Villainous Company

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 (50) | 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 two people who were fairly evenly matched insofar as temperment and mutual affection. Note, however, that I didn't say they were exactly even. While I agree with Eric that both partners have to be committed to making the relationship work, I emphatically do not agree that their commitment must be equal.

In fact, I've seen many successful relationships where neither the love between two married people, the amount of work they put into the relationship, nor their commitment to it were equal. A lot of people won't like my saying that, but it's true.

People have different personalities. Some like being caretakers. Some are loners. Some are difficult to get along with, some enjoy pleasing others. Some have more of a dependent personality and some could happily go through life solo. For all of these reasons things will never be strictly equal in a marriage relationship and if you go into such a relationship thinking things will always be strictly fair and egalitarian, you are bucking for a massive disappointment. Life simply doesn't work that way.

What is absolutely necessary for a successful long term relationship is that, in the end, both parties get what they want, keeping in mind that they may have very different requirements. So long as the benefits continue to outweigh the negative aspects, most people will continue to march along quite happily. But every long term relationship is a bit different. In the end, there is no requirement to get along with any other person except the one with whom one is involved (I say this because even the requirement to get along with family and friends is variable). The amount of "adjusting" or compromise one is called upon to perform is very much personality driven.

I have to say that as an older person I don't have a lot of patience with this sort of thinking, though I find it eminently understandable:

Beyond that, I don't know how it works for women. I've only had the barest taste of falling in love, but enough to know that nothing else I've experienced motivates me to become a better man like falling in love with a woman. For a relationship, a man pulls down the walls protecting his heart, bares himself, and makes himself vulnerable in order to give of himself to the woman he loves. There's anguish when she doesn't join him in the commitment. Further, there's a betrayal of faith when she, rather, seemingly gives of herself to other men whose behavior falls short of his love's standard. When his essential self is rejected, he is forced to evaluate his worth. The man is ready to transform for the relationship and, therefore, highly sensitized to the woman's feedback. Rejection is very compelling feedback, so when she rejects him in favor of something else, the man's instinct is to adapt to the preferences displayed by her. Thus, the woman's choice guides the man's choice. The rest, the player and the game, follows.

Men who've been rejected by the woman they love and have adapted their behaviors are often criticized for being selfish, but it's a painful process to rebuild the walls protecting one's wounded heart. You have to do it, but every time, those walls are built thicker and tougher and shut out more light.

Why am I reminded of an old song?

As I returned across the fields I'd known I recognized the walls that I once made Had to stop in my tracks for fear Of walking on the mines I'd laid

I'm sorry, but I don't buy this.

I've read a lot of science articles that prattle on about how the female does all the selecting. I think that's only part of the truth.

I do believe that men prefer selective females: in a competitive environment, men are more attracted to choosy women. But having been on the female end of the dating game for many years, I still remember what it was like, too.

I'm always slightly astounded to read some of the bitter comments men write about the other half of humanity. They make little or no sense.

Do men really believe women hold all the cards in relationships? If so, they're not paying attention. The best thing I ever read about men and women in relationships was written by Dave Barry. It can't help but ring painfully true to anyone with even an ounce of estrogen in her bloodstream:

Let's say a guy named Fred is attracted to a woman named Martha. He asks her out to a movie; she accepts; they have a pretty good time. A few nights later he asks her out to dinner, and again they enjoy themselves. They continue to see each other regularly, and after a while neither one of them is seeing anybody else.

And then, one evening when they're driving home, a thought occurs to Martha, and, without really thinking, she says it aloud: "Do you realize that, as of tonight, we've been seeing each other for exactly six months?"

And then, there is silence in the car.

To Martha, it seems like a very loud silence. She thinks to herself: I wonder if it bothers him that I said that. Maybe he's been feeling confined by our relationship; maybe he thinks I'm trying to push him into some kind of obligation that he doesn't want, or isn't sure of.

And Fred is thinking: Gosh. Six months.

And Martha is thinking: But, hey, I'm not so sure I want this kind of relationship either. Sometimes I wish I had a little more space, so I'd have time to think about whether I really want us to keep going the way we are, moving steadily towards, I mean, where are we going? Are we just going to keep seeing each other at this level of intimacy? Are we heading toward marriage? Toward children? Toward a lifetime together? Am I ready for that level of commitment? Do I really even know this person?

And Fred is thinking: ...so that means it was...let's see...February when we started going out, which was right after I had the car at the dealer's, which means...lemme check the odometer...Whoa! I am way overdue for an oil change here.

If that doesn't speak volumes about the difference between men and women, nothing does. Sometime during that six months Martha's world started to revolve around Fred. Her entire frame of reference stopped being "Martha and Martha's life" and became "Do Fred and I have a future together"? During her day, Fred pops into her thoughts constantly: she wonders if he is happy, what he thinks about various things, how she can make him happy, whether they'll see each other this weekend?

Fred, on the other hand, is thinking about his car. And the last thing on his mind is whether he and Martha have a future together. In fact, if the subject comes up (unless of course, it's his idea) it will very likely freak him out. In general, he will only want to settle down with her if he gets the idea he is likely to lose her to someone else or he has decided, for whatever reason, that it's time to settle down. Either way, the decision has very little to do with her as a person.

The idea that women in general have all the power in a relationship is really rather perverse.

Men and women respond to each other's cues as well as to the expectations of society. To flip Eric's scenario on its head, a woman who maintains high standards must compete in the marketplace with women who are willing to give men everything they want. Does he seriously think such women never get their hearts broken by men who date according to the Darwinian standard? Can't he understand that such self-serving behavior only reinforces the very traits he says he doesn't want to see in women - that it would tend to produce:

...a betrayal of faith when he, rather, goes for other women whose behavior falls short of her standard. When her essential self is rejected, she is forced to evaluate her worth. Women are highly sensitized to the man's feedback. Rejection is very compelling feedback, so when he rejects her in favor of something else, the woman's instinct is to adapt to the preferences displayed by him.

I'm not terribly impressed by the argument that someone else has "forced" you to be the way you are. Character is a decision you make every day, and it speaks volumes about your values. If you disapprove of slutty or self-involved behavior from women, don't reinforce that behavior by sinking to that level yourself. Demand better and lead by example.

There are always good women out there. Giving into cynicism doesn't make the world a better place; it's just a surrender to the very values you despise. I'm not sure how that improves the situation any.

And in fact it begs the question: if you engage in this type of behavior, how are you any better than the women who hurt you? Is that really the standard you want to set for yourself - that just because you were hurt, suddenly two wrongs make a right? I don't think that's what Eric meant to say, but that's the whole premise behind Darwinian dating and it's a morally bankrupt philosophy. Putting fancy words around it doesn't make it smell any better.

The bottom line is that Eric has the cart before the horse. He says that nothing makes him want to be a better person like falling in love with a woman. But that is exactly backwards. If you wish to find someone who is worthy of your love, don't you think perhaps you ought to be a person worthy of respect and love, yourself?

As I said in my last post, it all begins with you and your values. Don't look to someone else to "make" you want to be a better person. Be a better person because that is important to you. None of us can count on finding someone else to share our lives with, but we can decide to live our lives in a manner consistent with our values. If we surrender our integrity to the expectations of others, we truly have nothing.

Posted by Cassandra at 06:22 AM | Comments (95) | TrackBack

December 05, 2008

A Match Made In Heaven

They say there's someone out there for everyone, and personally we believe it. There may just be an eHarmony ad in this one:

Boy: "So... white men are dying from a horrible disease... [stamping foot] Can we please focus on issues that have some actual relevance to the community?":

Donnie Northrup received hate mail and death threats after he suggested the council find a new charity to support during Orientation Week instead of participating in the same fundraiser as other universities across the country.

His motion incorrectly claimed the disease affects "only white people, and primarily men" and said students should feel their fundraising efforts "will serve their diverse communities."

Girl: "So ... men are killing themselves more these days... Exactly how does this impact meeeeeeeeeeeeee"

"I have sad feelings too, you know."

The subtitle of the article "War, debt and joblessness causing emotional distress for many young men "doesn't seem like something that should be primarly male - those are issues that are enough to make anyone depressed!

The article tries to make male suicide seem more pressing by stating that more men actually do go through with suicide than women, and calls women taking pills "halfhearted". This just reads like a continuation of the ever-present portrayal of male psychological problems (when addressed) as a "serious concern", while women are considered "silly".

Two hearts... beating as one. We can always pray that if by chance these two find each other, they don't breed.

On the other hand, given their respective world views the likelihood that natural selection will rear its ugly head offers some hope.

Posted by Cassandra at 08:50 AM | Comments (16) | TrackBack

November 15, 2008

Why We Love Men

When they get bored, they do things like this.

CWCID: Heirborn Ranger

Posted by Cassandra at 08:14 AM | Comments (11) | TrackBack

November 14, 2008

I Give, And I Give, and I Give....

...and yet you people are never satisfied.

*Sheesh*

In the Princess' Inbox:

"Viggo Mortensen?"

"VIGGO MORTENSEN???"

Never let it be said that we didn't resist temptation. In our defense, let it be noted that we held out for 5 days:

Foreplay may be overrated according to a survey based on 2,300 women, which found that it has little or no significance when it comes to the likelihood of having an orgasm.

The duration of intercourse – 16.2 minutes on average – is the clincher, according to the research. The findings suggest that sex therapists, who emphasise the value of foreplay, may have that been getting it wrong.

This was obviously written by a man trying to get back into the living room before the 3rd quarter starts. Be that as it may, it's not hard (heh.... she said... oh, nevermind) to imagine how the discussion drifted off track and onto the subject (which the Princess for the longest time ignored in the noble and high minded fashion she desperately wants the readership to believe her capable of) of dreamy movie stars.

Be that as it may, we found this a bit odd:

The researchers point out that 16.2 minutes is considerably longer than reported in American studies, where intercourse was found to last on average seven minutes.

They added: "It could be that this reflects, a greater appreciation of intercourse and sensuality by Europeans than by Americans."

What the??? bizarre. Here's another one for the grist mill. How often should you have sex for optimum health? (and don't you just *love* these things? No matter what you answer, you'll probably end up feeling bad about yourself.)

Whatever. At any rate, Viggo Mortensen was the last straw. Some things simply will not stand.

Or so we've been told.

Posted by Cassandra at 07:10 AM | Comments (45) | TrackBack

October 02, 2008

Oh Why Not

I wasn't going to do this, but I thought it might be fun after all the serious stuff that's been going on lately. Discussion question of the day: what is your idea of the ideal woman? (ladies, you may, if you wish, expound upon your vision of the ideal man)

Update: to put some bounds around this, let's say define the ideal woman using between three and five characteristics. Otherwise, the definitions will be too hard to compare. And please list them at the beginning of your comment, then you can elaborate upon the reasons you chose them if you wish.

Posted by Cassandra at 08:55 AM | Comments (82) | TrackBack

September 26, 2008

Huh???

Personally, the Editorial Staff see nothing unusual about this:

Stop the presses! A Pew Research Center survey reveals that in nearly two out of three cases when one person in a married couple makes the decisions, that person is -- now brace yourself! -- the wife.

Shocking, I know.

Forty-three percent of wives call the shots, according to the poll, compared with 26 percent of the men.

Golly! That would seem to go against the grain of our unisex bathroom, gender-neutral, anybody-can -grow-up-to-become-an-unqualified-vice-presidential-candidate society. But then again, the practical considerations that keep marriages chugging along are not as open to shifts in fashion as we might think.

The survey did identify a third group -- 31 percent of couples claim they "equally divide decisions" -- an obvious lie. I'm not sure if equally dividing decisions is even possible, and figure the 31 percent must represent couples who say what they think they're supposed to say.

With that in mind, I phoned my wife. If I'm going to write about this, I thought it would be best, from a domestic tranquility perspective, to seek her input.

"So honey . . ." I stammered. "There's this survey . . . "

"We equally divide decisions," she replied.

"Do we really?" I squeaked.

"Yes, we do," she said, with a firm and-that's-the-end-of-that tone. I automatically backed off, mumbling apologies.

Well there you are. That settles it. We divide decisions equally. Though ... and I'm going out on a limb here ... I suppose it all depends on what you mean by "equally." When it comes to major life choices, we do divide them, in the sense that my wife sets the course and I'm allowed to fill in the details. She decided, for instance, that it was high time for us to get married, and I got to pick both the location for the wedding and the type of soup served at the reception -- cream of carrot.

It was she who announced that we were moving to the suburbs, and I found the house we live in.

That is a division, of sorts, though whether it is an equal division, I will leave to you.

I'm not complaining, mind you. The line I always use, when convincing myself to go along with her next scheduled stage of domesticity, is that if I didn't follow her lead, I'd still be a single guy living in a one-bedroom rental in Oak Park. (Mmmmm . . . No wait, that would be bad!!!)

And yet. There is an aspect to our joint decision-making worth mentioning. There are moments where I suspect it might not be quite as equitable as advertised.

For instance.

Now is the time when on-the-ball families plan their summer vacations. A few days back we were strolling along the Prairie Trail in Northbrook.

"Where should we go this summer?" she said. "I thought we'd go to Yellowstone."

"Or maybe the Grand Canyon," I countered.

"There's good hiking in Yellowstone," she continued.

"I've never been to the Grand Canyon," I said.

"Cate stayed in a lodge in Yellowstone she really liked," she said. "Ask her the name of the place so we can stay there when we go to Yellowstone."

So I guess, from my wife's point of view, we discussed several vacation options and came to a decision together, the way equal helpmates who love and respect each other do.

I might view it differently, but then I'm surely mistaken, for reasons which no doubt are being explained to me even as you read this.

Posted by Cassandra at 07:51 AM | Comments (13) | TrackBack

September 24, 2008

Sleeping Alone

Dr. Helen asks, "Is sleeping alone healthy for a marriage?"

How many couples sleep solo in a double bed?

A 2001 random telephone survey of 1,004 adults conducted by the National Sleep Foundation found that 12 percent of married Americans slept alone; a similar 2005 survey of 1,506 people found that number had jumped to 23 percent.

In addition, a March online survey of 1,408 couples conducted by the Sleep Council of England found that 1 in 4 people regularly retreats to a spare room or sofa to get a good night’s sleep.

The preference for separate spaces has even begun to affect home design. According to the National Association of Home Builders, there’s been a steady increase in the number of requests for “two-master bedroom” homes since 1990, prompting the organization to predict that by 2015, 60 percent of all custom upscale homes will be built with two “owner suites.”

I would think that whether one’s marriage suffers from sleeping apart would have to do more with why people want to sleep apart than the fact that they do. Is there a good reason for it or is it because one wants to get away from his or her spouse? A good reason for sleeping apart might be to avoid a sleepless night due to a partner snoring or other sleep-disturbing behavior.

