men, Women: Blah, Blah, Blah

Amazing article:

Since the Stone Age, he explains, men and women have had different attitudes towards sex. Men can pass on their genes with very little risk – all they need is a fertile woman.

But it's different for women, because pregnancy is incredibly risky. What women need is a man who looks like a good provider – better still, who looks like a proven provider.

So let's think about our Stone Age man and woman. If he's going to settle down, and stop playing the field, he wants one thing above all – a woman who looks fertile. More than that, he wants a woman who looks as if she'll be fertile for many years to come. In other words, he might consider being a provider and protector, as long as his mate looks young, fertile and unblemished.

And now consider his mate. What does she want? Not just a man who is a good hunter and a good fighter, but a man who has a track record as a hunter and fighter. In other words, an older man. And this is not only true of Stone Age couples. In a survey conducted by David Buss, 10,000 people, in 37 cultures, were polled. 'In all 37 cultures included in the international study on choosing a mate,' writes Buss, 'women prefer men who are older than they are.'

Now I'm getting close to understanding why women are so critical of their bodies. Since prehistoric times they have had a hard-wired link to how they look. For tens of thousands of years it was crucial; it could be the difference between having a protector and not having one – between life and death, even.

For men it's not the same at all. The odd wrinkle or grey hair doesn't matter. Hell, it might even be an advantage. As long as you're good at throwing spears and building shelters, you'll be fine.

Twenty thousand years on, what has changed? Well, as David Buss points out, it's unlikely that a Stone Age man would have seen 'hundreds or even dozens of attractive women in that environment'. But now, when he looks at a Playboy centrefold, he is seeing a woman who has competed with thousands of other women for the part – not only that, he's seeing the best picture out of thousands.

And it's not just centrefolds, is it? Just look at newsreaders – mostly, it's a pretty girl and a grey-haired man. Message to men: relax. Message to women: panic! And then there are the girl groups, and the short-skirted girl on Countdown, and even the characters in the Harry Potter films, where the boys are allowed to look like geeks but the girl must look like a model.

As the art critic John Berger wrote: 'Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only the relations of men to women, but the relation of women to themselves.' It's a tough one, isn't it?

Surely guys can understand that, at least. If it happened to us, we'd have a meltdown, too.

The comments are interesting. Two that jumped out at me:

'For men the holy grail is within reach – you just need to get fit...'

That does not explain the steady rise in retail sales of male cosmetic products and, more recently, the rising interest in cosmetic surgery for men.

Gee. Let's think about that one for a moment.

Traditionally we're told that men are hard wired to look at other women and to desire sex with them even when they're in an exclusive relationship. Now some might see a lurking incentive or two in there, especially for women who are hard wired to value monogamous relationships. We are also told that women only care about their appearance because the female of the species is by nature insecure, vain and shallow.

Riiiiiiiiiiiight.

Of course as another commenter points out, there are a few problems with the "Vanity, thy name is woman!" theory:

Women know that men are only interested in women who are thin and attractive. That's why they put so much pressure on themselves to live up to the ideal of female physical perfection presented in beauty magazines. Even if they have a man, they fear losing him if they are no longer attractive.

Men, on the other hand, generally attract women because of their wealth, status and power. Looks have very little to do with it, especially over the age of 25. Thus, straight men do not feel the pressure to conform to a prescribed ideal of male beauty. Ergo, most straight men over the age of 25 are overweight and out of shape - but have no trouble finding women to sleep with / date.

I am a gay man, so my observations come from an entirely disinterested perspective.

Gay men put a lot of pressure on themselves to look good because they know other gay men will not be interested unless they are gym-toned and well-dressed.

So are women who work hard to look good insecure, or do they just understand market forces? The older I get, the more value I see in examining the adaptive value of male and female behaviors that cause conflict and misunderstanding. While I'm not a big fan of rigid stereotypes, is it really reasonable to assume that people do things we don't understand/agree with for no reason (the old, "He/she only acts that way b/c men/women are insane/irrational/overemotional/not reasonable like I am").

What's interesting to me is the area of overlap. Today women are completing school in record numbers. We have careers, in most cases, before we marry and have children. This makes pregnancy a lot less risky because for the first time we can support ourselves and any children we might bear, if need be. That reduces the value of a man's earning potential and forces him, if he wants to win the best quality female (however he defines that), to bring additional qualities to the table.

I'm often bemused when I hear men go on about how women only care about the size of a man's wallet. When I fell in love with my husband, it was tremendously important to me that he have integrity and be dependable because when a woman is pregnant or has small children, she makes herself enormously vulnerable in a way I don't think a lot of men understand. His earning power was not something I even thought of. My assumption was that if he was dependable, he'd keep a roof over our heads if I needed to stay home and care for our children. But I also thought of wage earning as a shared and negotiated responsibility neither of us could unilaterally delegate away.

I still view it that way.

Wouldn't it be funny if we were heading towards a world where men and women will have to compete on the same full range of human qualities (looks, brains, character, sex appeal) rather than two divergent and gender specific sets of standards? Do happily married couples already select their mates this way, or is it more a case of happily married couples having compatible (or at least not conflicting) criteria?

There are some indications that mating preferences are not rigidly hard wired - that men and women evaluate trade offs differently as the range of possible outcomes changes.

How much of what we think we know is biological hard wiring and how much is intelligent adaptation? Is technology encouraging us to make more informed choices or pandering to our worst instincts? Discuss amongst yourselves.

Posted by Cassandra at 08:51 AM | Comments (88) | TrackBack

April 30, 2010

Well Now *There's* a Shocker For You....

Isn't this exactly what happens when a woman has frequent sex with the same man?

Touch causes our bodies to produce a hormone called oxytocin. Not only does touch stimulate production of oxytocin, but oxytocin promotes a desire to touch and be touched: it's a feedback loop that can have wonderful results. Oxytocin makes us feel good about the person who causes the oxytocin to be released, and it causes a bonding between the two persons. Nursing a baby produces oxytocin in both mother and child, and this is a major part of what initially bonds the mother and her baby. Even thinking of someone we love can stimulate this hormone; when women in good marriages were asked to think about their husbands, the level of oxytocin in their blood rose quickly.

There's more. Oxytocin plays a significant role in our sexuality too. Higher levels of oxytocin result in greater sexual receptivity, and because oxytocin increases testosterone production (which is responsible for sex drive in both men and women) sex drive can also increase. Moreover, this hormone does not just create a sexual desire in women, coupled with estrogen it creates a desire to be penetrated (that is, it makes her want intercourse). .. And while oxytocin can move us towards sex, sex increases production of oxytocin... [you can read the less fam-friendly parts yourself]

....The fact that sex increases oxytocin levels can be helpful for women who complain they "never feel like sex." Having sex, even when you don't have a drive to do so, will actually affect you in ways that will result in a greater sex drive. This also explains, at least in part, why many women find that the more sex they have, the more they want, and the less sex they have, the less they want.

The best thing is that it works both ways. A man is never so loving as he is when he's happy in bed. Use it or lose it, folks (said the deployment widow :p).

Posted by Cassandra at 03:04 PM | Comments (30) | TrackBack

April 14, 2010

Men of VC, Take Note: Part Deux

If your vacuuming doesn't impress her, you can pick up some smooth moves from this dude.

Via BOQ

Posted by Cassandra at 03:09 PM | Comments (39) | TrackBack

April 10, 2010

Mystery of the Ages

I found this amusing:

Most popular notions about the male brain are based on studies of men ages 18 to 22 - undergrads subjecting themselves to experiments for beer money or course credit. But a man's brain varies tremendously over his life span, quickly contradicting the image of the single-minded sex addict that circulates in mainstream consciousness.

In all fairness, the biggest proponents of the "that's all we ever think about and we can't control ourselves" meme tend to be ... men. Why do guys talk about themselves that way?

Posted by Cassandra at 07:47 PM | Comments (305) | TrackBack

March 27, 2010

*sigh*

The "Are Men Better Bloggers?" post has provoked some interesting responses. Smitty's is fairly typical, so I'll pick on him (and isn't that just like a woman?). Heh... :)

Given that we’re all looking at a browser, the gender of the author seems tangential at best. Either the post triggers thought, or it does not. WTF chromosomes? And does the typical male blogger ever consider this question?

I found that kind of funny because over the last 6 years, most of the posts I've seen on this topic were written by male bloggers. So I think the answer to that one is fairly clear: yes, men do consider the question. And so do women. But I want to address another refrain I saw repeatedly in the comments: the idea that one shouldn't worry about classifications or about what other people think. That interested me because, tongue firmly in cheek, I thought I'd been fairly clear about my opinion of such distinctions:

All of which has me in a lather. Do I blog more like a man? Or a woman? Am I a Wendy or a Peter Pan? A Scarlett O'Hara or a Melanie Wilkes? Spiderman or the Incredible Hulk? I like Breslin's writing. That's all I've ever cared about when deciding whether or not a blogger is worth my limited time. And I get very annoyed when men tell me I "think like a man".

I don't think like a man. I think like a woman. I *am* a woman. And yes, I understand what they're trying to say. I even understand that telling me I write like a man is supposed to be some sort of compliment. The thing is, though, that it's not really. I'm a woman. I cry when I see cute babies on TV. I cry when my readers hurt my feelings without meaning to. I cried all the way through The Sound of Music the other night.

That doesn't mean that my brain doesn't work or that I'm not interested in plate tectonics, public choice theory or biological determinism.

I don't think that being interested in, or wanting to comment upon, the fact that people do like to classify and compare things amounts to worrying about them. Perceptions are interesting things. I think I used the metaphor of a lens earlier in the comments but a prism works equally well. That's probably why it's used so often in the gender wars. A prism distorts or bends light that passes through it, and when we interpret what others say and do through the prism of our own experiences or outlook the output has little resemblance to what went in on the input side.

I rarely bother to address gender and blogging when it comes up because as Attila points out, the topic never seems to go away. Consequently, I can't think of any startlingly unoriginal insights to stun you all senseless with. I responded this time for two reasons:

1. Breslin's post did a good job of highlighting the "the male way is good, the female way is inferior" meme most of us grew up with. For years when I was growing up this notion was everywhere, usually accompanied by competing choruses who defended the tried-and-truism or attempted to put a steak (pun fully intended) through it's foul heart. Both sides were prone to saying things like, "Men ALWAYS...." or "Women ALWAYS...." or "Society ALWAYS...".

What a load of crap. Men, women, and society don't always do anything. At any given point in time, certain ideas gain what I'd call traction or popular currency. But there is always (there's that word again!) a vocal opposing viewpoint.

Gradually the "man good or superior/woman bad or inferior" fell out of favor and was replaced by an equally ill thought out meme: the "woman innately good or superior/man innately bad or inferior". Like its predecessor, it evoked the same tired cries of "x, y, or z ALWAYS does this...". Lately, it is my perception that at least in the conservative blogosphere, the old "men awesome/women suckitudinous" meme seems to be gaining traction again. I get it. I understand that it represents pushback against some of the excesses of radical feminism. It's just that I've never thought either extreme made any sense in light of a reality that is far more complicated than that.

I'm far more in favor of something like, "Men and women both have their strengths and weaknesses, and both have their uses. As the world changes, it seems more helpful to figure out the best uses for male and female traits than to bitch and moan about how everyone who doesn't happen to think as you do, sucks."

2. A common response to the attempt to classify and compare types of people is that people who don't conveniently fit any particular mold often feel the need to apologize for being atypical. A frequent consequence of the ubiquitous "More men blog and more big bloggers are male. Therefore male bloggers must be superior to female bloggers", or "Why, o why can't female bloggers be more like men???" meme is that female bloggers seem to feel the need to apologize for being the way they are or distance themselves from the notion that they are female. I rather liked Dr. Helen's take:

Hmm, not sure which one I am. I'm a mom but don't blog about kids much, unless they are violent and I want to discuss their psychology. I blog about relationships and misandry, not about misogyny. I like blogging about politics but am not sure I "blog like a man" whatever that means. According to Breslin, blogging like a man has something to do with blogging on current events, heated debates, racy subjects, and avoiding feelings and relationships. I hope/think this blog blends both of these topics. We discuss relationships and feelings, but often in relation to justice, the law or politics. And yes, there are often heated debates, which I enjoy.

The best part of her post was, "I blog about relationships and misandry, but not about misogyny". I liked it because every good blogger has what I'd call a sweet spot. Dr. Helen's is that she is a passionate advocate for men and she's devoted to highlighting instances of misandry. Doing this has earned her a large and faithful following. I'm not a big fan of the notion that failing to discuss or denounce a topic denotes tacit approval of same. She is under no obligation to devote equal time to pointing out misogyny because that's not a topic that interests her.

If I had to name my "sweet spot", I think it would be that I'm interested in placing things into context (historical or societal) and in critical examination of whatever I perceive to be the conventional wisdom or the prevailing sentiment of the day. I suppose that could make me a bit of a contrarian, but contrarianism isn't an end unto itself. What interests me is the notion that we don't see things clearly when we're in the midst of events.

That's why I tend to question whatever I perceive to be the prevailing meme. I think that current events influence the natural ebb and flow of opinion and so I try to examine current conventional wisdom in a larger or different context than that offered by current events. Sometimes that examination takes me someplace I never thought I'd end up.

In summmation, I believe gender does matter because it is part of what makes us who and what we are. I can't set aside my experiences as a woman. They inform - but don't determine - everything I write. I also think there are certain eternal truths that transcend the back and forth tug of every day life. One of these is that men and women need each other. We are - truly - made for one another, and to the extent that we allow our differences to pit us against each other, we are hurting ourselves.

I think that often the whole "men vs. women" thing makes both men and women defensive about our own character traits where we ought to be appreciative of the many ways our differences make life a richer and more wondrous experience. Why not embrace our differences?

Posted by Cassandra at 10:10 AM | Comments (35) | TrackBack

March 26, 2010

Why I Blog Like a Woman

Via Glenn Reynolds, some fascinating observations by Susannah Breslin who asks, "Are Men Better Bloggers Than Women?":

For the most part, I’ve found, women bloggers fall into three categories: “mommybloggers,” “ladybloggers,” and “women who blog like men.” The first category includes those who have made careers out of writing about the perils of raising a family, being married, and getting stuff off the kitchen floor. The second category includes the group of blogs that self-describe as “feminist” and which seem to have decided that blogging about purportedly widespread sexism and instances of misogyny in our pop culture a neo-feminist movement makes (NB: it doesn’t). The third category includes those few women who blog about politics, technology, and other more “male” topics with a scathing wit and piercing gaze that put their male blogger rivals to shame.

What the blogosphere needs is fewer Martha Stewarts and more Danica Patricks, more real debate and less positing women as the victims of a patriarchal society gone bloggy-wild, more men that blog like women and more women who blog like men.

All of which has me in a lather. Do I blog more like a man? Or a woman? Am I a Wendy or a Peter Pan? A Scarlett O'Hara or a Melanie Wilkes? Spiderman or the Incredible Hulk? I like Breslin's writing. That's all I've ever cared about when deciding whether or not a blogger is worth my limited time. And I get very annoyed when men tell me I "think like a man".

I don't think like a man. I think like a woman. I *am* a woman. And yes, I understand what they're trying to say. I even understand that telling me I write like a man is supposed to be some sort of compliment. The thing is, though, that it's not really. I'm a woman. I cry when I see cute babies on TV. I cry when my readers hurt my feelings without meaning to. I cried all the way through The Sound of Music the other night.

That doesn't mean that my brain doesn't work or that I'm not interested in plate tectonics, public choice theory or biological determinism.

And unlike Ms. Breslin I don't regret the sex and relationship posts. I do - often - feel like an outsider when writing about relationships between men and women. I don't understand why it's so hard to see both sides. The anger and the defensiveness my posts so often provoke are physically, viscerally painful to me. They've often caused me to rant and rave to my husband or poor Carrie.

I will never understand why it's OK for men to say certain things but if a woman says exactly the same thing, she's either insecure or controlling. Why the presumption of bad faith? I wish more people would attempt to take a giant step back from their feelings and look at arguments on the merits. That's not an easy thing to do. On more than one occasion it has caused me to write things I'm not entirely comfortable with from a personal perspective. But when I examined the same issue from a variety of angles, dispassion won out.

What does "blogging like a man" mean, anyway? I see a lot of differences between male and female bloggers. For one thing, men seem more competitive. I think they invest a lot more of their ego in their blogs. Since they're more competitive, they tend to be more prolific. Currency is the currency of the blogosphere but it's often inimical to thoughtful writing. Not always though, thank God. There are many bloggers who churn out reams of material and still manage to make sense.

I can remember when I was prolific, but it had nothing to do with being competitive. I wrote a lot because I was passionate about certain subjects and because I enjoyed it. When I quit blogging and created a tiny site no one knew about, I wrote just as much as I did when I had thousands of visits per day. Either way writing, to me, has always been the reward. But I'd be lying if I said the contentiousness of the blogosphere doesn't get to me. It has caused me to quit several times. The thing is, it's not enough to make me back down if a topic is truly important to me.

I don't think I blog like a man at all. I write about whatever I'm interested in at the moment, whether or not it's topical. Whether or not it makes me popular. That's why I'll always be a 3rd tier blogger: I know what I should do if I want lots of traffic but for me, doing those things takes all the fun out of blogging.

Lastly, I think I blog like a woman because in all these years I've never been able to screen people out; to be indifferent to them. My husband has often said to me, "Why do you care so much what so-and-so says? You've never even met these people."

That doesn't matter to me. Behind each comment there will always be a living, breathing person whose life and perspective I can only guess about. In this respect, being online is no different from real life. We may fool ourselves from time to time when technology's insulating effects shield us from sympathy, antipathy, anger, delight.

Fear. Revulsion. Wonder. But to me the most wonderful and the most frightening thing about the Internet is that there are literally millions of real people out there reading blogs like mine. Perhaps even mine.

Does anything we write make a difference? I have no idea. I only know that every now and then I stumble onto things that make me think, make me wonder, make me love, hate, scream, laugh, cry. And so, not knowing if any of this matters or if it's only so much hot air - the vain ramblings of a pretentious and self absorbed soul - I write.

Posted by Cassandra at 02:22 PM | Comments (32) | TrackBack

March 12, 2010

*sigh*

Are these folks out of their minds?

The World Association of Girl Scouts and Girl Guides hosted a no-adults-welcome panel at the United Nations this week where Planned Parenthood was allowed to distribute a brochure entitled "Healthy, Happy and Hot." The event was part of the annual United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) which concludes this week.

Happy, Healthy and Hot The brochure, aimed at young people living with HIV, contains explicit and graphic details on sex, as well as the promotion of casual sex in many forms. The brochure claims, "Many people think sex is just about vaginal or anal intercourse... But, there are lots of different ways to have sex and lots of different types of sex. There is no right or wrong way to have sex. Just have fun, explore and be yourself!" The brochure goes on to encourage young people to "Improve your sex life by getting to know your own body. Play with yourself! Masturbation is a great way to find out more about your body and what you find sexually stimulating. Mix things up by using different kinds of touch from very soft to hard. Talk about or act out your fantasies. Talk dirty to them."

My favorite part: page 8.

Some countries have laws that say people living with HIV must tell their sexual partner(s) about their status before having sex, even if they use condoms or only engage in sexual activity with a low risk of giving HIV to someone else. These laws violate the rights of people living with HIV by forcing them to disclose or face the possibility of criminal charges.

Call me old fashioned, but no one has a "right" to expose a partner to a potentially deadly disease without their knowledge or consent. But then I didn't think a patient's bill of rights included the right to demand sexual services from female health care providers either.

Silly me. No wonder I'm confused.

Posted by Cassandra at 03:22 PM | Comments (24) | TrackBack

Happily Never After

All government —
indeed, every human benefit and enjoyment,
every virtue and every prudent act —
is founded on compromise and barter.

- Edmund Burke

Recently while reading a friend's essay, I found myself pondering the wise words of Edmund Burke, not in their intended sphere, but as applies to men, women, and the holy state of matrimony:

This NSFW "Best Divorce Letter Ever" via the ever-contradictory Gerard, who writes so well at American Digest on more (to me) congenial topics, that one shouldn't get one's knickers in a twist about it.

I have to say, tho, that it left me feeling rather grimy. As all my friends and relatives know, I am the proverbial repressed WASP and proud. The more I read of such points of view (even when just internet froth) the more I appreciate my spouse, and think that it would be better to be celibate or live like a hermit than join the casual sex crowd. I found the letter both funny and appalling. Of course I read on...We are all voyeurs some of the time. It was a bit like reading National Geographic as a child: look at all those naked people, is that what people look like under their clothes?

"Is this how people really think? How awful."

That's a thought I find myself having more and more as I traverse the Internet. But I was bothered by the title of the essay. Since when did it become prissy or prudish to expect people not to behave reprehensibly? Like Retriever I fully realize the letter (along with the one she linked earlier) was meant to be a joke but if so, it's a bitter and barbed one. I've never thought of myself as a prude, but more and more these days those words seem to have become the ne plus ultra of argument enders. No need to acknowledge - much less respond to - the argument being advanced. The speaker can safely be dismissed. After all, he or she is a prude and who pays attention to those people? Their very refusal to acquiesce to your world view makes them - by definition - unreasonable.

But still, I wonder: when did it become unacceptable to have standards? To hold out hope for - to expect - not demand, not compel, but champion what we think is right? Let's face it - we're all adults. Few, if any of us possess the power to force others to our will. So why are we faintly ashamed of the weakly flickering impulse to virtue; as though to walk the walk as confidently as we talk the talk diminishes us in some way? Makes us chumps?

Laughable. Deluded, even. We're like little children afraid of doing something that isn't cool. The other kids might laugh at us.

I have a confession to make. I still cry at weddings. Yes, even at my age. I do so because even in this age of cynicism when the self is elevated over every other consideration, I've seen what can happen when two people willingly harness themselves in service to something larger than themselves. Yes, it's hard sometimes - and frustrating - but when I look at my parents, my in laws, my sons and their wives and my friends' marriages I see a circle of people who are better for having to consider someone other than themselves.

At some point in their lives, they saw a vision and grasped it tightly between their two hands and held on for dear life because that is what you do when you're married. It isn't always easy, nor is it painless. But then most things worth the having aren't easy or painless.

A year or so ago during one of our epic "discussions", my husband said something that really hurt me. Of course that's not why he said it - he didn't mean to hurt me and was taken aback at my reaction. But it did hurt. It hurt in a good way, because I learned I was doing something that bothered him a lot. And if I didn't want him to be unhappy, I'd have to change my behavior in ways I didn't want to.

Most of us, when the narrative of our lives is written, end up playing the starring role. We like feeling good about ourselves, and so somehow when things don't go well there is a tendency to look everywhere but in the mirror for the source of the trouble. What my husband had to say to me, though it made for unpleasant hearing, also made me look long and hard at the glowing self-portrait I'd painted. When I did, my halo looked distinctly dingy. His observation made me feel bad about myself - he spanked my inner child.

But he didn't crush me because human beings are not - or should not be - that emotionally fragile. Yes it hurt a bit, but the hurt prompted a much needed review of my standards. It made me want to change; to become a better person. And it seems to me that having aspirations, wishing to become a better person, is not such a bad thing. It's how great societies are built: as individuals strive to better themselves, they benefit not only themselves but those around them. Self restraint is contagious.

So is its opposite. And that brings me to the subject that has been worrying me of late. I'm not the only one who has noticed. Tigerhawk dubbed it "the man problem". George Will calls it a refusal to grow up:

Current economic hardships have had what is called in constitutional law a "disparate impact": The crisis has not afflicted everyone equally. Although women are a majority of the workforce, perhaps as many as 80 percent of jobs lost were held by men. This injury to men is particularly unfortunate because it may exacerbate, and be exacerbated by, a culture of immaturity among the many young men who are reluctant to grow up.

Increasingly, they are defecting from the meritocracy. Women now receive almost 58 percent of bachelor's degrees. This is why many colleges admit men with qualifications inferior to those of women applicants—which is one reason men have higher dropout rates. The Pew Research Center reports that 28 percent of wives between ages 30 and 44 have more education than their husbands, whereas only 19 percent of husbands in the same age group have more education than their wives. Twenty-three percent of men with some college education earn less than their wives. In law, medical, and doctoral programs, women are majorities or, if trends continue, will be.

In 1956, the median age of men marrying was 22.5. But between 1980 and 2004, the percentage of men reaching age 40 without marrying increased from 6 to 16.5. A recent study found that 55 percent of men 18 to 24 are living in their parents' homes, as are 13 percent of men 25 to 34, compared to 8 percent of women.

Conservatives, mostly, blame feminism. But as I pointed out in the comments over TH's place, the arguments they put forth - men are fragile hothouse flowers; they are discouraged by misandry, the feminization of culture, female centric schools, a perceived "hostile climate" that makes it impossible for men to succeed - are precisely the same arguments conservatives rightly rejected when feminists advanced them Lo! these many years ago. Women were told, in effect, "So what if it's a man's world? If you want to get ahead, suck it up and compete like a man."

Which prompts the question: whatever happened to all this talk about sucking it up and competing like a man now that the shoe appears to be on the other foot? Certainly, the numbers are daunting. But they are no worse for men now than they were for women decades ago. It's just that now that the situations are reversed, what was once sauce for the goose is most definitely NOT sauce for the gander. Some conservatives are even trying to tell us that it doesn't matter whether boys finish school. Unfortunately, it's not just a matter of boys not finishing school (though that's bad enough). The long term educational trends are disturbing:

They are disturbing because high paying manufacturing jobs have given way to white collar jobs and jobs in the service industries and jobs that require technical expertise. It is disturbing because not only are young men opting out of school - they aren't voting either. The percentage of adult men who vote has declined steadily over the past 4 or 5 decades:

In absolute terms that translates to a gap of almost 10 million votes - 10 million fewer men participating in decisions about who will lead this country:

That's not a gender gap. It's a gender schism. Some conservatives and men's rights activists will tell you that the widespread defection of men from the meritocracy is "understandable" because life in an age where men must compete with women is "unfair".

It's too "hard". These are generally the same folks who will tell you that men are stronger than women. And smarter. And harder working. Having raised two sons and lived with a Marine for over three decades, I can tell you that men are not motivated by having excuses made for them, nor by the emasculating bigotry of low expectations.

They are motivated by challenge. And risk. And by older men who will not brook shiftless behavior.

And by women who won't tolerate it either: mothers, wives, girlfriends, sisters. We don't need to berate or belittle our sons, but we do need to encourage them to act like men. What we don't need is conservatives who extol traditional masculine virtues but undermine any attempt to encourage responsibility and accountability.

Quite possibly the worst thing about feminism has been the notion that whatever young women do is right and good - that they need act no better than the basest of their instincts directs them to. Why are we repeating a formula we know doesn't work with our sons? Why are we creating victims instead of survivors? As emotionally satisfying as it is to cry "No Fair!", that's not the answer to what ails young men these days. We all - male or female - have a stake in the survival of our way of life. We don't get to take our balls and go home because losing hurts our feelings. The answer - just as it is in marriage - is not a refusal to participate. We need to help young men stay engaged, encourage them to go after what they want, challenge them to become better than they are today.

Anyone who has ever attended a graduation ceremony at Parris Island knows that men thrive on overcoming obstacles - that they need to believe in something greater than themselves. Our sons need the goad of high expectations, not the treacherous lure of inflated self esteem and self serving excuses.

The question is, do we love them enough to do what is right? Blaming feminism doesn't solve anyone's problems. The world has always been a competitive and unfair place, and men have always risen to the challenge. The truth is that it is far easier to survive and prosper now than it was for our parents and grandparents.

I very much fear it is our own softness that is the problem. The question is, will we accept what we see in the mirror and try to change? Will we take responsibility for our own part in this fiasco before it's too late?

Sometimes looking in the mirror is the hardest thing to do. I hope we'll find the courage to do it anyway.

Posted by Cassandra at 07:54 AM | Comments (42) | TrackBack

So, What Are Your Major Turnoffs?

This is something I wrote about 5 years ago during an extended hiatus from blogging. I brought it back here to VC because it bears on something I'm going to write about later today.

Good Lord how do I find this stuff? Not writing about politics is going to be the death of me. There ought to be a 12-step program for former bloggers trying to kick the habit. I don't have time to read literature (what I thought I'd be doing with all this glorious free time I don't have). My work schedule is just too hectic right now and my brain is completely fried from editing. That leaves my other major recreational interest...

Well I suppose there is alcohol too, but I fail to see what there is to write about there and Hubris seems to have the whole drunk-blogging metier pretty well covered. At any rate, muddled in with an inordinate amount of psycho-babble, this woman is exploring her control issues:

I used to be a "frigid" wife.

I knew even before I got married that I wouldn't be able to keep up the "schedule" of sex my husband and I had established during our courtship, and once I even warned him that it was going to have to slow down. But I think that went in one ear and out the other at supersonic speed, touching nothing in between.

Sure enough, not long after we got married sex became a battleground for us, and we struggled with the problem like two fish flopping around next to each other in the bottom of an open boat: gasping for a natural breath and injuring ourselves with every pointless, ineffectual spasm. [Ed. note: Lovely metaphor there]

To me it seemed simple: he wanted me to be his sexual appliance, a handy-dandy love machine that could be switched on and off at his command. I felt no desire, and I didn't want to "submit" to being handled and penetrated when I wasn't in the mood. If he really loved me, this sex thing, this "merely physical" part of our lives, wouldn't be such a big freakin' deal. And his pissy, furious responses to my refusals only made me more sure that he didn't really love me. He just wanted to use my vagina.

To him it seemed simple, too. If I loved him -- as I consistently claimed -- why didn't I want to make love?

Actually there probably aren't too many women who haven't had those thoughts at one time or another, but "I wouldn't be able to keep up the "schedule" of sex my husband and I had established during our courtship..."? Good nightshirt... did she pencil him in on her DayTimer right next to having her teeth cleaned and the every-other-week bang trimming at Chez Kenneth? *Not* a good sign.

I don't know what scares me more here: that she had a "sexual renaissance" or that she felt the need to blog about it. Did she discuss it with her husband first? How does he feel about having their bedroom difficulties aired over the Internet? Seems a rather hostile way of working out your problems. In all fairness, however, I'm not sure the issues were all on her side:

My husband had a bad habit in the first decade of our marriage of going to some routine business function or some minor get-together by himself, or just stopping for some after-work drinks with the boys, and "losing all track of time." Not only would he not come home until hours later, reeling, he wouldn't even call to tell me where he was.

Naturally, in the fullness of time came the day when, realizing at 11 p.m. that he was out on another of these toots, I literally packed my bag, put my infant daughter in her carrier and picked up the phone to call a cab.

So why didn't I?

Good question. The first decade???? I could see the first year or two - that seems like pretty normal growing pains for a marriage, but ten years? Here we have the classic WWE marital death match, complete with body-slamming and overwrought trashtalking. She doesn't want to "give in" in the boudoir, so he gets her back by being inconsiderate and acting like he doesn't care (like he wouldn't be at home in a heartbeat, if he could just get laid in the first place). While there's nothing wrong with a little power struggle in bed (keeps life interesting) it ought to be in the spirit of play and not dragging all sorts of outside issues in that have no place there. No wonder she didn't feel like having sex - I'd be exhausted.

I realized (somehow, in the flame-edged haze of my fury) that for all my fussing and fuming about this issue, I must have somehow not been able to get my husband to really understand how deadly serious it was to me. He still didn't Get It, and there had to be a reason for that, a reason I had to fathom.

Bingo. (A) He'd never experienced what you were feeling and (B) there were no negative consequences, or at least none he wasn't willing to put up with. Did it ever occur to you to quit nagging and get a babysitter? Or just get a grip on "the flame-edged haze of your fury"? For Christ's sake - got melodrama? He's having a few beers, not axe-murdering your mother. Why not go out yourself, without telling him where you were going or bothering to come home at a reasonable hour? Try that 4 or 5 times and odds are the behavior would have come to a screaming halt. I've always been amazed at the illustrative power of an object lesson, as long as you don't ruin it by belaboring the point. Don't waste time getting mad - adjust your behavior.

But on to the fun part. Oooh! this is where she proceeds to tell men what they can "fix" about themselves so their wives will leap into bed like deranged minks and drive them mad with desire 4 to 5 times a week! I couldn't wait to read this part to see how well it matched my own experience. Women love this kind of daft psycho-garbage: it's why we find ourselves thumbing through mind-numbingly idiotic puff-pieces of the sort found in Cosmo Grrrrl as we're waiting in the doctor's office (Oh the horror!) as Grandma in the next chair casts prun-y looks at us from atop her issue of People! Magazine.

250 Ways to Drive Your Man Shudderingly, Gaspingly, Heart-Stoppingly Crazy in the Sack

Yeah. Fine. Whatever.

15 Things Your Man Secretly Wishes You'd Do To Him

Let me guess... serve him beer and nachos dressed in only stilettos, black stockings and a devilish smile while the Redskins are executing that play action pass? Been there, done that. Next...

Fill his car up with gas next time you borrow it? (more likely)

What a disappointment. When I read her "fix-it" list, I couldn't even penetrate(!) the dense fog of follow-your-bliss, archetypal "you-too-can-be-a-manly-man-if-you-just-check-your-cojones-at-the-door" blather to see what the heck she wanted the poor guy to do. And if I couldn't understand it, no man on the face of the earth stood a chance in Hell of ever figuring it out:

To recover his marriage sexually (and every other way) [Ed. note: Huh??? Oh nevermind.], a Man will:

1) Face facts (obviously we're already working on that)

2) Fix "little things" first

3) Understand the emotional calculus of Love and Power in his relationship

4) Return to the basics of his own character and masculinity

5) Create his own solutions in his own context.

O-kaaaay...

In my experience there are only so many reasons a woman is not going to want to have sex:

1. She doesn't love the man. Hopefully if you're married, that's not an issue.

2. She's exhausted from work or taking care of small children. Solution: get help for her, help out more at home, and get her away from the house. Easy, easy, easy.

3. She doesn't feel sexy anymore. Sometimes women get so used to sealing off parts of themselves, just to get through the day, that they "forget" what it was like to be a real person. Every time I see a woman in one of those denim tent dresses with one of those putrid plaid apples appliqued on the front, I wonder if she has even a single negligee in her closet? The nicest thing my husband ever did for me when the kids were 8 or so was to start buying me nice lingerie. My neighbors in base housing teased me unmercifully - called me "Victoria" because of the parade of Victoria's Secret packages that used to show up on my doorstep at regular intervals. He'd go to the field and I'd get a package with something divine inside, wrapped in a black satin bow, and I knew he was thinking of me.

Honestly, I didn't know what to make of it at first - I felt a bit pressured. "I work so hard all day, I can't do anything I want to do with my life, and at night I'm supposed to transmogrify into something out of Odalisque?" But it grew on me. More importantly, it helped me recover a part of who I was before I got married. I just needed to view it the right way - not as an effort to control me, but as a tribute and a way for me to become a bit more adventurous. Now I buy things for myself!

4. Most importantly, she feels disconnected or doesn't feel loved. I don't think men understand this. It used to amuse me somewhat that one of the things that invariably drove me wild when we were first married was watching my husband run the vacuum. But it was because to me, that was a sign that he recognized how tired I was and was willing to help out. It was a sign of commitment, and women are huge on that. Conversely, men always think women "withhold" sex when they're mad at them, but the truth is that when we don't feel emotionally close to a man, sex isn't much fun for us. It's not punishment, it's truly lack of desire. I've never been a big fan of saying 'no' anyway. How much trouble is it to make love, even if you're not particularly in the mood? Even when the earth doesn't move, it's all good. The least that happens is that it brings you closer - at best it's amazing. I've always thought it rather short-sighted when women are always saying "I have a headache". What woman doesn't like to be held in a man's arms? If they weren't so durned touchy, they might find they'd get more affection and attention, which is generally what they really want.

Despite the fact that it failed to inspire me to "drill... down to [my] deeper personal truths, [my] aquifer" (good God - I didn't even know I had an aquifer), I did snort my coffee when she started going on about men finding their "individual masculine mythos...their personal erotic legend, the story of Manhood Your Way". At some point even the author had a glimpse of the very real possibility that she was spouting a bunch of folkloric bullshit, so it was an entertaining read.

It must be hard (no pun intended) to be a man these days. Everyone keeps telling you how to do it, usually by emasculating yourself and becoming more like a woman, which seems somewhat self defeating. Especially in the bedroom. And the thing is, women like men just the way they are. We just want to feel loved and appreciated.

Now is that so hard? Well, maybe the talking part. But there are compensations.

Posted by Cassandra at 05:16 AM | Comments (48) | TrackBack

March 09, 2010

I'm Going on a Diet...

So *that's* why the spousal unit is generally preceded through the front door by a bottle of wine. Best line in the whole article:

In the current study, women consuming more alcohol ate less, particularly carbohydrates -- a finding seen in other studies. Moreover, it's been shown that women tend to expend more energy after drinking alcohol -- more so than that contained in the alcohol.

Hmmm. Now what on earth could account for that?

Posted by Cassandra at 07:43 AM | Comments (13) | TrackBack

February 03, 2010

Disturbing News of the Day

Kind of gives "Look, but don't touch" a whole new meaning:

Agents for Britain's MI5 intelligence service have discovered that Muslim doctors trained at some of Britain's leading teaching hospitals have returned to their own countries to fit surgical implants filled with explosives, according to a report from Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin.

Women suicide bombers recruited by al-Qaida are known to have had the explosives inserted in their breasts under techniques similar to breast enhancing surgery. The lethal explosives – usually PETN (pentaerythritol Tetrabitrate) – are inserted during the operation inside the plastic shapes. The breast is then sewn up.

CWCID: The Armorer

Posted by Cassandra at 01:07 PM | Comments (12) | TrackBack

January 29, 2010

Reason 1001 Not to Imitate Europe..

They don't have the good sense God gave a gerbil:

Arni Hole remembers the shock wave that went through Norway’s business community in 2002 when the country’s trade and industry minister, Ansgar Gabrielsen, proposed a law requiring that 40 percent of all company board members be women.

“There were, literally, screams,” said Ms. Hole, director general of the Equality Ministry. “It was a real shock treatment.”

Even in this staunchly egalitarian society — 80 percent of Norwegian women work outside the home, and half the current government’s ministers are female — the idea seemed radical, if not for its goal, then for the sheer magnitude of change it would require.

Back then, Norwegian women held less than 7 percent of private-sector board seats; just under 5 percent of chief executives were women. After months of heated debate, the measure was approved by a significant majority in Parliament, giving state-owned companies until 2006 to comply and publicly listed companies until 2008.

I think we all know where this is going. Like the storied Camelot of olde, 'tis a silly place:

Nearly eight years on, the share of female directors at the roughly 400 companies affected is above 40 percent, while women fill more than a quarter of the board seats at the 65 largest privately held companies. To many feminists, this is the boldest move anywhere to breach one of the most durable barriers to gender equality.

Indeed, the world has noticed: Spain and the Netherlands have passed similar laws, with a 2015 deadline for compliance. The French Senate will soon debate a bill phasing in a female quota by 2016, after the National Assembly approved the measure last week. Belgium, Britain, Germany and Sweden are considering legislation.

But as the dust has settled, researchers are grappling with some frustrating facts: Bringing large numbers of women into Norway’s boardrooms has done little — yet — to improve either the professional caliber of the boards or to enhance corporate performance. In fact, early evidence from a little-noticed study by the University of Michigan suggests that the immediate effect has been negative on both counts. And the sixfold increase in women as directors has not yet brought any real rise in the number of women as chief executives.

Well now there's a shocker for you. Who'd a thunk that massive, government sponsored social engineering projects would fail to benefit the intended beneficiaries?

Fortunately, having learned from past experience we'll never do anything that dumb again. And I am so going to Hell for snickering at that woman's last name.

Posted by Cassandra at 12:12 PM | Comments (25) | TrackBack

January 19, 2010

I, For One, Demand to be Called, "Sugar Mama"

So.... O majestic penis-having individuals.... what say you? Is this a good thing? Or a bad thing?

In 2007, the Pew report found, median household incomes of married men, married women and unmarried women were all about 60 percent higher than in 1970. But among unmarried men, median household income rose by only 16 percent. These days, men who marry typically gain another breadwinner.

In 1970, 28 percent of wives had husbands who were better educated, and 20 percent were married to men with less education. By 2007, the comparable figures were 19 percent and 28 percent. In 1970, 4 percent of husbands had wives who made more money; in 2007, 22 percent did.

College-educated wives are less likely to have a husband who is college-educated and in the highest income bracket than they were in 1970, and married women are less likely to have a husband who works.

“Among all married couples,” the report said, “wives contribute a growing share of the household income, and a rising share of those couples include a wife who earns more than her husband.”

The folks at NPR are positively tingly about the Pew report:

The joke used to be that some women went to college to get their M.R.S. — that is, a husband. In sheer economic terms, marriage was long the best way for a woman to get ahead. But a study by the Pew Research Center finds that there's been a role reversal when it comes to men, women and the economics of marriage.

The study compares marriages in 2007 with those in 1970, when few wives worked — and it's no wonder why. Until 1964, a woman could legally be fired when she got married. Even a woman with a college degree likely made less than a man with a high-school diploma.

"When you think about it from a guy's perspective, marriage wasn't such a great deal," says Richard Fry of the Pew Research Center. "It raised a household size, but it didn't bring in a lot more income."

Four decades later, it's men who are reaping rewards from a stroll down the aisle. Many more women are now working, and in a greater variety of jobs. Add to that the decline of gender discrimination, and women's median wages have risen sharply in recent decades even as men's have remained stagnant or fallen.

I found their giddy take amusing, but also interesting in light of this quote from the Playboy story the other day:

The early Playboy sought the eyes and minds of what Fraterrigo calls “the young, affluent, urban bachelor,” and the first issue was pitched by Hefner as “a little diversion from the anxieties of the Atomic Age.” These anxieties were not only about being barbequed by Soviet nukes; for the American male, they included having to marry the first woman you had sex with, living with your parents (thanks to a dire postwar housing shortage), and feeling emasculated by the new nature of American work, no longer artisanal or rugged or self-determining but managerial and inchoate and soul-stranglingly indoor. This was, in fact, the young Hefner’s life, and he loathed it.

So here's the debate question for today: Are we headed down the otter slide to Helk? Is this change "sustainable"? Is there an upside to this development for men (especially since, as we're so often told, men get the short end of the marriage stick these days)? Is it possible that some men and women are actually being freed up from gender roles that can't possibly suit every man or every woman equally well?

If you could turn the clock back to the 1950s, would you? Why or why not?

What say you?

Update: IS NOTHING SACRED???

Every so often, you would see [a stray dog] waiting on a metro platform. When the train pulled up, the dog would step in, scramble up to lie on a seat or sit on the floor if the carriage was crowded, and then exit a few stops later. There is even a website dedicated to the metro stray (www.metrodog.ru) on which passengers post photos and video clips taken with their mobile phones, documenting the ­savviest of the pack using the public transport system like any other Muscovite.

Update II: Via bthun...

Uh-oh:

The director of Rape Prevention Education has attacked a promotion offering rugby tickets to "cougars" or women aged 35 and over "looking for slabs of meat" as appalling and disgusting, and wants advertisement withdrawn.

But the competition's promoters say they have no plans to stop the advertising campaign, which it says is meant to be light-hearted.

Rape Prevention Education director Kim McGregor said the promotion on Air New Zealand's Grabaseat website offering tickets to next month's Wellington Sevens aimed at groups of women aged 35 and over known as cougars, was objectionable on several levels.

She said the online advertisement, which shows a mature woman or cougar "starving itself on sparse vegetation during the day then hunting large slabs of meat at night" by stalking a young man at a bar should be withdrawn immediately.

Despite the man's attempts to ward off the woman's advances, the cougar has "not tasted fresh meat for days" and drags her prey to an inner-city apartment.

Ms McGregor said the organisation had heard from Air New Zealand staff who were embarrassed and concerned by the promotion.

"They find it degrading and that it is encouraging potentially harmful behaviour, so my question is why is our national carrier promoting sexually predatory behaviour?"

Again, what say you? FWIW, I think the promotion is in poor taste. Not sure men are a special class who need to be protected from sleazy ad campaigns any more than women would be in their place. I'd be more sympathetic to the idea that this kind of nudge, nudge, wink, wink ad is more suited for Cosmo or a men's mag than for general consumption.

Posted by Cassandra at 11:41 AM | Comments (20) | TrackBack

January 18, 2010

Blogging

My apologies for the lame blogging. I'm still on the road. Will be back Tuesday and will try to get something up then...

...if only to put a stop to the Fact Checking thread :p

Posted by Cassandra at 02:15 PM | Comments (24) | TrackBack

January 13, 2010

What Love Is

This is a favorite post of mine, written two years ago over at Grim's place. I thought I'd bring it over here as an antidote to the disturbing view of women and relationships put forward by The Futurist and his sources. If you want to read the supporting articles, please visit Grim's place, which has the links.

I still recall the dress I wore to my first dance. It was black with wild roses – pink ones - on it. The empire waistline tied in the back with grosgrain ribbon and the deep, square neckline was trimmed with white lace. My date gave me the most beautiful corsage: pink sweetheart roses and baby’s breath.

I kept the ticket and the corsage for years on a bookshelf in my bedroom. I’m not sure why. Perhaps because it seemed the sort of thing that should be remembered. I don’t think I missed a dance in school and I kept each corsage I was given; even the ugly ones.

Not every boy who asked me out was as adept as that first young man at matching flowers to my outfit and personality. But that didn’t matter. To tell the truth I never really liked corsages, even in high school. They were awkward and clunky and the pins had a nasty way of poking you in the shoulder when you tried to dance or stood up on your tip-toes for that long anticipated good night kiss. But they were tangible reminders that a young man had taken pains to please me, just as I had gone to a great deal of trouble to look nice for him, to make his evening pleasant. Memorable.

And so I kept them, every one. All my yesterdays, pressed between the leaves of my mind like wildflowers from some long forgotten ramble down a country road on a summer’s day. As they slowly faded in their allotted spaces on my bookshelf, they somehow managed to retain traces of their former loveliness; giving off sweet memories of being courted, cherished, of feeling - for the space of few moonlit hours - like a princess in a fairy tale.

Thus it is with some sadness that I wonder: what on earth do today’s would be princesses have to look forward to?

Last month, a boy asked my 16-year-old daughter to his school's homecoming dance. She agreed to go, bought a new dress and made a hairdresser appointment.

The boy never bought tickets to the dance. Neither did his friends. They decided that attending homecoming wouldn't be cool, and instead planned to just dress up that night, go out for dinner and then hang out with their dates at someone's house.

My daughter was disappointed, as were her girlfriends. They would have loved to have been taken to the dance, to show off their dresses, to see and be seen.

At 6 p.m. on the night of the boycotted dance, about a dozen of these girls and their dates gathered in one boy's backyard so a mob of parents could photograph them. I found it dispiriting. My heart went out to those girls -- all dressed up with no place to go.

I live in suburban Detroit, but this phenomenon is playing out elsewhere in the country, too -- a telling example of the indifference with which young people today view dating, chivalry and romance.

Studies, of course, show more young people skipping romantic relationships in favor of "hooking up." As teens socialize in packs, forgo one-on-one dating and trade sex nonchalantly, it is no stretch to find that boys are asking girls to homecoming and not bothering to take them there.

When I was a young girl I recall hearing a song by Peggy Lee on my transistor radio.

“Back in the day”, as my boys are fond of saying with rolled eyes, you couldn’t just summon up a tune any time you felt like it. We didn’t have iPods, playlists, or personal CD players. When it came to that special song that made you dizzy with delight, you were at the mercy of the DJ down at the radio station. You had to wait, sometimes for what seemed like ages, for your favorite song to come onto the airwaves and thrill you to the very marrow of your bones. That’s what made it special: rarity, and the knowledge that you couldn’t hear it any time you wanted to. If you were really, really crazy about a song you might save up and buy the 45, or even the LP. But that took a while. And in the meantime there was the agony of suspense.

I wonder, sometimes, if that is what is missing from modern relationships: the ache of wanting; the knowledge that someone isn’t there just for the taking, the thrill of finally gaining your heart's desire after long uncertainty, a series of delays? Of knowing you might never have had them at all? What happens to our sense of wonder when we take everything for granted, when we are never deprived, when we never take pains?

When nothing is special anymore?

There is something to be said for anticipation. I carried my little transistor radio everywhere, glued to my shell-like ear. I must have known the words to a million songs by heart – I repeated them over and over in my head while waiting for the next time my favorite song would come over the airwaves. I still do. Who does that now? The song was called, “Is that all there is?”

I hated that song with a passion, even then. It asked that question - “Is that all there is?” - about love. It was too cynical and worldly wise for me then and it still is today, forty-odd years later, because no matter how long you walk this earth, you never stop discovering the unending wonder of loving other people, and you never quite do come to know all there is to know about life.

Never.

I know that in my bones. There are a million kinds of love, and to me the saddest thing on earth is the cynic who asks, “Is that all there is?” because she has never experienced the delight to be found in pleasing others; who says “Let’s not bother…” celebrating special occasions because he has never been denied anything (and so sees every new experience through a lens of dreary sameness), who doesn’t understand that hooking up or casual sex, though amusing, can never be anything but pale substitutes for what happens when two people really love each other, when making someone else’s heart race a mile a minute is just as satisfying as feeling the earth move yourself. And sometimes more.

I wonder if these children will recognize (or would they be bored by) the quiet, peaceful Sunday morning comfortableness that sneaks up on you when you’ve been together for half a lifetime? When you fit neatly together as though you had been made for each other? That doesn’t happen overnight. It takes years of living, and sometimes years of ups and downs that I sometimes wonder if they will have the patience to wait for?

Love takes many forms. Love is having the faith and the courage to let go when your children need to strike out on their own. Love means trusting in their judgment (and your own long stewardship); it means recognizing that they are no longer babies, but young adults. It means releasing them gently, lovingly, gracefully; though every fiber screams they aren’t ready yet – that they aren’t listening to you, that they will screw things up if you don’t keep a hand on the old tiller. It means not saying “I told you so”, when you did. Again. And again. It means biting your lip, and your tongue, a lot. It means giving them the space to grow, as you did once. Love means standing a bit apart when they come home, though you long to crowd them with questions as you did when they were small; waiting for them to come to you. Loving it when they finally do.

Even though it took years. Boys are a slow crop.

Love means taking pride in the achievements of your friends, sharing their every day triumphs and tribulations, both great and small. Taking satisfaction in their talent, not knowing whether to laugh or cry when one of them writes something so poignant it could have been plucked from the pages of your own life:

Pre-deployment briefs.

Right before Lancelot went on his latest trip, he reminded me that the Dark Prince was coming home on Friday. I must have had a blank look on my face because he then reminded me why: Dark Prince's pre-deployment brief the following day. A brief that I would have to attend with my son without my husband.

Looking back, I'm now of the opinion that my husband planned to be out of town so as to avoid the whole nightmare....

For starters, my son is not very skilled in the social graces. Some might even assume that he was raised by wolves. Arriving at the brief, it began.

"Mom, I have to go talk to someone."
Me: "Oh, okay, I'll be right here."

This, in case you didn't know, is his way of avoiding even the admittance that he has a mom (let alone introducing her).

Nope, not the Dark Prince, he was hatched from an egg.

Love means thanking God for them when they aggravate you, and when they make you laugh, when they lift you up. What would we do without friends? They make the sun come out when all the world seems grey and cloudy. They say things that make you cry. And laugh out loud. Sometimes in the same breath:

A house isn't a home until you can write "I love you" in the dust. I just ask that you don't date it.

I like that. But for a military wife home can never be a place, really, or a time. Times change, and even the people we meet are often far less constant than they appear to be. But somehow, friends are a gleaming thread running through the hopelessly tangled skein of our lives. Pull on it, and everything suddenly slips into place effortlessly; all the snarled knots come untied. They know, without our having to tell them, certain things about us. We share, not everything – because no two people share everything – but the important things. A friend will be there to celebrate quietly with you those moments that mean something to you. And that can make all the difference, for then you carry home inside of you wherever you may roam.

Because home, you see, is the people you care about. A home is love.

I am sitting here in Georgia with The Burrito in my lap. He is one week old. My son’s house is full of light, and warmth, and love. The Burrito is mostly full of milk. His eyes are very heavy and he is making comical faces as he falls asleep in my arms. Across the room, my son is talking quietly to his wife. I like watching him with her. He loves her very much. I am thinking of what I will write to my husband in the morning. The scene around me is proof that families do evolve – they have so much more than we did, starting out. But then they are a good ten years older than we were when we had our first child. I am also thinking of ten years ago, when I was convinced the young man across the room from me was a complete bonehead and wasn’t listening to a word his mother had to say.

He is a fine young man, a good father, and an even better husband. I am proud.

And The Burrito totally rules.

*******

Update: I love this essay.

Posted by Cassandra at 01:01 AM | Comments (17) | TrackBack

January 04, 2010

*snort*

Misandry!!!!

Very nearly all the violence that plagues, rather than protects, society is the work of young males between the ages of fourteen and thirty. A substantial amount of the violence that protects rather than plagues society is performed by other members of the same group. The reasons for this predisposition are generally rooted in biology, which is to say that they are not going anywhere, in spite of the current fashion that suggests doping half the young with Ritalin.

The question is how to move these young men from the first group (violent and predatory) into the second (violent, but protective).

Be honest now. Can you imagine the screeching that would occur if a woman (even a conservative women who likes men such as... oh, I dunno... moi) said that?

Our perceptions of things we read are very much influenced by our perceptions about the motivation or characteristics of the speaker. That's something we could all afford to keep in mind.

Just sayin'. On another note, that happens to be one of my favorite posts too.

Posted by Cassandra at 12:55 PM | Comments (27) | TrackBack

January 03, 2010

The Blog Princess Ponders the Ineffable Wisdom of Dr. Joy Bliss, Individual Responsibility, Scope Creep, and the Venusian Arts

Stacy McCain has a tagline at the top of his site that has gnawed at the edges of my mind ever since the first time I saw it:

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up."

— Arthur Koestler

I think it works for him. One of the many qualities people enjoy in Stacy's writing is his willingness to air his unvarnished opinions. In an era where too many people weigh each syllable for possible offense I see some value in this advice. I have been urged by friends - all men - to "write ruthlessly" too, though they did not use those precise words.

I looked up the word "ruthless" to see what it means, exactly. It means having no pity : merciless, cruel. I think you can see my problem here. I believe one of the great strengths of men is their ability to neatly sever compassion, empathy, fellow feeling from the decision making process. In certain circumstances that can be an extremely useful skill.

There's just one problem: I'm not a man and I have no desire to become one. Though my privately held opinions can be pretty merciless, I tend to keep them to myself. I'm far too aware of the barren, affectless nature of the written word. Without facial expressions, inflection and tone of voice, a lifted eyebrow or even a small, quickly stifled half smile, words can be as dry and brittle as unleavened bread. They can wound unintentionally; can darken a day as easily as they can brighten it.

And so I've been thinking a lot lately and not writing much.

I had a quiet New Year's Eve. Didn't feel like going out, didn't want to talk to anyone. Spent the evening in bed surrounded by fluffy pillows, a pot of green tea, a tube of ginger lemon crisps and a book of essays by Reinhold Niebuhr. Yes, my life is a never ending thrill ride. Of course when the movie comes out I'll be played by Angelina Jolie and there will be confusing sex toys and an impertinent cabana boy lurking under the duvet.

At any rate, the essay I was reading while chrysanthemums blossomed in the night sky over the lake was about how all religion is essentially an attempt to refute the inevitable sense of pessimism that overtakes us when we try to make sense out of the world. There's a joke in there somewhere, but I wasn't in any sort of mood for jokes that evening. I was alone in bed with my husband thousands of miles away in a different time zone and every cell in my body ached for him.

I don't think it would have been any better if I'd gone out. A few years back I had an odd experience. He was, of course, deployed and I was traveling a lot to keep myself busy. I was invited to another city by a work associate - someone I'd met at a conference. She had tickets to a fancy dress ball and I thought, "Why the Hell not?" So I drove up there for the weekend. Four hours through the mountains. It was a lot of fun - it felt like being back in college. I felt young again (she's about 10 years younger than I am, and single). We got all gussied up and danced and drank and parried the attentions of prowling guys. And I was having a ball right up until shortly after midnight when, for no reason I can name, I suddenly felt all the wind go out of my sails.