And, in fact, these seem to be the main reasons people sleep apart: because of snoring or other physical difficulties — such as restless leg syndrome — that make sleeping difficult for the partner without the problem. But perhaps some of the reasons also have to do with an increase in economic wealth and changing expectations of how we view relationships. Perhaps more couples sleep alone now than in the past because they can.

I know I've written about this before, but I had a few more thoughts. As a wife who often gets up in the middle of the night to sleep in the other room (but always, always makes an effort to go to sleep in the same bed, and at the same time as, my husband) I understand why couples are tempted to sleep apart. After all, having gone through several one-year unaccompanied deployments, I know what it is like to get used to having the bed - and the bedroom - to oneself. It's an adjustment when your spouse returns and you have to deal with issues like the numbers of covers on the bed, snoring, tossing and turning, different schedules (my husband gets up at 4 a.m. or even earlier every day).

And I know how wonderfully relaxing it is, sometimes, just to be able to fall asleep in a perfectly quiet room where everything is exactly the way you want it.

It's almost like being... single again. But that isn't really the point of marriage, is it? Having everything your way? Putting your own needs first? Maximizing your own convenience and comfort at the expense of the relationship? Reading Dr. Helen's post, I was reminded of this rather novel experiment:

There are two new books out from couples who made a decision to have sex with their spouse every night for 101 or 365 days. The reviews from both couples seem to be mixed…not surprising. Yes, it improved intimacy and yes, it was very difficult and, at times, a horrible drag.

I recall reading about this in the Times a while back and thinking it a bit extreme. But on the other hand, how does a couple get to the point where they even contemplate mandatory sex every night for a year? This couple can tell you: they get there the same way so many couples get into trouble.

They get busy, and it becomes easier to think of their own needs first rather than putting time and energy into the relationship.

They forget that their needs may not be the same as their partner's, but that a marriage only works so long as both the man and woman are getting something out of it.

They forget that relationships take constant work and that every day a thousand little fractures can occur in even the strongest relationship. If you don't put in the time and effort to repair them as you go, small wounds can easily turn into large ones.

Or worse, they turn into indifference.

Elsewhere today, I read that 58% of women fantasize about having an affair.

34% admit to having cheated on their husbands.

And most distressing of all, I read that the average married couple only has sex 66 times a year.

While I can understand all the reasons couples can and do sleep apart, I think it's a mistake not to make the effort to at least fall asleep together (or spend some time in the same bed) every night. Making time for your spouse should be a priority, not an afterthought and very often, because making sexual overtures to each other is very much a function of opportunity, the first casualty when couples spend too much time apart is going to be their sex life. Sex is about a lot of things. It's far more than simply having an orgasm, which (let's face it) we're all perfectly capable of doing on our own. For most men, sex is not just an enjoyable physical activity. In addition to making them feel valued, it also allows them to relax and open up to their wives in a way they're usually taught to suppress when they're dealing with the outside world. And most women very much want and need to feel connected to their husbands emotionally in order to fully enjoy sex, so it's hard to have one take place without the other:

What both couples seem to have really learned is how much closer and intimate sex can make you feel, even when you have been married a long time. This is because we are all at our most vulnerable during sex. It is an open, honest and tender time. You each get to see and feel more of the human essence of your mate. You have put it out there -- in terms of what you like, what you don’t and what you are thinking about. This is both exciting and scary, which is why so many people back away and erect a wall against such intimacy-- to avoid the risk of rejection. It is so important to be sensitive to each others' vulnerable state and be as supportive as possible. At the same time, such revelation is very exciting when you feel really safe and honest and loved just for being you with your partner.

I think the takeaway from such an exercise is that sometimes you just have to get going to break through those initial sexual barriers that may have been built up over many years. What is on the other side is most certainly worth having.

I attended a wedding recently. I love weddings. I nearly always cry.

There is something sacred about the sight of two young people, beaming with happiness and obviously in love, pledging to devote the rest of their lives together. And I believe in marriage, both as a social institution and as a way for people to be happy.

But sometimes - often - I read things online that fill me with dismay. How do people lose that feeling they had on their wedding day? I've been married for nearly thirty years, and I don't understand the bitterness and anger I read so often in comments from people who have clearly been deeply hurt.

How do we lose that feeling?

I think we lose it by increments. And I think we need to do everything in our power to hold onto it. It is a lever capable of moving mountains or desolating souls.

I suppose I've always thought that success in marriage is much like success in life. Ninety nine percent of it lies in continuing to show up, day after day, shovel in hand.

Sex: it's a dirty job, but someone has to do it :p Seriously, when I read the hundreds of "how did this happen" books on marriages gone wrong, I can't help thinking that the most obvious problem is the least often discussed: that most marriages don't fail due to discord or irreconcilable differences. That's a symptom, not a root cause.

I think many marriages starve to death. They fail when couples drift apart and their differences begin to outweigh the good feelings that brought them together in the first place. And I think the main reason that occurs is that couples no longer take the time to create those good feelings, the way they did when they were dating.

It's something to think about.

Posted by Cassandra at 08:52 AM | Comments (22) | TrackBack

September 12, 2008

You Do The Math

Hmmmm... this sounds disturbingly like common sense:

When it comes to launching missiles in the Mommy Wars, Sarah Palin has nothing on Christopher Ruhm. On Thursday, the University of North Carolina, Greenboro, economist published a study showing that kids from high-socioeconomic-status families take a long-term hit when their moms work outside the home—at ages 10 and 11, they perform more poorly on cognitive tests and are also more likely to be overweight than those whose high-status mothers leave the workforce. Children from low-status families, on the other hand, don't seem to suffer as much when their moms work. In fact, many of them do better on the same tests, and they're more fit, than similarly disadvantaged kids with stay-at-home moms.

The findings are surprising, and it's easy to read them as a warning to affluent, educated mothers: if you want the best for your child, don't work. (Conversely, if you're not well-off: get your kid to day care.)

But what use is "science" if we can't apply it to our every day lives?

... those are dangerous conclusions to draw from the study, and even Ruhm—whose own wife worked while raising their children—says so. "This comes down to a fundamental principle of economics: something has to give. We can't have it all," he says. "But I would never tell anybody what to do or not do about that. I certainly wouldn't tell my wife." [Editorial *snort* inserted] So what are women facing a choice between work and home—and those many more for whom work is an economic necessity—supposed to make of these findings?

The study, published in the journal Labour Economics, divided women into two socioeconomic groups, based on several variables (including education levels, income prior to pregnancy, ethnicity and whether a spouse was present at home). The kids from families in the "lower" group generally fared fine if their moms worked for the majority of their childhoods—at ages 10 and 11, they either scored about the same on cognitive tests, or better, than disadvantaged kids whose mothers stayed home. For kids from high-status families, though, the pattern flipped. The more these affluent moms worked—especially if they went back to their jobs while their children were still very young—the less well their kids did on cognitive tests later in childhood. (The high-status children with working moms still did better overall than all the low-status children—so class, not employment, was ultimately the stronger factor in their well-being.)

Why do mothers' choices have such different effects on kids, depending on their socioeconomic situations? Most likely, says Ruhm, the low-status kids get more intellectual stimulation in day care or with other caretakers, such as grandparents, than they do at home. Meanwhile, the high-status kids may find day care less enriching than being with their highly educated mothers. When these moms go back to work, "you're pulling the [high-status] kids out of these really good home environments," says Ruhm, "and a lot of the alternatives just aren't as good."

The same pattern was true of weight: low-status kids weren't any thinner or fatter depending on what their mothers did, but high-status kids with working moms did have a slightly higher risk of being overweight at 10 or 11. The biggest effect on weight came when mothers were working during their high-status children's school years. Maybe, says Ruhm, these moms didn't have time to cook healthy dinners and after-school snacks: "If you're working a lot and you're eating out and buying fatty food, that could have an effect on obesity later in the child's life." Or maybe those kids were left unsupervised more often, and thus had more opportunities to eat cookies in front of the TV—and fewer opportunities to run around outside. "Parents who are working but want to make sure their kids are supervised and safe will often load up the house with sedentary activities, since they can't always be there to take them to sports or to the park," says Karen Eifler, an associate professor of education at the University of Portland. "Their kids are more likely to have a TV or computer and videogames in their room—and also, the higher your economic status, the more likely you are to have those three machines in your house."

Certainly, Ruhm says, there's good reason to think that working women spend less time overall supervising their kids. That's what other studies have shown, and time, of course, is a zero-sum game—there's only so much of it in the day. "Working women do try to preserve the most important activities with their kids. They'll let a lot of things in their own lives go," he says. "But they still have less time to spend. And it's also true that if you're sleeping less and are tired or stressed, that could have an effect on the kids, as well."

Although there's a certain intuitive logic to the study results—take a privileged mom out of the home, and some of the privileges leave with her—there's little reason for affluent working mothers to panic. The study is one in a long line; other surveys have found positive effects, negative effects and no effects when moms work. It's hard to trust any one set of results, says Thomas Cottle, a clinical psychologist at Boston University's School of Education. "This is not the natural sciences, where we can replicate things," he says. "If you're of a particular ideology, you're going to say about any given study, 'I don't want to believe this'."

Discuss amongst yourselves. The Princess will be at the bar.

Drinking heavily.

Posted by Cassandra at 06:41 PM | Comments (30) | TrackBack

September 09, 2008

Palinsanity

There was a time in America when women were the teachers. We were the keepers of family rituals and tradition, of moral standards and rules for everyday living passed from mother to child. We made sure holidays were observed and family ties preserved. The hand that rocked the cradles of this country did, in many ways, shape the world around us as our children moved from beneath our sheltering arms into the world, taking our values with them.

It was women who ensured our children knew right from wrong. No decent mother trusted a school to teach her family these things. These were lifetime lessons; learned after playground fights, struggles to complete homework on time or resist the temptation of stealing penny candy from the corner store. More often than not they were lessons learned after we made mistakes, discovered only because someone kept a watchful eye on most everything we did. And after the tears were dried and we'd spent time in our rooms, there came The Talk.

That was when we learned why what we had done was wrong; how it damaged the fabric of the society we lived in. There must be a million aphorisms Moms have scolded their children with over the years. All have a moralistic bent. All are intended to teach a lesson; to make us think and engrave the experience on a young heart and mind. They are, when it comes right down to it, good questions.

"What would the world be like, if everyone did as you just did? How would you feel, if someone did that to you?"

That one that never failed to get me, because I didn't have a good answer for it. The truth was if I'd done wrong, I knew I wouldn't want to live in that kind of world. I knew I wouldn't want to be treated the same way I'd treated others - that was how I knew what I had done was wrong.

And I felt ashamed, as I was meant to. This was, after all, the point of the lesson. By learning to identify with others, we learned to treat them the way we would want to be treated ourselves, to feel shame when we fell short of that standard. In time the conditioning became so ingrained that the imagined pain of another human being was enough to stop us in our tracks; to make us want to do right instead of wrong.

Though we did not realize it then, motherhood is a position of great power and influence. It is a position women have largely abandoned to television, the Internet, day care providers and beleaguered public school teachers as we chased the siren song of women's emancipation from the odious chains of home and hearth. But the beckoning promise of a more liberated future; one free from the biological imperatives that continue to operate with blissful disregard for anti-discrimination laws and affirmative action initiatives alike, contained what should have been a telltale flaw in logic.

No person - male or female - can juggle two full time jobs without letting one suffer.

The answer to this, of course, from traditional feminists was, "Men will have to step up to the plate." But the fatal flaw in this assumption is that their husbands were already working one full time job. They, too, were subject to that same logical law, and men with children compete in the marketplace against men with no children. There is no requirement for their employers to pay them the same salary, if they take time off to care for children, as a man who works longer hours. Hence their careers, promotion opportunities and pay prospects all suffer.

Enter Todd Palin. His career has already been negatively impacted by his wife's election to the governorship of Alaska. He gave up a management position in order to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest. One would think women, and feminists in particular, would be heartened to see a strong, masculine man ardently supporting an ambitious women as she rises like a meteor through the hardscrabble world of politics.

You would be wrong. Over the past week or so, Governor Palin, her husband, and now her 17 year old daughter have been subjected to the most irresponsible and vicious rumor mongering imaginable. No slander seems too base, no form of innuendo too slimy for partisan mudslingers driven to increasingly pathetic fits of hysterics by the threat of losing a hotly contested election.

And the worst thing about it is that the most egregious offenders have been women.

While I don't happen to believe Governor Palin needs defending, I do know that her 17 year old daughter Bristol doesn't deserve the abuse she has taken from full grown women who ought to know better. And so I can't help wondering:

Does the Left feel proud of itself for knowingly spreading lies and gossip about a minor? How do they justify their actions, other than with the transparently shallow excuse that two wrongs (if you buy the premise that simply opposing them politically is a "wrong", much less that the children of political candidates are appropriate targets for their political attacks) make a right?

Do progressives feel such actions are worthy of their political beliefs? Do they puff up with pride at the sight of "authoritative" timelines so sloppy that even a novice Google user can easily demonstrate that the "pregnant" picture of Bristol Palin was taken in 2006 (which, if she was carrying Trig Palin at the time, would make it the world's longest pregnancy)?

Despite this obvious problem with Vanity Fair's "authoritative" timeline, 69% of Vanity Fair readers believe Bristol is the mother of Trig Palin. So much for the intelligence of the average Vanity Fair reader.

Did Vanity Fair care that the ex-wife named in the Todd Palin's business partner's divorce case has publicly stated there was no affair between her husband and Sarah Palin? Of course not. That information was obviously on a "need to know basis", and Vanity Fair decided its readers didn't "need to know" such mundane details:

if you think the mainstream press is ignoring the Enquirer allegations, guess again. Politico reports that numerous national journalists have gone to an Alaskan courthouse to examine the divorce file of a Palin friend -- the subject of the rumors -- after he tried to have the papers sealed. The man's ex-wife, by the way, denied to Us Weekly that any affair took place.

Is there anyone within a 10 mile radius of the Palins whose privacy these creeps won't invade? Apparently not.

As a mother of two sons myself, let me ask: as a Democrat, how would you feel if someone you know casually entered politics and all of a sudden the press and Republican operatives suddenly started delving into your private life, your trash, your personal records, looking for dirt on them? Suddenly, through no fault of your own, your privacy just disappeared.

Poof.

It's not a pretty picture, is it?

How would you feel if suddenly, some person you served with on a board sent a chain email halfway around the world blasting you to kingdom come?

Anne Kilkenny - a Democrat - (why, oh why am I not surprised) has bravely stepped up to the keyboard to tell us that Sarah Palin is the anti-Christ in Manolo Blahnik pumps. Debbie Frost, who for I all know may be slightly to the reich of Attila the Hun, thinks Gov. Palin is the Second Coming of Meg Thatcher.