I didn't want strange men flattering me and chatting me up. I wanted my husband: the man I love. The father of my children. The guy who has known me since shortly before my 18th birthday. The one who knows everything about me, from what makes my knees weak to how to jolly me out of a bad mood to what I'm secretly afraid of. There was no reason for me to think of him at that moment - to want him. I was being flirted with and complimented and paid attention to in a way I hadn't been in years (at least by men I'm not married to), and I won't tell you I wasn't enjoying it, because I was. But it all seemed as worthless and false to me as a 3 dollar bill.

I'll bet you were wondering when I'd get to the Ineffable Wisdom of Dr. Joy Bliss, weren't you? Well, wonder no more:

While I am quite pleased and content with my own (first) marriage, when I talk with unhappy people, which I do all day, I am often reminded that the nuclear family is a very recent invention, that the notion of romantic love is also recent, that arranged marriages and marriages of convenience or necessity were the norms of the past, and that humans are not "naturally" monogamous - whatever I might mean by "naturally".

When you put the nuclear family together with dreams of enduring romantic love, it's a set-up for disappointment. The nuclear family, unlike the extended family (or the tribe), is isolating and does not provide a broad base of support in life. Intense romantic love, unlike plain old-fashioned strong attraction and desire, is a regressed state of mind - some shrinks half-jokingly call it a form of insanity. Not that it isn't great fun, but it gives way to reality in time, although the best marriages can rekindle the old feeling from time to time.

Naturally monogamous. I always cringe when I read those words. They annoy me. Of course we're not naturally monogamous. And though women don't seem to feel the need to remind men that we're not "naturally monogamous" 24/7 I can guaran-damn-tee you that women are no more immune to temptation than men are. Probably the single transcendent truth I've learned in 30 years of marriage is how very little it would take for me to cheat on the man I love. It's not a comforting thought, nor one conducive to inflated self esteem. But it's why the vows mean something. If remaining faithful were easy to do, the promise wouldn't really be worth much would it? People write their own vows a lot these days. I suppose I could have promised, as a symbol of my undying passion, not to stick my tongue in a light socket back in 1979. Then again, since we all know I'm not naturally inclined to French kiss strange electrical outlets, I doubt my sacrifice would have sent the spousal unit into rapturous ecstasy.

All snark aside though, I liked Dr. Bliss' essay. I liked it a lot. I think she hit on something very important - a theme I've seen circulating around a lot in varying forms, none of which seem quite right to me. It's as though we're slowly, painstakingly narrowing in on the truth. We do put way too much faith in marriage. But more generally, we put too much faith in institutions.

I think we do this because we get used to them, and because depending on someone or something else is much easier than holding ourselves accountable all the time. It's much easier than taking responsibility for our own happiness; than facing the strong likelihood that we're (as my friend spd so trenchantly put it once) responsible for at least half of every disappointment we encounter in life.

Yeah. Us. When things don't go as we expect, we never do want to admit that maybe we are part of the problem. Maybe what's "wrong" wasn't really all that much of a surprise after all. We knew it was coming - we just chose to ignore the fact that every choice has a price tag. We don't really care for the idea that life is an inherently risky business for which there is no surefire insurance program:

Many people seem to be in the middle of a religious crisis of faith. All the gods they believe in — technology, technocracy, centralized government control — have failed them in this instance.

In a mature nation, President Obama could go on TV and say, “Listen, we’re doing the best we can, but some terrorists are bound to get through.” But this is apparently a country that must be spoken to in childish ways. The original line out of the White House was that the system worked. Don’t worry, little Johnny.

When that didn’t work the official line went to the other extreme. “I consider that totally unacceptable,” Obama said. I’m really mad, Johnny. But don’t worry, I’ll make it all better.

It seems odd to me that people seem to seriously expect a 100% success rate in preventing terrorist acts. Is this reasonable? Has having police around ever resulted in a 100% prevention rate for murder, rape, theft? Of course not, because to guarantee such a success rate we'd have to allow the police to infiltrate and control every aspect of our lives and no sane society wants that.

What we want is guaranteed security without that nasty price tag. And we don't want to have to think about tradeoffs too much because it's hard.

Yes, Napolitano's "the system worked" was poorly worded. But it wasn't as bad as it's being made out to be. Mostly it was politically incorrect, which no doubt explains why so many Dems are screaming for her head on a bed of lettuce. She had the temerity to remind us of something we already know: 90% of the apparatus of law enforcement and national defense is designed to respond to attacks and crime, not prevent them. No government agency can keep us completely safe because even if we had a perfect system with perfect procedures and rules up the ying-yang, it would still be administered by flawed human beings who make mistakes. People like us. No "system" or agency can change this. It's not an excuse for breaking the rules, but it's a cold hard fact we need to face. My husband said it after 9/11. He was *in* anti-terrorism, and the first thing he said was, "We can never protect everyone from terrorists because terrorists don't attack buildings. They attack people, and people are everywhere."

He was right. There is a role for institutions: they can reduce, but not eliminate natural risk. And it's OK to try and hold them accountable for managing risk in a way that involves acceptable tradeoffs, whatever "acceptable" means this week.

But managing risk is not the same as eliminating it. At some point we need to grow up enough to face these tradeoffs honestly and more importantly, assume more responsibility for our own safety. Our own survival, like our own happiness, is a responsibility we can never delegate away entirely, though God knows we continue to try and to whine when the predictable occurs:

Maybe the most worrying trend the past 10 years can be found in this phrase: "They forgot the mission." So many great American institutions—institutions that every day help hold us together—acted as if they had forgotten their mission, forgotten what they were about, what their role and purpose was, what they existed to do. You, as you read, can probably think of an institution that has forgotten its reason for being. Maybe it's the one you're part of.

Noonan makes a lot of great points in her paean to (sort of) individual responsibility but she misses a big one: scope creep. Like so many of us - like partners who expect marriage to make them happy or fill all their needs or voters who want to know why George Bush didn't tell them to sell their AIG stock before it tanked - she misses what Brooks says so well:

... over the past 50 years we have concentrated authority in centralized agencies and reduced the role of decentralized citizen action. We’ve done this in many spheres of life. Maybe that’s wise, maybe it’s not. But we shouldn’t imagine that these centralized institutions are going to work perfectly or even well most of the time. It would be nice if we reacted to their inevitable failures not with rabid denunciation and cynicism, but with a little resiliency, an awareness that human systems fail and bad things will happen and we don’t have to lose our heads every time they do.

Creating a highly interconnected, highly interdependent society has made us all safer. It has made us more affluent and increased our leisure time to levels our parents and grandparents only dreamed of. But there's a down side too: as we delegate more and more of the tasks our parents and grandparents shouldered to institutions, we become more and more dependent upon them. It's not just that increased interdependence allows inevitable screw ups to affect us more than they used to. It's also a matter of there being more failures. We continue to offload tasks onto already overburdened institutions. We expect more than any institution composed of flawed human beings can possibly deliver.

And our reliance on institutions makes us less and less able to shift for ourselves. When things go wrong, the last place on earth we want to look is that bathroom mirror because the last thought we want to entertain is the idea that maybe - just maybe - we have delegated away responsibility for our own lives.

It's always easier to blame someone else. Which brings me to the "Venusian Arts". Every now and then I read something on the Internet that is so incandescently, luminously stupid that it temporarily stuns me into silence. Oh go ahead - Google it.

You know you want to.

I have been married for over 30 years. To a man. In fact, a United States Marine. I don't waste a lot of time trying to figure out whether I married an "alpha" or a "beta". He knows who he is and he likes the person he sees in the mirror. Works for me. Last time I checked, he doesn't spend his time apologizing to me for breathing or begging for sex. He doesn't have to.

He also does not have to trick me into acting the way he wants by withholding affection (controlling women withholding sex, anyone?) or being insulting, selfish, overbearing or rude. When he wants something he says so and stands his ground: calmly, with dignity and strength. And I meet him halfway. Not 2/3 of the way. Halfway. You see, it's in my interest to make sure that he is happy. It is in my interest to ensure that he looks forward to coming home from work at night, because when he does he treats me well and I get what I want, too.

I really have to wonder about people who are impressed with pickup sites. A lot of conservatives are. I don't get it. I think there are a lot of very insecure folks out there looking for a magic formula to fix the boo-boos in their lives. But after 30 years of marriage I can tell you: there's no formula. It's all trial and error. There's a reason that I thought of my husband after midnight at that party and it had nothing to do with him constantly reminding me that he can cheat on me anytime he feels like it. I already know that, you see. The thought occurs a few times over 30+ years. It works both ways.

I thought of him because in all the world, he is the one person I trust. Implicitly. I would trust him with my life and there's not another human being on this planet I can say that of.

He didn't have to trick me into trusting him; to play childish games to pad his fragile ego into thinking he can or should control what I think or how I feel. He didn't withhold love the way insecure, controlling women sometimes withhold sex, robbing themselves in the bargain. He won my trust by being exactly who and what he is. Sometimes I don't like who he is... temporarily. Sometimes he doesn't like who I am. Hell, sometimes I don't like who I am. But overall we're adults. We understand that any relationship worth having needs to be based on honesty. Not "I'm taking up residence in your belly button" honesty, but the kind of honesty that recognizes you were two separate people before you got married and will be two separate people on the day the first one of you dies.

Two separate people each with hopes, dreams, quirks, virtues, flaws. Two separate people who, if they have the courage to reach for something bigger than either one of them, just might hit the jackpot. Or... not. Either way, it all starts with having faith in yourself. Of everyone, Elise got what I tried to say last week: we are the world in small.

If we as a nation are able to regain our energy, our surefootedness, our faith in our ability - and our desire - to “continue improving our lot”, to “leave the world a better place than we found it” we will do so based not on what we do in the political realm but on what we do as individuals, how we each live our lives.

Us. We can't blame feminism, institutions, government agencies or even the state of Holy Matrimony for what ails us because the buck really stops with us. It's a lonely place, but a glorious one too.

Posted by Cassandra at 07:59 PM | Comments (53) | TrackBack

December 16, 2009

Betrayal/Humiliation, Continued

Cassy Fiano makes an interesting point about the piece on humiliation I linked the other day:

Men will look at online images of a woman without stopping to consider for one moment the strong possibility that the woman wasn’t a willing participant. She is every bit as much a hostage to male indiscretion as the husband whose wife feels it necessary to write long, rambling puff pieces for the NY Times detailing her sexual boredom or the man who goes on and on in public about how hot other women are or how frigid his wife is (both pretty common occurrences in today’s world). For me at least, it’s hard to separate the women who blabs all from the man who tells everyone around him that his wife can’t satisfy his raging sex drive.

I respectfully have to disagree with Cassandra. It isn’t that sharing photos or videos isn’t as bad; it’s arguably worse. It’s that there’s usually a large difference between who has a tendency to do what. You usually see ex-boyfriends or casual hook-ups sharing videos of their ex-girlfriends or one-night-stands. I can’t think of many examples of men who are sharing naked pictures or sex tapes of their wives that they’ve been married to for years and years. Men are much less likely to humiliate their wife and partner in such a way, because today’s husbands simply have more dignity and class than today’s wives do. While it surely is humiliating and degrading to have naked pictures of a woman posted on the internet by her ex-boyfriend, isn’t it a much worse betrayal for a wife to humiliate her husband by ridiculing him before millions? It’s common knowledge to never let a man take risque photos or videos of you, especially a man you barely know. It’s just a common sense way of protecting yourself. However, there is no such protection a man can take to keep his wife from humiliating him in print. Which is really a worse betrayal?

I agree that, in general, the motivation for women who over share online may be different from that of men who post revealing footage of their partner. But I'm not sure it's as different as Cassy thinks it is. After all, there are entire web sites dedicated to voyeuristic exploitation of women who either didn't know they were being filmed or allowed such footage to be taken with the understanding that it would remain private. This isn't accidental - it's the entire purpose of such sites.

But there's another aspect here that is suggested by this part of Cassy's comment:

I can’t think of many examples of men who are sharing naked pictures or sex tapes of their wives that they’ve been married to for years and years. Men are much less likely to humiliate their wife and partner in such a way, because today’s husbands simply have more dignity and class than today’s wives do.

I think there may be something else at work. As has often been observed, men and women view life and relationships differently. Men, in general, are more competitive and status conscious than women. They are also more likely to view women as objects to be possessed. Just as the term "slut" is routinely applied to women who sleep around but not to men, so the term "trophy wife" has no masculine equivalent. Certainly not all men view their wives this way, but a significant number do. These men have more built-in incentive to guard their wives' reputations because they are, in essence, guarding their own possessions; protecting their own status and reputations.

As I said in the post the other day, I think there are a fair number of women who share intimate details of their relationships because they truly don't understand what a violation of trust such revelations are. After all, *they* don't mind sharing their innermost feelings and most private moments with millions of readers. If it doesn't bother them, why should their husbands object? In a sense, they're applying a particularly self absorbed and clueless version of the Golden Rule: treat others as you don't mind being treated.

In the same vein, though many men who share naked footage of their lovers do so for revenge after a breakup or as a form of bragging, there are also men who genuinely don't understand what's wrong with sharing nude photos of the woman they're with (even if she never consented). An example of this occurs right in Cassy's comment section:

...with regards to guys sharing pictures/videos/intimate details about their significant other…that is just deplorable and stupid as well. A good friend of mine started dating this girl a little over a year ago. About two weeks went by and I hadn’t met (or seen) her yet. I stopped by his house for a visit and we were talking about her and I asked what she looked like. He pulled out his cell-phone and I thought he was just going to show me a picture of her…instead it was a fully nude female body from the neck down. The first thing I thought was “What kind of whore are you dating that lets you take naked pictures of her after only a few dates?”. The second thing I thought was “What kind of guy are you to show these pictures to people?” Of course, they kept dating for a few months and she wound up pregnant. She moved in with him and they just had their baby last weekend and I assume they will get married soon. So is that what he wanted? To be able to say years from now “Hey, she’s my wife and the mother of my children…remember when I showed you that full-frontal picture of her? Nice, wasn’t it?” He’s still my friend but I lost respect for him (and her) after that.

Another case in point was the reaction of many men to the Erin Andrews peeping Tom controversy. I was stunned at how many guys, rather than admitting that what was done to Ms. Andrews was wrong, responded by saying, "Good! Hopefully now she'll just pose nude for Playboy." They were incapable of understanding that most women find having unauthorized nude photos splashed all over the Internet to be deeply offensive, humiliating, and painful. These men showed no recognition people have the right to erect boundaries - that they don't have to share something as private as nudity or sexual acts with millions of readers they don't even know.

I've read several posts by male bloggers who say they've been shown such photos by their friends while a relationship was still ongoing. I've never understood why anyone would remain friends with a person who acts this way, but at the point where it's happened more than once one has to suspect these guys don't really see anything wrong with it.

I do think the phenomena are different in nature but the root of the problem in both cases is a refusal to respect the other person's privacy/boundaries. When one stops to think about it, the Internet has blurred or even erased our respect for limits of any kind. There is so much oversharing online that it has changed our perception of what is normal. The Internet has eroded the distinction between public and private behavior.

On Twitter and Facebook, we routinely reveal all sorts of private information with our online "friends". Yet there is little or no recognition that this kind of online sharing isn't anything like trading confidences with a trusted friend in real life. Likewise, news sites like Fox News and ABC now prominently feature content men have always looked at ... in private. I never thought I'd see the day when respectable news sites contained daily links to barely dressed women and trashy stories about infidelity, promiscuous sex and other edgy fare. While I've never objected to others reading such fare, I do object to having it shoved in my face in a venue where it isn't appropriate. It seems as though our sensibilities and sense of propriety are being deliberately challenged: it's no longer a question of tolerating other people's choices so much as being asked to endorse them.

Finally, I've gotten the impression several times while reading this type of personal memoir that the writer was engaging in a bit of payback or one-upmanship. I think that is what has made me so uncomfortable with tell all essays - the sense that, at least in part, such seemingly casual revelations were motivated by something ugly; meant to even some invisible score: to punish, humiliate, or control.

I think Cassy and I are mostly in agreement that this sort of thing - no matter who does it and no matter how it is done - is a violation of trust. My intent was not so much to say, "Men are just as bad", as to take issue with the WSJ author's statement that "Men would never do such a thing."

They demonstrably do, albeit possibly for different reasons. At any rate, Cassy's thoughts are well worth reading. Go check out her post!

Posted by Cassandra at 08:09 AM | Comments (12) | TrackBack

December 14, 2009

Blogs With A Penis...

Via Attila.

Hopefully, this is not the end of the trail:

...there are many trails in this life. You must choose the trail of a true human being. Whether or not you run this trail with a penis is not important. Oppressive gender issues are only important to the white man.

Damn it, Pile. I miss you.

Posted by Cassandra at 09:41 PM | Comments (23) | TrackBack

December 12, 2009

Is Oversharing a Female Trait?

The WSJ has an excellent (and discomfiting) essay on oversharing:

Pity the man whose wife writes a memoir.

Consider Elizabeth Weil's husband, Dan. On Sunday, in the New York Times Magazine, Ms. Weil previewed a memoir she is writing about their effort to improve their marriage. She doesn't stint on the frisky bits—or rather, what she proclaims to be the insufficiently frisky bits. The conjugal part of their equation is apparently "not terribly inventive." Ms. Weil derides their "safe, narrow little bowling alley of a sex life" and tells us that she and her husband "hadn't been talking to each other while having sex. And not making eye contact either." One thing's for sure: If that hesitation to make eye contact suggested a certain reticence, Ms. Weil has overcome it.

Dan's wife is just one of the legion of women scribblers eager to divulge the intimate details of their marriages. The hot new genre is the tell-all of sexual disappointment written by women having their Peggy Lee moment: "Is That All There Is?" Male writers are well behind this curve, retaining some vestigial hesitation to expose their wives in print. This reflects a basic social norm: No husband I know speaks out of school about his wife. You wouldn't trust any man who did. Say what you will about the male half of the species—famous for its promiscuous and predatory proclivities—but they can be remarkably discreet about the intimate aspect of marriage. Whether this is stoicism or a residual chivalry, it is a core part of the male code. Consider Tiger Woods's alleged transgressions: Perhaps the most appalling of them is the report that he prattled on to one of his cookies about how she connected with him in a way his wife did not. As if cheating weren't bad form enough.

Women, by contrast, seem to be at somewhat greater liberty to share private matters. This can be reflected in trivial indiscretions. DoubleX, a blog on Slate, asked its contributors for their Christmas wish lists. First up was Rachael Larimore, who proclaimed "All I want for Christmas is for my hubby to get a vasectomy. And he is!" I'm sure that made his day. Still, that's nothing compared to what gets aired in coffee klatches, where, according to writers such as Sandra Tsing Loh, the ladies get together to talk about how their husbands haven't touched them in years.

Ms. Loh, who published a memoir about mommyhood last year, is one of those writers whose husbands you have to pity. In her 2008 book, "Mother on Fire: A True Motherf%#$@ Story About Parenting!," she laments that her "salt of the earth" spouse, Mike, is too even-keeled and practical to give her the steamy loving she craves. You can guess where that was heading. This summer Ms. Loh began chronicling her divorce in the pages of the Atlantic Monthly, sharing with all and sundry that, after the thrill of a hot and heavy extramarital affair, she decided not to go to all the trouble—the "arduous home- and self-improvement project"—of falling back in love with her boring old spouse. "I would not be able to replace the romantic memory of my fellow transgressor with the more suitable image of my husband," she wrote. Poor Mike. One would think that having a wife cat around would be enough of an assault on his manhood. But just to twist the blade she has to explain to anyone willing to pick up a magazine that his marriage failed because he couldn't cut it in the passion department.

A few thoughts. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that women share more - and more personal - details of their lives than men do. This phenomenon is not limited to print media. In every day life, women are more likely to discuss relationships with husbands, children, co-workers and friends. We do this for several reasons: this kind of sharing is part of the way women get to know each other and bond. And we do it in order to share knowledge and insights we can use to improve our lives. We do it because women draw the boundaries between public and private information differently than men do. Often we think, "If I wouldn't object to someone knowing this about me, it's not private." We do it, sometimes, because we can't talk to the men in our lives. The male tolerance for endlessly dissecting the nuts and bolts of personal relationships is, after all, a finite commodity with a very short shelf life. But female interest in these subjects - not to mention our need for talk and intimacy - doesn't go away simply because it isn't shared to the same degree by the men in our lives.

The problem, as the author notes, is that it's one thing to share your own feelings and thoughts and quite another to divulge private information about one's spouse. The betrayal is only compounded when, rather than sharing your bedroom issues with a close and trusted confidant, one chooses to share them with a half million faceless readers.

But is it only women who do this, or even primarily women? Is there a male equivalent of online oversharing? The author makes it sound as though men would never do something as inconsiderate and tawdry as humiliating a spouse through the revelation of matters best left private.

Obviously he hasn't stopped to consider the truly alarming number of boyfriends, ex husbands, ex lover, and even married men who freely distribute sex tapes or nude photos of their women. The idea that posting, emailing, or sharing visual images of a woman without her knowledge and consent isn't a betrayal and isn't oversharing is just stunning.

And it may be stunning, but it's also extremely common.

Men will look at online images of a woman without stopping to consider for one moment the strong possibility that the woman wasn't a willing participant. She is every bit as much a hostage to male indiscretion as the husband whose wife feels it necessary to write long, rambling puff pieces for the NY Times detailing her sexual boredom or the man who goes on and on in public about how hot other women are or how frigid his wife is (both pretty common occurrences in today's world). For me at least, it's hard to separate the women who blabs all from the man who tells everyone around him that his wife can't satisfy his raging sex drive.

Neither one, it seems, stopped to think about their partner's feelings. And that's a cringe-worthy thought for anyone who writes online: is that me? The answer, in all too many cases, appears to be "yes". And that's not a comforting thought, nor one likely to result in untroubled sleep.

Posted by Cassandra at 08:27 AM | Comments (42) | TrackBack

"Smart Women" and Relationships

Tigerhawk has posted a tasty bit of sex-and-relationships fodder. As part of our never ending efforts to keep the Oink Cadre from getting mopey, we have decided to give in to BillT's incessant demands for more posts about feeeeeeeeelings.

Women. We give and we give and we give:

In my fairly limited experience, there is more than a little truth in this list of reasons why there seem to be a lot of very smart, single, and frustrated women floating around. Number 5 strikes me as especially true, but your results may vary.

First of all, let's define "smart women". The author of the linked post defines intelligence like this:

I confess: I love smart women. I love it when she can write a sonnet, use Euler's formula, code Perl, play a concerto, speak half a dozen languages, run a company, quote Chaucer, diagnose diabetes, compose a quartet and converse brilliantly. Especially in a big city like Los Angeles or New York, looks alone do not suffice. I need, nay, require the intellectual engagement, and legions of smart, educated men feel similarly.

One suspects Dr. Benzer of indulging in a bit of literary hyperbole. Still, if you accept his definition at face value, the distinguishing characteristic of this "smart woman" is not her intelligence, but her accomplishments. Intelligence is not always easy to measure. Two widely used yardsticks are IQ and SAT scores. So it made sense to me to measure myself against those benchmarks.

I've taken several IQ tests over the years and the results have been fairly close. Using the lowest score I received (I simply don't remember which tests I took), I looked up the percentile rank for that score to see where I fall.

I did the same thing with my SAT scores. The result for both measures put me at about the 99th percentile. So if one accepts that IQ or SAT scores are a reasonable proxy for intelligence, I should easily qualify as "smart". And yet I can't do half the things on the author's list. I can do many things, but I wouldn't exactly call myself a high achiever.

So if I'm so smart, why haven't I accomplished more? No one who knows me well would say that I'm lazy. The answer, perhaps, lies here:

Most people have about four or five strong talents out of the roughly two dozen independent aptitudes known to exist. Most jobs require about four or five. As many as 10% of the population has double that number of aptitudes--and that is a problem for them and their employers. The Johnson O'Connor Research Foundation, the oldest aptitude-testing organization in the country, has statistical evidence that people with too many aptitudes (TMAs) are less likely to obtain advanced education and/or succeed in a career than those with an average number of talents.

Perhaps part of the problem with high achieving women isn't one of intelligence but of focus? Strong ambition and high achievement in school or a career require intense effort that detracts from other areas in which women have traditionally excelled, such as interpersonal skills.

During my growing up years, boys were a top priority of mine in a way that school never was. School was easy. Boys, on the other hand, were challenging and fun so I spent a lot of time trying to understand them and working on my relationship skills. There is little doubt that my schoolwork suffered as a result.

Eventually I was admitted to an Ivy League school where I studied just enough to pull fairly mediocre grades and partied a lot. Many of my friends had to study 3 times as much as I did just to stay afloat, but being young and irresponsible, I studied only as much as I had to and only to the extent that a subject interested me. I left school for a lot of reasons. One is that I knew I wasn't serious about school yet and felt it would be unforgivable to continue wasting my parents' money.

But the other reason is important, too. As I looked around, I realized that my priorities were very different than those of most of my peers. This isn't a politically correct thing to say, but I knew - even at 18 - that I wanted to marry and have children. What's more, I wanted to raise my children myself. It made absolutely no sense to me to place a home and family last on my "to do" list when it was first or second on the list of things that were important to me. And it made no sense to me to spend years and years prepping myself for a high powered career I would have to give up almost as soon as I attained it.

As it turned out, I quit school, got married within a few years, raised my boys and then went back to school as an adult. In school, I was very much a high achiever because this time there was no conflict between my values and doing well. The effort made sense because it consorted well with what was important to me.

So I wonder if part of the problem with these smart (or perhaps just high achieving) women is that relationships aren't a priority for them and they haven't developed the right skill set to succeed in love?

But there's another side of the equation too - one the author hints at indirectly but doesn't address: the male side. Men have different goals and different wants when it comes to relationships. Intelligence is important to them, but not as important (generally) as good looks and a woman's ability to make them feel happy, wanted, and most of all needed. Given how persistently men pursue women, it came as a great surprise to me to realize just how hesitant a man can be in this area. A man can be very interested in a woman and yet decide not to get involved with her because he perceives her as "too much work". Men also are more likely to chat up a woman who appears to be receptive to their advances: while they enjoy a bit of a challenge, they don't like risking rejection.

And finally there's the timing factor. Women tend to want commitment far earlier in their lives (and far earlier in a relationship) than men do. Men, on the other hand, view commitment very seriously and often won't even entertain a commitment until all the right moving parts are in place: career, a feeling that they've experimented enough and are ready for something different, a desire to have children. One of the ironies of the sexual revolution is that while it made it easier for women to enter into uncommitted sexual relationships, it made it harder for them to attain what most of us really want: a committed, long term relationship.

In this area, women who have not made understanding and relating to men a priority may find themselves competing with younger women who are willing to give men everything they want without demanding anything in return. That competitive hurdle may be difficult to overcome. By the time her male peers are ready to settle down, they can still attract younger, more complaisant women while her perceived attractiveness has begun to wane. That's a hurdle I didn't have to face in my youth for a variety of reasons.

I thought it was a bit strange that the author only looked at one half of the relationship equation: the female half. Failing to consider what "smart women" have to offer potential male partner from the male point of view doesn't strike me as all that "smart". In most relationships, it isn't solely the man or solely the woman who determines whether that fleeting feeling we call love turns into something permanent. It's a joint effort.

Feel free to opine in the comments section, but please don't let Bill go on and on about his feelings :p It frightens the horses.

Posted by Cassandra at 07:12 AM | Comments (26) | TrackBack

December 04, 2009

Heavage???

And the idiocy continues:

The latest resurrection of man cleavage does raise a not-so insignificant issue: to wax or not? For a number of years, any male chest hair was considered a fashion don't, but very recently a thin thatch has become quite acceptable. The low-cut look "is better if you have a little chest hair," says Tyler Thoreson, a New York-based men's style consultant. "It's not about showing off chest hair, it's about it peeking out a little bit."

Robert Caponi, a 32-year-old musician in Greensboro, N.C., isn't taking any chances. In order to get the hair-to-skin ratio just right, he shaves his chest every two weeks or so -- a regimen that helps him to feel comfortable in one of the six deep V-neck shirts he owns. Not all styles fit the bill. After purchasing a wide scoop neck recently, he declared it simply too revealing. "I looked in the mirror and I was disgusted," he says.

Because I know the Oink Cadre are just tingly with anticipation, wond'ring what the blog princess thinks about this important sartorial issue, please - for the love of God - do not shave or wax your chest.

Also, subtlety. One of my fondest memories involves mad teen daydreams brought about by the occasional glimpse of my then boyfriend, now husband's eminently perusable torso through the open collar of his shirt. But please - have some dignity. And leave something to the imagination.

Anticipation - and a bit of mystery - just makes it that much better when we finally get to unbutton the rest of those buttons.

Posted by Cassandra at 08:18 AM | Comments (32) | TrackBack

December 02, 2009

Huh

Go figure:

I have let my family down and I regret those transgressions with all of my heart. I have not been true to my values and the behavior my family deserves. I am not without faults and I am far short of perfect. I am dealing with my behavior and personal failings behind closed doors with my family.

Poor guy. Understandable, though. I guess he was "tired of her sh**".

Posted by Cassandra at 12:11 PM | Comments (55) | TrackBack

November 18, 2009

Questioning the "Palin Double Standard"

The photo of Sarah Palin on the cover of Newsweak seems to be generating quite the controversy. Even the notoriously Lefty Media Matters is outraged... outraged I tell you... about Teh Sexism of it all:

... this photograph may have been completely appropriate for the cover of the magazine for which the picture was apparently intended, Runners World. But Newsweek is supposed to be a serious news magazine, and the magazine is certainly not reporting on Palin's exercise habits.

Like her or not, Palin is a former governor and vice presidential candidate. She deserves the same respect every single one of her male counterparts receives when they are featured on the cover of the magazine. I must have missed the cover of Vice President Joe Biden in short shorts or of Mitt Romney in a bathing suit.

I'll return to the bolded sentence in a moment, but first a few stipulations:

1. Yes, I think Newsweek intentionally set out to diminish Palin. The photos inside the article all have a common theme: they all emphasize her sex appeal in a way that implies it's the most (or possibly the only) important thing about her. Showing a truncated shot of her legs in high heels while three men in the background appear hypnotized by the view up her skirt has got to be the Mother of all Subliminal Messages.

Just what are we supposed to take away from that one? That her appeal to conservatives - and particularly conservative men - is largely based on her iconic GILF (Governor I'd Like to ... well, you get the picture) status?

2. That said, I find the commentary on her wardrobe and personal style interesting:

Look at this picture right here. And what do you see? Can't we just acknowledge it? Sarah Palin is sexy, and she doesn't seem to hide from it. She shows her gams. She openly embraces her femininity. And how many other successful female politics do the same? Not Secretaries Hillary Clinton or Janet Napolitano, not Senators Kay Bailey Hutchison or Dianne Feinstein, or even next- generation female leaders like Jennifer Granholm, governor of Michigan, or California gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman.

Symbolically, all these female politicians have played by the old pantsuit rules of the workplace. They don't pretend to be men. Every so often, they acknowledge their feminine side, usually by talking about motherhood.

But, far more often, American female politicians have seemed to keep their femininity under wraps, so to speak. But it's different with Sarah Palin. And it strikes a chord.

It does strike a chord. The question is, what kind of chord does it strike? Palin fans may not care for my next point, but I'd like to ask them to consider my general argument on the merits. Divorce it, if you will, from specific references to Palin or the way she's been treated by the media. Let's examine the question in the abstract.

Few of us would argue with the premise that the image a politician projects - the way he presents himself - conveys a message about how he sees himself and also about how he wants to be seen. Applied to a man, this statement seems fairly unremarkable. So why do we see a double standard when the exact same statement is applied to a woman? I am reminded of a conversation I had with my Dad over 10 years ago.

First, some context. My Mom and I had been out shopping for business attire. After raising two boys, I completed college and had just been hired by a Fortune 500 firm. It's worth noting that prior to this I had worked on and off, but never in what I'd call a professional environment. Most jobs I'd held involved business casual attire. In the job I was transitioning to, the men wore suits (not sports jackets, but suits) and Hermes ties to the office.

As a Marine officer's wife, I had several suits in my closet already. They were useful for attending daytime receptions and dress parades. But they weren't business suits. I may not have been able to put my finger on exactly why they weren't suitable for the office, but I knew it nonetheless.

Women, whether they dress for social occasions or the workplace, have far more fashion options than men do. No matter the occasion, our attire is more individualistic and more nuanced. The standard male wardrobe, on the other hand, tends to be fairly formulaic. In a formal office environment one sees charcoal grey suits with white shirts and small patterned ties. A more artsy (but still formal) workplace or a sales environment features colored shirts and suits with edgier tailoring and fabric. For social occasions, ensembles range from the suit to the quintessentially Southern khaki-pants-and-navy-sport coat to khaki pants and polo shirt/button down oxford, to the truly casual jeans and t-shirt. On the negative side, male dress codes don't provide much opportunity for the expression of personality. On the positive side, deciphering the dreaded "Business Casual" or "Casual" on a social invitation is far less fraught for men than it is for women.

My mother and I returned home triumphantly brandishing a cute navy suit with a short, peplum jacket and pencil skirt. It looked good on me. Like Palin, I look best in closely tailored suits that are nipped in at the waist and skirts that don't flare out at the hems. After regaling Dad with carefully chosen examples of our shopping mojo, I was dispatched to the back bedroom to subject my purchases to paterfamilial inspection. And this is where I love my Dad. As I paraded back and forth across the living room carpet showing off my best fashion-show model pivot, he beamed with paternal pride. "You look marvelous", he said.

"Well, the skirt needs to come up about 2 inches", I said. At only 5'4", I've learned that skirt and sleeve length makes all the difference between looking sharp and looking like a child playing dress up in Mommy's clothes.

My Dad said, "No. Leave the skirt where it is. And you should wear a lower heel for the office."

I wasn't pleased. Not by a long shot. Anyone who knows me knows I love my high heels. But after a short time in my new office environment I had to admit something: he was right. I didn't like admitting that a shorter skirt and higher heels injected the wrong note into what was supposed to be a professional environment. I'm a woman. I wanted to like what I saw in the mirror; to feel pretty. But that wasn't the goal. The goal was to look professional; to get work done, not attract admiring gazes from my co-workers. I knew Dad was right. It wasn't the office that needed to adjust to me: it was I who needed to adjust to the office.

This is what bothers me about Sarah Palin; about her reaction to the way she's portrayed in the media. If the image she chooses to project is that of a woman who is confident in her sexuality but wants you to notice it, that's fine. But having made that choice, it's a bit much to complain when people comment on the very attribute you've chosen to emphasize. If you do so in an environment where other women dress conservatively, your decision will stand out. It will excite admiration from your fans and criticism from those whose short list of Presidential qualifications doesn't include the terms, "sexy", "unconventional", or "hot".

During an interview conducted shortly before the Palin/Biden debate, Jennifer Granholm made an interesting observation:

In general, do you think there's a difference between debating a male and a female opponent? I do think, generally, it is more difficult for a man to debate a woman. I think that citizens have certain expectations still ingrained in them about how men and women should behave and comport themselves. And for both sides, there are pitfalls.

Such as?
As a man, you don't want to be perceived as beating up on a woman. As a woman, you don't want to be perceived as being shrill or unlikable or harsh. I think those are things that I'm sure both sides are keeping in mind.

How have you prepared for your own debates, mostly against male opponents?
I've really tried to show that I can throw a punch and could take a punch. You're in there playing in the big leagues, playing with the big boys; you've got to show that you can throw and land some punches of your own.

Do you think that women are judged differently when they run for office?
Women often use that Ann Richards line about how you have to be twice as good as a woman to be considered as good as a man … That sort of striving to be twice as good, either in your credentials or in your ability to govern, is very important for a woman, because there aren't that many of us yet in these positions. You have to really demonstrate that you are capable of taking this on.

What about how they run and present themselves?
I… hate to say it, but women running for office have to run like a man. The fact that you're a woman is obvious. You don't need to talk about it. I would encourage women to downplay the gender issue as much as you can. If you're married with kids, obviously the voters want to know about your family. But I never put the kids or the mom thing out on Front Street because they're electing an executive. Being a mom clearly demonstrates that you can relate to what people are feeling and experiencing, and you don't want to hide that because that's part of why you'd be an effective executive. But you're not running as a mom, you're running as an executive, and that's what [voters] want. Most people want responsible executives. You have to be pragmatic. They want someone who is a fiscal tightwad usually and able to make tough decisions. I think you have to convey to people that you are the best executive around.

Again, let's separate her argument from her politics. I think her argument is dead on.

Is Palin really being judged by a double standard? Or is she being judged by the image she chooses to project? I mentioned my love affair with high heels earlier. Palin's shoes excited a lot of comment during the campaign. Let's take a look at them:

In the words of the inimitable Mr. On, those aren't sensible pumps. They're what he aptly terms, "Catch me, f*** me shoes." Allow me to submit two other photos for your consideration:

Now the question. What is your viscereal reaction to Palin's appearance? What's the first thing you think? Is it, "Damn, now there's a competent executive?"

Or is more like, "Damn, she's hot?"

Don't get me wrong: I love Palin's shoes. And I love her sense of style. She's a knockout. I freely admit that I have shoes with heels that high in my closet - piles of them. But I don't wear them to the office, because in a work environment I don't want people thinking, "Damn, she's got great legs".

I want them to think, "Damn, she knows her stuff." The primary image I want to project at work is credibility, not sexiness (or even attractiveness).

I'm not so sure it's men who are subjecting Palin to an unfair double standard here. I think she could fairly be accused of expecting to be treated differently than a man who dressed similarly. Remember that bolded sentence at the beginning of this post? When was the last time you saw Mitt Romney or Joe Biden dressing in a manner anything close to seductive? When was the last time you saw either of them deviate from traditional male politician attire?

Women have a very bad habit of flouting long established conventions and then complaining when when people react the way they have always reacted. They want the freedom to ignore deep seated differences between men and women while escaping the entirely predictable consequences of doing so.

Trust me: I sympathize. It would be nice if we lived in a world where large numbers of people judged each other on ability rather than appearance. It would be nice if the sales guy down the hall could dress like a hot Latino cabana boy and still be admired for his mind. But we don't live in that kind of world.

It's not impossible for a woman to be viewed as both hot and a competent leader. But pretending there's no conflict between being seen as a GILF and a no nonsense professional verges on the delusional. It's OK to present a folksy, refreshingly authentic, unconventional persona ... if that's what you're selling:

Grant that the editors of Newsweek hate Sarah Palin. We have every reason to believe that the choice of photo of Palin in shorts represented an attempt to diminish and belittle Palin, to portray her as a cheesecake bimbo, the political equivalent of Lindsay Lohan. Palin herself writes:

The out-of-context Newsweek approach is sexist and oh-so-expected by now. If anyone can learn anything from it: it shows why you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, gender, or color of skin. The media will do anything to draw attention - even if out of context.

That this is "sexist," OK. Gotcha. But does Sarah Palin want to assume a feminist victimhood posture, to say that she is being oppressed by the patriarchy?

No, I think not. Excuse me for suggesting that the way for Palin to leverage this -- to "re-brand" herself as they say -- is to lean into the curve. The better response would be along the lines of:

"Yes, I am a woman. Yes, I have legs. And, yes, I've been told they're very nice legs. Exactly why the editors of Newsweek decided that showing me in shorts was appropriate for the cover of their magazine is for them to explain -- and good luck with that. I guess I'm trying to figure out what side of the double-standard applies here. Levi can get naked for Playgirl and still be taken seriously, but Newsweek thinks it's something scandalous to show me in running shorts? Just wait until I grant my first in-depth foreign-policy interview to Maxim!"

The downside, of course, is that by flouting convention you've pretty much assured that people will talk about you. If you're a woman, you've also made it harder for anyone but your most ardent supporters to envision you in a job that has never before been held by a woman. The problem is that it's not your qualifications that are front and center: it's your womanliness and your looks.

Unlike Stacy, I do think female politicians are subjected to sexist attacks. But politics is a blood sport. Your enemies will throw the entire kitchen sink at you if they can - just to see what sticks. Smart politicians assess their vulnerabilities. Some actively rebut such attacks, as Bill Clinton did with the "Bubba" meme. And some minimize the usefulness of such attacks by not becoming defensive; by refusing to rise to the bait.

The problem is that Sarah has done neither. When the way your enemies seek to frame you closely mirrors the image you've chosen for yourself, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that you've just made their job a whole lot easier.

That's not blaming the victim. It's just common sense.

Posted by Cassandra at 03:37 AM | Comments (134) | TrackBack

October 29, 2009

The Boys' Club

Every so often the question of gender parity in the blatherosphere pops up like a whack-a-mole. This time, somewhat unusually, the question was raised by a man:

If you spend any time looking at social media demographics, there’s one stat you see over and over: women dominate the space. Facebook, MySpace, Twitter — all are more popular with women than men.

So it was a bit jarring this week to see that 67% of bloggers are male, according to the newest installment of the Technorati State of the Blogosphere report.

... compared to the other mainstream social media activities, it seems bizarrely guy-heavy.

What’s the deal? Why is blogging a boys club at a time when women are such a powerful force in creating social media content

In contrast to the explanations doled by male bloggers in the past (women lack confidence/interest in politics, women aren't competitive/assertive), many female bloggers who responded this time emphasized safety:

The Internet still feels like the Wild West. There are some safe homesteads–social media, for example. Consider: On Facebook, a woman can decide who she wants to connect with and who she wants to keep out. On Twitter, a woman who feels wrongly attacked can block the attacker. (Meghan McCain, the mad blocker, comes to mind. She takes even mild criticism as a block-worthy offense.)

When it comes the arena of ideas, the women who blog are not typical women. Over and over, the women who blog are tougher. Like the shotgun wielding Western expansionists of yore, women bloggers take shots and can shoot back.

Women bloggers are often sexualized and insulted. One famous incident with Kathy Sierra involved photoshop and personal information. Kathy quit, something I urged her not to do. She is now, though, on Twitter and I believe she blogs anonymously to spare herself the insulting misery. Michelle Malkin, Amanda Carpenter, and just about every conservative woman blogger, including me, has endured horrible personal, violent and sexual insults–very often from “enlightened” male liberal commenters and bloggers.

Most women simply do not want to put up with this garbage. They feel threatened and they worry about their safety and the safety of their children. Michelle Malkin had to actually move after her personal information was plastered on the web. She is a mother. She has children. There are nutjobs out there and in this business, there is a very real risk to personal safety. It’s something guys just don’t have to deal with as much.

This concern was echoed by several successful women:

Women tend to start blogging and then realize that it is a tough, tough world out here. You say something someone doesn’t like, and they don’t dispute your point calmly and politely with rational, well thought-out replies. They attack you, personally. They call you fat, ugly, stupid. They’ll call you a whore or a bitch or a slut. And these are the mild insults. A lot of women have no clue what they’re getting into when they start blogging. And when they see how rough it is, they quickly get out, because to them it’s not worth it.

Every conservative female blogger I know gets this kind of abuse, and it’s often sexualized. We all get it. It’s a fact of life when it comes to blogging.

While I definitely see (and have experienced to a minor degree) this kind of verbal abuse, I'm not entirely sure simply being female explains it. As Cassy Fiano notes, there are definite advantages to being an attractive female on the web:

I don’t want there to be more female bloggers. I like the fact that I’m a minority in the blogosphere. It’s a huge selling point for me. I’m not afraid at all to say it. With so few women bloggers, it automatically makes me stand out, and that’s a good thing. Throw in the fact that I’m… ahem… well-endowed, shall we say?, and not bad-looking and it’s even more of a plus. Men don’t get those benefits. A great looking male blogger is not going to attract much traffic, because readership online is mostly male, at least when it comes to politics. A great looking woman, however, who can write well and is not afraid to take shots and shoot back is going to be very attractive to their male readers. It makes you stand out, and if the blogosphere suddenly becomes crowded with female bloggers, then I’ve just lost my edge.

This is an interesting point. Over the years I've noted several behavioral differences between male and female bloggers. Women are far more likely to display one or more pictures of themselves prominently. Cassy is, I think, more honest than most about why they do it: sexual attractiveness is a definite advantage in a visual medium dominated by men who like looking at pretty women, especially in a state of undress.

I've always been somewhat conflicted on the practice, myself. If, like Cassy, a woman can take the flack that comes with putting her personal appearance front and center, the move makes sense. On the other hand, just as voicing an opinion invites criticism of your arguments, putting yourself out there for people to look at tends to invite criticism of your looks. It has always struck me as problematic when women complain about sexually insulting commentary given the fact that so many of us openly advertise both our appearance and our sexual attractiveness.

In the hurly-burly, free for all atmosphere of the 'Net, critics and trolls throw out whatever will stick. These folks are fairly good at sussing out a blogger's Achilles heel. They attack to get a reaction, and here women often reinforce abusive behavior. "Don't feed the troll" has always been sound advice: if you let an attacker know he or she has found a soft spot, don't be surprised if they repeatedly aim for it.

I'm not sure what to make of the argument that women don't enjoy the intellectual back and forth. This is arguably what keeps me writing, despite the aggravations associated with running a blog. I do know it took years to build a proportionate level of female participation in my own comments section. Women do seem slightly more hesitant to wade into the conversational fray, whether we're talking blogging or simply asserting a strong opinion in the comments.

Part of this may be due to the different conversational styles of men and women. To us, men can seem needlessly curt, dismissive, or confrontational. Over the years I've occasionally been taken aback by comments from men I know and like and I've had to fight not to take something that wasn't meant personally to heart. Women often attribute male abruptness to sexism, but I think it's more likely just a reflection of the way men talk to each other.

In school, I was the only woman in a class largely composed of male Marines. There weren't too many shrinking violets in that group, and yet I easily held my own. I wasn't really aware of the differences in the social dynamic until I found myself in a class with another woman - an unusually sharp and self confident one. She cornered me after a few weeks and asked, "Doesn't it bother you, the way they just talk over women as though we weren't there?"

I thought about it, and replied, "I'm not sure being female has as much to do with that as being willing to back down. They talk over each other all the time". Men are at once more direct and less personal in their interactions with others. They don't tend to be as careful with, much less aware of, other people's feelings. That's probably an advantage if the world you live in centers around competition. The man who tiptoes through the minefield of subjective offense is likely to find himself left in the dust by less delicate souls.

I'm not sure how typical I am, because unlike most women I have zero interest in MySpace, Facebook, or Twitter. Social networking, to me, features all the downsides of blogging with none of the advantages. I'm not interested in keeping in touch with large numbers of people. I was on Facebook for a while, but found the whole "friends" thing exhausting and distracting.

Female bloggers, it seems to me, are sometimes victims of our own success. I've quit blogging at least three times now, but verbal abuse or dislike of the 'food fight atmosphere' had nothing to do with my decision. Looking back, the same conditions were present each time I walked away:

1. Daily visits over 2000. When VC begins to draw too much traffic, all the joy goes out of blogging. I begin to feel like the psychic vampires have been at me, though much of my discomfort is self imposed.

Here, again, I see differences in male and female behavior. Women tend to participate more in their comments sections. To me, this is part of the joy of blogging but it also takes its toll. I've never been able to stop seeing the person behind each moniker. This amuses and exasperates my husband. He says, "Why do you CARE about these people? You don't know them!"

2. Lack of balance. Attila echoes this concern:

Me? I dunno why I didn’t make it to Western CPAC: My excuses are what they are. For one thing, I’m working way more than full-time, and I’m trying to cut back on travel. I don’t go out of town more than every couple of months, and my petro-fieldtrips count, as I see it. Many of those take place in California, within driving distance, but a night away from home is a night away from home. It’s a necessary evil, but an evil.

So, no: I wasn’t at Western CPAC; I go to the real CPAC every year. If I have time, I’ll go to the YAF cconference this fall and see if I can get Stacy McCain to buy me that martini he still owes me.

Blogging is incredibly time consuming, and it has to compete with family time, work and other pursuits. Over the years I find myself less willing to expend the time needed to run VC the way I would like it to be run. I also find myself less willing to share my thoughts - to put my whole heart and soul into my writing.

That feeling is very much a response to the way I see women treated on the 'Net. Even though I have experienced little of the vicious invective and disrespectful treatment I see every day, as it has increased in volume and intensity I've sometimes been momentarily stunned into a sort of disgusted silence. Though anyone who knows me knows I'm far from being a prude, I find the overly sexualized, locker room atmosphere of the web to be a real turnoff. I've written about it a few times, mostly because I think it has a lot to do with the hesitancy women feel about participating in online conversations but also because I truly believe it degrades civility and encourages behavior few (if any) of us would countenance in real life. I don't want to know that some guy thinks some supermodel's rear end is just begging to be ramrodded, or how often he fantasizes about having sex with women he's not married to. I'm not stupid: I realize men have thoughts like that all the time. Hell, women have thoughts like that.

I just think sentiments like that are better left unvoiced in mixed company. Grim had a real point when he observed that people do and say things online that, in real life, would merit a punch in the mouth.

I can't recall - even once in the 6 years I've been writing online - feeling threatened, unsafe, or scared by anything I've experienced, read, or seen. By the same token, the climate online has definitely affected my enjoyment of blogging and made me question whether it is an endeavor that's worth time and energy it requires?

That's not a decision that is being forced on me. It's a decision every blogger - male or female - has to weigh for his or herself. I don't feel oppressed by the Patriarchy. But I do wonder - increasingly these days - whether this is the kind of blogosphere we want to inhabit? Do we want an online world where only the toughest, loudest, and most competitive voices are heard?

The Internet is a marketplace of not just ideas but entertainment, emotion and raw sensation. As such, it reflects our values. That is an uncomforting thought at times.

It should not be a politically incorrect one.

Posted by Cassandra at 04:59 AM | Comments (27) | TrackBack

October 19, 2009

Where's Waldo?

Sorry guys. I've had a lot going on lately (unfortunately, none of it in my head). Head on over to David M's place - the joint's jumping.

Posted by Cassandra at 04:23 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

October 17, 2009

The Freakin' Patriarchy and Their Jackbooted Jackboots of Oppression

Always tryin' to keep a sistah down...

Wow Dan! That would make you a conservative man who actually respects the opinions of women! To listen to the MSM none of you actually exist in the conservative party. You know, not like all those enlightened male liberals and femanistas who speak about women with respect but behind the scenes only use them for the political purposes they may serve.

I have to say that in 6 years of blogging, I've disagreed with scores of male bloggers and only extremely rarely had one be nasty or take offense. Given that guys get into flame wars all the time with each other (and they aren't particularly gentle in the way they disagree with each other, either!) I've never been quite sure how any reasonable person would get the idea that male conservative bloggers are sexist pigs.

Grim and I disagree a lot and I think our disagreements have make me a more thoughtful person. Dan's another blogger who has often shifted the way I think about an issue by bringing some aspect I hadn't thought of into the discussion.

Patrick O'Hannigan has an interesting essay up that discusses the case against blogging:

Stefan McDaniel has a heartfelt blog post at First Things arguing that blogs are not doing people who love language any favors. Riffing on what Neil Postman wrote two generations ago about television (the book was Amusing Ourselves to Death), McDaniel worries about what blogging has done to our attention spans. That literature is worth saving, he takes as a given, and good for him. Although he doesn't put it quite this way, his misgivings stem from the fact that literature is built for comfort, not for speed. His argument is that the proliferation of blogs now makes it more difficult for people to read or write a sustained argument (or any narrative, really) than it used to be.

I think there's a good deal of truth in this argument: because we react in the instant, blogging is in some ways inimical to the well considered argument. This is something I fight with constantly. My sense is that I just don't have time to think about about 90% of what I read and so I don't comment.

But looked at another way, blogging provides something that can't be derived from longer form writing in a one-way medium: it's a conversation about ideas and a chance to explore our differences.

I don't view convincing others as the point, although that's nice on the rare occasions it happens. The point of blogging, at least for me, is the back and forth; the chance to see how others reason and justify their positions.

Blogging shouldn't be a replacement for more substantive reading and to the extent that it displaces this kind of learning, that's unfortunate. But having another choice shouldn't be blamed for decisions we make freely. We are free to read deeply and thoughtfully.

If we choose not to, we were not compelled to that decision but rather (perhaps) seduced into it. But that's another discussion entirely.

Posted by Cassandra at 12:36 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack

October 16, 2009

Friday Debate Question: Pepsi's Tasteless App

Dan Riehl thinks that only those "with no sense of humor and so much bottled up outrage just looking for something to come crashing down upon" find Pepsi's latest iPhone app offensive:

How the heck did the Sixties beget a culture with no sense of humor and so much bottled up outrage just looking for something to come crashing down upon? Talk about your unintended consequences. It's getting to be a crime to laugh at anything, though I suspect there wouldn't be an issue were the genders reversed here. Get over it, already. Geesh!

There are several things wrong with Dan's reasoning here. First of all, the stereotyping aspect of the app and the cheesy pickup lines don't bother me one whit. I agree that people are far too quick to take offense these days. People do fall into recognizable categories and there's nothing wrong with poking a little fun at our differences. Where I get off the bus is here:

The app then lets users add women - along with name, date of the conquest and comments - to the user's "brag list," which can be shared online on sites like Facebook and Twitter.

Conservatives have a really nasty habit of fulminating about the horrors of feminism while absolving men of the very same irresponsible and selfish behaviors they deplore in women. Heaven forbid that men recognize that they are contributing to declining public morality:

I rarely hear anyone acknowledge that a man who behaved the way many men behave today would have been shunned by society when I was growing up. Men, too, are demanding that behaviors society has never approved of be not just legitimized but mainstreamed and approved of.

I would not want to have to raise a daughter in today's climate.

In what world has it ever been acceptable for young men to try and "score" with as many women as possible and then publish their names, the date of the interlude and graphic details of their conquest? Young men are not exactly known for their scrupulous honesty in this regard. They brag of screwing women who wouldn't give them the time of day with no regard for the effect on the woman's reputation. In a world where prospective employers conduct online searches as a part of the hiring process, having one's name and alleged sexual exploits plastered all over the Internet could have life changing consequences.

But hey - it's all just a big joke. At least it's funny if it happens to someone else's daughter. The hilarity might seem a bit less apparent when it strikes closer to home.

Perhaps this makes me a humorless individual just looking for things to be outraged over, but I expect more from men. If either of my sons had behaved that way, he would have been on restriction for the rest of his natural life and furthermore I'd have considered myself a complete failure as a parent.

I fail to see the humor in viewing women as notches on your belt and bragging about 'bagging' them online. Lovely standard Pepsi is setting for our kids, but I think the bar could be set a bit higher.

I've known Dan for years and he's a great guy. I'd like to think that this was the kind of drive-by comment all bloggers make from time to time when they're in a hurry. Grim nailed what is really going on here:

The reason we've got this kind of behavior going on is that we've created a society in which the rude are completely protected from any sort of reprisal.

It's exactly like the way that virtual communication leads to flaming: because you have removed the physical elements of the communication, there's nothing except personal character to stop people from flaring up emotionally at each other. This is a well-known phenomenon among bloggers, though it predates blogs, and has been observed since the beginning of internet communication.

The removal of the duel -- and the practice of filing criminal charges for assault every time a jerk gets a punch in the face -- has performed a similar transformation on non-virtual society. Neither Chris Matthews nor Keith Olbermann is the sort who would dare to speak that way in the presence of a man like Zell Miller if he were permitted the duel he wanted, even though Zell is spotting them both about fifty years.

Instead, modern society has made the good men powerless to do anything about the bad ones. You can point out that they are mannerless, cowardly puppies; but the more they get called names, the more attention they get, and the more money they make. They are actually rewarded for their bad behavior. Of course you're seeing more bad behavior as a result, and of course their model is being emulated by young people who witness it and see it being rewarded.

Like the internet flamer, they find that all restraints on their worst impulses have been removed. There is nothing to stop them from being abusive except their personal character. If they have any, it is clearly overwhelmed by the actual monetary rewards paid to them for generating controversy.

I can't help but wonder why any adult would think it's OK to post the details of sexual encounters online and even more importantly, why a major corporation is trying to mainstream this kind of behavior or lessen the stigma attached to sexual irresponsibility by saying to its critics, "Get over it. It's no big deal". And contrary to what Dan seems to think, I'd be equally offended if young women were being encouraged to brag about "scoring" with young men online. Wrong is wrong.