The point is that I know precisely nothing about either of these women. Why on earth should I care what they think of Sarah Palin? Reasonable people do not vote on the basis of chain emails written by persons whose character, intelligence and motivations are unknown to them. Dear God in heaven, have we all lost our minds?

And then there's the Parade of Feminists. You know: the ones who are basking in the glow of a fellow Sistah finally shattering that glass ceiling.... NOT? Those who, of late, have lamented the dearth of women on the op-ed pages need complain no more. The rise of Sarah Palin has brought forth an ever-replenishing cornucopia of feminine stupidity and malice (but I repeat myself) that may well explain the erstwhile lack of such precious delights:

Exhibit One:

Froma Harrop, a feminist oxymoronically concerned about who's minding Sarah Palin's children, would like her to just stay home with the kiddies. In fact, she's so concerned about Sarah's children that she's beside herself over Bristol's pregnancy; so much so that she somehow imagines Mothers go out on dates with their teenaged daughters, perhaps inserting themselves firmly but gently as loving chaperones in the back seats of Chevrolets everywhere.

"No dear", they say, sweetly, smacking the offending digits from their virgin daughters' blushingly virginal naughty bits. "Don't put your hand there until the two of you are legally wedded. Or at least until you're sure you're both protected by two forms of birth control."

Yes, the compassion just oozes from every pore:

...all she could now see was that picture of Palin's pregnant 17-year-old looking defiant and stupid ...

Charming.

A 44-year-old who parades her dysfunctional family as a poster-child for conservative values.

Wunderbar. Here we go again - another lecture about "conservative values" from yet another bigoted progressive who thinks every conservative is Jerry Falwell. Nice job of painting with the broad brush, Froma (or whatever your name is). Grow up, why don't you? Or better yet, learn to think. Thinking requires nuance. It also helps to get the facts - facts such as the inconvenient (for you) fact that Gov. Palin believes teens should be taught how to use condoms. But then you didn't bother to find that out, did you? Because it interfered with the narrative you wanted to spin. However, there's plenty more patronizing snottyness where that came from. After all, Ms. Harrop is a Tolerant Lefty:

I noted that even when a pregnancy leads to marriage for teens of any race, a divorce quickly follows. And many of these women end up having several children with different fathers-- and very difficult lives.

Really? How odd. Because, you see, I was a teen mother and I've been married for nearly 30 years now. To the same man. I have several friends. All teen mothers. All married for 20+ years. All college educated. All happily married. I put both my sons through college too, with money I made in my own right after 18 years as a wife and full time homemaker. I've succeeded in both worlds, as a homemaker and as a career woman.

Imagine that.

Exhibit Two: Anna Quindlen, another charming lady who likes to paint with the broad brush. Attila takes on several of her points, but this needs refuting:

I never thought I would live long enough to see the day when the Republican presidential candidate would cite membership in the PTA as evidence of executive experience, when the far right would laud the full-time working mothers of newborns, when social conservatives would stare down teenage pregnancy and replace their pursed-lip accusations of promiscuity with hosannas about choosing life.

How neatly Ms. Quindlen misstates the view of 'social conservatives', who have long sponsored shelters for unwed mothers. There has never been any widespread condemnation for pregnancy itself. Sex is a thing the right understands. After all, social conservatives or not (and I do not number myself in that population) everyone has sex. The condemnation has been of abortion. So their embrace of Bristol Palin is hardly hypocritical. Quindlen is more on target with this observation, if only in a limited fashion:

...expediency is an astonishing thing, and conservative Republicans have suddenly embraced the assertion that women can do it all, even those conservative Republicans who have made careers out of trashing that notion. James Dobson of Focus on the Family once had staffers on his hot line saying, "Dr. Dobson recommends that mothers of young children stay at home as much as possible." He now applauds a woman who was back at work three days after her son, who has Down syndrome, was born.

She is right to note hypocrisy in Dobson's supporters, but wrong to tar all conservatives with the same brush. Republican women, contrary to her wishful thinking on the subject, come in all shapes, sizes, and ideological colors. It's a big tent, Ms. Quindlen, and you only show your own narrow-mindedness and ignorance when you act as though a huge party had no more than one faction. She is also patently dishonest here:

Amid the drumbeat of female Amazonian competence occasioned by the Palin nomination ran one deeply discordant assumption, the assumption that women are strong and smart and sure and yet neither sentient nor moral enough to decide what to do if they are pregnant under difficult circumstances. The governor has talked about the choice she and her pregnant teenage daughter have made, but would deny other women the right to make their own choices. She talks about fighting the old boys' network and corrupt politicians, but would turn over the private reproductive decisions of American women to both. This is not choosing life. It is choosing unwarranted intrusion into the family lives of women. Which, ironically, is exactly what the Republicans accused the press of doing in the case of Governor Palin.

This is arrant feminist victimization nonsense again. "Old boy network"? Were women deprived of the vote while I was sleeping? Have we lost the right to petition the courts? Has Roe been overturned? To hear these women talk, you'd think we'd gone back to the days when we were chained to our Easy Bake ovens.

Exhibit Three:

Dahlia Lithwick unveils yet another of the stunning logical nonsequiturs which have made her the target of "sexist" critics like yours truly. No wonder so many people are a-feared of Sarah Palin. Apparently, her ascent to the national stage will limit choices for 17 year old girls still living under their parents' roofs women:

There are legitimate reasons to differ over the morality of abortion. There is also a legitimate disagreement over the fitness of a 16- or 17-year-old to decide to terminate her pregnancy. But the GOP position on abortion not only treats teenagers as less than grownups, but also shows a growing inclination to treat grownup women as little girls. As important as the decision to end a pregnancy may be, the matter of who gets to decide may be even more so. And that decision is increasingly being taken out of the hands of women, and put into the hands of strangers.

Ms. Lithwick's brand of logic is always interesting to me. Is it her contention that the legal age of majority should be eliminated so that no child should ever have to speak with his or her parents before undergoing a major surgical procedure? Or are we simply conflating the issue of parental authority over medical decisions with abortion in full grown women because it is so enticingly inflammatory to do so? Amusingly, her "logic" here begs the very question raised in Anna Quindlen's article, namely:

...the assumption that women are strong and smart and sure and yet neither sentient nor moral enough to decide what to do if they are pregnant under difficult circumstances.

Like so many abortion advocates, (full disclosure: I am pro-choice) Ms. Lithwick imagines women (those emotional, delicate flowers!) will dry up and blow away if confronted with the fact that what they are aborting is in fact a human being or that as she misleadingly implies, men think women are too irrational to make clearheaded decisions regarding their own health:

Justice Anthony Kennedy gave huge currency to the argument that women cannot be trusted with the decision to abort in his majority opinion in a 2007 decision banning a type of late-term abortion. Relying on yet more equivocal data, Kennedy lavished concern on women who regret their abortions, whose "distress" may someday lead to "severe depression and loss of esteem." It's a long road indeed from Roe when a woman's private choices about her future and her body are subordinated to Justice Kennedy's 20/20 psychological hindsight.

Having actually read the decision she references, I find Lithwick's assertion that Justice Kennedy gave "huge currency" to a woman's mental state both baseless and dishonest, but this should surprise no one who has watched her blithely conflate parental consent for surgical procedures performed on minor children living at home with the decisions of adult women as though there were any rational relationship between the two issues. Sillier by far is Lithwick's hyperbolic assertion that Palin's rise in politics somehow betokens "fewer choices for women".

Got paranoia? If only we women were that powerful.

Certainly there have been silly arguments made in defense of Sarah Palin and even sillier arguments made against her. In many ways, the histrionics and vicious rumor mongering on the left have provoked some very ill advised responses from the right, including a definite tendency towards reflexive defenses of the Governor which aren't always well considered. Glenn Reynolds makes an excellent point:

... Republicans should be careful about launching a cult of Sarah Palin. She's the V.P. pick, not the head of the ticket. She's still a relative newcomer to national politics. She's virtually sure to commit at least one major mistake between now and November. And -- yes, I know I said this before -- she's the V.P. pick, not the head of the ticket.

The Dems built a cult around Barack Obama. It energized some folks, but it ultimately backfired. Republicans might want to restrain themselves just a bit, here.

And if that's true, Progressives need to restrain themselves a lot, or risk betraying everything they claim to believe in. Unless, of course, that's not important to them.

Update: Yikes! Remind me not to make Belle angry!

Posted by Cassandra at 08:09 AM | Comments (34) | TrackBack

August 14, 2008

The Morality of Abortion, Part I: Women Want It Both Ways on Choice

This is a repost of something I wrote a long time ago over at No Government Cheese. It is one of my favorite posts. I am reposting it here as Part One of a two part response to Linda Hirschman's piece, provocatively titled "Reclaiming the Morality of Abortion" I will address her essay specifically in Part Two.

Grim makes a good point on the Alito nomination:

The nomination of Alito has been a good thing for the country, if only so we could have this debate. The question is, "We've come to something of a settlement on a woman's rights. Now, what rights does a father deserve, and how do we balance the two?" The de facto answer is that we don't: the father's sole reproductive right is to keep his pants on. After that, the woman alone has the choices.

Silly man. Abortion is a women's issue - did anyone ask him for his opinion?

The casting of abortion, or stare decisis as it is euphemistically referred to on Capitol Hill, as "pro-choice" could not be more misleading, for in this debate only one of the three parties concerned (man, woman, and child) has the slightest semblance of a choice. Only slightly more honest is the strident call of abortion advocates who swear to defend a woman's right to choose to the death. Pro-choice lobbyists strain our credulity by beating beleaguered district attorneys over the head with the phrase when they go after sexual predators who prey on ten and eleven year-old girls.

No "woman" chose to have sex with those monsters, or to end the tragic new life that began and ended shortly thereafter as a result of that crime; but so jealous are these activists of their "privacy rights" that they'd rather see criminals go free than allow the courts access to records of abortion clinics that practice illegal late-term abortions. After all, we're talking about the woman's right to choose here. It's in the Constitution.

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. When one considers that women can have multiple orgasms (and that ours generally last longer), something tells me men are getting the short end of the stick.

The following story makes that crystal clear:

...a lesbian couple wished to have children. An understanding and liberal-minded male friend agreed to donate his sperm, and three children were born to one of the two women between 1992 and 1996. But then relations between the two women deteriorated, and they split up.

The mother of the children found herself alone and in difficult straits. Who would support her, in her—and her children’s—time of need? Her former lover was unwilling, because—after all—she was no relation of the children. The sperm donor had made it clear from the first that he had no wish to be a father in any but the most literal biological sense; he thought he was merely doing the couple a favor. He therefore felt no moral obligation to support the children, and his conscience was clear.

You can probably guess where this is going:

Nevertheless, the government’s department of social security—the potential surrogate parent of every child—sued to force the sperm donor to pay. After a case lasting four years, he found himself obliged henceforth to support the mother and children financially.

The president of the Swedish Federation for Sexual Equality declared the legal decision an outrage. “It is scandalous,” he said. “The man has been condemned to be a father even though he did not take the decision to have the children. Above all, one of the women who took part in that decision has been absolved of all responsibility. If one desires equality of rights for lesbians, it is anomalous that it should not be she who was obliged to support the children financially.”

This is an interesting case for many reasons. The knee-jerk reaction is to say, "Well of course: the poor man did nothing but deposit his sperm into a cup. Why should he pay?"

In truth, several social institutions are shown to be foundering here. Marriage itself, so fervently desired by the lesbian community, as well as child-rearing, does not come off well. Four years? Hardly a serious commitment to making a relationship work. My sons both dated their girlfriends longer than that - they have shown more maturity in their teens and early twenties than either of these women. Not that the heterosexual world is doing a bang-up job at marriage either (mind you) these days. But two people stood up, presumably, and promised to love and honor each other "'til death do us part"... or until they tired of it, whichever came first.

The concept of family as an unseverable bond is another. Divorce happens, but children are forever. Only one half of this "couple" walked away from that. When she took wedding vows and decided to take on the responsibility of having three children in four years, that responsibility did not end when she tired of the relationship.

But what is in danger of getting lost here is the role of the sperm donor. On the one hand, I completely agree that his responsibility should be by far the least of any party involved in this. But there is still something unseemly in the Swedish President's use of "condemned to support the children", for without his intentional act those children would never have come to be. Did he never give a thought, when he deposited his sperm in that cup, that living, breathing human beings would one day walk the earth?

That they might, one day, wonder who their father was? That they might need him? Theodore Dalrymple comments:

If women have a “right” to children, in the sense that not having them if they want them is an infringement of their rights, then of course lesbian women can no longer accept childlessness as the natural consequence of their condition. Let it not be said that new medical technology is responsible for this change in attitude, incidentally: the kind of artificial insemination offered in a domestic setting by the sperm donor has been possible for a very long time. No, the culprit here is the idea that the fulfillment of our desires, no matter what our condition, is a right. As for the well-being of the children in this case—beyond the provision of sufficient financial support for them—that seems to have entered into no one’s thinking.

And that is the whole problem with the abortion debate: everything is cast in terms of the woman's rights.

Has a man no reproductive rights? Why don't we ever ask that question?

Yes, gestation takes place solely within the woman's body, but it could never take place without the man's unique and special contribution, and while not all men care about their progeny, some men do want, and love, and very much desire to protect and nurture, the children they conceive. In a rather caustically-worded excerpt at Protein Wisdom, Jill from Feministe said:

Alito distanced himself from previous Supreme Court views on undue burden, writing that “an undue burden may not be established simply by showing that a law will have a heavy impact on a few women but that instead a broader inhibiting effect must be shown.” So if a particular requirement which infringes on the right to privacy — husband notification for abortion, for example — only has a detrimental effect on some women, that isn’t a good enough reason to disallow it.

Hmmm... since she disagrees with Judge Alito's dissent, if abortion without the consent of a woman's partner only has a detrimental effect on some men, isn't that a good enough reason to disallow it?

Grim comments:

...feminists insist that abortion be seen as a medical procedure that is the woman's business and no one else's. The child has no rights that ought to bind her, because the advocates for the woman's position in our law insist on that point. The masculine understanding, however, holds that the man's rights are overwhelmed by his responsibility for the child. The men who have ruled the discussion, men like me, feel that fathering a child is an awesome duty and one that ought to bind you. The compromise position gives both sides what they want: the leading thinkers of the women's position have demanded freedom for women; the leading thinkers among men have demanded responsibility for men.

The feminist position on "reproductive choice" closely resembles the Rad-feminista position on many other issues of the day: so-called "equal pay for equal work", Mommy-friendly workplaces, flex-time, and cries of gender discrimination in math and the sciences: they want freedom without tiresome responsibility. It is a childish and petulant stance, unbecoming to 'liberated' women. There is enough genuine discrimination in the working world to combat without tilting at straw men.