Though I'm not sure how outraged I am about this (more like disgusted), feel free to tell me what a reactionary, joyless prude I am in the comments section :p

Posted by Cassandra at 08:26 AM | Comments (38) | TrackBack

October 15, 2009

Oh For Pete's Sake...

What is Meghan McCain's problem?

"So I took a fun picture not thinking anything about what I was wearing but apparently anything other than a pantsuit I am a slut," she wrote, later adding "I can't even tell you how hurt I am."

Soon after, she considered closing her Twitter account altogether.

Let me go way out on a limb, here.

Pantsuit.... low cut shirt with your boobs pushed up so far they nearly touch your neck...

Hmmm. What could the difference possibly be?

Normally the VC Editorial Staff try to avoid criticizing Ms. McCain. There's no sport in it.

But in this case her behavior is so bizarre that she seems to be inviting a conservative intervention. This isn't complicated: if you don't want people to treat you like a pop tart, don't act like one. If you don't wish people to look at (or comment upon) your breasts, don't show them off to thousands of folks to whom you've yet to be formally introduced.

I can't stand when adults demand the "right" to act a certain way and then want to be shielded from the normal consequences of their actions. The term 'pearls before swine' comes to mind. Women are notorious for this, and it's silly behavior.

Update: If you can't take the *&^%$ing heat...

When Little Miss Overprivileged Victim started whining because of mean comments, throwing a Twitter fit and saying she was "getting the f**k off Twitter," I doubt she expected her own nasty f**king sh*t to come flying back in her face. But as they say down home, "Payback is a motherf**ker, b*tch."

People never cease to astonish me and Ms. McCain is no exception. For what it's worth, I don't think posting a picture of your boobs on Twitter makes you a slut. Not even sure who said that but it's hard for me to care, either.

I guess I'm just tired of people thumbing their noses at the rules and then citing those same rules as evidence they've been ill treated. Two wrongs don't make a right but it's generally unconvincing when you try to hold others to a standard you long since openly rejected.

Posted by Cassandra at 06:43 PM | Comments (35) | TrackBack

A Little Thought Experiment

Interesting:

But what I thought was even more interesting was what you find if you compare what single men and single women search on:

It's tempting to see a bidirectional cause and effect thing going on here, but I'm not sure that's valid. Even more curious, however, is what happens when you change just one word ("is" to "does"). That focuses the question more on what men and women are actually doing as opposed to how their behavior is perceived by the opposite sex. I would think that would be slightly more accurate since it isn't passing through the filter of interpretation:

Finally, what are the differences between single and married behaviors by both sexes?

What is the takeaway here? Well, for one thing farting is a much bigger problem in male/female relationships than we ever suspected....

As a final experiment, I eliminated the behaviors that married men and married women BOTH objected to. What is left was thought provoking:

Posted by Cassandra at 07:11 AM | Comments (48) | TrackBack

October 13, 2009

E.J. Dionne Explains Angry White Men to Blue America

Why is it that Obama supporters never want to defend his transparently vague brand of transformative change on the merits? Is it because - despite approximately 10,000 utterances of the phrase, "Let me be clear", progressives have yet to figure out what he intends to do and when he intends to do it?

Ah well, change isn't easy. Make no mistake about it.

Perhaps the only thing more diverting than E.J. Dionne attempting to explain how a typical white man thinks is watching E.J. Dionne try to explain conservatives. The result is a howler of a column, chock full of cringeworthy straw man caricatures of angry white men driven by rage and poorly concealed racial animus.

Dionne's language is a masterwerk of enlightened tolerance unt civility: "rage" appears four times in a one page column. Various forms of the word "anger"? Five times. "Hatred" appears twice, "anxiety" three times, "extremism" twice. References to racism? A whopping seven times. Intelligent (read progressive) readers will quickly twig to Dionne's subtle theme.

"Psssst: these "angry white men" can't really be taken seriously, can they? After all, they aren't rational."

Smart (read progressive) folk know that opposition to Obama's policies stems more from fear and insecurity than the dispassionately informed thought processes common to downtrodden members of the proletariat non-angry non-white non-men:

...there is a second level of angry opposition to which Obama needs to pay more attention. It involves the genuine rage of those who felt displaced in our economy even before the great recession and who are now hurting even more.

These Americans are sometimes written off as "angry white men." In analyzing anti-Obama feeling, commentators have taken to rummaging around the work of historian Richard Hofstadter during the 1950s and '60s, focusing on his theory that "status anxiety" helps explain the rise of movements on the far right. The idea is that extremism takes hold in groups that feel their "status" is threatened by new groups on the rise in society.

The problem with status-anxiety theory is that it focuses on feelings and psychology, thus easily crossing into condescension. It implies that the victims of status anxiety should be doing a better job accepting their new situations and plays down the idea that they might have something real to be angry about.

In fact, many who now feel rage have legitimate reasons for it, even if neither Obama nor big government is the real culprit. September's unemployment numbers told the story in broad terms: Among men 20 and over, unemployment was 10.3 percent; among women, the rate was 7.8 percent.

But rage and status anxiety are only the tip of the iceberg. Simmering beneath all that rampant testosterone is a veritable volcano of ignorance:

Middle-income men, especially those who are not college graduates, have borne the brunt of economic change bred by globalization and technological transformation. Even before the recession, the decline in the number of well-paid jobs in manufacturing hit the incomes of this group of Americans hard. The trouble in the construction industry since the downturn began has compounded the problem.

But how accurate is E.J. Dionne's portrayal of angry white men? To find out, the Editorial Staff consulted a prominent racist angry white male Obama hating extremist.

OK, that last may have been overkill... We admit that at least two of those adjectives would seem to be redundant. Still, when we're right, we're right!

A substantial number of voters seemed to believe that Obama would bring to Washington a large supply of magic pixie dust, which he would sprinkle hither and yon to create Good Jobs, Peace, Prosperity and Social Justice.

Some nine months in, a lot of those people are baffled to discover that we have a pixie dust shortage. The "angry white males" of the Dionne headline are basically Republicans who didn't vote for Obama, and now they're saying, "Hey, you morons, we tried to tell you this guy was hosing you, but you wouldn't listen!"

How many people "hate" Obama? I don't know. Dionne talks about "too many racist signs at rallies and too many overtly racial pronouncements in the fever swamps of the right-wing media," but I spoke at two Tea Party rallies in Alabama -- of all places -- and don't recall any such signs. As for the "fever swamps," I suppose that Dionne means talk radio and Fox News, but cites no examples of the "overtly racial pronouncements" which alarm him.

Typical white guy. Angry. Hostile, even. Blind to his own racism and certainly too unhinged to acknowledge the searing emotional truthiness of Dionne's winning defense of Angry White Male Loserdom. Let's face it: these folks are desperate. On the ropes! Capable of anything! Of course, if we can just turn them into victims - establish a dialog with them - perhaps they'll go away. Maybe - if we pretend we're on their side - they won't blow us to Kingdom Come with their unregistered assault weapons when the military rise up and take control of the federal government.

The odd thing is that we know a lot of white males who oppose Obama's policies and not one of them - not one! - is unemployed. In fact, they're all financially secure. But hey - if the Age of Obama promises an end to the failed divisive rhetoric of the past 8 years, let it begin with E.J. It's time for the healing to begin.

Wink, wink. Nudge, nudge.

Update: Dang. Why are white guys such haters?

As for the Obama administration, whether the grumbling is about Republicans on Fox or bloggers in pajamas, there's a word for what the president and his aides are doing. That word is "whining." And nothing -- no attack by Glenn Beck, no blogger busting about Guantanamo -- does more damage to Obama's credibility or authority than the sense that a popular president is becoming the whiner-in-chief.

*sigh*

While I can point to no real evidence of racial animus, there's no denying that racial bias is driving much of the criticism of this President. Not that I'm implying anything, mind you.

Posted by Cassandra at 06:16 AM | Comments (41) | TrackBack

October 12, 2009

Pppppppphhhhhtttttthhhhh :p

OMG. This made me laugh out loud:

Via Grim, who has more.

I was just thinking the other day of another fave:

Posted by Cassandra at 11:39 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

October 08, 2009

Best Advice Ever

And from a man, no less!

The worst reason to move in with your main squeeze is to test out whether or not they are marriage material. There are no guarantees when it comes to that institution, no beta-test, no half-measures. I’ve actually said, “We’re going to see if we’re compatible!” What a superficial thing to say. If I love a woman and am compelled to give her access to my rotten DNA, compatibility is moot. I love her totally, and flaws are part of that equation.

Marriage is another word for “trust.” Maybe “trust, plus.” It is two people full of doubts, shortcomings, and love holding hands and jumping together. It’s a risk, fraught with the potential to fail, and that makes it beautiful. Three-legged races, where two people hop, stumble, get back up, and maybe hit a stride until they fall again. It’s funny, frustrating, and the wedding ring is a symbol for the rope tying two legs together. I’ve written a lot recently about my folks: They weren’t perfect. They fought, bickered, and had some tough years. But I admire their marriage and don’t really feel the need to top it. I should have known better than to have doomed two relationships to failure by writing a check my emotional maturity couldn’t cash.

Women want weddings too much, men not enough. Women embrace the intimacy; men fear the responsibility. Maybe if we switched those two, women would understand why men sometimes agree to moving in as a way to put off what they think is inevitable, and men would understand why a woman would settle for a major step closer to a cherished event in her life.

Men. When they're right, they're right.

Posted by Cassandra at 12:59 PM | Comments (84) | TrackBack

October 06, 2009

No Justice, no Peace:

No wonder men breeze into work looking like freshly sprung daisies while women crawl in on their knees.

Oppressors :p

Posted by Cassandra at 12:34 PM | Comments (40) | TrackBack

Oh Right... Like You've Never Done This....

Sounds perfectly reasonable to me...

The affidavit stated Purcell told police, “I started my husband's pants on fire” because she was mad.

She had apparently dumped his pants in a bathtub and set them on fire.

Police pressed her on why she set fire to the pants, and according to the affidavit, she replied, “He's always right, and I wanted him to be wrong this time.”

Posted by Cassandra at 12:08 PM | Comments (27) | TrackBack

October 04, 2009

Bwa ha ha ha!!!!

I'd seen this before, but it's still funny. And true:

CWCID: Carrie

Posted by Cassandra at 10:24 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Should Women Withhold Sex?

Miss Attila thinks Stacy got a few things right and a few things wrong on the question of withholding sex to get a guy to commit. I think she's right. Though I realize Stacy is partly kidding here, this passage is a prime example of what I don't like about the way men view women:

...if it is a husband that a woman is seeking, rather than just another in an endless series of going-nowhere "relationships," her negotiating posture in the marriage market is greatly enhanced if she avoids giving up the nookie -- humping, screwing, fornicating, making the beast with two backs, call it what you will -- until she can entrap her prey and drag him to the altar.

... Making the decision to keep your britches on henceforth does not require you to make a moral judgment about your sexual past. Even if you spent your teenage years slutting around like Meghan McCain after four margaritas, this doesn't necessarily make you a bad person -- unless you start writing ill-informed RINO political commentary for Tina Brown's Daily Beast, in which case, you're a total whore with pustulent chancres.

If there's one thing that has continued to bother me over the years about our "Sex and Relationships" conversations, it is the depressingly cynical double standard so many men employ with regard to the women in their lives. It seems to go something like this:

Men are programmed by Mother Nature to sleep with any woman willing to spread her legs. Giving in to their instincts, however, does not make men total sluts or whores the way it would if we were discussing... oh gosh, I don't know: women who give in to their instincts.

On the contrary, promiscuous sex makes men studly and admirable. So much so, in fact, that men love to brag about their willingness to use and discard women. They flaunt their 'conquests' while reviling the women they are having sex with for being dumb enough to "give it up". Don't like it? Hey - get over it babe - men are "wired that way". And anyway, you asked for it. Don't expect so much from us and you won't be disappointed, dummy!

Without a doubt, Stacy has hit on a few great home truths here. But I also think he is - unsurprisingly perhaps, since he is a man - looking at things only from the male perspective. Since most heterosexual relationships involve both a man and a woman, he's missing about half of the picture.

Men prize sex - and sexual access to women - greatly. But sex has different consequences for men and women. One of the things few women understand is that - regardless of whether their behavior lives up to their ideals - most men take commitment VERY seriously. That's why so many men run from commitment; not because they don't understand it, but because they understand commitment and responsibility all too well. Before taking on a lifelong commitment, a man usually needs to be at a point in his life where this makes sense to him; where he is prepared to fulfill his responsibilities. Most men weigh marriage very carefully because when a man finally does settle down, he feels obligated. Many men will work themselves nearly to death to provide for their families. They take great pride in their role as providers and protectors. And precisely because most men DO recognize that they are morally on the hook to provide for their offspring (even if they fail to live up to this responsibility), men prize something else: exclusivity.

Men, simply put, want to be able to trust that a woman they have sex with has eyes only for him, even if he isn't willing to reciprocate by 'forsaking all others', as it were. He wants to know that she will grant her favors to him and him alone. Consequently if she is too quick to give in to his attempts to seduce her, he wonders whether she would give in just as easily to some other Lothario? Her value lessens in his eyes. Who wants to commit to a lifetime of supporting a woman who may be sleeping around behind your back - who may commit you to support children you didn't even have the pleasure of fathering?

I also think, and here I'm counting the seconds here until the Mother of All Oxymoronic Arguments rears its ugly head, that men get their feelings hurt just like women do. Not just their pride, but their feelings. I don't believe men who argue that men are wonderful and moral beings... and simultaneously cynical users only care about sex.

Men and women are very different. Women definitely go into relationship mode far earlier than men do. But sex makes both men and women emotionally vulnerable, albeit to different degrees. A man is never so malleable, loving or tender as he is in a good sexual relationship. I think this is part of where the ugly talk of sluts and whores comes from. I also think it's the reason for male complaints of manipulative female behavior: on some level, men recognize that sex has great power over them and some resent that. The fact is that for men, sex can create some pretty strong emotions. It can also engender a very primal (and not irrational) fear of betrayal.

I'm not going to get into a recitation of my premarital sexual history. That's really none of anyone's business. Anyone who has read VC for any time at all knows that I married young. But I also began dating very early, so even though I was taken off the market (so to speak) early, I had a good 6-7 years of dating experience under my belt before I walked down the aisle.

During my dating years I never "dated around". With the exception of half of 9th grade (what I used to laughingly call "the dry spell"), I was usually in a long standing committed relationship. Moreover, I never had any trouble "trapping" my boyfriends into a long term commitment. I didn't even try.

On the contrary: they were the ones doing the chasing, who literally insisted on the commitment.

I think there were several reasons my boyfriends were always willing to commit to me and it had nothing to do with using sex as a bargaining tool. Both through my own experience and through talking to endless female friends over the years, I've noticed a few patterns in women who are successful in getting what they want with men.

1. They are selective. If a woman is attracted by men who have no character, she is not going to end up in a good relationship. Physical attraction is important but a man's other qualities: the ability to delay immediate gratification, responsibility, integrity, intelligence, wit, and - surprise! - kindness and sensitivity are the mark of a good man.

I never trusted smooth talkers or men who flirted too much. A little flirting is all right, but if he comes on too strong his attraction to you is likely to be superficial.

2. They take things slowly, realizing that men and women have different relationship timetables. I think this is probably the biggest mistake women make with men.

There's a pattern that plays out in male-female relationships all the time. A guy notices a woman. He employs the full court press: frequent phone calls, flowers, romantic dates, anything to make himself stand out from the crowd. And the first few dates go well. She is comfortable with him. The relationship is easy and she's on cloud nine. He seems eager to see her again.

And it's here that women frequently screw up. She is thinking, "He's the one! It's love!"

And he's thinking, "Hey, this is kind of pleasant. I could see things continuing just like this..." Except they don't a lot of the time. As time goes on, two things happen:

1. Having won her acceptance, he stops trying quite so hard. The full court press becomes a half court press. He's still interested, but he's not standing on his head trying to win her anymore because he's no longer afraid of losing her.

2. Her behavior changes, too. In the back of her mind they're now in a relationship, and relationships come with expectations. For a woman, this happens far sooner than it does with a man. As I said earlier, I knew whether I was serious about a guy by the second date. Men, on the other hand, can take a whole year to get to the point where they begin to think of that little white picket fence.

BIG difference. I think that how the woman behaves at this point makes all the difference in the world in whether the man goes on to decide he wants a committed relationship. Because at this point, a lot of women go on to do something very dumb and it has nothing to do with sex.

Little by little, they begin to give up their independence. They stop going out with their girlfriends and start waiting by the phone for Mr. Right to call them. And if he doesn't call promptly, they resent having given up the usual fun activities they would have engaged in before he came along. They get irritated or emotional, and the weight of all that expectation and disappointment makes the guy feel trapped. Suddenly things aren't light and fun anymore. Instead of positive reinforcement, he encounters poorly hidden hurt and resentment. This is where I think Stacy got it right at the beginning of his post when he asked:

Question: Why do people treat you badly? Answer: Because you let them.

Bingo. When I was younger I used to say, "If you lie down and act like a doormat, don't be surprised if people wipe their feet all over you." And women do this all the time. We engage in placating behavior: "If I do X for him, he'll like me." This comes from a good place. We are hard wired by nature to care for small children; to be unselfish and giving and unguardedly affectionate. But the thing is, men aren't children.

The woman he was attracted to in the first place was fun and light hearted and above all, someone he couldn't take for granted. Here's another place where Stacy is partly right: if - this early in the relationship - you've already had sex with him, he will tend to take you for granted. Notice I said, "tend".

Women walk a very delicate tightrope here between being able to convince a man they will be true to him and being taken for granted. I don't think having sex with a guy will cause him to avoid commitments. I know far too many men who have married women they were already having sex with to believe that. Sex isn't the driver here - it's an important part of the package, but not the whole package.

I think what makes men willing to commit to a woman - regardless of whether they're having sex with her or not - is that they see her as someone who has her own interests and her own life and moreover, who will make his life better, more fun and more meaningful if he can convince her to commit to him. If she gives up her friends, her hobbies and outside interests and expects him to fulfill her every desire, he's going to see commitment as a prison rather than as something that will enrich his life. Sex complicates the equation because women bond earlier and being in a sexual relationship can cause women to cling too tightly or give in to a man's naturally dominating personality.

I think what most women don't realize is that while men need to be respected and admired, they don't really want you to give in to them totally. One thing we can never delegate in life is responsibility for our own happiness. Often, women in relationships do exactly this: everything starts to revolve around the man and that puts way too much pressure on a new relationship. Men don't react well to pressure and do many things themselves that aren't helpful.

But I reject the notion that women should use sex as a bargaining tool. What makes more sense to me is that neither men nor women should jump into sexual relationships unless they can handle the emotional fallout. If having sex with a man you care for causes you to lose control of your life or your emotions, you're treating sex too casually.

Discuss amongst yourselves.

UPDATE: Bride of Rove (OMG - love the name!) makes a great point here:

If you are a 31-yo woman recently dumped by a long time live in here’s some actual advice from a woman who has seen this many times. Don’t kill yourself look for that next guy. Take up water skiing or sky diving or archaeology or something – anything – you’ve been denying yourself because of that last asshole you were dating. If you are out doing things you love you will run into guys who love the things you are doing and if one happens to be ready for marriage? Well – there you are. It’s not you. Unless you are a skanky whiner bitch who is miserable for the sake of being miserable – it’s not you. It’s probably not even him. Move on. Let him go. Life is waiting for you – go live it.

I will never forget the first time the Spousal Unit and I had The Relationship Talk. We were only 18 and had been dating only a few months, but I think we both realized we had something both of us thought was special. The Talk took place on a lovely summer's day on the Golf Course at NOB, Norfolk. We sat under a tree and the soon to be love of my life stunned me senseless with the following:

"Yes, I feel the same way about you, but I have plans for the next 4 years. And after that I don't want to marry until my service commitment is over. So that will mean ... let's see... 4 more years. And I want to be able to give you a good home and medical insurance [Ed. note, I had asthma as a teen]. So... hmmm... 9 years."

I clearly recall being quite shocked that my undeniable physical and emotional charms were insufficient to blind my SO to mundane details like making sure we had enough to live on. I also clearly recall thinking, "Damn. I love this guy, but he's smoking crack if he thinks I'll wait 9 years until everything is 'just so'. That's nuts."

Inside, I was a whirl of emotions. I often find myself responding that way to him. What I said, was something like:

"Well, I understand your plans but I really can't see dating exclusively for 9 years without a clear commitment from you. Too much could happen in the mean time. I love you, but if that's the way you feel I am going to date other people. If it's meant to be, it will be but I'm not putting myself on the shelf for 9 years."

And I did. I went to school and dated other people. But I loved my future husband and never found anyone to rival him in my affections. This went on for another year and a half. I am often mystified by military wives who completely fall apart when their husbands deploy. It's not that I don't feel all the same feelings they do. I haven't slept well since my husband left and neither has he.

But we come into this life alone and we leave it alone. To me, a successful marriage is not so much a merging of two persons, but a partnership. As such, it requires two people who can be self sufficient. FWIW, we also discussed living together (it *was* the 70s folks). I never seriously considered that, though.

If I'd moved in with him, I would have expected a proposal and if he didn't propose, I would have resented that. Sometimes you need to know what you want from a relationship. If the other person isn't willing to give it to you, he's not right for you.

Posted by Cassandra at 06:16 AM | Comments (138) | TrackBack

September 29, 2009

Question of the Day

CWCID.

For what it's worth, I've never much cared for the "all men are pigs" thing, but the first time I recall hearing it said, it was by a guy and pretty much all the other men present agreed with him.

I don't like to hear women say it (assuming they're serious, and not just poking fun at the feminine tendency to wax disgusted when men have the temerity to act male) because it sounds ungracious and slightly contemptuous. I think the majority of men both want and deserve the respect of women.

I don't like to hear men say it (assuming they're serious, and not just poking fun at certain natural tendencies a fair number of men happen to share) for the same reason I don't buy the "That's just how we're wired - deal with it" line. Men and women are different, but both men and women possess innate tendencies that - left unchecked - can be pretty obnoxious. Arguing that we can't be expected to behave any better than our worst instincts sets a depressingly low bar for human behavior. If men don't even respect themselves, why should anyone else respect them? On the other hand, I've found that when you broadcast contempt for others, they tend to lower themselves to meet your expectations.

Perhaps if people were as tolerant of others as they are of their own foibles, the "take me as I am" standard might work. But generally speaking, they're not. Both men and women tend to excuse their own petty peccadilloes while taking great umbrage at the behavior of the opposite sex. It seems bizarre to me that after thousands of years of civilization, there are still those who argue that people are incapable of self control.

How do they think we got where we are today?

Update: Heh.

via JM Heinrichs

Posted by Cassandra at 08:29 AM | Comments (22) | TrackBack

September 24, 2009

Yikes

Today's monster under the bed: indirect sex partners.

Need. Coffee.

Posted by Cassandra at 08:58 AM | Comments (26) | TrackBack

September 17, 2009

Heresy!

"We have found a witch! May we burn him?":

From FIRE comes this remarkable tale:

The abuse of campus sexual harassment policies to punish dissenting professors has hit a new low at East Georgia College (EGC). Professor Thomas Thibeault made the mistake of pointing out — at a sexual harassment training seminar — that the school's sexual harassment policy contained no protection for the falsely accused. Two days later, in a Kafkaesque irony, Thibeault was fired by the college president for sexual harassment without notice, without knowing his accuser or the charges against him, and without a hearing. . . .

Thibeault's ordeal started shortly after August 5, 2009 when, during a faculty training session regarding the college's sexual harassment policy, he presented a scenario regarding a different professor and asked, "[W]hat provision is there in the Sexual Harassment policy to protect the accused against complaints which are malicious or, in this case[,] ridiculous[?]" Vice President for Legal Affairs Mary Smith, who was conducting the session, replied that there was no such provision to protect the accused, so Thibeault responded that "the policy itself is flawed."

Two days later, Thibeault was summoned to EGC President John Bryant Black's office. . . . Black told Thibeault that he "was a divisive force in the college at a time when the college needed unity" and that Thibeault must resign by 11:30 a.m. or be fired and have his "long history of sexual harassment . . . made public."

As of today, the college has still not provided any evidence to support its sexual-harassment charge.

Of course, it could have been far worse. They could have had hard evidence against him:

Sampson's troubles began last year when a co-worker complained after seeing him reading a book titled Notre Dame vs. the Klan: How the Fighting Irish Defeated the Ku Klux Klan.

The book's cover features white-robed Klansmen and burning crosses against a backdrop of Notre Dame's campus. It recounts a 1924 riot between Notre Dame students and the Klan in which the students from the Catholic university prevailed.

Sampson, a 58-year-old white janitor and student majoring in communication studies, said he tried to explain that the book was a historical account.

"I have an interest in American history," Sampson said. "I was trying to educate myself."

But Sampson says his union official likened the book to bringing pornography to work, and the school's affirmative action officer in November told Sampson his conduct constituted racial harassment.

"You used extremely poor judgment by insisting on openly reading the book related to a historically and racially abhorrent subject in the presence of your black co-workers," Lillian Charleston wrote in a letter to Sampson.

Whenever I see this degree of tiptoeing through the tulips, trying to redress slights that occurred largely in someone's overactive imagination, or right wrongs that occurred long before any of the participants were born, I begin to suspect there is way too much estrogen in the room. It's even funnier when you see grown men getting their Hanes UltraSheers all in a wad.

Kinda reminds me of that whole intersex fish deal. Where is the Brawny Man when we need him?

Posted by Cassandra at 02:34 PM | Comments (24) | TrackBack

September 16, 2009

"It's the Commitment, Stupid"

The longer I live, the more astounded I am at how many people make life way more complicated than it needs to be:

...a study Stanley co-authored in February found that of the 1,050 married people surveyed, almost 19 percent of those who lived together before getting engaged had at some point suggested divorce, compared with 10 percent for those who waited until marriage to live together.

Those findings mimic the reports from the mid-1990s that first peaked Stanley's interest, showing that men who cohabitated before marriage were, on average, less dedicated to their relationships than those who didn't.

"It was one of those kind of findings that I wouldn't have suspected," Stanley, 53, recalls. But he immediately had a theory: "The basic idea was, 'Okay, there's a group of males there that married someone they wouldn't have married if they hadn't moved in with them.' "

The problem is one of inertia, he says. Living together, mingling finances and completely intertwining your lives makes it harder to break up than if you'd stayed at separate addresses. "Some people get trapped by that and they end up hanging around," he explains. Even if a couple doesn't eventually marry, they might prolong the relationship and "miss other opportunities with a person who's a better fit."

But not all cohabitations are created equal. Stanley's studies have shown there's almost no difference in marital satisfaction between couples who moved in together after they got engaged and those who did it after their wedding day. He attributes this to varying levels of deliberateness; engaged and married couples have committed to a future together, while some couples who cohabit before engagement are ambiguous about where their relationship is headed.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but... "Duh".

Yesterday morning I was reading the comments on a site that seems to attract far more than its reasonable share of bitter divorced men. Before I go any further with this, there are comparable sites where bitter, disenchanted women go on (and on... and on...) about what beasties the male sex are. I rarely visit them because they rarely discuss any topics I'm interested in.

At any rate, yesterday morning there was a persistent refrain weaving in and out of the comments: "She was so nice before we married... and then - for no reason at all! - she turned into a deranged harpy on crack."

While I'm quite willing to stipulate that there are bad women and men in the world, real life relationships are rarely that simple. One person may well be the instigator (especially when the marriage hits a rough patch and outside circumstances cause one partner or the other to temporarily wig out):

LET’S say you have what you believe to be a healthy marriage. You’re still friends and lovers after spending more than half of your lives together. The dreams you set out to achieve in your 20s — gazing into each other’s eyes in candlelit city bistros when you were single and skinny — have for the most part come true.

Two decades later you have the 20 acres of land, the farmhouse, the children, the dogs and horses. You’re the parents you said you would be, full of love and guidance. You’ve done it all: Disneyland, camping, Hawaii, Mexico, city living, stargazing.