If we ever hope to be equal with men then we must, with our "equal rights", accept equal responsibilities. It is, truly, that simple. And if women ever, by and large, come to do so and quit the silly whining that occupies so much of the airwaves, they will very likely find that a great deal, though by no means all, of the 'discrimination' they experience will vanish into the ether like a bad dream. Life is never going to be a level playing field for women, but then it's not a level playing field for anyone. We all bring different talents, different strengths, and if we are honest, different aspirations to the table. The one inescapable fact of life however, is that there are always trade offs.

The sad thing about the abortion debate is that by simply exercising a tiny amount of responsibility before conception, grown women could easily avoid a situation where they inflict the results of their own negligence on their partners, while depriving them of the "reproductive choice" they so ardently defend for themselves.

Posted by Cassandra at 08:21 AM | Comments (37) | TrackBack

August 10, 2008

That Little White Picket Fence

Greetings. The Princess appears to have survived week one of home renovation hell. Fortunately she has detected no ill effects that ten days on a beach in Key West with Adrian Paul on tap (in case she needs her toenails painted a divine shade of shell pink!) wouldn't cure. All of this just goes to show that there is nothing like having one's house torn completely to shreds to the comforting sound of Manly Power Tools to give a person some extremely bizarre fantasies.

Throw in a few crises at work and we have all the required ingredients for chronic cirrhosis of the liver. Needless to say, such an atmosphere is not conducive to quiet contemplation. It was a relief this morning to wake early enough to have the house to myself; to be able to read the paper, have some time to think, write, contemplate the lint in my navel. This is my favorite time: early in the morning before anyone - even the birds - are up. The house is still. Even the dog is still slumbering downstairs. In a few moments I will no doubt hear his muffled but imperious "woof!" from the basement but for now, the golden hours of pre-dawn serenity are mine to savor.

I am happily reading about books. Apparently, little boys like reading about things that are gross:

The book's main character slaughtered his victims by running them through with sharp stakes. He once left hundreds dying slowly on a hillside while the soil grew "muddy with blood" and "blackbirds flocked around the corpses, fighting for a meal."

Although it has the contours of a horror story -- with splotches of red ink on its pages depicting blood -- it's actually a children's book. "Vlad the Impaler: The Real Count Dracula" is widely available in libraries and is making its way into middle-school social-studies classes.

...Publishers are hawking more gory and gross books to appeal to an elusive market: boys -- many of whom would rather go to the dentist than crack open "Little House on the Prairie." Booksellers are also catering to teachers and parents desperate to make young males more literate.

It would be easy to condemn movements like this as pandering to the lowest common denominator but as a mother of two boys, the article's observations ring all too true. My sons were both strong readers but their reading preferences differed sharply from mine. To interest them in reading I had to appeal to their tastes, not necessarily my own. Luckily, we shared an appreciation for all kinds of humor as well as a love of learning about the world around us:

Scholastic and other publishers are heeding the research of such academics as Jeffrey Wilhelm, an education professor at Boise State University. Prof. Wilhelm tracked boys' reading habits for five years ending in 2005 and found that schools failed to meet their "motivational needs." Teachers assigned novels about relationships, such as marriage, that appealed to girls but bored boys. His survey of academic research found boys more likely to read nonfiction, especially about sports and other activities they enjoy, as well as funny, edgy fiction.

For girls, especially as they grow older, a large part of successfully negotiating the world around them means learning to understand how the people around them think and feel. Relationships, whether they are friendships, professional contacts, or romantic liasons, are tremendously important to most women. While boys rarely devote more than a few moments of conscious thought to actively maintaining their personal relationships, girls generally begin doing so almost from birth. And if they want to learn about relationships, they could hardly do better than this refreshingly retro-sexual page turner:

... the four Meyer novels -- "Twilight," "New Moon," "Eclipse" and now "Breaking Dawn" -- tell the story of a regular girl, Isabella Swan, who falls in love with a not-so- regular boy, Edward Cullen. Edward is a vampire. New to the perpetually rainy town of Forks, Wash., Bella immediately falls for the pale and shockingly beautiful Edward -- who does everything in his power to resist his attraction to Bella. Edward has long fed only on animals, not humans, but his thirst for Bella's blood is beyond intense. Neither, it turns out, can stay away from the other, and what follows is a page-turning saga, a portrait of adolescent desire and first love at its most powerful and tender.

Bella and Edward find themselves "unconditionally and irrevocably in love," as Ms. Meyer writes. Despite this, there are barely more than a few passionate kisses in the series' first 1,700-or-so pages, and almost no kissing at all in its first 500. Rather, Bella and Edward are satisfied by nearness. An innocent touch of the hand feels "as if an electric current had passed through us," Bella explains at one point. Saying her beloved's name, Edward, is "a thrill" in and of itself. Edward's breath on Bella's face is a heady, intoxicating experience, and Edward is knocked nearly senseless by Bella's smell, which he describes as floral, "like lavender . . . or freesia." They are restless unless they are together. But when together, they create more sparks than either knows how to handle.

Oh, and then there's Jacob, Bella's best friend, also supernaturally beautiful (he's a werewolf) and in love with Bella -- creating a triangle that has fans declaring allegiances to one or the other of Bella's suitors. (Though Edward clearly wins the day.)

And here lies Ms. Meyer's secret. She knows that romantic tension is often better built with anticipation than action. That there is enough excitement in gazes, conversation, proximity and maybe a few stolen kisses to keep young lovers busy for years -- if they allow themselves to indulge in this slow kind of seduction.

Ms. Meyer's fans agree. This vampire love story has captured more than their hearts -- it has them demanding that young men behave like gentlemen.

...At the New York "Breaking Dawn" concert event, amid girls alternately chanting "Ed-ward! Ed-ward!" and "Steph-en-ie!" and screaming with excitement, one girl, Jordana, explained why she thought the relationship between Bella and Edward was so compelling and sexy, even though they never go further than kissing. "They are so perfect together and so into talking to each other and just being together, you don't even notice they don't kiss." Her friend Sarah added that "they show that you can have a perfect relationship without being physical."

Another pair of girls, Donna and Meghan, said they loved "the forbidden passion" laced throughout the series. (And, indeed, many girls wore T-shirts that said: "The forbidden fruit tastes the sweetest." This may be a reference to the cover art of the first book, which shows two hands holding an apple.) "Bella and Edward connect in ways other than with sex. They connect spiritually," Donna explained. "They just look at each other and sparks fly."

"It's not all physical," Meghan chimed in, saying once again a line I heard over and over from girls I interviewed. "I mean, Edward has been alive since 1901," Meghan continued. They both then stopped to do the math. "That's over 100 years and he's been waiting for Bella the whole time! He's never been with anyone else. That's the most romantic thing ever."

Teenage girls were not the only ones with a strong presence at the Twilight Party. Mom-fans from the online group TwilightMoms.com were out in full force, wearing T-shirts boasting their allegiance and excitedly talking about why the series is good for their daughters. "Edward is everything every high-school boy isn't," one said with conviction. This mother of a teenage girl went on to explain how boys "are only interested in booty calls, not romance," while the rest of the TwilightMoms nodded their heads in agreement. "Twilight shows girls that you can have the most intimate, romantic relationship of your life without any sex."

Another mother nearby had a litany of reasons why the series was good for girls. "Twilight helps girls realize they don't need to settle for anything less than what they really want," she began. "It teaches them to keep high standards. That there are guys that will treat them with respect. Girls today need to learn this, and they can learn it from this series."

I had two thoughts when reading this review. First, that many men would thing: "Great! Here we go again! Reinforcing the notion that a great relationship doesn't involve sex!"

And secondly, "If more men spent time talking to their wives - actually flirting with them again, respecting them, cherishing them - they might get more sex after marriage." A few weeks ago I read an article about marriage. It was pretty negative on the whole institution:

At the core of Dolan's thinking is the insight that even when we leave aside internal contradictions between models of marriage, each version presents intractable problems. The "fusion into one" conceit, notoriously absorbed into law through the fiction of "coverture" that made a husband the controller of his wife's rights, ignores the reality of distinct personalities with distinct goals. The "contract between equals" vision of companions and partners confronts religious, legal, and popular traditions that associate "equality with conflict," and hold that "once spouses confront one another as equals only one can win the resulting battles."

In Dolan's view, marriage rests on an "economy of scarcity" in regard to rights and privileges "in which there is only room for one full person." The traditional solution? Marriage "as a hierarchy in which someone, usually the husband, has to be the boss." On this view, "hierarchy resolves conflict while equality promotes it," an assumption that Dolan says underpins "many conceptualizations of marriage."

It's here that Dolan insinuates her most provocative idea — that marriage, by its confused nature, amounts to a form of "violence" against individuality, sometimes prompting other forms as well. At first blush, the notion sounds extremist. Yet Dolan makes sense of it. She hardly lacks examples of the more gory violence long associated with marriages gone terribly bad. But her perspective often proves most impressive not when she's revisiting women burned at the stake for actually murdering their husbands, but identifying a whole tradition of women diarists who fantasized their husbands' deaths as the only way out of captivity.

Dolan devotes only two pages to same-sex marriage, but the implications of her study for it are immense. Though plainly sympathetic to the idea on equality grounds, Dolan suggests that married gay people will confront many of the lingering biases of the "economy of scarcity" model — its presumption that one marriage partner must be privileged, its tendency to concentrate "entitlements and capacities in one spouse" until "that spouse absorbs, subordinates, or eliminates the other." Without the signposts of biological difference, how will the courts know who's who in gay marriages?

Dolan ventures no opinion. But Marriage and Violence forces a bigger issue into the policy limelight where gay marriage now finds itself. The book's incisive, detailed attention to abundant aspects of matrimony makes one realize that scholarship on marriage as a historical institution must be part of the nationwide debate on gay marriage. We need to contemplate, in a new light, those challenging concrete elements — the ownership symbolism of the ring, the wife's traditional taking of the husband's surname, so-called male "headship" in marriage generally, intercourse as a "conjugal debt," prenuptial agreements, wifely submission as subterfuge, the psychological subtleties that criminal law must confront in assessing battered women.

Until now, most media have taken the "marriage" half of "same-sex marriage" for granted. That's a recipe for more of the simplistic discussions we've heard so far. Dolan rightly seeks to "denaturalize" our clichéd conception of marriage by explaining its historical development. In that spirit, she makes clear that while she can't devote desirable space to such rich traditions as Jewish and Muslim marriage in her largely Protestant-driven narrative, they too, and their idiosyncrasies, must be part of any sophisticated conversation about the subject.

In the meantime, Dolan and the marriage scholars she ably represents and cites — such thinkers and inspired researchers as Nancy F. Cott, David Cressy, Alison D. Wall, and Stone — offer a further message to conservative opponents of same-sex marriage. If they truly understood the institution's history, they might fall to their knees and thank God that gay people want anything to do with such a conceptual mess.

Good nightshirt. Where to start? How about with "I do"? Because it seems that right after saying those two little words, so very many couples start saying, "I don't".

As in, "I don't..." have to do that anymore. I don't have to earn this person's regard anymore ... because I'm married now. I don't have to compete for his or her time. I don't have to pick up my own socks. I don't have to put out. I don't have to shut the bathroom door.

We become so careless. We all do. It's as though when we say those two little words, we forget that we could always lose our partner to someone else. The best thing about marriage - the sense of safety, of belonging, of being part of a couple, is also the worst. We become complacent.

And thus, if we are not careful, the sense of excitement that was there when we were just dating, the challenge, the danger, the thrill - all of these things go away and are replaced by a dreary sameness. But Dolan has it all wrong. Marriage is not the death of individuality, but the conscious decision of two individuals to commit to something greater than themselves: a partnership. If they choose wisely, if they are equally yoked to a partner of roughly equal intelligence, willpower, and other gifts, there is a give and take over the years. We are not relieved of the duty to assert ourselves over time: if the balance shifts too far towards one partner or the other, the partnership will fail.

I have always loved the words of Khalil Gibran on marriage. A wedding does not create one person, but unites two distinct people with a common goal. They freely choose to walk side by side through life, because they would rather be together than apart. During the journey, each learns from the other:

Love one another, but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup.
Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf
Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,
Even as the strings of a lute are alone, though they quiver with the same music.

Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping.
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.
And stand together yet not too near together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.

I don't think marriage is going anywhere, for all the bleating of the chattering classes, because human nature hasn't changed. And it's reassuring that despite the constant bombardment of sleazy Victoria's Secret ads, our children still realize there is nothing sexier than that tantalizing space between a man and a woman, still waiting to come together for the first time.

If they can understand that desire is as much about the pursuit as about the attainment of our dreams, they will have learned much.

Posted by Cassandra at 06:31 AM | Comments (60) | TrackBack

July 16, 2008

To Love, Honor, And Cherish

Something tells me it's going to be one of those days.

The Princess had a bad night last night. Woke up at 2:30 with the uncomfortable feeling the Attention Bill hadn't been paid. Made the world's largest pot of coffee, pottered randomly around the kitchen in the dark for a few minutes (thus allowing me to don the highly coveted Mantle of Domesticity), savagely threw an obscenely large spoonful of coffee ice cream into my coffee cup and headed for my office where I performed the ritual genuflection at the shrine of Santa Mañana, the patron saint of highly ineffective people.

Hey look: I don't think of it as procrastination. After 49 years of living on the edge, it's more like performance art.

Read an email from Pile. Seems Brit Hume is leaving FauxNews:

Brit Hume, a top anchor and executive with Fox News since the channel was launched 12 years ago, plans to step down at year's end. But he won't disappear entirely.

Sources familiar with the situation say that Hume, 65, will give up his job as Washington managing editor and anchor of "Special Report," the 6 p.m. show that has beaten the cable news competition for seven years. They say he is near a deal to continue with Fox in a senior-statesman role, not unlike that of NBC's Tom Brokaw, for roughly 100 days a year.

Hume would be a senior political analyst, anchor for special events, panelist on "Fox News Sunday" and occasional substitute for the host, Chris Wallace.

Mr. On, to say the least, was less than enthused about the change. In a desperate effort to cheer him up I'd sent back a snarky bit of repartee referring to a conversation years ago on ScrappleFace about how I thought Brit was just dreamy. Back then the idea had struck me as funny, given Hume's correct and rather formal manner. It worked as a riff on the old Carol Burnett/John Foster Dulles routine, except that Hume really is rather cute. The funny thing was that shortly after that I found myself at a fairly small cocktail party sipping a glass of wine when suddenly, my youngest son tapped me on the shoulder, one eyebrow raised with Spock-like interest (as though he had just placed two exotic but highly unpredictable specimens together in a Petri dish). My cherubic offspring proceeded to inform me of the great man's presence with what I deemed an unwarranted degree of relish.

There are times when I suspect I provide entirely too much entertainment value to my children.