Sure, you have your marital issues, but on the whole you feel so self-satisfied about how things have worked out that you would never, in your wildest nightmares, think you would hear these words from your husband one fine summer day: “I don’t love you anymore. I’m not sure I ever did. I’m moving out. The kids will understand. They’ll want me to be happy.”

If there's one thing I've learned in three decades of being married, we have absolutely zero control over someone else's state of mind. But we have quite a bit of control over how we respond to them.

I think the hardest thing about being married for a long time is remembering the importance of self-restraint. We get comfortable, we fall into a rut, we begin to take each other and the relationship for granted. And then suddenly we hit a speed bump and find that gradually, imperceptibly, we have drifted apart.

When someone hurts you deeply or their behavior throws you for a loop, the natural response is to lash out; to retaliate in kind or to react without stopping to consider how your response might make things worse rather than better. We've come to think that promises are no longer relevant these days.

I think promises act like a keel on a large boat. When gale force winds strike, sometimes the promise is all you have to cling to until fair weather returns. Marriages are built on faith, and faith in a promise can sometimes tide you over when faith in your partner seems hard to come by.

That said, if my spouse suddenly announced he wasn't sure if he ever loved me, I don't think detached reasonableness would be my first response. Sometimes knowing what to do is not the same thing as being smart enough to do it.

But then again, maybe that's what the promise is for.

Posted by Cassandra at 05:44 PM | Comments (43) | TrackBack

September 03, 2009

Great Moments in Journalism

Who among us has not celebrated these time honored rites of passage?

Daugherty said his son is very mature and would be able to handle the responsibility of owning a piece of artillery.

Posted by Cassandra at 08:10 AM | Comments (10) | TrackBack

July 26, 2009

First Rule of Holes

When you're in one, stop digging.

Shorter Donald Douglas:

1. I did something disgusting and wrong, and I know it was disgusting and wrong, but I refuse to apologize:

I saw a news opportunity that might bring in some traffic. My hunch exceeded expectations. And, it is what it is - exploitation of privacy invasion for profit. It's ugly, but that's what I did, no apologies.

2. I am passing NO VALUE JUDGMENTS on anyone who looked at that disgusting and wrong video, or on anyone else....

...except Miss Attila, who is a disgusting hypocrite because she has written about sex, which as we all know is tantamount to exploiting a crime for personal gain...

...and that radical feminist Cassandra, who is not only a hypocrite for displaying a fully clothed pinup on her masthead (remind me to tell you that story sometime, Donald) but a "hardline feminist ayatollah".

Sometimes, the comedy just writes itself :p

Posted by Cassandra at 10:49 AM | Comments (31) | TrackBack

July 22, 2009

Is Sex Necessary?

The Editorial Staff sprang from betwixt the marital sheets this morning possessed of a steely eyed resolve to slake BillT's insatiable appetite for sex and relationships posts. It's a dirty, dirty job but then your hostess is a dirty, dirty girl. Besides we have a vested interest in preventing the thong slinging contingent from becoming restive, lest they commence to finger painting each other's fiddly bits with salsa or - heaven forfend! - homemade guac.

Fortunately, 'Lil Miss Attila poses today's question for the ages. Is Sex Necessary? The Scourge of the Blogosphere concludeth: "Yea, verily":

Men, it turns out, are very simple creatures, and if you please them they will do anything for you. Flanigan, despite her very real insights, is heart-breakingly unwilling to see that there might be two sides to any story, and in her insistence that women can solve the problem of sexless marriages if they just shut up, and put their minds to it. Where there’s a will, there’s a way!

Well, sometimes. And one gets, one really does, that Flanigan’s husband is dynamite in the sack, so whenever there’s been a lull in the action all she’s had to do it turn the faucet back on. I’m sure that is all that’s required, north of 50% of the time, when married folk encounter a dry spell. But I don’t think human sexuality is universally uncomplicated. And I don’t think men are quite the simple creatures that some of ‘em claim to be. I mean—they aren’t.

I think Attila's dead on here. Most of my battle of the sexes essays grapple with commonly occurring facets of male/female interaction. That said, I'm cognizant of the pitfalls of oversimplification. Few generalized observations can possibly hope to explain every individual along a broad spectrum of men and women exhibiting endless combinations of masculine and feminine characteristics. It's perhaps more helpful to think of the exercise as an attempt to understand behaviors we think of as typically masculine or feminine because, though individuals of both sexes may possess them in varying degrees, in the aggregate they're more common in (and are exhibited to a greater degree by) men or women, respectively.

But I digress...

The Flanigan essay linked by Attila is a must read. So many "Bam!" moments. But this, especially, made our little grey cells go positively tingly:

The dominant feature of Kate's attitude toward her husband—that is, before they resume making the sound of Us—is blistering contempt. Contempt for his work: he is a quietly successful architect, given to building whimsical little structures like Peace Pagodas, a pursuit that leaves him time to make pesto and watch Disney videos with the kids while she strides off to her high-paying, high-pressure job. Contempt for his inability to notice if the family has run out of toilet paper or whether the children are properly dressed for a birthday party. Contempt for his very existence in the household: when he wonders whether it would be such a bad thing if their uncooperative nanny quit, Kate tells him, "Frankly, it would be easier if you left." That the man entertains even a single amorous notion about this ball-breaker—much given to kittenish, come-hither comments along the lines of "Richard, I thought I asked you to tidy up?" and "Why the hell can't you do something that needs doing?"—is testament either to a libido of iron or to an erotic sensibility that leans toward the deeply masochistic. If best-selling novels succeed because they "tap into" something in the culture, surely this woman's helpless anger at the man who she thought was going to share her domestic burden accounts in part for the book's immense popularity.

Pearson told an interviewer, "Until they program men to notice you're out of toilet paper, a happy domestic life will always be up to women"—a sentiment almost unanimously held by the working mothers I know. What we've learned during this thirty-year grand experiment is that men can be cajoled into doing all sorts of household tasks, but they will not do them the way a woman would. They will bathe the children, but they will not straighten the bath mat and wring out the washcloths; they will drop a toddler off at nursery school, but they won't spend ten minutes chatting with the teacher and collecting the art projects. They will, in other words, do what men have always done: reduce a job to its simplest essentials and utterly ignore the fillips and niceties that women tend to regard as equally essential. And a lot of women feel cheated and angry and even—bless their hearts—surprised about this. In the old days, of course, men's inability to perform women's work competently was a source of satisfaction and pride to countless housewives. A reliable sitcom premise involved Father's staying home for a day while Mother handled things at his office; chastened and newly admiring of the other's abilities, each ran gratefully back to familiar terrain. Nowadays, when a working mother arrives home after a late deposition, only to find the living room strewn with Legos and a pizza box crammed into the kitchen trash, she tends to get madder than a wet hen. Women are left with two options: endlessly haranguing their husbands to be more womanly, or silently fuming and (however wittingly) launching a sex strike of an intensity and a duration that would have impressed Aristophanes. The men who cave to the pressure to become more feminine—putting little notes in the lunch boxes, sweeping up after snack time, the whole bit—may delight their wives but they probably don't improve their sex lives much, owing to the thorny old problem of la difference. I might be quietly thrilled if my husband decided to forgo his weekly tennis game so that he could alphabetize the spices and scrub the lazy Susan, but I would hardly consider it an erotic gesture.

It turns out that the "traditional" marriage, which we've all been so happy to annihilate, had some pretty good provisions for many of today's most stubborn marital problems, such as how to combine work and parenthood, and how to keep the springs of the marriage bed in good working order. What's interesting about the sex advice given to married women of earlier generations is that it proceeds from the assumption that in a marriage a happy sex life depends upon orderly and successful housekeeping. Marabel Morgan's notorious 1973 book, The Total Woman, has lingered in people's minds because of the seduction techniques it recommends to unhappy housewives. They ought to consider meeting their husbands at the front door in sexy costumes (heels and lingerie, that kind of thing), calling them at work and talking dirty to them, seducing them beneath the dining-room table. (Morgan does not, however, recommend that women nurture a burning intelligence. In a list of unconventional locations in which to make love, she includes the hammock, counseling her readers, "He may say 'We don't have a hammock.' You can reply 'Oh, darling, I forgot!'"). But long before she describes any of these memorable techniques, Morgan gives a quite thorough accounting of how a housewife ought to go about "redeeming the time" and the energy so that she is physically and emotionally able to make love on a regular basis. A housewife should run her household the way an executive runs his business: with goals, schedules, and plans. She should make dinner—or at least do all the shopping and planning for it—right after breakfast, so that she isn't running around like a madwoman in the late afternoon with no idea what to cook. She should take time to rest and relax during the day so that she is not exhausted and depleted come whoopee hour. With the right kind of planning, "you can have all your home duties finished before noon." In a household run by an incompetent wife, however, "by the time her husband enters the scene, she's had it," Morgan writes. "She's too tired to be available to him." This seems a fairly accurate depiction of many contemporary two-career marriages, in which dinner is a nightly crisis (what to eat?) and an endless negotiation (who to cook it?) entered into by two people who have been managing crises and negotiating agreements all day long and who still have the children's homework and baths and bedtimes to contend with.

The key insight here is not so much that a successful sex life is inextricably linked to a spanking clean kitchen floor but the realization that if we don't make sex a priority (with all the distasteful "work" that requires), our sex lives tend to suffer. It shouldn't be the woman's job alone to keep things spicy in the boudoir, but at the same time there's little doubt that when women entered the work force their careers added one more competing element to the often daunting list of responsibilities they juggle on a daily basis. It's little wonder sex can seem like just another chore: after a tough day at work the probability that the lady of the house will greet her significant other at the door in a wig, stiletto heels and a pink satin thong asymptotically approaches zero. But if a thing is important enough, some of us will jump on that grenade anyway. The problem here is that as our lives become busier, so does our list of "important things". Something has to give, and all too often it's our sex lives. Is this the fault of those dreadful feminists, or just one more unpalatable tradeoff to be juggled along with everything else?

Blaming feminism may be comforting to some, but it's possible to recognize the practical tradeoffs involved with actually allowing women to make their own choices. As much as I've decried the flight of women from hearth and home, I'm not sure I want to go back to the world I lived in as a child: a place where women were sometimes - mostly when it was convenient - put on a pedestal, but also dismissed as fluffy headed children suited only for "women's work" (MCP shorthand for any occupation which neither requires women to think too hard nor exposes Western Civilization to the horror of PMS, a debilitating condition that can only cause the fairer sex to do terribly silly things like fumbling the nuclear football and bringing life on planet Earth to a nasty and brutish conclusion).

Serendipity is a funny thing. Googling just now for a link to augment the PMS/nuclear football reference, I stumbled upon a comment that adroitly conveys my utter frustration with the 'We are no more than the sum of our endocrine glands' argument:

"In our society, a man knows that even if he is not getting a blow job, a lot of other men are. He can see all those men getting blow jobs on porn videos, and he hears about blow jobs from his friends. And he knows that in that way, those men are "luckier" (if not more virile and attractive) than he. So much so that a man who does not get serviced by his wife might be hesitant to even admit such a thing to his friends. What a shame, that a man has so little power in his marriage that he cannot even get a blow job from his wife. What kind of man is he? Maybe not much of a man at all. Such a lack could, um, eat at a man. Such a lack, along with a compulsion to remedy it, could even undermine a marriage."

I'm just wondering. If this is true, and really more or less common wisdom for all men, then how on earth did WOMEN ever get the reputation for being hormonally driven to the point of being too unstable for higher office? Remember all those jokes about how a woman can't be president because, why, her PMS would represent a threat of global proportions for an imminent nuclear holocaust! Seems to me that men's focus is so permanently on the little head, how on earth did the trope ever develop that they had the capacity more so than women to lead businesses, religions and nations? My god, apparently all they are EVER thinking about, even as their wives are dying inch by inch, is where the next blow job is coming from! It's a miracle they get anything done!

Leaving aside the wisdom of using what women are constantly assured is 'only a fantasy which has no effect on how I feel about you' as a benchmark for unspoken performance reviews, we proceed to Attila's question: is sex necessary for a good marriage, or even for a good life?

I don't think so. Sex is tremendously important, fun, life affirming. But necessary? Not by a long shot.

I love sex. When I've had to go without it, my quality of life suffers. During those rare interludes when one or the other of us has been too tired or too busy to make the effort at the end of a long work day, I miss it. I don't feel as close to my husband because there is something deeply primal about touch. It connects people in a way words often fail to do. But is sex the only way to establish and maintain that connection?

Of course not. It can be done in a thousand different ways. Sex just happens to be a particularly enjoyable and efficient means to an end and in this age when both men and women (as Flanagan so aptly noted) are juggling job stress and familial demands, it is probably more important than ever. But we human beings are an adaptable race and I know many good marriages which also happen to be sexless ones.

Air Force wife posed an interesting question via email yesterday that seems on point:

What is your take on this?... I know you were married young as AFHusband and I were. I just don't think that "too young" is a real thing for the most part. In fact, in my experience and what I've seen, people who get married older often have more problems adjusting to life in marriage simply because they've already matured into patterns that marriage disrupts.

Not always, of course, but quite often.

I've been thinking that perhaps it's not "too young" that is the problem, it's the fact that marriage is treated as disposable that is the real problem, and that is not connected to age.

The view of marriage as a disposable arrangement honored only so long as both parties feel "happy" (rather than as a binding promise whose success includes the willingness to put our personal happiness on the back burner at times) is definitely a factor. But I think the failure to truly commit is also a huge driver in both cheating and divorce. If you're truly committed to your marriage, it comes first in your life.

You may prize your career, your hobbies, or time with your friends, and as demands on your time wax and wane, outside considerations may temporarily take priority over your marriage. But it strikes me as profoundly ludicrous to expect a 60 or 70 year relationship to last unless one is willing to put in the day-in, day-out effort needed to keep love alive. What we tend to forget is that even good sex requires work. Being a good lover (and for many women even learning to let go and fully enjoy sex requires a conscious effort) is a skill much like any other. The more you do it, the better it becomes. And you can get out of practice.

If you care about your marriage, you do what it takes. Sex makes getting along easier - far easier. But as the plethora of Viagra commercials aptly demonstrate, sex isn't something we can count on.

It makes a far better better servant than it ever did a master.

Posted by Cassandra at 04:40 AM | Comments (51) | TrackBack

June 25, 2009

But for the Grace of God

Call me naive, call me old fashioned and unrealistic, but I yearn for the days when government was so small that if a governor disappeared for five days, it really didn't affect all that much, and a politician's private life, if it didn't impact on his job, was totally off limits.

- Commenter "Pete"

I guess I'm a hopeless romantic.

I've been trying to puzzle out what so offended me about the feeding frenzy over Mark Sanford's absence the other day. Part of it, undoubtedly, was the notion that it's anyone other than the Sanford's business what arrangements they make regarding their respective activities. Like Miss Attila, I didn't find it the least bit odd that Jenny Sanford either didn't know exactly where her husband was, or chose not to pass on what she did know. Either way, her business. And judging from my own 30 year marriage, hardly unusual. I've always thought of marriage as more a partnership than a prison sentence:

... I just don’t get the male culture these days, and that’s part of what set me off about the early stages of the Sanford scandal, while the media was in the process of happily pounding nails into the coffin of the good governor’s marriage: the suggestion that men are supposed to ask their wives’ permission before they can do what they like. Does my husband ask me before he trains for a marathon or goes to visit his family? No. Of course not. I mean, he might double-check to make sure there’s not something on our mutual calendar that he’s forgetting, just as I do with him. But . . . permission? Say what? Is he eight years old?

Back when we lived in the hills I actually got asked things like, why did I let my husband smoke in the house? “Let”? Um, how about, he contributed half of the downpayment on the place, and was paying 100% of the mortgage at the time, and I knew when I married him that I was getting a smoker? He exiled himself to the balconies when he was trying to quit, and I supported that, too. Whatever makes him happy. Now he’s a non-smoker. Good, but that wasn’t my project.

I mean, isn’t there some kind of middle ground, here?

My husband does lots of things I'm not crazy about. I do things that don't fill him with delight either. But I don't think either of us, when we spoke those vows back in the nineteen seventies, thought that we would spend the remainder of our lives joined at the hip.

Together? Certainly. But I think both of us always understood that no one human being can fill all our needs. I think we also understood that the quickest way to kill desire is to make a prison of love - to demand that a loved one slowly chop off tiny parts of himself until he is made over into your ideal fantasy lover. This applies equally, if not far more so, to women for after marriage we often surrender ourselves to domesticity and child rearing. We forget the girl he fell in love with; the free spirit he pursued and finally won (but not easily).

This may sound as though I'm excusing Sanford's adultery. I'm not, though. One can accept the utter wrongness of his behavior and yet understand the very human impulses that led him to this pass:

Power corrupts because of the temptations it offers. Sanford’s allowing himself to cheat on his wife is just another example of allowing feelings to excuse bad behavior as was previously debated.

Sanford may indeed love his wife, but in marriage love isn’t the most important thing, it is trust. This is why all the handwringing when he first “disappeared” didn’t concern me at all. I gave the Sanfords the benefit of a doubt that if Jenny wasn’t concerned then no one should be concerned.

Love can ebb and flow in a marriage, but if trust is betrayed it is rarely recovered.

Adultery in politics is nothing new. What is relatively new, at least for the American press, is the vicious pleasure we take in exposing the human frailties of those in power; in dragging their families through the muck with them, compounding the hurt, the sense of betrayal, the embarrassment. It is this sickening sense of entitlement that allows ghouls like Andrew Sullivan to attack Sarah Palin's underaged daughters, to cast aspersions on the paternity of a tiny baby with Down's syndrome. No one is safe from our leering eyes and ears. Not even children and innocent spouses.

Contrast this with the forebearance granted to JFK:

We all know that JFK was a ladies' man but it's never boring to remind ourselves quite how many ladies the man had, continuously - he told Harold Macmillan he got a headache if he didn't go to bed with someone once every three days - and from a young age.

Here he is at 19, writing to a friend about how his father's private secretary had, on a holiday in Cape Cod, "got us some girls thru another guy - four of us had dates and one guy got f---ed 3 times, another guy 3 times (the girl a virgin!) plus myself twice."

After he married, the compulsion for quick, random sex continued unabated. A woman friend said he was as "compulsive as Mussolini. Up against the wall, Signora, if you have five minutes, that sort of thing." Another woman he dated just before he became president was told, "I wish we had time for some foreplay."

Perhaps the most frequent question I've read from disappointed Republicans has been, "How could he? He had everything."

Oddly, I don't find that one difficult at all to answer. He screwed up because he was human. The disturbing truth is that although there can be no excusing a betrayal like this, we don't know what led up to it nor what words were exchanged between Sanford and his wife.

Nor should we. None of this sad affair is any of our business. And what strikes me most forcefully in all of this is that Sanford didn't do the easy thing.

The expected thing.

Pundits and commenters alike seem outraged that this man didn't grasp at the standard male excuse for extramarital dalliance:

"It didn't mean a thing. I just used her for the sex."

It is hard for me to imagine any greater insult to a wife than to say, "I risked everything for a cheap one night stand. I didn't even have that much respect for you." But Sanford, though it makes his adultery no less wrong, didn't throw his lover under the bus. It appears that whatever else he may have done, there was something more there than casual lust. This may be the biggest tragedy of all, because all I could think when I heard the news was, "There, but for the grace of God, go I."

No, I would never cheat on my husband, and I have never done so.

That's why I think rules are so important. Sometimes they are all that stands between us and self destruction. But if I have not erred in this fashion, I would never think to pretend that I am perfect or that I don't have it in me, given the right circumstances, to allow my heart or my mind to stray. Knowing right from wrong is a great bulwark against human frailty but it is hardly an infallible one. Somehow, I can't find it in my heart to rejoice at the misfortune (much less the misbehavior) of others.

Maybe that's why I find myself increasingly disenchanted with so much of what I read these days. I am left with only sorrow for everyone involved in this train wreck. And I only wish we had the decency to leave them alone while they sort this all out.

Posted by Cassandra at 07:26 AM | Comments (63) | TrackBack

June 22, 2009

Honor Thy Father

I once read that the difference between fathers and mothers is that a mother's love is unconditional, whereas a father's love must be earned.

Until today, I thought this quote was quite possibly the dumbest thing I'd ever read on the subject of fatherhood. It turned out that I was wrong:

Today's dads are more cuddly with their children than the generation before them.

At least that's what dads are self-reporting in a new survey from Lever 2000, part of its Making Every Touch Count campaign. According to the survey, up to 84 percent of dads surveyed say they show more physical affection to their own children than their parents did with them.

What's wrong with this? Apparently, every time a father gives his children a hug, what he's really doing is abandoning his role as an authority figure and ushering in the decline of Western civilization:

... the touchy-feely parenting style that started a few decades ago is not for everyone. Among its harshest critics is John Rosemond, a psychologist, author and syndicated columnist. On his Web site, www.rosemond.com, Mr. Rosemond says the nonauthoritative parenting of today has "wreaked havoc on the family, the community and the culture."

Mr. Rosemond, who bases his parenting advice on biblical Scripture, says today's permissive parenting results in arguments and fights as parents try to explain themselves rather than just demand respect and good manners from their children. Mr. Rosemond is not opposed to spanking children.

The idea that fathers cannot be affectionate and good disciplinarians at the same time is nonsense. In fact, fathers more often than not set the tone for the entire household. They are the originators of the standards families live by.

Fathers seem to have an awfully bad rap in the media. When they're not being depicted as inept or uninvolved, they are seen as unreasonably harsh taskmasters who insist upon harshing the all knowing maternal mellow. But the truth is that we mothers can sometimes be too close to our children to take a properly detached view of what is best for them. Mothers are good at teaching our children about love and friendship. We train them to respect the rights and feelings of others; to listen to their conscience and wash behind their ears. These are all important lessons. But Fathers, while no less loving, have a steadying influence on a household. They balance all that maternal care with a thorough understanding of how the outside world works and a pragmatic insistence that children learn to compete as well as compromise. They offer children a loving bridge between the accepting world of home and family and the often critical and demanding world of work, sports, and school.

Everywhere one looks these days, Fathers are taking a more active role in their children's lives:

Most of the guys I know are in their 30s or 40s and kill themselves to get home early enough from work to do bath time or catch a soccer game. Nobody goes to the gym anymore after work. Forget about seeing a father of school-age kids on a weekend. He is at three games or on a school retreat or a swim lesson. Men now are as involved in their kid's lives as women are and the stereotype of the father who hasn't changed a diaper or met with a teacher is completely passé. The reality is that most fathers have that much more to do now. They are trying to balance all their previous responsibilities and all the new ones brought about by children. Just about everything other than parenting has fallen by the wayside.

And yet they receive little credit for their many sacrifices. Over the years I lost count of the times my husband stepped up to the plate when I was at the end of my rope with our two smart (and at times challenging) sons. Raising two sons with nearly opposite personalities required every bit of insight and intuition I possessed.

It also required the active participation of a loving father whose keen observation and unfailing integrity gave me the strength to hold my ground as a parent. Today when I look at my sons I see, not their mother's influence, but their father's. Each, in his own way, strives to live up to the ideals their father modeled for them every day.

A mother probably speaks a million words to her children over the years. But a father, through his example, shows them how to live. He is the standard against which daughters will measure their future husbands and sons will measure themselves. It's hard to think of any influence more important, nor one that has a more lasting effect on a child, than that of a father.

And it's hard to think of anyone more taken for granted.

Posted by Cassandra at 08:20 AM | Comments (35) | TrackBack

June 18, 2009

Thoughts on Love and Marriage

Aspasia reasoned thus with Xenophon's wife and Xenophon himself:

"Please tell me madam, if your neighbor had a better gold ornament
than you have, would you prefer that one or your own?"

"That one"

"Well, now, if she had a better husband than you have, would you
prefer your husband or hers?" At this the woman blushed.

"I wish you would tell me Xenophon, if your neighbor had a better horse than yours, would you prefer your horse or his?"

"His."

"Now, if he had a better wife than you have, would you prefer yours or his?"

And at this Xenophon, too, was himself silent.

"Therefore, unless you can contrive that there be no better man or
finer woman on earth you will certainly always be in dire want of what you consider best, namely, that you be the husband of the very best of wives, and that she be wedded to the very best of men."

- Cicero, De Inventione

I've been thinking a lot about marriage lately for two reasons. One is that I sometimes find myself dismayed by the Internet.

It's a contagious medium. Ideas and emotions flit like kamakaze bottleflies from one site to another. They bounce off the narrow walls of tiny pop up comment boxes, growing increasingly frantic as each new contributor enters the fray. Temporary alliances form and are suddenly shattered. Seemingly innocuous debates suddenly flare into full blown arguments and subside just as quickly as they arose.

I rarely comment on other sites any more. I used to wade into online conversations with lusty abandon but these days I find myself holding back; unwilling to say what I think. The things I read, more often than not, either disturb or fail to interest me. There doesn't seem to be much middle ground any more.

Yesterday I found myself reading a comment thread on a site I usually avoid because it always leaves me with a slightly sick feeling in my stomach. There's not much I can't laugh at, but there is something about this place. Something dark. Some of the commenters seem so bitter:

There is something going on here. I wouldn't suggest it was a "mental illness," not just because I wouldn't want to be insulting, but because I don't believe that it is. The only "mental illness" I believe actually exist are the ones with physical, observable causes, which can be corrected. That's an illness, and part of the proper field of medicine. What we're talking about here is not illness with a medical solution, but something else.

What we're talking about here is not part of the mind, but of the psyche -- which, so many have forgotten, is not the mind but the soul. These are people who have lived lives of remarkable peace and plenty, in a land now ruled by their preferred and chosen officials and policies, and who yet find themselves ruled by fear, by shyness, and by anxiety; and therefore by a kind of seething anger, which is the natural compliment of fear.

What is needed is not a diagnosis, nor a drug. It's a way of learning to live boldly; and a way of embracing joy, even if destruction lays overhead.

Their words are harsh. Unforgiving. But worst of all is the pain. I recoil from it like I'd jump back from a poisonous snake. These are people who have been deeply hurt. But rather than healing over time, growing stronger gradually as the bad memories fade and the pain slowly subsides, they are still nursing ancient grievances - some decades old. In place of a fading scar that only aches when it rains, there's a brittle, hard protective shell covering a festering wound they're fiercely protective of.

And so, because I can't bridge the yawning gap between their anger and my optimism, I remain silent.

I read another article this morning: one that stayed with me as I worked:

I remind myself of the phenomenon of unconscious overclaiming; i.e., we unconsciously overestimate our contributions or skills relative to other people’s. This makes sense, because of course we’re far more aware of what we do than what other people do. According to Jonathan Haidt’s The Happiness Hypothesis, “When husbands and wives estimate the percentage of housework each does, their estimates total more than 120 percent.”

I complain about the time I spend organizing babysitting or paying bills, but I overlook the time my husband spends dealing with our car or grocery shopping. It’s easy to see that overclaiming leads to resentment and an inflated sense of entitlement. So now when I find myself thinking, “I’m the only one around here who bothers to …” or “Why do I always have to be the one who …?” I remind myself of all the tasks I don’t do.

Second, I remind myself of the words of my spiritual master, St. Therese of Lisieux: “When one loves, one does not calculate.” That precept is the basis for my 11th Personal Commandment: No calculation.

This is what I saw in the comments on that site the other day: the keeping of scores that so often results in anger and bitterness. It's so easy to over-calculate our own contributions to a relationship and undervalue what we receive from others. We enter marriage with a lot of fine theories about how love will be, but few survive contact with the humdrum monotony of daily life or the thousand tiny fault lines left by arguments, unstated grievances, a careless word or frown that may have gone unnoticed by the speaker but which rubbed us raw at precisely the wrong moment. We guard the tiny wounds assiduously lest we be hurt again.

I married young. Too young, most people would say, but then I've never had much use for rigid formulas. In the beginning, unsurprisingly, it was mostly I who fed the relationship. I planned surprises, cooked special dinners, picked flowers, remembered every occasion with a card even though I had to walk 3 miles to the store with a 30 pound toddler in tow to do so. It seemed important to put effort in - this, after all, was a relationship I expected to last for a lifetime. And so I tried to keep our lives interesting, both in and out of bed. I tried to be patient and cheerful, no matter how I felt. When you have no money, fun is important. So is a sense of hope.