Sure enough, there he was. Brit Hume. Standing not 20 feet from me. Sadly, my son also saw fit to alert my mother in law. Who decided we needed to walk over and talk to him. Fortunately, it was a very crowded party in a very small house. We spent the next 40 minutes or so weaving in and out of various conversational groupings whilst the Princess assiduously avoided any situation which might result in accosting FoxNews anchors.

The thing is, Pile can never resist the temptation to pull my chain.

My snarky comment, you see, had been something to the effect of, "Dang - I *knew* I should have spoken to Brit at that cocktail party."

To which he replied, "...if you had talked to him, did you know that he would for him be talking to a much younger chick?"

And that is all it took to send this too, too much younger chick's Clue Train right off the rails. The female mind is a Terrible Thing. Forty minutes of my life I will never get back, one deleted and unsent email later, my mind had been to Timbuktu and back. Poor Brit. And poor Ben Stein, because he is about to get dragged into this against his will. Back in March I wrote about the interplay between economics, decision-making, and happiness:

The architect's maxim that the form of a building should express its intended use cleanly and honestly seemed so right. But what interested me even more was a notion that occurred to me in thinking about the human implications of this idea. For often, perhaps because I'm female, I see human corollaries to ideas in economics, math, or even architecture. Not that, as a consequence, I am necessarily quick enough to correct my own behavior, mind you :p

I just lecture other people about how to correct theirs. This is one of the dubious joys of being a solipsistic parasite who traffics more in pronouncement than persuasion.

Once, after having a 'discussion' with my husband, it occurred to me that in marriage outward behavior (i.e., our "form") was in many ways more important than (and may even at times play a role in determining) what both partners think to themselves privately. In other words, some times if we are not happy, it's because we've fallen into the habit of not acting happy. Correct the behavior and you correct the state of mind.

Relationships are a bit of a feedback loop. In marriage, people tend to get sloppy and stop doing the nice things they did when they were courting. They take each other for granted. And all of a sudden, there is no positive feedback and they wonder where the 'magic' went? What they forgot was that the magic wasn't an externally created force: they had a role in creating it. If the flame dies out, you can re-ignite it. I think that's the biggest reason modern marriages don't succeed; couples are so busy with careers, the Internet, their iPods, and watching cable TV that they're forgotten to take an active role in their own lives. No wonder they're unhappy.

Stein picks up this idea. It's one that has always fascinated me - the notion that because it deals with the way human beings assign value, manage risk, and choose from competing alternatives in the presence of scarcity, economic theory applies not just in the marketplace but is broadly applicable to all facets of our personal and emotional lives:

In general, and with rare exceptions, the returns in love situations are roughly proportional to the amount of time and devotion invested. The amount of love you get from an investment in love is correlated, if only roughly, to the amount of yourself you invest in the relationship.

If you invest caring, patience and unselfishness, you get those things back. (This assumes, of course, that you are having a relationship with someone who loves you, and not a one-sided love affair with someone who isn’t interested.)

The economic corollary is "Don't throw good money after bad." - a maxim many women would do well to study. Stein has more:

The returns on your investment should at least equal the cost of the investment. If you are getting less back than you put in over a considerable period of time, back off.

Long-term investment pays off. The impatient day player will fare poorly without inside information or market-controlling power. He or she will have a few good days but years of agony in the world of love.

To coin a phrase: Fall in love in haste, repent at leisure.

Realistic expectations are everything. If you have unrealistic expectations, they will rarely be met. If you think that you can go from nowhere to having someone wonderful in love with you, you are probably wrong.

You need expectations that match reality before you can make some progress. There may be exceptions, but they are rare.

None of these, however, is what popped into my mind in response to Pile's "young chick" crack. Though I know he was just kidding, what popped into my mind was actually quite serious.

Men and women have such different perceptions about age and appearance. Being on the Internet has been an eye opening and at times disheartening experience. What is very much apparent, both through reading endless intuitively obvious studies and the comments of male readers is that men of all ages pretty much universally prefer young women. Duh.

The reverse, however, is not true. Women do not prefer younger men. Very much the opposite is true, in fact.

Men and women value different things in each other. But paradoxically I am not always certain we reward the things we claim to value in our mates. I am always interested in what finding out what people think. Consequently I try to visit other sites and read the conversations there from time to time.

I don't know how much skew there is in the readership of some of the larger sites, but I've been dismayed at the tone of the comments at Dr. Helen's and Ace of Spades. I see an awful lot of what seems to me to be very angry, unhappy men coupled with a lot of female bashing. There are times when I don't see much difference between what goes on there and what goes on over at Pandagon where the men are all evil, all the time and the women all seem to be victims of some galactic conspiracy to chain them to their Easy Bake ovens and force them to deliver unwanted fetuses.

I suppose I don't see life that simply. I see a lot of systemic problems in modern society which mediate against happy marriages but I hardly think all of them can be the fault of shrill, shrieking feminazis or the overbearing, testosterone-laced Patriarchy. Maybe - just maybe - there is some room for individual responsibility here?

Maybe it takes two people to make a happy marriage: a man, and a woman. Both have to try. Both take a vow: till death do us part, not "Like ... until this gets so, last week.".

What I see, mostly, is a mutual lack of respect.

I think this is largely a function of modern society, but also of a failure to honor the vows we take on that one day we make such a tremendous deal over. We hold nothing sacred anymore, so perhaps it is hardly surprising that we have lost the ability for reverence in our private lives. But nowhere is this more necessary than in a marriage. The marriage vows say, "To love, honor, and cherish." I believe the honor part is essential to a happy marriage. In order for a couple to form a bond that withstands the stresses and strains of modern life, each partner must feel the other has placed them first: in a place of honor and respect that takes precedence over anyone outside the relationship.

Viewed through this lens, each sex's objections to certain things become more understandable. For instance, in reading Pile's 'young chick' joke, I immediately thought to myself, "Isn't that funny. Men do like younger women, but I'm hardly a younger woman. Haven't been for years."

Women, on the other hand, continue to find men attractive well into their fifties and even sixties. I often think of this when I'm getting ready to go out. I thought of it when reading an article in the WSJ this morning. It made me laugh:

My kid is playing Russian roulette with Creamsicles. He's seven, pushing eight, but he scarfs them down like he's got the arteries of a four-year-old. Then he rationalizes it all by boasting about his "HDL/LDL ratio" and his "fitness routine." Which is chasing the cat around the house 100 times.

Last week his doctor hoisted him up on the examining table and gave him a stern talking-to, complete with gruesome pictures of arterial plaques. In response, Harry noted that "a kid'll eat the middle of an Oreo first." But he knows he's whistling past the graveyard.

At least we got through the midlife crisis, which arrived like clockwork at Harry's fifth birthday party, where he licked the icing off 30 cupcakes, opened the piñata with my buzz saw and ran off with Meryl Braunsdorf for 15 minutes. That autumn in kindergarten, she wouldn't stop bothering him at nap time and left decapitated Steiff animals in his cubby hole when he tried to end things. At Thanksgiving he abstained from the pilgrims-and-Indians diorama project, calling it "scary" and "sad."

Now that he's getting slammed by the alternative minimum tax, though, all that seems quaint. He's been meeting with his accountant, Joey Scardino from next door. Scardino's the best, been handling tricky cases for most of his nine years, but from what I overheard of their working lunch at our kitchen table yesterday, it isn't going well.

HARRY (slurping): This milk is good and cold. Why are there bubbles?

SCARDINO (riffling through papers): Harry, you need to focus. I'm looking at accelerated depreciation here, I don't like your percentage depletion … bottom line, you're out of deductions. We're talking about a 26% rate.

HARRY (immersing cookie): How fast do you think it'll disintegrate?

SCARDINO (snatching briefcase and rising to leave): Harry, you're in denial. Call me when you're ready to deal with this.

I don't think he is ready to deal with it. It doesn't help that he's in a lot of pain with that torn rotator cuff, that and the itchy palms (his dermatologist says it's just dry skin but it's driving him crazy), plus a clicking he's started to notice in his jaw when he goes like this. He's been brooding a lot. Yesterday he snarled that if this $4 gas continues he's going to "go drilling in the damn Arctic Wildlife Refuge" himself.

"Dad?" he says, as I kneel by the school entrance to hug him goodbye. "You think Scardino'll get me out of this mess?

Whenever I go clothes shopping with my son, he or the sales clerk will bring me clothes and I invariably say, "That's too young for me - put it back."

And they say, "Nonsense. You don't look your age. Try it on." And I do. And it looks fine, and I buy it.

I don't look my age, or at least what I remember as a child thinking someone my age should look like. Who does, these days? None of us does. My husband is proud of the fact that I've kept my weight down. I'm not beautiful, but I look OK... for my age. At my age, that is all I aspire to. And my husband likes me to dress nicely sometimes. Well, not like this exactly, but it is not so hard to dress like a woman instead of like some of those couples I see where I cannot tell which is the wife and which the husband.

The point of all this (and there is a point) is that sometimes I am struck by my own relative discomfort with all of this, but also by how much time men spend running down women who are "shallow" and "preoccupied with their appearance" while out of the other side of their mouths ostentatiously ogling pretty younger women and complaining that their wives have let themselves go. Do they ever wonder what their wives think of the mixed message?

I argue with Grim, sometimes, about why women spend so much time fixing themselves up? I would just as soon stake myself on an anthill as wear makeup and high heels and fussy clothes but the truth of the matter is that I look better with them on. Not to my next door neighbor, who doesn't give a rat's ass if I'm wearing a sundress and high heeled sandals, but to my husband. Because the truth of the matter is, the aesthetic I'm competing against, subconsciously, is that 19 year old supermodel with the cantilevered physique that often as not owes as much to the surgeons knife as to mother nature.

She's everywhere. Everywhere I look. And it's a competition that I don't stand a chance in hell of winning, and one that can often make me feel vaguely shamefaced. Truth be told, I'd rather be in shorts and a t-shirt. It would be feel more natural to me, and I'd be a hell of a lot more comfortable. But I'm competing with a million years of programmed biology, so I put my game face on and compete because I love my husband and I love to see that smile on his face when he comes home from work and I've taken his preferences into account, not mine.

But it's not just me. Feminists, of course, would tell me I'm "pandering" to the patriarchy. But isn't my husband "pandering" to me when he gets home from an exhausting day at work and makes boring conversation when what would be far more natural for him would be to zone out in front of the TV? There are times when it's pretty obvious that it - that I - take a lot out of him.

I don't think we're at all unusual. I see plenty of couples who do this, who accommodate each other. It's not difficult.
But what is also apparent is that increasingly, as with childbearing, a great many men and women can't be bothered to make the effort to accommodate each other, to place each other's needs above their own comfort zone.

I have no great desire to push my lifestyle, much my values, upon them. But what I wonder at is the bitterness, anger, and disappointment I keep seeing. As society and gender roles have changed, so have marriage and the demands of raising a family. But human nature and the basic truth that you get out of these endeavors what you put into them, haven't changed. The simple truth is still, after all these years, this: marriage is sometimes hard work. But it is still possible to be married, and to make marriage succeed.

The truth is that it is modern life which has gotten easier, and our tolerance for the work that is necessary to make marriages work that has changed. Another unpleasant truth may be that the erosion of our culture has eroded our will to work at institutions like marriage. As movie critic Pauline Kael learned to her sorrow after a lifetime of championing pop culture at the expense of craftsmanship, what we take for granted sometimes disappears altogether. Once the benefits are forgotten, the cost of producing what used to be the standard become unacceptably high:

Kael assumed she was safe to defend the choices of mass audiences because the old standards of taste would always be there. They were, after all, built into the culture. But those standards were swiftly eroding. Schrader argued that she and her admirers won the battle but lost the war. Acceptable taste became mass-audience taste, box-office receipts the ultimate measure of a film's worth, sometimes the only measure. Traditional, well-written movies without violence or special effects were pushed to the margins. "It was fun watching the applecart being upset," Schrader said, "but now where do we go for apples?"

...Not long before she died, Pauline Kael remarked to a friend, "When we championed trash culture we had no idea it would become the only culture." Who did?

And so it is with marriage. Will it the same thing happen, one day, with having children?

The birth rate among the Western nations suggests this may be so. And many of our "well educated" children whom we tried so hard to spare the pains we gladly suffered when we were young see no downside to all of this.

So much for progress. Or is it regress?

Posted by Cassandra at 06:07 AM | Comments (82) | TrackBack

July 03, 2008

Party Idea of the Week

First there were Mandals. Then came the ManCave and the Mancation.

The latest shiny thing? The ManShowers:

When Jonathan Morris’ daughter was planning her wedding, he thought the groom was getting overlooked. So he planned a guys-only "man shower" to welcome Brian Wigand into the family.

The party included manly snacks, games and gifts.

"It seemed like there was a lot of hoopla for the ladies and not too much for the guys," said Morris of Maple Valley, Wash. "It was really fun, male bonding."

It’s another example of grooms leaving their stereotypical roles behind, she said, noting that male bridesmaids and female groomsmen are becoming more common.

That doesn’t mean they’re abandoning tradition. For Rob Wise, the man shower was a warm-up to, not a substitute for, the bachelor party.

"It was precursor, a chance to get the guys together and let off a little steam," he said.

Highlights of the party included playing football, drinking games and Rock Band, a video game where players perform in virtual bands, said Wise, who married Michelle Creel in June.

"First and foremost, it was getting all my friends together in one place," the Baton Rouge, La., resident said. "It meant a lot for everyone to mingle before they got to the wedding."

Men also are recognizing that showers are a great way to acquire tools and other necessities needed to maintain a home, said Abby Buford, spokeswoman for Lowe’s Home Improvement stores, which launched an online wedding registry in 2006.

Actually, as long as guys don't have to wrap stuff or do anything stupid, I don't see what's wrong with giving the groom something to take his mind off the fact that his life has been completely derailed by the preparations for a one day ceremony. This kind of bonding experience could catch on.

Posted by Cassandra at 08:34 AM | Comments (28) | TrackBack

June 19, 2008

Post of the Day

Reader Lela has started her own blog. Recently she asked her daughter to guest post. The result was this delightful entry on what it means to be a woman in the military:

“Describe your military experience, please. What does it mean to be a woman in the military?” Blah. Blah. Blah….

I really hate it when people ask me things like that. “What does it mean to be a woman in the military?” What does it mean to be a man in the military? What does it mean to have brown eyes and be in the military? What does it mean to be short and in the military?

These are characteristics, not definitions. When I look back on my military service, I don’t want to think of myself as a “female warrior” or a “lady pilot”. I’m a pilot. I happen to be a woman, but I also happen to have brown eyes and a tattoo. Those aren’t germane to this discussion, why should my gender be?

And, of course, I know the answer.

The answer is that it’s germane because we as a society have made it germane. It’s almost like a type of voyeurism. We want to know about everyone’s dirty little secrets and experiences. It’s like it gives us a thrill to hear that someone has faced discrimination. For many of us, I suspect, it lets us feel vindicated. Holier than thou, perhaps, as if we’d never, ever contemplate judging someone on the basis of their gender, or race, or appearance, or whatever.

I also suspect that for most of us, that’s what we in the business call “Bullsh**”. (Feel free to edit, Mom. Just leave in my parenthetical. smile.). If those things truly didn’t matter, then we wouldn’t have to ask questions like “so what does it mean to be a woman in the military?”.

See? Catch-22, like so much else. smile. But now that I’ve talked you in circles, let me answer the question I hate.

Go read her answer. What she has to say may surprise you.

The lady takes no prisoners. I don't believe I could have said it half as well.

Posted by Cassandra at 07:07 AM | Comments (15) | TrackBack

June 05, 2008

Getting Beyond the Real Men/Real Women Paradigm

This thread, via Glenn Reynolds, got the Princess thinking furiously about the relative advantages and disadvantages of being a man vs. being a woman:

Both genders face huge and distinct disadvantages. I'd be hard-pressed to say whether it's more unfortunate to be a man or a woman.

As a thought-experiment, you could imagine -- apologies to John Rawls and his veil of ignorance -- that you haven't been born yet and you get to choose which gender you want to live your life as. You get to be fully informed about what the world is like, but all you know about your future life is that you'll be a human being growing up in the United States. (Significantly, you don't know your race or sexual orientation.) Which gender would you choose to be? I think some people would choose to be a man, and others would choose to be a woman, and it's far from obvious what the wiser choice would be.

I want to focus on the male-disadvantages side of this question, which I find more interesting because it's not talked about as much.

I'm well aware that the person who suggests, at least in certain kinds of elite circles, that maybe there are some not-so-great things about being a man is likely not be heard. Civil discussion will end. You aren't allowed to talk about, or think about, the idea that while gender roles, norms, traditions, stereotypes, etc. have certainly been bad for women ... they might also be bad for men too.

It's odd: I would have thought that if that's true, then it would actually strengthen the case for feminism. If everyone is burdened by antiquated gender rules, isn't that twice as bad as if half the population were burdened?

I think that's a bit of an oversimplification. "Antiquated gender rules", as they are so often referred to, developed over time as the most efficient means of ensuring stable families and guaranteeing the survival of homo sapiens. Our relative affluence and political stability have allowed us to change the rules, or so we like to think. Unfortunately for us, we have yet to figure out how to repeal the law of cause and effect:

Most countries in the Western world have stopped breeding. For a civilization obsessed with sex, this is remarkable. Maintaining a steady population requires a birth rate of 2.1. In Western Europe, the birth rate currently stands at 1.5, or 30 percent below replacement. In 30 years there will be 70 to 80 million fewer Europeans than there are today. The current birth rate in Germany is 1.3. Italy and Spain are even lower at 1.2. At that rate, the working age population declines by 30 percent in 20 years, which has a huge impact on the economy.

When you don't have young workers to replace the older ones, you have to import them. The European countries are currently importing Moslems. Today, the Moslems comprise 10 percent of France and Germany, and the percentage is rising rapidly because they have higher birthrates. However, the Moslem populations are not being integrated into the cultures of their host countries, which is a political catastrophe. One reason Germany and France don't support the Iraq war is they fear their Moslem populations will explode on them. By 2020, more than half of all births in the Netherlands will be non-European.

The huge design flaw in the post-modern secular state is that you need a traditional religious society birth rate to sustain it. The Europeans simply don't wish to have children, so they are dying.

In Japan, the birthrate is 1.3. As a result, Japan will lose up to 60 million people over the next 30 years. Because Japan has a very different society than Europe, they refuse to import workers. Instead, they are just shutting down. Japan has already closed 2000 schools, and is closing them down at the rate of 300 per year. Japan is also aging very rapidly. By 2020, one out of every five Japanese will be at least 70 years old. Nobody has any idea about how to run an economy with those demographics.

Europe and Japan, which comprise two of the world's major economic engines, aren't merely in recession, they're shutting down. This will have a huge impact on the world economy, and it is already beginning to happen. Why are the birthrates so low? There is a direct correlation between abandonment of traditional religious society and a drop in birth rate, and Christianity in Europe is becoming irrelevant. The second reason is economic. When the birth rate drops below replacement, the population ages. With fewer working people to support more retired people, it puts a crushing tax burden on the smaller group of working age people. As a result, young people delay marriage and having a family. Once this trend starts, the downward spiral only gets worse. These countries have abandoned all the traditions they formerly held in regards to having families and raising children.

The U.S. birth rate is 2.0, just below replacement. We have an increase in population because of immigration. When broken down by ethnicity, the Anglo birth rate is 1.6 (same as France) while the Hispanic birth rate is 2.7. In the U.S., the baby boomers are starting to retire in massive numbers. This will push the "elder dependency" ratio from 19 to 38 over the next 10 to 15 years. This is not as bad as Europe, but still represents the same kind of trend.


Western civilization seems to have forgotten what every primitive society understands, you need kids to have a healthy society. Children are huge consumers. Then they grow up to become taxpayers. That's how a society works, but the post-modern secular state seems to have forgotten that. If U.S. birth rates of the past 20 to 30 years had been the same as post-World War II, there would be no Social Security or Medicare problems.

The world's most effective birth control device is money. As society creates a middle class and women move into the workforce, birth rates drop. Having large families is incompatible with middle class living. The quickest way to drop the birth rate is through rapid economic development.

It's odd; I think that the discourse on gender is heavily influenced by political orientation. The Left, taken as a whole, seems repulsed by traditional masculinity. A series of posts by Ezra Klein brought this into particularly stark relief. His analysis of Obama's candidacy is revealing:

Webb represents something of almost transcendent importance to some post-Bush liberals: The opportunity to out-tough the GOP. A candidate who's not only a liberal, but in no way a sissy. He is the daywalker, combining a progressive's positions with a southern militarist's affectations.

But this is not a sustainable approach to politics. Democrats can't out-tough the GOP. It's possible that James Webb can do it. But he's sui generis; a Democrat who can win at politics when played under Republican rules. Democrats love those candidates, because they think of presidential elections as an away game, and they're endlessly hunting for the candidate who plays best under those conditions.

But Democrats can't win at politics when played under Republican rules. Progressivism can't prosper when politics is played under Republican rules. It needs to make its own rules.

Barack Obama's effort to do exactly that has been, by far, the most exciting element of his campaign...

...though [Obama] has been confident and even aggressive in all of this, he has not been "tough." He has not pretended to go shooting, or driven on to Jay Leno's show on Harley. He's essentially been making his own rules.

It's crystal clear, given the choice between the 'hypermasculine' Webb and the 'exciting' but 'un-tough' Obama, which Klein prefers, even given his admission that Democrats have repeatedly lost contests against the GOP. Remembering their impotent fury over the girlie man taunt Klein's choice of words seems even more piquantly ironic here:

...this isn't a commentary on Webb. But the argument for his elevation to the national ticket -- which is to say, to become one of the faces of the party -- is about the electoral benefit of a hyper masculine, effortlessly tough, culturally conservative (seeming) candidate who can win back those Reagan Democrats and white males. As I wrote the other day, I don't think the Democratic Party should be orienting itself towards reknitting that particular coalition.

Apparently Jim Webb is not to be welcomed in the best progressive knitting circles. But Klein goes on to say something even more delicious in a subsequent post. Is it a Freudian slip, or just a moment of stunning intellectual honesty?

Earlier, I asked for a better term than "soft power".... Reading through all this, though, I'm not sure the term can be saved. The problem isn't just the "soft" part, it's the "power."

Grim comments:

I don't think we're going to do well against the evils of the world with that attitude.

But then that seems to be what the battle of the sexes comes down to, in the end: the maintenance of power. The Left hates the very idea of it and is seen as weak and femininized. The Right wants to preserve it and is seen as controlling and masculine. The fight, like many domestic battles, gets pretty nasty at times. And just as the Left can't seem to get past bashing men every chance they get, the Right seems to be on a never ending tear against women. Everything, it seems, is the fault of feminists. Even the most paradoxical and nonsensical arguments are laid at our door, even when men engage in (ostensibly) laudable activities for the distaff side, it is all our fault, our fault, our most grievous fault. Mea, mea culpa:

Do you guys think that by women entering the workforce, that women have had the same effect on the man's role as say welfare has?

I mean, a generation ago, a man wouldn't look down on his woman for not working outside the home. Taking care of the house; cooking, cleaning, caring for the children and basically being the center of the home was what a woman did. It was enough. No one would consider her to be slacking. In this generation, women suffer a vague, and sometimes, explicit, unease about doing that job. She is viewed as not pulling her weight because she's just a housewife.

And it's not just women judging women. Men, too, want their women to work to take the pressure off. A man is simply not interested in carrying all the financial weight and why should he have to? Women are equal now. Equal means doing the same thing--working and living like a man. Feminism means, and it's men that I've seen to be the biggest feminists, being a good man and bring home the bacon, frying it up in a pan and doing it again and again.

But it seems like an unintended consequence has been resentment. Women have excelled in the workplace. They can take care of themselves. They do leave their babies to work. Meanwhile, some men (not all, of course) have gone the other way. They no longer work as hard because they just don't have to. On the one hand, they don't have the financial pressure of their father's generation, but they also don't have the self-respect, work-ethic and noble purpose of their father's generation either.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. The clue train just went off the tracks, big time. I fully agree that, speaking in broad terms, men and women have different psychological needs.

I understand that men tend to value their role as providers and breadwinners; that they have a deep need to be admired, respected, and needed; that most men are more driven to compete and win than most women. I understand that most women are more comfortable in our role as nurturers, teachers and facilitators; that we have a deep need for communication and intimacy; that we are more driven to form bonds and build alliances. We prefer to foster cooperation rather than competition. These are, properly understood, complementary rather than clashing traits; both have value in society. This is why marriages work: in a good marriage both parties grow and learn from each other over time, absorbing and assimilating each other's strengths and compensating for each other's weaknesses. Marriage is a partnership.

Hopefully it is a partnership of equals. As Shakespeare said, 'Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments'. Perhaps that is why I am so dismayed by the responses to Melissa's post. I don't understand the whole "real man/real woman" paradigm. Why would any sane person allow anyone else to tell them what a real man or real woman is supposed to look like?

Melissa seems to want "real men" to "butch up" (dear sweet Christ, what an idea):

I'm sick of men condemning women to superficiality when many women just want a strong, decent, hard-working man who is very good at what he does professionally and can man up personally. Some women limit themselves because they make good money and feel they need a man to make more than they do in order to respect him. That can be short-sighted. A confident man won't give a shit how much the woman makes. He won't feel small because she is successful. He will know who he is and what he's made of.

There are rich men and men of modest means who embody what it means to be a real man. And there are rich men and men of modest means who are insecure, wimpy, over-compensating assholes. In my experience money has had little to do with it.

Cassy Fiano, likewise, has had it up to here with "limp" men:

I've written before about how men need to freakin' MAN UP. My most notable post on this issue was my The Shortage of Real Men post.

It can't be said enough -- if there are any real men left out there, they need to come out of hiding. It's frustrating as hell, even as a woman, to see men becoming more and more pussified each year (yeah, I'm stealing Kim's phrase).

The run-down housewife and over-worked husband myth needs to cease. If a woman wants to work outside the home, then that's great. A real man would encourage her to, if that's what she chose to do. But a real man would also accept her role as housewife if that was what she wanted -- even if it meant taking on extra financial responsibility. A man's job is to provide for and protect his family, and no, it isn't because a woman is incapable of doing so. It's because that is his primary responsibility. It's one of the reasons real men like guns -- because they understand that having a gun is a crucial part of the "protect your family at any cost" mantra encoded into real-man DNA.

As I've said before, I think you see an overwhelming number of real men flocking to military or law enforcement lifestyles. And there's a reason -- the values I listed above are instrinsic to being a real man, and also to succeeding in the military. And, as I've said before, this is a large part of why so many women pine over having a military man for their own. There's a reason women swoon over An Officer and a Gentleman. Being in the military (or law enforcement) means you're signing up for so much more than just a job -- it's a lifestyle, a mindset.

Women, although feminists like to deny it, want and need men who can be a real man. This means they want and need a living, breathing embodiment of values like honor, courage, and integrity. They want someone who will be strong even in the toughest of situations. They need someone they can feel safe and protected with. And you know what? They aren't going to find those things in an emasculated, feminized, sissy-boy who still clings to his mommy's apron and whines about carrying his family's financial burden.

If you're that kind of man, there are only two words you need to hear: MAN UP. Don't whine that you have to pay for every date you take your wife or girlfriend on. Don't bitch that your hair got messed up or your clothes got dirty from doing some manly activity -- or worse, refuse to get involved for those reasons. If your shower and bathroom cabinet is lined and stocked with more haircare and body treatment products than your girlfriend or wife owns, reevaluate your male-ness. Real men have more important things to worry about.

Unfortunately, it seems too many men are willing to let feminists emasculate them. Too many men aren't willing to stand up for themselves, lest they be attacked by the PC Police. Real men have thick skin, and are more worried about doing what's right than what is popular, so who gives a crap what feminists like Amanda Marcotte & Co. have to say? I think all men know, deep down, what their priorities should be, and the values that they need to hold dear. But everything that real men stand for has been under attack for 20+ years, and men have seemingly given up.

Dr. Helen has a different take, but I don't really agree with her either:

I have a question for you, Dr. Melissa. "Why should men--in your words--butch up?" Certainly women don't seem to value manliness as they once did.

I have a different take on things. Say that a man works hard, and "acts like a man," rarely complaining and doing "man things." What is his reward? In your mind, it is self-worth. This is nonsense. Self-worth comes from working hard and being rewarded. Today, that man is regarded as a "chump." If a man works hard to get ahead, he puts it all at risk by having a family, in a society that says that his working means that he is now responsible for everything in a way that a woman will never be--if that man gets divorced. If he has kids, he is now responsible for their standard of living no matter what. No matter if he gets sick, no matter if his ex-wife is a spendthrift, no matter if his pay goes down, no matter what. The state puts him into indentured servitude to a family that no longer wants him as a member or wants him for four weekends a month. His life is toast, unless...he never "butches up" as you suggest. Your strategy can end in early death and a lifetime of servitude. "Soft and aimless" often ends with freedom. Which would you choose?

I find it interesting that all three of these women describe a universe in which men essentially have their maleness determined by the actions of women.

In Dr. Melissa's world, men are so demoralized by the ravages of feminism that they've lost their male 'mojo', somehow devolving from the wonderfully rewarding world of male work to the ignoble demi-existence of "women's work". Ironically, they resent the little woman for wanting to stay home. Men should not do this, because staying home is hard work for women but somehow lazy, demeaning, and dishonorable for men.