And the young are not afraid of life yet. Or at least I was not afraid when I was younger: not afraid to make a fool of myself, or screw up, not afraid to be a bit of a clown if that would earn a smile or even a laugh. Not afraid of being wrong or being rejected.

Not afraid of being hurt.

As the years went on, I continued to be the relationship keeper. But somewhere deep inside, small hurts began to accumulate. While my brain chose to ignore them, my heart never entirely forgot all the times I'd gone out of my way to please and ended up feeling slightly taken advantage of.

If someone had asked if I kept a hidden tally I'd have said no, but deep inside of me the counter was ticking away and the debt kept growing. It was a sum far too large to repay in the brief moments we had together, crushed between deployments, soccer games and camp outs for the boys. And so, because I didn't want to become bitter or angry, I put up walls around the hurt places. It was a coping mechanism. I kept trying, but I was more careful.

When our sons left home, something changed.

I went to work, and suddenly it was my husband and not I who aimed to please, who thought to bring me a cup of coffee in my office each morning and flowers at night; who began to woo me again as he had when we were in high school, who wrote love poems and sent pretty baubles when he was thousands of miles away. Suddenly, the man who was constantly at work started coming home early, taking leave frequently to whisk me away to some tropical beach or country inn.

I would like to say that I enthusiastically reciprocated in kind, but that would not be true for suddenly I had new interests and responsibilities. My world expanded and I began to understand what it must have been like to be him, all those years. More detached, but not necessarily less loving. Just... different.

But also, there were those walls in my heart. They had taken a long time to build and I wasn't anxious to tear them down just yet. You always find a use for something right after you throw it away.

Yesterday morning I listened to those bitter people and I heard a long litany of grievances with no recognition that there might have been another side to the story - that perhaps their wives had been hurt too; had been disappointed. That perhaps the hissed "she" had walked away from the relationship with her own grievance list?

What I heard, over and over, was "me, me, me". And this isn't something only men do. You can go over to Pandagon and listen to bitter women complain about how all men are insensitive and inconsiderate brutes who only think of their own selfish wants and needs. That doesn't strike me as a particularly thoughtful position, nor one likely to allow any kind of hurt to heal.

For some reason I found myself thinking this morning of the piano I grew up with as a child. It was not new, and certainly not a Steinway. Not my dream piano. But it was mine.

It took care and skill to coax the sounds I wanted to hear from those yellowed keys - hours of patient effort and loving attention. One or two never would hold their tune and struck unexpectedly sour notes when I hit them, so I learned to adjust. To work around them. I wrote in other keys or slid the song up or down an octave. I practiced over and over again until what I heard pleased me. It wasn't always the music in my mind. But it was music, nonetheless.

With practice I learned to avoid the sour notes and apply just the right touch for each moment; to produce music that was serene and soothing or stormy and passionate, that delighted the ear and lifted the spirit.

The thing is, I don't think any of us acts in isolation. We play, and are played upon by those we love; responding to the ambient temperature and the threat of storms just as my old piano did.

I have an electric piano now. It has none of the faults of my childhood instrument but I don't enjoy playing it as much as I did that old one - the one that, if I wasn't paying attention sometimes rewarded my earnest efforts with a discordant clang or false note. You can't play a piano and hold anything back. If you don't take risks - hit a few false notes, let the passion inside you come out even if it makes you feel slightly foolish, the music becomes stale and flat and you find yourself playing mechanically; just going through the motions.

The older I get, the more I think that the keys to a good marriage are pretty simple. It's harder, playing an old piano. You have to put more effort in than you would if you had a shiny, new perfect instrument. But in life, perfect instruments are a rare thing and as it turns out simply making an effort every single day to step outside yourself and learn everything you can about the person you're with, to learn what makes them happy or what they want instead of assuming they think just like you do, to see things through their eyes, gives you an entirely different perspective on the world; one you'd never obtain on your own.

You'd never have to make that kind of effort if you had a perfect partner. But the challenge is what keeps you interested - and interesting.

Posted by Cassandra at 08:53 AM | Comments (47) | TrackBack

May 06, 2009

Carrie Prejean Hypocrisy Abounds

Normally I don't comment on tabloid style stories, but the blatantly irrational commentary on the Carrie Prejean scandal is grating on my last nerve. No wonder the Republican party has credibility problems. I've been straining to see an ounce of principle in the conservative reax to this non-story, but finding a needle in a haystack would be easier.

On a personal level, I sympathize with Ms. Prejean but I'm not quite ready to have her declared the patron saint of unpopular opinions. While I admire her refusal to genuflect at the altar of political correctness, when standing up to the likes of Perez Hilton becomes the stuff of dewy eyed heroine worship I begin to wonder whether we're not defining bravery down? Maggie Gallegher's statement typifies the cognitive dissonance:

On a personal note, as a former unwed mother, I want to say to Americans: you don’t have to be a perfect person to have the right to stand up for marriage.

This is undoubtedly true. As I noted a few days ago, the attacks on Ms. Prejean graphically illustrate the fundamental unseriousness of ad hominem, "tu quoque" arguments. While they may serve to cast doubt upon her character, (and frankly I'm not sure that case has been made convincingly) in the end the question of whether or not Ms. Prejean lives up to her professed standards says absolutely nothing about the objective value of such standards as moral guidelines. It doesn't take a genius to realize that fallible human beings are rarely able to execute their goals perfectly, but that doesn't mean we stop trying. But this, from Ms. Gallegher, is just plain dishonest:

Nothing gay marriage advocates can do can change the fact—we all saw it on national TV—that Carrie is a young woman who surrendered all the glitter Hollywood has to offer, because she would not become the kind of person afraid to say the truth.

The problem with Ms. Gallegher's statement is that judging from what we know right now, it's hard to deny that Carrie Prejean was very much afraid to speak the truth when it counted most. This isn't even a close question. To all appearances, she lied. So while I don't buy the 'tu quoque' line of supposed reasoning as a means of discrediting her opinions on gay marriage, it's hard to get around the fact that when she stood to gain by not telling the truth, she had no problem with dishonesty. The hypocrisy argument pales beside the evidence of her own actions:

U.S. anti-gay marriage spokesmodel and nearly-Miss USA pageant winner Carrie Prejean has found herself mired in yet another controversy after early career photos of her in various stages of undress were posted to the internet.

The images, which were reportedly taken when she was 17, have been used by a variety of websites to accuse the new National Organization for Marriage spokeswoman of hypocrisy, asking such questions as "What does Jesus think about pornography? and "Shouldn’t a girl who lives by the Bible shy away from topless pictures and breast implants?"

These arguments fail on a number of logical levels. First of all, the single photo released to date is hardly pornographic. One can see more of her physique in the string bikini she wore at the Miss U.S.A. pageant. There is an argument to be made that setting and context count. After all, the staging of a photograph can be used to convey different messages. A beautiful woman wearing a bikini in public, though it will undoubtably arouse sexual thoughts in most men with a pulse, is hardly overtly sexual. Bathing suits are beach attire. On most beaches in the U.S. it would be highly unusual to see anyone having sex in public.

The photo released yesterday, however, was taken in an entirely different context: in a private setting with Ms. Prejean coyly covering her breasts and gazing back over her shoulder at the camera. Women who take the time to put on underpants generally also wear a brassiere. So it's hardly a stretch to see the image as suggestive of an impending sexual encounter. But suggestive isn't the same as pornographic. Unless the unreleased images contain something far spicier, it's ridiculous to call the image anything other than sexually suggestive and risque. By that yardstick, the Victoria's Secret catalog should be in a brown wrapper and teenaged boys everywhere are being sexually abused by pornographic images of Czech supermodels. Oh! The humanity!

The problem with this image (and the outraged excuses conservatives are making for it) is not that the image is pornographic. It's that Ms. Prejean entered the Miss U.S.A. pageant under false pretenses:

... according to a clause in her Miss California USA contract - obtained by the news show - Prejean is barred from being "photographed in a state of partial or total nudity".

The contract, which Prejean signed, also states, "Appearing in public or permitting myself to be photographed in a state of partial or total nudity or in a lewd, compromising or sexually suggestive manner constitutes a violation of this provision (this includes photographs of images that may appear on any website...)."

So how do conservatives get by claiming that the revelation of incontrovertible evidence that Miss California not only lied to pageant officials, but did it in writing constitutes an unjustified and vicious personal attack? Aren't we the folks who always flog accountability, personal responsibility, and the sanctity of contract?

How are Ms. Prejean's actions defensible when these time honored conservative values are applied? Do we blithely jettison our principles because this time it happens to be a very attractive 21 year old conservative ox being gored? Apparently so.

But that isn't the only conservative principle being thrown to the winds. If Ms. Prejean's statement is to be trusted, these photos were taken when she was only 17. Does gleefully linking to semi-nude photos of a minor not register on anyone's moral compass?

Apparently not. When even TMZ has more integrity than righty bloggers, it might be time for a gut check. If you are defending her actions and think she's being unfairly treated, why are you emulating and encouraging her persecutors?

And even if you don't think the publication of these photos is "unfair", what are you doing linking to photos of a minor? If you have a daughter, you need to take a long, hard look in the mirror.

Scratch that. If you have either a son or a daughter, you need to take a look at what you are saying to your children. Either way, it's not good. Either honesty and integrity matter, or they don't. Either women need to stop playing the victim card and accept responsibility for their actions, or they don't. Either women and conservatives are held to the same ethical standards as men or progressives, or they aren't. Conservatives can't play it both ways and still claim a shred of integrity.

And either adults have no business looking at semi-nude photos of underaged girls, or they don't. I feel sorry for Ms. Prejean on a personal level. I hate to see any young person treated with such nastiness and distain for a lapse in judgment.

I hate even more seeing grown men simultaneously defending this young woman and winking and pointing at what she claims was a mistake made while she was still a minor:

We contacted Carrie's rep, who gave us this statement yesterday: "This was a photo that was taken several years ago, when Carrie first started modeling. In her naivete, an agent convinced her to pose for this photo to submit to a lingerie company, claiming they could make her the next Victoria's Secret model. She has since learned what a lie that was, and what a mistake it was to have the photo taken."

... we just got a handwritten statement from Carrie herself, and she's towing the line: "The photo in question was taken when I was a minor, several months before the 2005 pageant. The photo was not meant for disclosure to the general public."

And more than anything else, I hate to see conservatives championing behavior we would deplore if it had been committed by a progressive. We don't have to consign this young woman to the 6th circle of hell for her actions, but we ought to possess the intellectual honesty to admit she was wrong to lie to the pageant committee and even more wrong to accept plastic surgery under false pretenses, knowing full well that under pageant rules, she wasn't qualified to become a contestant.

Conservatives ought to have the decency not to link to a photo of a partially nude minor. Whatever one may think of her youthful indiscretions, her onstage honesty stands out precisely because she had so much to lose by telling the truth. What she has done before, or since, cannot change what happened on that stage and conservatives are right to applaud her willingness to stand up for what she believed then. And contrary to what many are saying, the revelation that she has been less candid in other areas doesn't detract from her willingness to stand up to the PC bullies who injected politics into a non-political beauty pageant. But most importantly, lying once doesn't invalidate every single thing a person will say for the rest of their lives. Perhaps that moment of honesty on stage sprang from the awareness that she had failed in another area. We will never know. Young people make mistakes because they're still learning.

But all of us ought be willing to learn from our mistakes. Human frailty is no reason to paper over the difference between right and wrong.

Adults are supposed to know this, and act accordingly.

Posted by Cassandra at 06:58 AM | Comments (101) | TrackBack

April 27, 2009

Little Things

Many moons ago when the blog princess was newly married, we lived in a small apartment complex in Williamsburg, Virginia. We didn't have much in the way of furniture. The decor could perhaps be best described as Early Yard Sale with a dash of Pier One thrown in to make it truly bewildering. The living room sofa was two foam mattresses with some lovely peach-colored fitted sheets and an assortment of batik throw pillows, and our only end table a repurposed TV cabinet, turned around backwards so the hole where the TV screen had once been was hidden from view.

I worked hard, though, to try and make the place look homey. I had a wonderful exotic looking floral tablecloth that I kept on our round table in the breakfast nook. It matched our dishes (that was probably the only thing we owned that did match). Since we didn't have many pictures, I carefully ironed and hung an assortment of linen tea towels with printed botanical images on the wall.

We only had one car, which the spousal unit invariably took with him to class and work, after he was done with his classes for the day. That meant our tiny son and I walked everywhere; to the grocery store, the library (3 miles one way!) or the laundromat.

But my favorite walks were the ones I took in the afternoons at the end of each week. On Fridays, I liked to have fresh flowers on the table. Since buying them was out of the question, I would take the baby out for long walks along the back roads where wildflowers lined the pavement on both sides: asters, Queen Anne's lace, chicory, Lady's Slippers in springtime. They never lasted long, but I can't think of too many things that made me more satisfied than looking at my table and seeing a vase full of wildflowers.

A scientific experiment measured the effect that receiving various gifts had on the recipient. Unsurprisingly (at least to me) flowers gave the most joy:

While the women smiled when receiving nearly all of the gifts, significantly more authentic Duchenne smiles were observed in women receiving flowers than the other gifts. While 100 percent of those receiving flowers smiled, only 90 percent of those receiving fruit and 77 percent of candle-receivers smiled authentically when seeing their gifts. Three days later, the women were interviewed on the telephone again, and only the flower-receivers scored significantly higher on the mood questionnaire than they had in the first interview.

Whether they arrive grasped in the chubby fist of a small boy or wrapped in gauze with a big satin bow, flowers gladden the heart of any woman.

It's scientific.

Posted by Cassandra at 07:23 AM | Comments (32) | TrackBack

April 14, 2009

Men vs. Women: Those Little Things You Do

Interesting article: do the little things you do without thinking making your spouse feel bad?

25 ways to make a woman anxious

• Ignore her
• Tell her what to do
• Be short with your answers
• Tune out her feelings
• Stonewall or give her the cold shoulder
• Take her for granted
• Limit or criticize her spending
• Tell her stop worrying
• Tell her she's making too much of it
• Tell her to get over it
• Tell her she talks too much
• Complain about her weight
• Criticize her family
• Withdraw or shut down
• Yell or get angry
• Pout or sulk
• Threaten to quit your job
• Flirt with other women
• Don't know her dreams
• Tell her she's just like her mother
• Complain about her girlfriends
• Give her the cold shoulder
• Dismiss her ideas
• Sound like you're trapped in the marriage
• Buy a sports car

25 ways to stimulate shame in a man

• Exclude him from important decisions
• Correct what he says
• Question his judgment
• Give unsolicited advice
• Dismiss his opinion
• Imply inadequacy
• Make unrealistic demands of his time and energy
• Overreact
• Ignore his desires
• Focus on what you didn't get, rather than what you got
• Withhold praise
• Use a harsh tone
• Be abrupt - spring things on him
• Undermine his wishes
• Condescend
• Criticize his personality
• Disrespect his work
• Show little or no interest in his interests
• Criticize his family
• Interpret, psychoanalyze, or diagnose him
• Make comparisons to other men
• Focus on your unhappiness
• Put friends before him
• Value others' needs over his
• Rob him of the opportunity to help

I was surprised by how different the lists were. But also, the thought struck me that when it comes to men and women, trying to treat others as you wish to be treated backfires more often than not.

I've written before about how differently men and women interpret the same things. But I'm not sure I ever fully realized how often, in trying to show that we care, we do something that is interpreted in exactly the opposite manner.

That strikes me as almost unbearably sad, somehow.

Posted by Cassandra at 07:21 AM | Comments (43) | TrackBack

April 11, 2009

Responsibility

Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.

- George Bernard Shaw

One of the annoying things about believing in free will and individual responsibility is the difficulty of finding somebody to blame your problems on. And when you do find somebody, it’s remarkable how often his picture turns up on your driver’s license.

- P.J. O'Rourke

One of the more bizarre things I've seen recently is number of conservatives jumping on the men's reproductive rights bandwagon:

Amy Alkon and I discuss women who accidentally get pregnant on purpose and whether men have any rights in this situation at all in this week's segment on PJTV.

I understand the heartburn many folks have with abortion. Setting aside the not inconsiderable question of why ensuring the continuity of whatever lifestyle you feel entitled to this week is considered sufficient grounds for taking a human life leaves substantial grounds for opposing abortion:

As we are constantly reminded, the abortion debate is all about something called reproductive choice. Of what does this reproductive choice consist? If a man and a woman, married or unmarried, conceive a child together, both are on the hook financially to support that child until he or she is grown. But there are rules. If the woman decides to rid herself of a fetus that she does not want (but the man does) she may kill it and this is perfectly legal. If the man decides to rid herself of a fetus that he does not want (but the woman does) - perhaps by slipping her an abortifact that does not otherwise harm her - this is murder, and he will go to jail.

Thus, two utterly contradictory things occur at the moment of conception:

Legally, from the point of view of a woman: the fetus is a lump of tissue which may be excised at will if she subsequently regrets having conceived a child. It imposes no obligation or legal duty unless she chooses to accept it.

Legally, from the point of view of the man: the fetus is a human being which must be allowed to live, even if he subsequently regrets having conceived a child. It imposes an absolute and irrevocable legal duty, regardless of his wishes in the matter.

In other words, if you have a y chromosome you have no reproductive choice. Except, of course, to pay at least a half-share of whatever "choices" your sexual partner may make, whether you are married or single - it makes no difference.

I believed these words when I wrote them. They are part of the truth. But they are not the whole truth.

I don't understand conservatives who seem to maintain that the entire responsibility for preventing unwanted pregnancies rests with the woman. Since I'm not buying the proposition that women have a right to consequence-free unprotected sex, it is hardly surprising that I don't believe in a male right to consequence-free unprotected sex either.

I don't understand ostensible conservatives who think society should be more concerned with protecting some nebulous male right to risk-free sex (boy, there's a winning public policy stance) than in ensuring the unintended victims of adult sexual irresponsibility are adequately cared for. Yet that is precisely what the "it's not fair!" contingent seem to want. Like couples locked in a bitter divorce battle, they are perfectly willing to visit the sins of the parents upon their innocent children if, by so doing, they can "punish" whoever they consider to be the guilty party. The problem here is that both parents are guilty of failing to prevent the pregnancy. No matter. Inexplicably and in defiance of hundreds of years of conservative ideology, suddenly conservatives have found a new cause celebre: protecting grown men from the consequences of their own irresponsibility and poor judgment!

Nor do I buy the "...but it's not faaaaaaaaair!" argument.

When has the world ever been fair? When are both conservatives and liberals going to wake up and realize that there are more important things in life than the pursuit of selfish pleasure?

Men and women have an equal duty to prevent unwanted pregnancies. This duty cannot be delegated and I have zero sympathy for people who don't want children, fail to take reasonable precautions, and then blame someone else when they get run over by the clue bus. Reality doesn't care about your life plans or subjective desires. If you don't want something to happen, make sure you're protected. Everything else is just whining.

It's hardly a surprise that both men and women lie about sex.

Men lie and say they love women when their real agenda is to obtain sex without that messy "caring" thing. Women are dishonest when they fail to admit their real agenda - which more often than not is to secure a committed relationship - to their casual sex partners. Any man or woman who has unprotected sex with someone they are not married to should have to face the consequences of their actions, and your partner's failure to act responsibly does not grant you carte blanche to be irresponsible too.

The fact is, if you're unmarried and chose to have unprotected sex, you're a fool to trust the responsibility of birth control to the other party. What possible incentive does your partner have to protect your interests at the expense of their own? This is, after all, why men tend to prefer uncomplicated and uncommitted sex: they neither trust nor love the women they have sex with.

And yet these men seem to feel (thinking is the wrong word for this kind of arrant nonsense) they have the "right" to expect someone they don't know well, don't trust, and don't love to protect them from a risk human beings have known about for centuries? It's no great mystery where babies come from, and whining when you are confronted with the entirely predictable consequences of your own fecklessness is not the hallmark of a reasonable or responsible adult.

Repeat after me three times, slowly: There is no "right" to risk-free or consequence-free unprotected sex.

And while I'm on the subject, abortion doesn't allow a woman to completely avoid the consequences of failing to prevent pregnancy. It may be more palatable than having to raise a child to adulthood for some, but there are risks and costs associated with having an abortion. Abortion isn't an escape from the consequences of unprotected sex.

It's a consequence of unprotected sex that can have life-long and life threatening repercussions, many of which are unforeseen at the time. That some women remain unscarred by those consequences isn't any more "unfair" than the fact that far too many men engage in unprotected sex and then walk away from the children they father without a backward glance. In any event, maintaining that you should be allowed to do something irresponsible and wrong because others have done irresponsible and wrong things is pretty childish.

We are each responsible for our own actions, and anyone who would make an innocent child pay for their own lack of responsibility - be they male or female - is wrong, wrong, wrong. It's a sign of the moral degeneracy of our society that conservatives have joined the chorus of whiners demanding to be freed from the onerous responsibility of behaving like adults.

Posted by Cassandra at 09:49 AM | Comments (23) | TrackBack

March 16, 2009

Nice Double Standard, There...

What the...????

I love the way the author of the article blames men for women's manipulation and irresponsibility:

But, seriously, if a man takes a risk like that, he has to face the consequences. The woman, meanwhile, needs to make sure she has unprotected sex with the right kind of man.

Where is the blame here? I see only a completely rational and uncontroversial assertion: the only way to prevent a baby you don't want is to use birth control. This is not a responsibility that can be delegated - by either sex.

And manipulation? In what rational universe does honestly disclosing the fact that you're not using birth control constitute "manipulation"? Seems to me the man had all the information he needed to avoid a pregnancy if that wasn't what he wanted, yet chose to assume the risk:

I haven't used contraception for years and years - I hate taking the Pill - and I'm always entirely honest about that with the men I sleep with.

As far as I'm concerned, if a guy is having unprotected sex with me, then he knows what he is doing, and if he doesn't, then he is just arrogant and more fool him.

Bingo. There is a word for men who have unprotected sex with women they KNOW aren't on birth control: fathers. Why the double standard? Why is it irresponsible for a woman to have unprotected sex, but if a man knowingly makes exactly the same choice he's not only NOT being irresponsible, but we're supposed to feel sorry for him because he was manipulated by the old full disclosure trick? Good God.

If you're not old enough to know where babies come from, odds are you shouldn't be having sex at all.

The innocent victim in all of this is the child. A woman who is up front about the fact that she's not using birth control is flat out telling the man he's taking the risk of conceiving an unwanted child if he doesn't use some form of contraception.

This is hardly rocket science. We have really fallen as a society when the bar is set this low.

Bottom line: she's wrong and he's wrong too. And all the nonsense in the comments section about how two wrongs make a right is just a race to the bottom of the morality barrel with an innocent child as the victim.

Grow the hell up.

Posted by Cassandra at 10:03 PM | Comments (58) | TrackBack

March 06, 2009

Through a Dark Lens

"Man's love is of man's life a thing apart,
'Tis woman's whole existence."

- Lord Byron

I like men. I like them a lot. This may well be because my Dad and I have a loving relationship though frequently (because we are both strong willed and stubborn) we argue about stuff. Growing up in a household with an affectionate and engaged father trained me to see men as caring and good people who just happen to be very different in some ways from my own sex.

As a little girl living in the only duty station I ever thought of as home, my best friend was a boy my own age. His name was Steve and of all my friends I liked him best because we could - and did - talk about anything. He was patient and thoughtful; intelligent and funny. Good at baseball, fishing, and building things but not as cute, flashy or athletic as his little brother, Steven was the guy a lot of men are mistakenly afraid of being: the kind who, in high school, doesn't particularly stand out in a crowd of shallow and self-absorbed teens awash in a sea of hormones. Guys think this because being respected and admired - feeling like a winner - is just about the most important thing in the world to them.

But at the 20th HS reunion mark when the basketball stars and teen heartthrobs are on their nth divorce and talk too loudly and listen too little, the people we thought as kids were "winners" don't always look so good. Standing off to one side is the guy no one recognizes at first. He's handsome and happy and successful. He carries himself with a quiet confidence that has every women in the room secretly eyeing him and thinking, "Why on earth didn't I notice him" way back then?

That's easy. We didn't notice because like so many men and women, we were focused on the wrong things. Looks, perhaps. Or charm. Or simply the appearance of being a "winner". We didn't bother to look beneath the surface, and while we weren't watching the race a dark horse came out of nowhere and walked off with the prize.

I liked Steve because even at eight years old I saw enormous potential in him. The strength that didn't need to spend itself in pointless showing off; the controlled intelligence that didn't boast or brag but merely waited for a quiet moment - exactly the right moment - when others had said their piece and then spoke into the silence with an answer that seemed so obvious it amazed me that no one else had thought of it.

In many ways Steven was the dream I fell in love with nine years later, when I first spoke with my husband.

My husband is all the things I am not. He is a pessimist whereas I am eternally, gloriously, unrepentantly optimistic and hopeful. He is careful and cautious and sometimes a bit cynical where I tend to live for the moment, confident that nothing and nobody can hurt me. He plans for things to go wrong and likes to have a road map. I feel hemmed in when things get too structured; I like to keep my options open and excel at adapting to the unexpected lemons life seems to hand out with disturbing regularity. Unlike a lot of people, I rather enjoy lemons. Sure they can be sour, but they also wake us up. They get our attention. In the kaleidoscopic shifting of priorities troubles often bring, I often see as many new opportunities as I do problems.

And my husband reminds me to take my umbrella, my gloves, my cell phone because he knows without asking that I didn't check the weather report... again. He pays attention to a thousand things that aren't even on my radar screen, but which have the potential to wreck my world. And in return I pay attention - close attention - to many things that are little more than blips on his radar screen, but which have the potential to wreck his carefully constructed and prudently planned life just as surely as the things he diligently and faithfully guards me against.

I suppose that's why I find this sort of thing, which I see all the time on the Internet from men I like and whom I consider intelligent and likeable, totally bewildering:

"The List" is the bane of testosterone-driven humans. "The List" is kept in the secret mental lock-box of human beings of the estrogen persuasion. Some believe that "The List" is a social construct, while others believe that "The List" is hard-wired into the DNA of the human female. I favor the latter theory since it seems to me that "The List" is merely a subset of "The Plan" -- and "The Plan" is not only part and parcel of the basic makeup of the human female regardless of race, color, creed, national origin, or historic epoch, it is also the reason that -- over time -- women triumph over men. Women, in short, always have a life plan while men are stuck with something that looks like a cross between a spread sheet without a recalc button and a really slick marketing idea.

In short, men might have a plan for making a rocket-propelled street luge, but they have none at all when it comes to human activities that stretch across decades -- unless it involves such trifles as national defense or energy policy. Men seem to see items like this as actually important, but women know that what is really important is the command and control of male behavior. Hence, "Your Permanent Conduct Record" aka "The List."

Women reading this essay are, of course, not the type to ever keep an indelible list of male transgressions, large and teeny-tiny. But trust me, there are many that do. Why? Because it works.

Wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. Did I say "wrong"? Oh good, because sometimes I'm not so good at speaking up when something strikes me the wrong way.

Before I begin here, let me make a few things clear. I don't know Vanderleun so nothing I say should be taken as applying to him or to his life. My reflections are meant to serve one purpose only: to shed a little light on what the female half of the world are doing when we do things that make you grit your teeth in frustration.

My dear Vanderleun: I love your writing. I often see a vast gulf between our perceptions of male-female interaction, but that's a yawning, often painful gap that treacherously opens up beneath my feet all too often when reading what men really think about the women in their lives. I end up shocked, and pained, and more than a few times in tears over the waste.

Because what he describes is totally, utterly foreign to my experience. Oh, don't get me wrong: I fight with my husband and my male friends from time to time, though it never fails to tie my stomach into knots and thoroughly ruin my day. But I don't like fighting and certainly nothing could be farther from the truth than the notion that I (much less most women of my acquaintance) secretly harbor some malicious desire to control the men in their lives.

The thing is, we don't respect men we can control. So what good does it do us to gain what we don't want?

What we want is, to understand and be close to you. We want things to go smoothly. We want to be happy, and for you to love us as we love you. But because both men and women often see each others words and deeds through the lens of how we feel and how we react to life, we end up with a picture that contains some elements of truth, but is also badly distorted.