Uh-huh. Got it.

Cassy Fiano extols the virtues of macho, manly-men who like guns, eschew male grooming products, pay for dates and earn the lion's share of the take-home pay. There's just one problem with this handy-dandy formula: it seems like a rather simplistic and formulaic prescription for a phenomenon that is, in reality complex and poorly understood. People love to describe men as little better than Neanderthals, content with sex, food, and a never ending diet of Nintendo and cable porn. That these virtual knuckle-draggers somehow managed, despite their intellectual limitations, to design the world we live in today escapes those who continue to advance this paradoxical notion. In truth, masculinity is a complex equation, not a one-size-fits-all straightjacket and men come in an almost limitless number of permutations. The idea that there is some magical "real man" who is disappearing is something I find laughable. What do exist are people of greater and lesser willpower who sometimes allow their destiny to be shaped by social forces. This has always been the case throughout history and will no doubt continue to be the case long after I have shuffled off this mortal coil

Personally, I could give a rat's ass about many of the things Cassy Fiano talks about. I've been married to a Marine for nearly 30 years. We don't have a gun in the house and never have had. My husband does happen to keep himself in excellent shape. He has a very nice body that fits the definition of manliness by any yardstick one cares to name. If you like muscles, he's your huckleberry.

And yet in many ways, he sounds little like her definition of a "real man". He doesn't care about guns one way or another. He doesn't care much about cars either, or about many other traditionally male geegaws. He's the smartest man I know. He is also very quiet; there is no bluster about him. He is not a show off. I've known other men in my life whom I consider to be very masculine. I can't tell you why. Some are tall and thin. Some hate sports and guns. Some get choked up easily. Many have incredibly tender hearts. I consider this far and away their best quality, and it doesn't impinge on their masculinity in the least. In fact, when they let you see this side of them, it only makes me respect them more. Their willingness to be a bit vulnerable doesn't make them soft: one can tell that they are tough as steel inside. One can sense that in a pinch, they would die rather than let you down.

And it was my husband who, weeks ago, provided the answer to Dr. Helen's question. What kind of man is too stupid to look around him and see what would happen to the human race if every man refused to grow up, get a job, find a decent, responsible woman, and have children.

An selfish idiot, that's who. Certainly one for whom my husband had nothing but contempt. Going back to the piece cited at the beginning of this post, if only uneducated, irresponsible people have children, what implications does this have for the continuation of civilized society? The first duty of any human is to continue the species. This is not brain surgery.

In short, I don't believe in the whole "real man/real woman" paradigm.

I've seen successful marriages work along a whole spectrum of male/female role sharing. I don't believe either traditional conservatives or traditional liberals have it right on this score. Get the hell out of private marriages and let people work this out on their own.

The key is simple: mutual respect and support. If those two elements are present, everything else will fall into place. Despite my reluctance to reduce manliness or womanliness to a simplistic formula, if pressed, I found this comment consorted well with my overall notion of what I (personally) find manly and womanly:

On what a real man is... A real man is one who feels a sense of responsibility to care for, provide or protect something or someone, and then offers his strength (even when it is almost run out) to make their world a better place. Hence, the fight. It can be physical, it can be financial, it can be emotional, but masculinity is strength applied to the good of others. for contrast, I say femininity is gentleness applied for the good of others. It's simple enough, and it doesn't tie you down to guns and tattoos.

On a note about why women don't deserve it...
"Today's woman wants to be treated like a princess, yet she refuses to treat her man like a king."

You'll notice two things about this definition:

First, it is quite vague. A man is strong, but how he exercises that strength is a function of his unique personality. A woman's essence is more that she is gentle and loving, but again, she chooses the application. But also men and women, if they are wise, respect each other.

A while back on the 'real woman' post, Grim asked for a standard by which men could replace chivalry when dealing with women. I have always believed, and continue to believe, that respect is that standard. Using distainful language like "butch up", or man up, or limp men bothers me because it is, by its nature, disrespectful to men in the same way the rhetoric directed at Hillary Clinton has been disrespectful to women. I think it is sexist. Telling men what a "real man" is like seems beside the point, because I'm not sure an adult ought to care what anyone else thinks a real man or real woman is. An adult decides for him- or herself what kind of man or woman he or she wants to become.

And then he or she goes out and becomes that person. It's a voyage we all have to make, but sometimes, it really is that simple.

So..... that said, if you had it to do all over again, would you rather be born a man?

Or a woman? And why?

Posted by Cassandra at 07:08 AM | Comments (312) | TrackBack

May 27, 2008

The Mote In Our Own Eye

Many moons ago on a Constitutional law exam far distant in time and space, the blog princess argued herself into a position that surprised her greatly. In short she found herself agreeing, at least in part, with the reasoning behind a landmark decision, the practical results of which she found (and continues to find) personally distasteful. This was most distressing, but try as she might, she could not in good conscience reason her way to a more acceptable conclusion. Being of a somewhat snarkastic bent, she couldn't pass up the obligatory self-deprecating remark.

When her graded exam was returned, in the margin next to that answer was written, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." At the time, she thought her law prof was poking a little gentle fun at her.

The passing years have given that remark a rather different connotation, however. Age, and a thousand small reminders that we aren't as smart as we'd like to think, are powerful advocates against a doctrinaire approach to life's little tribulations.

I couldn't help thinking of that exam when reading Peggy Noonan's latest column. Long suffering time readers of VC will no doubt recall that the princess is no great fan of Ms. Noonan. I was, once. In fact, I rather wanted to be her.

But my problem with all too many of her columns is repeated in this one. Ms. Noonan is quite perceptive. She has a gift, and a way with words. But she is also frequently quite vicious, and to my way of thinking at least, has a disturbing way of attacking people without backing up her charges. In this case, the charge is against Hillary Clinton. Ms. Clinton, you see, (at least according to Ms. Noonan) is a "sissy":

Hillary Clinton complained again this week that sexism has been a major dynamic in her unsuccessful bid for political dominance. She is quoted by the Washington Post's Lois Romano decrying the "sexist" treatment she received during the campaign, and the "incredible vitriol that has been engendered" by those who are "nothing but misogynists." The New York Times reported she told sympathetic bloggers in a conference call that she is saddened by the "mean-spiritedness and terrible insults" that have been thrown "at you, for supporting me, and at women in general."

Where to begin? One wants to be sympathetic to Mrs. Clinton at this point, if for no other reason than to show one's range. But her last weeks have been, and her next weeks will likely be, one long exercise in summoning further denunciations. It is something new in politics, the How Else Can I Offend You Tour. And I suppose it is aimed not at voters -- you don't persuade anyone by complaining in this way, you only reinforce what your supporters already think -- but at history, at the way history will tell the story of the reasons for her loss.

So, to address the charge that sexism did her in:

It is insulting, because it asserts that those who supported someone else this year were driven by low prejudice and mindless bias.

It is manipulative, because it asserts that if you want to be understood, both within the community and in the larger brotherhood of man, to be wholly without bias and prejudice, you must support Mrs. Clinton.

It is not true. Tough hill-country men voted for her, men so backward they'd give the lady a chair in the union hall. Tough Catholic men in the outer suburbs voted for her, men so backward they'd call a woman a lady. And all of them so naturally courteous that they'd realize, in offering the chair or addressing the lady, that they might have given offense, and awkwardly joke at themselves to take away the sting. These are great men. And Hillary got her share, more than her share, of their votes. She should be a guy and say thanks. [Ed. note: how, precisely, did Noonan determine that Clinton had been awarded "more than her share" of the male vote? Inquiring minds want to know.]

It is prissy. Mrs. Clinton's supporters are now complaining about the Hillary nutcrackers sold at every airport shop. Boo hoo. If Golda Meir, a woman of not only proclaimed but actual toughness, heard about Golda nutcrackers, she would have bought them by the case and given them away as party favors.

It is sissy. It is blame-gaming, whining, a way of not taking responsibility, of not seeing your flaws and addressing them. You want to say "Girl, butch up, you are playing in the leagues, they get bruised in the leagues, they break each other's bones, they like to hit you low and hear the crack, it's like that for the boys and for the girls."

And because the charge of sexism is all of the above, it is, ultimately, undermining of the position of women. Or rather it would be if its source were not someone broadly understood by friend and foe alike to be willing to say anything to gain advantage.

First of all, Ms. Noonan commits what amounts to journalistic malpractice almost right off the bat with two statements. If Noonan's willingness to attribute the complaints of Hillary's supporters to the candidate herself didn't give you pause, you can segue straight to the first of them, here:

Great women, all different, but great in terms of size, of impact on the world and of struggles overcome. Struggle was not something they read about in a book. They did not use guilt to win election -- it comes up zero if you Google "Thatcher" and "You're just picking on me because I'm a woman." Instead they used the appeals men used: stronger leadership, better ideas, a superior philosophy.

Noonan's argument is not just disingenuous. It is, frankly, appalling in its blatant disregard for what was actually said during the interview she refers to. Had Ms. Noonan bothered to listen to the interview, she would have heard Clinton responding to direct and pointed questions posed by Ms. Romano rather than volunteering complaints of sexism. This places Noonan's opening anecdotes in rather a different context, doesn't it, unless, of course, one is determined to reach a predetermined conclusion.

What if Golda Meir, Indhira Gandhi, or Margaret Thatcher had been specifically interviewed about their experiences with sexism in political life? It would seem the only way to avoid being called nasty names (at least by the likes of Ms. Noonan) would have been for them to lie. Hardly the example I'd want my daughter to follow, but your mileage may vary.

One wonders, given her opening anecdotes, how Ms. Noonan ever found out Ms. Gandhi had been called "Dumb Doll"? Who breached this impenetrable sisterhood of silence she would have us believe existed, pre-Hillary, when sexism (and Noonan admits there was sexism) was dutifully met with saintly silence?

The second misstatement of fact is that Ms. Clinton has alleged that she is losing the election because of sexism. Where in the interview did she hear this charge made? I was unable to find the quote and Noonan offers no corroboration. In fact, Clinton expresses confidence that she can and will win; that voters will vote for her because (wait for it) she is the better candidate.

It's right on the tape Ms. Noonan didn't have time to listen to while she was calling Hillary Clinton a "sissy".

And as to the charge of sexism on the part of the media, watch this tape and tell me that these ads are directed at Ms. Clinton's policies, or even her personality:

How is implying that a United States Senator will pull the nuclear trigger once a month when she has her menstrual period (yes, it's pretty unpleasant, isn't it, when you say it out loud) not incredibly offensive sexist rhetoric? More importantly, why is it off limits for Ms. Clinton to note that this is offensive to women generally?

What about calling her a whore? How, precisely, does this address her policies or her fitness for office? Has Ms. Clinton been arrested for prostitution or any other sexual misconduct? The truth is that had comparable remarks been made regarding Barack Obama, Ms. Noonan and every other pundit (whether liberal or conservative) would be screaming 'racist' from the hilltops.

And yet when the same type of attack is consistently leveled against Clinton on no basis other than her gender, they not only remain silent, but have the temerity to call her a sissy if she (in response to a direct question from a journalist who did call attention to this treatment, mind you) is honest enough to call it exactly what it is: offensive, sexist, and unworthy of being included in a Presidential race.

I have seen a lot of disappointing things in my lifetime, many of them in my own party. One of them is the treatment of Hillary Clinton, a women I will openly admit I don't like much. But one thing Hillary Clinton is not is a sissy.

She has hung tough in this race despite repeated abuse and calls from her own party to bow out. This is as close a race as I've seen. So close, in fact, that even if she did claim sexism lost her the race, I think Peggy Noonan or anyone else would have an extremely hard time proving her wrong:

Hillary Clinton is now complaining that her candidacy has been harmed by sexism. Interviewed earlier this week by the Washington Post, Sen. Clinton said the polls show that "more people would be reluctant to vote for a woman [than] to vote for an African American." This gender bias, she grumbled, "rarely gets reported on."

So a woman who holds degrees from Wellesley and Yale – who has earned millions in the private sector, won two terms in the U.S. Senate, and gathered many more votes than John Edwards, Bill Richardson and several other middle-aged white guys in their respective bids for the 2008 Democratic nomination – feels cheated because she's a woman.

Seems doubtful. But hey, I'm a guy and perhaps hopelessly insensitive. So let's give her the benefit of the doubt and assume that her campaign has indeed suffered because of sexism.

This fact (if it be a fact) reveals a hitherto unknown, ugly truth about the Democratic Party. The alleged bastion of modern liberalism, toleration and diversity is full of (to use Mrs. Clinton's own phrase) "people who are nothing but misogynists." Large numbers of Democratic voters are sexists. Who knew?

But here's another revelation. If Mrs. Clinton is correct that she is more likely than Barack Obama to defeat John McCain in November, that implies Republicans and independents are less sexist than Democrats.

The truth of the matter is that the media have repeatedly trumpeted the mantra that anyone who doesn't vote for Obama is a racist. And yet the very idea (despite repeated polls indicating there is more resistance to a female than a black candidate) that those who don't vote for Hillary are sexist is hogwash. The supposed "proof" that there is no sexism is that some people do vote for her.

The logic, she is compelling, no? Peggy Noonan and Donald Boudreaux could teach a course on it: in a population composed of a spectrum of voters (some of whom may harbor sexist attitudes and some who may not) the very fact that some people - even men, praise the Lord! - have voted for Hillary Clinton constitutes conclusive proof that there is no sexism. Yep. Well nigh irrefutable. Of course, no one can prove there is sexism either. But their arguments begin to sound much like the reaction to Hillary's tears earlier in the election season: more of a double standard that exists, but is seldom talked about.

The fact is that male politicians have been crying for ages. One may well doubt the sincerity of Ms. Clinton's tears. One may even deplore crying by political figures. But to claim it is not done for American leaders to cry is ludicrous.

Recently during a conversation with a man I respect, I was shocked to hear the words, "in the past few years your feminist sentiments have been coming to the fore..." from him. What shocked me about this is that it has often seemed to me that men are overly quick to label the exact same behavior in a woman that they find perfectly acceptable, normal, and even desirable in a man as "feminist". Not to put too fine a point on it, a man expects other men to have self respect, to stand up for their own rights assertively, and not to back down when someone tries to put them in their place. He also naturally expects a man to resent it if anyone tries to infringe on his freedom or his rights. And yet, if a woman does these things, she is considered "feminist", with all the pejorative connotations that word carries with it (the prime example being that she must somehow be angry or dislike men rather than perhaps she simply respects herself too much to accept behavior they themselves would not put up with for one second.) As Grim has often remarked, (and I agree) men and women think differently. Yet we want many of the same things out of life, though not always for the same reasons.