Reading Vandereun's post I recognized some things that many women do indeed do and in places, I laughed. What puzzles me is the contradictions that seem so obvious to me; ones that undermine his assumptions about why women do things that so clearly annoy and frustrate him.

Reading his post with a woman's eye, I don't see a woman who is trying to control her man. I see a woman who is worried; who senses something wrong but doesn't know how to bridge the yawning gap that so often separates even people who truly care for each other. I see one who is trying to head off problems, not cause them.

Women often continue to bring up past transgression for one of several reasons:

1. A man won't stop doing something that greatly distresses her (and which she doesn't understand). Now if a man was doing something that pissed off another man, he would of course object strenuously and then they'd punch each other out OR (if they value their friendship) they'd each try to be a bit more careful until the next time one of them had a bad day. But when the same thing happens between a man and a woman, often he doesn't want to deal with it at all. If she insists on confronting him and trying to solve the problem, he either dismisses her concerns (There she goes! Being 'emotional' or 'controlling' again! Women are so irrational... sheesh.), shuts down completely, or apologizes even though he's really not that sorry and has no intention of changing.

2. If he won't talk to her, she doesn't know where his boundaries lie. Often, he may have no intention of changing his behavior but since he never bothered to explain how important it is to him in terms she can understand, she thinks he doesn't care or is being unreasonable. Or, he may just be doing these things from unconscious resistance to behavior he thinks is meant to rein him in.

3. She's a nagging, controlling bitch. But this begs the question: what are you doing with such a woman in the first place? Perhaps things aren't quite as clear as they always seem when we only look at life through a lens that reflects our own motivations and experience.

Guys, because they're more attuned to competition and rank, tend to interpret a woman's desire to talk as either criticism, a demand for action, or an attempt to be the top dog. Women are mostly unaware of the way men see human interactions. We want to talk out a problem so we can understand why the man keeps doing what he's doing and effect some compromise that keeps us from killing each other. If the man cooperates in this worthy endeavor, we then have several options: we can negotiate a compromise, agree to disagree, or maybe (in light of the fact that he has reasons of his own that - once considered - render our objection moot) re-examine our position entirely. But nothing - and I mean nothing - annoys us more than playing out the same scenario over and over with no prospect of FINALLY putting it to bed and getting on with the make up sex.

Women are good with words. So good, in fact, that men often ascribe to us an eerie ability to know all and see all. Seeing the bad effect "The List" had on its intended recipient, this clearly isn't the case. Reciting "The List" didn't achieve the desired effect, did it?

It didn't make him want to open up and talk about what was upsetting the female half of the equation. It didn't make him more receptive to her distress. It didn't make him think, "Gosh, I never understood this was so important to you. Is there some way you can get what you want without my giving up what I want?" Instead of understanding and compromise, she got resentment, anger, and resistance to her point of view.

Successful relationships - whether they are friendships, business relationships or love relationships - are all about negotiation and compromise. Not abject and unconditional surrender, because trust me, whatever our shortcomings (and we do have them!) most women know that a man who isn't getting what he wants is far more trouble to live with than a man who feels he's respected, understood, and treated fairly.

The idea that women want to be in charge is not one rooted in either reality or female psychology, but somehow modern society has drifted so far into rejecting the concept of roles that we fail to consider age old truths that stood couples in good stead for generations before we came along:

I turn now to Peter's brief and very insightful summary of a husband's duties in marriage, found in First Peter 3, Verse 7:

Likewise you husbands, live considerately with your wives, bestowing honor on the woman as the weaker sex, since you are joint heirs of the grace of life, in order that your prayers may not be hindered. (1 Peter 3:7 RSV)

I can just see the heads of a thousand female readers exploding :p

But all this is just a fancy way of saying, "Respect a woman for what she is or you don't have a snowball's chance in Hell of getting laid". All that "weaker" nonsense is a not-terribly-precise way of saying that women are sensitive creatures. We pay more attention to our relationships than men do because they're important to us. That a woman with even an ounce of self-respect will nearly always assert herself should not surprise anyone who's been married for longer than 5 minutes. But that doesn't mean our object is to seize your immortal soul and crush it like a grape.

And if you are joined at the hip to such a woman, let me strongly suggest that perhaps you were focused more on her appearance than her character. In other words, find someone whose interior is as pretty as her exterior. Men all too often fail to even consider that a woman's character is of any import, and that's a fatal mistake.

I know it is popular to make jokes about bossy wives and henpecked husbands (and there are such in evidence around us, I do not deny that), but having observed the marriage scene for considerable time, and having personal involvement in it, the problem is not so much due to the demand of wives to assert leadership as it is the refusal of husbands to assume their responsibilities. This is borne out by studies made along this line by competent scholars. It is difficult to understand how men can give themselves to careful, responsible leadership in business, but when they get home they expect everything to rock along all right and turn out well in the end -- without any thought, direction, or leadership on their part. We call women the homemakers, but women are homemakers only within the general pattern determined by the husband. It is the man who is to choose the values that go into a home. It is the father who ought to decide the emphases that are to be expressed within a home. True, it is often the mother who implements this choice and upon her falls the responsibility for carrying out much of it in application and implementation, but, by and large, it is the man who makes the choice of what the home shall be, whether he does it consciously or unconsciously. There is built into his male nature, by divine fiat, not only a responsibility but a desire to do this.

It is the man who determines whether the family shall be sports-minded or book lovers; whether they are travelers or stay-at-homes; a family that emphasizes personal integrity in their relationships, or are clever manipulators who get along by their wits; whether they are social climbers or quiet introverts. Almost always the stamp of the family is determined by the man. This is also, therefore, where men most frequently fail in marriage. They do not exert leadership, they do not give intelligent direction to the home. Even if they do give some kind of leadership, it is not thoughtful, it is not intelligent, it is not "according to knowledge," as Peter says. It is simply a drifting along, making the best of things according to the way they feel at the moment. Thus there is no leadership at all, or, what there is, is lopsided.

Many marriage counselors dealing in this area have pointed out that in our American life, for some strange reasons, we do not teach men to be men. Therefore, many men grow up and get married who are nothing more than grown-up little boys, still looking for mothers rather than wives. They want someone to minister to their physical needs, keep them well fed and happy, and soothe their egos when they get hurt. But that is not the proper role of a wife, and that is why Peter's first word to men is: Learn what a marriage ought to be, what the rules are, what is expected of you. What a home will be is determined primarily and responsibly by the man.

If the man does not exert leadership at all, then the wife must take it on, thereby forcing the woman to assume a role for which she is not made, and, as I have already suggested, she does not basically and essentially desire. One way men do this is by lopsided leadership. They feel that their major concern is to make a living, and it is the wife's job to run the home. They give their whole attention to the business of acquiring material gain, of making money so they can provide the comforts of modern life for their family. Most American men do a very commendable job along this line. They take this responsibility (properly part of the responsibility of marriage) very seriously, but they leave the rest of it to their wives. This, frequently, engenders the attitude, "I let my wife decide whether the children are to go to Sunday school and church. That's her job." The moral values of the home are left for the woman to incorporate. A slice of life is made of primary male concern while the rest of life, with great and important values within it, is left wholly for the woman.

...To show how women instinctively desire [the active involvement of men], let me quote a brief paragraph from an article by a woman on the subject of man's role in the home. She says,

Don't yield your leadership, that's the main thing. Don't hand us the reins. We would consider this an abdication on your part. It would confuse us, it would alarm us; it would make us pull back. Quicker than anything else, it will fog the clear vision that made us love you in the first place. Oh, we will try to get you to give up your position as Number One in the house, that is the terrible contradiction in us. We will seem to be fighting you to the last ditch for final authority on everything for awhile, but in the obscure recesses of our hearts we want you to win.

I wouldn't put it quite that way, and yet I see the truth of it. Women aren't children - they're adults. And yet we are human and children are, after all, just small humans. When children act spoiled and throw tantrums, it is almost always (unless they're tired or sick) because their parents have not firmly shown them the limits of proper behavior. Likewise, when a man consistently refuses to respect or show consideration for his wife or a woman consistently throws emotional tantrums, they are looking for guidance as to what you are willing to accept. If we human beings - male or female - aren't shown the limits, we tend to act up until someone lowers the boom on us.

I am about as stubborn and strong willed a person as you can find anywhere. I secretly think I know it all and most other people are complete cretins. And yet I married my husband because, unlike most of my boyfriends up until that point, I sensed we were evenly matched. He loves me more than anything on this earth, but he will never allow that love to make him do a single thing he doesn't truly want to do.

And I don't want him to, because if he did I'd lose respect for him.

That doesn't mean I don't let him know when he does something that pisses me off. And it doesn't mean he never compromises when our wishes bring us into conflict. It just means I truly don't want him to be anything less than a man. Neither do I want to control his behavior because common sense tells me a man who thinks he's being controlled becomes resentful and won't tell me the truth.

But respect is a two way street and it assumes two fully present, assertive, and actively engaged partners who both value the relationship enough to compromise when compromise is called for. That kind of relationship requires an enormous amount of trust on both sides, because the first instinct both men and women have when we're hurt is to withdraw or retaliate.

Over a nearly 30 year marriage, we've both changed a lot; mostly in response to problems that needed solving. I've become more able to let things go and my husband has become more adept at not ignoring problems until they're so big they escalate into unneeded conflict. On both sides, we've had to give up some things we wanted and be nice when what we really wanted to do was axe murder each other.

But there is no one I trust or respect more than my husband.

No one. And a good part of that is because, like my long ago childhood friend, he has been willing to try to understand me even when I don't make sense to him. Because of that willingness, I bend over backwards to understand his point of view. It's an imperfect world and men and women see each other through a dark lens.

But if we keep looking, even when it's difficult or painful, we learn about each other and often about ourselves. I know I wouldn't trade an instant of that journey.

Not even for a big old diamond ring :p

Posted by Cassandra at 06:22 AM | Comments (37) | TrackBack

February 15, 2009

Time Enough for Love

Now that the violence has largely abated in Iraq, the Iraqis are finding the time for more pleasurable pursuits:

Romance is in the air in Baghdad as war-weary Iraqis celebrate Valentine's Day after a sharp drop in violence, allowing lovers to cautiously hold hands in parks and to buy gifts for their sweethearts.

Public courtship and more daring clothing for women are increasing after years of growing intolerance, perhaps signaling the Islamic dogma and conservatism that accompanied Iraq's slide into sectarian slaughter may be losing their grip.

"You cannot imagine how happy I am today," said Usama Abdul-Wahab Khatab, a recent university graduate nestled beside his girlfriend at a riverside Baghdad park.

A year earlier, the park shook to the sounds of artillery fire that rained on the U.S. diplomatic and military Green Zone complex across the river, launched by religious militias whose reign also kept unmarried men and women apart.

Although Iraq is predominantly Muslim, celebration of an originally Western day for lovers became popular after the ouster of Saddam Hussein in the U.S.-led invasion of 2003.

But many Iraqis also fled the violence unleashed by the U.S.-led invasion.

When Khatab went to Syria several years ago, he left behind not just his studies and friends, but Nada Issam, the soft-spoken woman who now sits beside him with manicured nails and a delicate sequined headscarf.

Khatab returned a year ago and the couple has been venturing out to places where they can spend time alone -- in green areas by the Tigris or along the shores of a nearby a lake.

Even there they must fend off or bribe police who hassle them for being too close or for holding hands.

Like other Iraqis, they are caught between a desire for greater freedom and romantic expression, and a conservative Islamic culture brought to the fore in six years of war.

When religious militias and insurgents controlled swathes of Baghdad, men found with women before marriage were whipped, and the woman taken to her parents, Abbas Jawad said.

"My son is spending Valentine's Day with his girlfriend. He's 16. I would never have allowed that before," he said.

Technology out of reach or not yet in existence under Saddam has enabled many Iraqis to discreetly widen their social circles or flirt. Bluetooth radio signals on most modern phones allow people to subtly send messages to strangers sitting nearby.

Amazing.

Posted by Cassandra at 07:46 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

December 29, 2008

Getting Along With Women 101: How *Not* To Make An Argument...

It has oft occurred to the Editorial Staff that the vast majority of male/female misunderstandings can be directly attributed to each sex's tendency to project their own assumptions and mode of thought upon what in progressive circles is politely termed The Other. Since men and women think and respond differently to a whole laundry list of stimuli, this is a recipe for disaster.

That's not exactly an earthshaking revelation, especially to anyone who isn't dumber than a sackful of hammers who has managed to stay married for longer than 20 seconds. But though most of us know men and women are different, when faced with behavior we don't understand we continue to assume the opposite sex will respond as we would.

And if they don't, well then darnitall they *ought* to.

It's hard to find a more amusing example of this phenomenon than Dennis Prager's latest column and the reactions to it. Mr. Prager weighs in on a subject from which far better men than he have fled shrieking in terror:

It is an axiom of contemporary marital life that if a wife is not in the mood, she need not have sex with her husband. Here are some arguments why a woman who loves her husband might want to rethink this axiom.

... A man whose wife frequently denies him sex will first be hurt, then sad, then angry, then quiet. And most men will never tell their wives why they have become quiet and distant. They are afraid to tell their wives. They are often made to feel ashamed of their male sexual nature, and they are humiliated (indeed emasculated) by feeling that they are reduced to having to beg for sex.

When first told this about men, women generally react in one or more of five ways:

1. You have to be kidding. That certainly isn't my way of knowing if he loves me. There have to be deeper ways than sex for me to show my husband that I love him.

2. If this is true, men really are animals.

3. Not my man. He knows I love him by the kind and loving way I treat him.

4. You have it backwards. If he truly loved me, he wouldn't expect sex when I'm not in the mood.

5. I know this and that's why I rarely say no to sex.

Mr. Prager proceeds to address each of these reactions in a way that sends the Hanes UltraSheers of bloggers both male and female into wads of fury. This is a shame, because there's really nothing wrong with his basic premise.

It's just that he really didn't do a terribly good job of explaining male behavior to women in a way that women understand. As amusing and overwrought as many of the reactions to his piece were, it's not hard to see why even some conservatives bridled at passages like this:

Compared to most womens sexual nature, mens sexual nature is far closer to that of animals. So what? That is the way he is made. Blame God and nature. Telling your husband to control it is a fine idea. But he already does. Every man who is sexually faithful to his wife already engages in daily heroic self-control. He has married knowing he will have to deny his sexual natures desire for variety for the rest of his life. To ask that he also regularly deny himself sex with the one woman in the world with whom he is permitted sex is asking far too much. Deny him enough times and he may try to fill this need with another woman.

Take one red flag. Wave directly in front of bull you are supposedly trying to stun senseless with the ineffable lucidity of your arguments. Step back, watch mayhem ensue.

As it so happens, I couldn't agree more that:

1. Sex is far more important to men (both physically and emotionally) than most women realize, and
2. Given that this is so, making sure your partner is satisfied in an area of your relationship which has tremendous importance to both the way he views your marriage and the way he sees himself as a man is pretty much a no-brainer.

BUT (and this is far bigger problem than diplomatically informing your wife her new little black dress makes her caboose look like a runaway Mack truck) allow me to suggest that telling a woman her husband desires sex with her (and apparently everything else on two legs) because he's basically an animal is not exactly calculated to appeal to her reasonable side.

And then there's the small matter of informing her how heroic her spouse is because he hasn't cheated on her.... yet. Of course those raging desires are barely under control. The reversion to animaldom *could* begin at any moment.

Cue the Barry White. I don't know about you, but I'm feeling romantic already. Methinks Mr. Prager needs to work on his sales technique just_a_bit.

Exactly how should this line of 'logic' make loving and concerned wives feel about something they don't understand? If you answered, "receptive", go back to the drawing board. Congratulations! You've married a caged beast who is constantly fighting off wicked thoughts and if you don't throw him some raw meat, he'll go feral on you?

Let me stipulate the points Prager made again and again in his column because they bear repeating. First of all, he didn't order anyone to submit. He advanced an argument whereby women might care to rethink their position if they have been habitually denying sex to their husbands. He further stated that it isn't a man's automatic "right" to expect sex whenever he wants it; that a considerate and loving husband must understand there are going to be times when for whatever reason, it's better just to roll over and dream of Halle Berry (just as a considerate and loving wife should understand there are times when protracted discussions about his feeeeeeeeelings or The Relationship may be the straw that broke the camel's back):

Of course, there are times when a man must simply refrain from initiating sex out of concern for his wife's physical or emotional condition. And then there are men for whom sex rarely has anything to do with making love or whose frequency of demands are excessive. (What “excessive” means ought to be determined by the couple before the refusals begin, or continue.)

That said, the slightly clumsy way he made his arguments was more calculated to appeal to a man than a woman and it ain't men he's trying to persuade. With a slightly different spin his observations remain no less true but are more likely to gain a sympathetic and willing ear:

1. You have to be kidding. …

The most common female reaction to hearing about men's sexual nature is incredulity, often followed by denial. These are entirely understandable reactions given how profoundly different — and how seemingly more primitive — men's sexual nature is compared to women's.

Incredulity is certainly the reaction most women have when first being told that a man knows he is loved when his wife gives him her body. The idea that the man she is married to, let alone a man whose intelligence she respects, will to any serious extent measure her love of him by such a carnal yardstick strikes many women as absurd and even objectionable.

This is undoubtedly true. I'm not sure if Prager understands *why* it's true, though. I have a theory about this. Maybe it's correct, maybe not.

Unlike women, men are competitive by nature: driven to fight and win. And as Prager notes, physically (let's not forget men are far more than the sum of their desires) men do have the instinct to sow their oats far and wide. But they also have other needs - intellectual, emotional, and spiritual - in addition to the purely sexual ones. Men are more than walking glands. If they weren't, they'd never settle down with one woman, accepting all the hard work and sacrifices marriage entails. Oddly enough, men have been known to forgo sex entirely, especially when they're working on something important to them. Who knew the poor dears had brains, let alone other interests in life? If that sounds a bit snarky, it's because it's a bit insulting to be thought of as nothing more than the satisfaction of a purely "animal" instinct. It's not that women don't get the animal part - trust me, we do, and far better than Mr. Prager seems to understand. It's just that most women would like to believe we provide a little more than the simple gratification of a nearly uncontrollable animal urge virtually anyone can satisfy. He is oversimplifying something that is actually pretty sophisticated and complex - the male sex drive, and what's more that oversimplification trivializes and demeans the needs of men. If sex were all men wanted or needed, they'd just take what they wanted. But men don't do that - they balance that side of their natures with their other attributes. That's why Prager's argument is calculated to raise hackles rather than promote understanding and acceptance.

During their dating years, most men prefer females they perceive to be a bit of a challenge. Certainly some will sleep with anything, but they won't settle down with just any woman. Ideally, they want the most difficult catch who prizes them in return; hopefully exclusively. They don't want her to be too easy to win over, but nothing is more attractive to a man than a woman who only has eyes for him, especially if she's viewed by other men as a good catch. She raises his status and in her arms he feels like a winner. This is a little hard for women to understand, but it's really very little different from the way we ourselves behave. We primp and preen and do our utmost to attract the best suitor from whatever pool we're able to gather around ourselves. We tend to undervalue the easy catch and often overvalue the one that got away, but essentially it's no less of a competition. From an evolutionary standpoint, this makes for healthy babies.

What women often don't understand is how truly important it is to most guys to please the women in their lives. For a man even love has a competitive aspect: he will fight for the prize of a woman's regard (or her desire at the end of the day), and that's how you keep the spark in a long term relationship: by allowing the man to do what he does best (pursue) and the woman to do what she does best (lure or seduce, often elusively at first but in the end, yielding... with the enticing appearance of a struggle... to his advances). In a good marriage, he continues to make this effort and she rewards him exclusively for his pains. But if she rejects him, not only is he going to be frustrated physically, but he's going to feel like a failure with the one person who matters most to him.

Since I've never met a guy who likes unpleasant feelings, guess what happens next? He shuts down and distracts himself with work, sports or hobbies. And this is where it all breaks down, as I'll discuss a bit later.

2. If this is true, men really are animals.

Correct. Compared to most women's sexual nature, men's sexual nature is far closer to that of animals. So what? That is the way he is made. Blame God and nature. Telling your husband to control it is a fine idea. But he already does. Every man who is sexually faithful to his wife already engages in daily heroic self-control. He has married knowing he will have to deny his sexual nature's desire for variety for the rest of his life. To ask that he also regularly deny himself sex with the one woman in the world with whom he is permitted sex is asking far too much. Deny him enough times and he may try to fill this need with another woman. If he is too moral to ever do that, he will match your sexual withdrawal with emotional and other forms of withdrawal.

Wow. Worst. Argument. Ever to make to a woman. Question for the ages: Is the wife who doesn't respond to the passes single and married men make at married women all the time (remember, women LOVE flirting, romance and attention of any kind - hey, we're animals! It's how we're made Mr. Prager: get over it) "heroic", too? Or is she just keeping her promise?

What about the woman who continues to tenderly care for her screaming infant when she hasn't had any sleep in 2 weeks and what she'd really rather be doing is relaxing on a tropical island with Fabio? Might such a woman possibly feel put upon at the end of the day when one more demand is made on her? This is something men don't understand - women are 'always on' to those we love. Just as men can't show emotion in the workplace, women have the opposite problem: we don't get to shut down emotionally because our feelings or pride are hurt. We can't turn off our feelings or stop thinking about those we love. We aren't "wired" that way and we can't shut out the needs of others, even when we are tired, angry, or resentful. They batter at us constantly until we do something about them.

Of course men have to keep their impulses in check once they get married. And of course that's not always easy. But it's hardly "heroic" any more than the thousand sacrifices women make in order to keep their relationships smooth are heroic.

There is probably little in life that annoys women more than being told by a man that nature has "programmed us" to do anything, bear any burden, make any sacrifice (except, apparently, having sex) in order to trap men into a state that is unnatural for them but oh-so desirable for us. I know I hate being told by conservative men in particular that women either hate sex or have little need for it; that we must pretty much be forced, against our natures, into 'giving it up'.

Could our extreme lack of interest in sex be why so many women cheat on their husbands, an activity that - last time I checked - included... lots and lots of the very activity we ostensibly exist to avoid?

Yeah. Doesn't make much sense to me, either.

The truth is probably a bit more nuanced than that: something more along the lines of, "men and women are different and within the spectrum of our differences, individual men and women vary greatly in temperment, need for sex, etc." This means that if you plan to get along with an individual man or woman, it helps to try and understand not just how all men or women think in general, but how the individual you're dealing with may differ from that general description. Try this argument on for size:

Men have feelings too, even though they don't talk about them very much. The number one reason for marital infidelity is not sex but rejection: the feeling one isn't appreciated.

And men, as many women may have noticed, are not always so good at talking - especially about their feelings. From birth they are trained to keep their emotions under tight rein. But as a woman, you hold the key to his heart. A man is never so receptive and loving as he is in bed. This is the one place where the rest of the world can't see him and when you touch him, when you show him you desire him above all others, that is probably the safest and most open he will ever feel. If you wish you were closer to your husband, you need to connect with him. For better or for worse, men find it easier to be emotionally intimate within the context of a happy and loving sexual relationship. It opens up their tender, loving and protective side.

If, as a woman, you are intentionally (and this was precisely the argument advanced by many bloggers who objected to Prager's post) holding back out of some misguided "He has to do X,Y, Z first before I'll interact with him in a way that allows him to be respond to the things I need from this relationship..." mentality, let me be the first to say: "You're a fool.". Sorry, but there it is.

A happy man will do almost anything to please you, up to and including conquering the world.

3. Not my man.

Many women will argue, understandably, “My husband knows I love him. He doesn't need me to have sex with him to know that. And this is especially so when I'm too tired or just don't want sex. Anyway, my man only enjoys sex with me when I'm into it, too.”

Not a bad argument so far as it goes. Realizing that many men would rather stick their heads into a gas oven than talk about their feelings, ask a woman how she would react to this statement from a man:

“My wife knows I love her. She doesn't need me to listen to her or tell her I love her to know that. And this is especially so when I'm too tired or just don't feel like making nicey-nicey. Anyway, it wouldn't mean anything to my wife if I acted affectionate just to please her.”

If you believe that, there's a very large bridge in Arizona I'd like to sell you. Often in marriage it's precisely the gestures we make when we don't feel like it - just to please our partners - that show how much we care. Anyone can be considerate when they're in a good mood. It's when you care enough to consider your mate's needs when you're tired and cranky that you know a marriage is solid.

4. You have it backward.

Every rational and decent man knows there are times when he should not initiate sex. In a marriage of good communication, a man would either know when those times are or his wife would tell him (and she needs to — women should not expect men to read their minds. He is her man, not her mother.)

This goes to my earlier point. Just as women should not expect men to read their minds, the absolute WORST thing a man can do (and very likely the #1 reason a lot of wives don't understand their husbands) is ...

[drum roll]

Men expecting their wives to read their minds. Women are good - very good - at relationships. But we're not perfect, and in a relationship between two consenting adults I don't have a whole lot of patience for an adult who takes his - or her - ball and goes home when things don't go his or her way. You want game?

Show up. And don't sulk.

And don't expect your partner to know - or understand without a lot of explaining - how you think. Not all men are alike. Neither are all women. Though men and women share many overarching similarities to others of their sex, no one marries "all men" or "all women". Individuals can be all over the map in terms of their need for emotional or sexual fulfillment and in the end, it is your individual needs that matter. If you don't feel comfortable broaching a subject, buy her a book that expresses what you wish she understood about you. Take responsibility for your own pleasure (and your own emotional well being). And here's a huge hint: find out how *she* thinks, what's important to her. Marriage involves communication and negotiation. Maybe she has shut down in the bedroom because she's feeling emotionally rejected. Maybe she's just lost touch with that side of herself, just as many men aren't terribly in touch with their emotions. Either way, asking a physically smaller and more vulnerable woman to open herself to a man she feels - for whatever reason - doesn't care about her is not only insensitive but leaves her feeling used.

SHE CAN'T READ YOUR MIND, and if you won't talk about your feelings she assumes you don't care about her or your marriage. She interprets the whole 'shutting down' thing as a rejection, and it hurts. Hurt people generally retreat into themselves, and that's never healthy for a marriage.

5. I know this and that's why I rarely say no to my husband.

I believe I'll let James Joyce speak for me here:

And then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will yes.

The secret lies is meeting each other halfway. And if you find your spine a bit unyielding, you may wish to consider an old saying we ladies have often found instructive: That which submits, rules.

We humans are complex beings full of often contrary desires. Sometimes, though, someone has to make the first move.

Posted by Cassandra at 08:02 AM | Comments (66) | TrackBack

December 08, 2008

Darwinian Dating and the Moral Cop Out

A gentleman named Eric wrote an interesting response to my earlier post on Darwinian Dating. I'm not sure he entirely understood the point I was making, but that's not surprising as I barely addressed the City Journal article. [Ed. note: Eric added this clarification tonight, so I may have misunderstood what he was getting at! Don't have time to look at his post again just now, but wanted to get his clarification up right away.]

Just to be clear, my post was responding to the City Journal article, not the VC blog post, so the "author" I'm referring to is Kay S. Hymowitz, not Cassandra.

However, I'd like to address his comments:

... a mutual relationship is not a juxtaposition of two independent entities, it is an interplay that builds upon itself, which means both the man and woman are more than equally responsible. Each is entirely responsible for the greater whole. Both have to give of themselves. A relationship can be unexpected in many ways, but at the core, there does have to be the same commitment and fidelity shared by both. If the commitment is there for one, but not the other, then there isn't a mutual relationship.

Perhaps I didn't express myself well. Here's what I wrote originally:

... relationships are supposed to be a two-way street, that's why. You can't love someone else until you have a strong sense of yourself. That doesn't mean being selfish and self centered; it means being secure enough in who you are that you can give freely to another human being without suspicion and pettiness, because marriage isn't always a 50-50 or even a 60-40 proposition. In hard times, you may be called upon to give 90 percent. Marriage means doing things you don't "feel" like without begrudging the giving. It means taking as much pleasure in pleasing your partner as you do in pleasing yourself.

Obviously things ought to balance out roughly over the years, but it doesn't always start out that way and people who keep hidden scorecards rarely succeed. What keeps things on an even keel is choosing someone with whom you're well matched and maintaining interests of your own to preserve some balance and keep the relationship fresh.

Perhaps I was too subtle - the foregoing passage assumed t