I was heartened that Grim, unlike Peggy Noonan, was able to see the sexism in way Hillary Clinton has been treated:

What we're seeing from the Obama campaign is in fact sexism -- the use of negative female stereotypes, either in place of or to augment actual arguments. Had Sen. Clinton succeeded to the Democratic nomination, I don't doubt we would have seen it increasingly from Republicans as well.

I think there is a lot of reflexive chest beating among female conservative bloggers and pundits. Sometimes we get so caught up in our own dogma that we won't recognize the truth when it is staring us right in the face. The truth is, it's not easy for a female conservative to cry, "sexism". Most of us would rather stick our finger in a light socket.

But as my long ago law professor once said, a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. I think Peggy Noonan is right thus far: in the end, if you succeed at something extremely difficult, 9 times out of 10 it is some combination of luck, ability, hard work, but mostly refusal to give up. The problem with government programs aimed at leveling the playing ground or redressing so-called historical injustices is not just that they fail to accomplish their intended objectives (How can government force those people who are prejudiced to accept you or your work? How can government redress wrongs done to people who are dead?) is that they are distractions from the fundamental truth that regardless of who you are, hard work and determination are the only things that will get you ahead in life.

Everything else - even where you started from, relative to someone else, or what perceived handicaps you face on your way - is just a distraction. Those are givens and they won't change. Some people are short, some are stupid, some are slower than others. You may be female or black or foreign in an atmosphere where that matters, or one of the many, many more where it does not. The thing is, there is not much anyone can do about intangibles like race, gender, or other personal qualities that help or hinder us along the way.

On an individual level, the best course is to take stock what you have and work with it until you cross the finish line. On a broader level, I can't help wondering if calling people sissies when they take notice of unacceptable behavior is the standard conservatives want to hang their hats on? Republicans used to believe standards and ethics were important. Perhaps that's not true anymore.

Ms. Noonan? Anyone?

Posted by Cassandra at 07:53 AM | Comments (21) | TrackBack

May 13, 2008

Monkey See, Monkey Do

Yesterday, MikeD left a comment on the college rape post that I wanted to respond to more fully for a number of reasons other than my usual impulse to be excessively tiresome:

Now, to be fair... while I understand the young men's motivation (I was once a raging pile of hormones myself), someone should really pull these guys aside and have a talk with THEM about self respect.

I think this is something that frequently gets overlooked. We're used to warning the young ladies about the predatory male, and the good news is that some (e.g. Katelyn) are also recognizing that they bear some responsibility for their actions too (didn't we just have a long conversation about women being fully capable of taking care of themselves recently?). But other than pointing fingers at the young men and shouting "RAPIST! J'accuse!" they seem to get a pass on their own behavior.

Basically, all I am saying is that there's some middle ground between being a slavering bestial monster bent on deflowering helpless maidens and being an incompetent fool who is mentally disabled by testosterone flowing through his bloodstream. These guys are NOT idiots. Nor are they monsters. If you lay out to them that sexual conquest is not a game, and that if they don't respect themselves how is anyone else going to (and let's not forget the "would you really want some other dude treating your sister/daughter like that" logic... cause guys hate that), then I suspect the world might be improved.

I'm no Pollyanna... I know what college dorm life is like. I also know that it took me till the ripe old age of 24 to get my head out of my fourth point of contact. But dammit, let's have more respect for guys (and for them to have more respect for themselves) and grant that hormones do not cause men to become Neanderthals.

These are the points I tried, as a mother, to drive home to my young sons. It's not always easy for a woman to talk to teen-aged boys about sex. For one thing, your street cred isn't all that impressive. You can't exactly tell them "When I was your age..." stories since you lack the comparable road gear. In addition, boys are often a bit uneasy when Mom brings up a subject they're intensely curious about, but is also intimately connected with their impending voyage into that great unknown we call the wonderful world of adulthood. Let's face it: who wants to tell his friends, "Yeah, I learned all about birth control from... [not Playboy or Penthouse or a camping trip with Dad in the Adirondack, but... wait for it!] my Mom!" But when Dad is gone most of the time, someone has to do it if you don't find the idea of being the youngest Grandma on the planet even mildly attractive, so you find a way.

What I tried to teach my sons is that there is nothing wrong with sex. It's wonderful and enjoyable, but it isn't the be-all and end-all of life. Adult men and women should have enough respect for themselves that they remain in control of their emotions and impulses: a healthy sense of balance is what distinguishes a mature adult from a child. This is what annoyed me so about some of the arguments on the Military exchanges post. It is almost comically demeaning to seriously contend that the ability to procure skin mags from the local PX is an essential force multiplier, without which we might as well run up the white flag. This obscures the real issue: there are far stronger arguments to be made for not unnecessarily infringing upon the rights of service members.

But the reason I wrote about that issue, and the reasons I continue to bring this (and tangential issues) up here at VC are twofold:

1. It continues to bother me when I see conservatives ostensibly defending freedom of expression by reflexively flinging ad hominems at anyone who dares to raise a point they happen to disagree with. Any time this happens, I'm going to get my back up. I have often urged women to be more assertive about voicing their opinions on the 'Net, but there are valid reasons why many women are reluctant to do so.

One reason is that when certain subjects are raised, some of the very men who would be the first to maintain that women are mean spirited and overly emotional proceed to defend their positions with.... [wait for it] mean spirited personal attacks and essentially emotional arguments. This doesn't mean that women are good and men are bad. It means that both men and women are fallible, and when it's our own ox that's being gored, each sex tends to react with something less than our usual equanimity. The thing is, if your best argument against porn is that "normal men don't enjoy that sort of thing" or that men who do are rapists in training, you've left the realm of the rational.

But if your best argument against women who object to porn is that women "shouldn't object to/feel threatened by it" or that women who do, do so because they are "ugly, fat, and don't like sex" or are "joyless scolds who like to control men", you're not exactly looking like the poster child for reasoned discourse, are you?

2. Grim and I have probably gone at least 50 rounds on this subject, and we seem to have come at last to an understanding (I think) that I have no desire whatsoever to ban pornography. Never have. Never will. What disturbs me is the mainstreaming of porn into everyday culture. The reason this concerns me, frankly, is well illustrated by stories like this:

Time was, when a girl had a crush on a boy, she sent him a note in class.

Today, as at least one local school district has learned, she might use her cell phone to take a naked picture of herself and send the photo to him.

The Pioneer Central School District over the past two months has discovered three cases of teenage girls — ages 13 to 16 — electronically sending nude photos to male classmates.

“All of the situations we’re dealing with, the images are of a girl in a provocative and seductive position, and in the nude,” Pioneer Superintendent Jeffrey Bowen told The Buffalo News.

What I have argued against, repeatedly, is not the existence of porn but the easy access to porn. Pornography has been around for centuries. It will continue to be around as long as human beings enjoy sex. No one is ever going to "get rid" of porn. It's that simple. What you hope to do - what I hope to do - is keep it out of the hands of children who are not nearly old enough to possess the judgment to handle it yet.

When I see young girls having plastic surgery to make themselves look more like porn stars, that really bothers me.

When I see 15 year old girls sending nude photos and movies of themselves over cell phones and email, that bothers me. And the most disturbing thing of all is passages like this:

In the third and most recent case, a female high school student at some point sent a naked photo of herself as a text message to her boyfriend, a fellow high school student.

“That picture then was forwarded somehow from that phone to another phone and was distributed from there,” Schultz said.

...The teens initially didn’t realize the consequences of what they were doing, Bowen said, but now they do and they are upset.

Most of us talk to our children about unprotected sex.

How many of us talk to our children about unprotected email? A single careless email can be forwarded in an instant half-way around the world without your knowledge or consent. If your child is foolish enough to attach an indiscrete photo, it could end up on the Internet, where it could be found by future employers and colleges, ruining any chance he or she might have of finding employment. In one careless moment, your child's reputation could be utterly ruined.

And the real kicker here is that our don't come up with these ideas on their own. Their behavior reflects the world they see and hear every day: they mimic the values we create and defend.

Think about that for a moment: Monkey see, monkey do. As Mike so perceptively noted, men hate being told, "Would you really want some other dude treating your sister/daughter like that?" And yet it often seems to me that even conservatives, increasingly, just wish away the conflict between their professed values and their own behavior. The truth is that children pay far more attention to what we do than what we say, and they notice far more than we give them credit for.

The problem, as I see it, is not that porn exists at all. It has always existed. The problem is that it has become so mainstream that people's appetites are sated. When you can dial up the most hardcore entertainment right on your home TV set, when even lingerie ads and prime time television shows have become semi-pornographic, nothing is tantalizing or forbidden. And our children are getting that message loud and clear: nothing is off limits anymore. Nothing is unthinkable. Because adults (and many conservatives) ridicule what we used to call modesty or restraint, there is no barrier to keep them from doing things that can and do harm them.

Sex occurs primarily in the mind, and in order to feel that forbidden thrill it's only human nature to push the boundaries farther and farther out. Where once the mere sight of a woman's uncovered ankles was unbearably enticing, now we see nearly naked women on billboards; consequently it takes something truly shocking (how about a 15 year old sporting that freshly f*cked look?) to get our collective juices flowing. But what effect, when adults refuse to rein themselves in, does this have on our children?

Easy. Fifteen year olds are mailing videos of themselves engaging in sex acts over the cell phones their parents gave them so they could 'keep in touch'.

The kids are in touch all right. Nice work.

Posted by Cassandra at 07:26 AM | Comments (30) | TrackBack

May 09, 2008

What the....

Via Glenn Reynolds, have these women lost their minds?

Dr. Helen,

My wife has recently informed me that husbands are now expected to give their wives “push presents.” Quite frankly, the idea and the term disgust me. She is not pregnant, nor is she materialistic, shallow, or prone to feeling entitled to anything. To the contrary, she is an exceptional woman, and I don’t believe she was motivated to tell me this out of materialism. Thus, I found this somewhat out of character for her. I tried to convey my disgust to her, but she just did not seem to understand what I found so offensive about the idea.

I had never heard of this, but it is not only offensive but demeaning. Why don't you just put a fish in her mouth when she's done pushing and have done with it?

Have I been living underneath a rock? That said, this seems like the right response:

What a woman is saying when she expects a gift is that sex — and by extension, child-bearing — must be compensated by a man. This exchange boils down to legal prostitution (nothing wrong with prostitution in my book, but call a spade a spade). The problem here lies in the fact that wives who want this type of exchange often think of themselves as above being a prostitute, but indeed, they are not — they are just dishonest prostitutes who are pretending to be something else. And what about the act of paying for children? A diamond in exchange for a child? Isn’t this a little sick? And if this kind of exchange is okay for women, why not for men?

Perhaps husbands should start expecting “pro-presents” when they get a promotion — wives should be expected to get hubby a new car or perhaps some kind of fun technology he has been wanting, that new big screen TV, perhaps? If the wife has no money, surely there are other things she could do to show how much she cares that her husband is moving up the career ladder. I’ll let the guys fill in the blank here.

If women find the above suggestions insulting, then think how men might feel when women expect gifts from them for having their children. Something that is precious, amazing and part of the human experience has now been turned into a business transaction.

What was it I said yesterday? Something about doing things for the other person because you enjoy the doing, not because you secretly expect something in return?

It seems to me that is part of being an adult, whether you're a man or a woman.

Posted by Cassandra at 08:20 AM | Comments (29) | TrackBack

May 08, 2008

Finding Your Inner "Real Woman"

I can put the wash on the line
Feed the kids, get dressed
And be at work by five to nine

I can bring home the bacon
Fry it up in the pan
And never, never, never
Let you forget you're a man...

'Cause I'm a wooooooman

"Darling, a true lady takes off her dignity with her clothes and does her whorish best. At other times you can be as modest and dignified as your persona requires."

- Notebooks of Lazarus Long

What is a real woman? Via Tigerhawk, the question seems to be generating some interesting commentary:

...there’s really not a lot of mystery about what everyone agrees a “real” man is. We all know “real” men are:

Mentally, emotionally, and intellectually strong, even if not physically (crippled and elderly men can still be “real” men). Hardworking, honorable, honest, dutiful, protective of family and country. Brave, courageous, rational, reasonable, kindhearted, and respectful. Knowledgeable about how to survive in rough times and how to solve problems. And so on.

What I started wanting to know when I was about 16 was just how in the hell any of those things were (or should be) exclusive to men. I realized even then that in fact, they are not. All adults should have every one of those personality and character traits as a matter of course.

So then I started wondering why anyone bothered with the phrase “real man” at all. Don’t they just mean “real adult”? As a young girl, shouldn’t I strive to be exactly the kind of person I kept hearing a “real man” would be? I thought so, and I still do. Maybe that’s why you never hear me whining about how my butt looks in these jeans or crying that no one pays enough attention to me. Who gives a crap? I don’t need any reassurances about silly shit because apparently, I am a “real man”, secure in my own “manliness”. Even though I’m a woman.

Now, what the fuck? Why can’t I just say I’m a “real woman”? Because no one ever talks about that. Except in the context of how “real women” have curves and “real women” don’t look like Heidi Klum. Of course, of course it always comes back to looks and sex when you’re talking about women. Google it. The first result you get on “be a real woman” is a site that says stuff like:

A woman shouldn’t solve man’s problems. This prerogative is male. A man is the one supposed to take care of a woman.

A real woman can’t ever be had over the barrel. She is always well-dressed with her hair and make-up done. Be ready that anything can happen all of a sudden. You’ll say it is hard to look nice all the time – for a real woman it’s a habit.

A real woman always has a couple of really good and expensive dresses in her wardrobe. They play the role of a parade costume for cases when it’s necessary to make an impression.

A real woman can let herself twist men round her little finger. She may stay mysteriously silent, complain that she’s bored, act stupid or start a passionate scientific argument. Nobody can make a woman answer a question if she doesn’t want to, and nobody can force her explain the reasons for doing/not doing this or that. Acting so capricious and unbalanced is a simple way to get a man attached to a woman. Don’t hesitate to make a man spend as much money on you as he can afford – he will never leave an object of capital investments.

A woman knows her worth, but makes everyone believe she’s priceless…She knows how to make men dance to her tune and she really enjoys it.

Christ with a cigarette.

The other results you get from the search “be a real woman” are almost completely equally pointless or niche-like, nothing general about all women and what it takes to be a “real” one. There’s stuff about being a good chaste Christian woman, stuff about “real beauty”, and stuff about sex changes. By the end of the FIRST PAGE of results, the search phrase is not even found. But Google “be a real man.” It goes on and on, page after page, about honor and strength and hard work and discipline and how to fix shit around the house.

Once again I feel the most appropriate question to ask at this juncture is what the fuck?

You know what I think? I think women have utterly FAILED each other. It has almost nothing to do with men, at all. Men have this shit worked out, they have a code by which they judge each other, and it’s a good code for the most part. There’s no mystery among men about how to