Villainous Company

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 behave in order to be taken seriously and have a life you can look back on when you’re old and feel pride.

What do women do? We sit around and we either bitch about men or we bitch about other women. Men don’t do what we want them to do, and other women are competition for all those men we don’t even want because they don’t obey us, so we’re never happy.

What we don’t do, or at least I don’t see it very often and believe me, I’ve looked, is establish our own code for judging others based on qualities that really matter, like men have.

Oh dear. I'm about to say some things that are going to make a whole lot of people very, very angry.

Again. Yee ha.

First of all, I agree with Rachel to a limited extent. But I also take issue with part of her argument. She blames the difference in standards squarely on women, claiming that men have defined their own standard for themselves and that women have, unlike men, singularly failed to do likewise:

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 behave in order to be taken seriously and have a life you can look back on when you’re old and feel pride.

But is this really the case? I don't think it's that simple at all.

Neither men nor women exist in a vacuum. We react to rewards and disincentives, to signals we receive in response to our actions as we interact with other human beings. These are all cues we use to adjust our behavior and bring it into line with what society expects of us. To the extent that some of us are adept enough to figure out how to give other people what they want (i.e., to trade what pleases others for what we want in life), we are "successful". We get hired, date, marry, breed offspring. And it's not a simple equation either. Mere physical attractiveness isn't the only thing that matters. We've all seen people who aren't all that good looking, but who charm their way through life by virtue of their vitality or their ability to win the affection of others. But at the end of the day, I have always suspected that what really drives all of this is biology.

So the "real man" qualities Rachel quoted:

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.

... they make a man a good husband, provider, and father, no? They insure the survival of the species and in the final analysis that's the most important duty of any human being. Left to themselves, most guys would just as soon lie around on the sofa drinking brewskis and watching Monday night football. No man in his right mind voluntarily scrapes his face at 6 am or spends Saturday mornings perusing 400 count sateen sheets at Bed Bath and Bored Beyond Belief. But thankfully for us female types, the prime directive directs our inner Neanderthals to make sure there are more little human beings to carry on the important task of sullying Gaia's pristine ozone layer with our noxious carbon emissions. And because men are, when one gets right down to it, such visual creatures, we ladies are valued (though it pains this writer to say it) more often than not for maintaining a pleasing outward aspect; along with the ability to appear helpless and in need of a strong pair of manly biceps:

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

Because - according to the biological imperative - men love the chase and despise anything won too easily we learn (sorrowfully, because duplicity is not our nature) to cultivate at least the appearance of being hard to get:

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.

I laughed when I read that. It conjured up my many "conversations" with Grim about how women only wear make-up or dress for each other. Sorry, but what a load of bunk. Let me say that again, just in case someone missed it: what a load of utter bullshit.

Oopsie. Did I say a bad word? Open an issue of Playboy, Penthouse, Hustler, Maxim... guys, I can stop any time now. Are any of those women NOT WEARING MAKEUP?

Let me put this to you another way. HOW MANY OF THOSE WOMEN, IN PROPORTION TO... SAY, THE POPULATION OF WOMEN WALKING AROUND INSIDE YOUR AVERAGE GROCERY STORE (where we go to stare at each others clothes, hair, makeup, and enormous breasts, HAVE HAD THEIR BREASTS SURGICALLY AUGMENTED?

I rest my case.

Yeah. Women alter our appearance in often painful ways "for other women". Bullshit. Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.

BULLSHIT.

We do these things for the oldest reason in the book: to attract men. Just as men learn to be "sensitive" for the oldest reason in the book: because women prefer mates who look like good husband material. We want a guy who will, at least occasionally, appear to listening raptly when we yammer on about our feeeeeeeeelings.

I think there is a 'real woman' standard.

I just think that it's harder to describe that the male one, because being a woman is not as straightforward as being a man. Women have many roles in life and unlike the way men deal with the work/home disconnect, with women everything in life is wrapped into one big ball. You can't separate the different pieces of our lives - we don't compartmentalize. Most of us don't go to work and "turn off" Mom/sister/wife/friend/lover mode from 9 to 5. There is no 'off' button to help us detach ourselves. We are constantly performing a mental juggling act: the regression equations are competing with Aunt Edna's tumor and little Joey's forgotten homework and our sister's failing marriage and the argument we had last night with our spouse. We can't help it. It bites, sometimes.

Carrie and I were talking last week about the problem of training young military wives to be more self-sufficient on long deployments. I observed that the Marine Corps does such a great job with training Marines. They obviously know a great deal about leadership, and yet they apply none of this knowledge when it comes to helping young women deal with family separation. It's puzzling: it's as though the Marine Corps views wives as somehow not fully human. But we respond the same way men do to inspiration and leadership. We are not children who need to be taken by the hand by the Nanny State and given Free BabySitting and Mental Health Counseling.

I will never forget the first year I was married. I was nineteen on my wedding day.

As a young bride with a newborn baby, I struggled to adjust to living far from home, family and friends. I had recently quit college and my job to stay home with the baby. Our parents (on both sides) helped us, but still we had very little money and only one car, which went off to school with my husband every day. It was as if I had been pulled up by the roots and abruptly left on the sidewalk somewhere like a forlorn little seedling someone forgot to plant. My husband was busy. He was taking a full course load and had a job, plus he played rugby and was in a fraternity. This did not leave a lot of time to massage my fragile ego: he had been thrust into a man's responsibilities at a tender age. Even then, I realized how lucky I was to have him. He is one in a million.

Back then, there was no calling people long distance. That cost too much money. There was no Internet or email. And we couldn't afford a television set. I laugh now when I read about young military wives struggling with loneliness and 'paycheck-to-paycheck' living. We had no health insurance. We had to pay the hospital a $700 non-refundable deposit just for the 'privilege' of not being turned away when I went into labor.

Been there. Done that. As I recall, there was no T-shirt.

I also recall not being all that miserable most of the time, even with four months of fairly bad undiagnosed postpartum depression that I got through just fine because I was too dumb and to know what was wrong with me. I just thought I was a big sissy until I quit nursing and the daily crying jags disappeared like magic.

The thing is, when I was first married I started off all wrong and it was my own damned fault.

I am a straightforward person. When I love, I love with my whole heart. And I do love my husband, so I threw my whole being into my new marriage. Every day he went off to school and I stayed home with the baby. And I was bored out of my mind, and a Bored Princess is a Very Bad Thing. I had been to an Ivy League school once. He was attending a very good college in Virginia. There had never been any doubt I am his intellectual equal, but now there was a bit of a disparity in our stations: he was in college and I was a homemaker. So I read voraciously and tried to make our little apartment welcoming when he came home. I took the baby for long walks and picked wildflowers to put on the table. I made elaborate meal plans and tried recipes (how many ways can you cook Armor chipped beef? Dear God help me, I can tell you). And the harder I tried, it seemed, the more strained things became between us.

Did I mention earlier that men like the chase? That they never respect that which is won too easily?

It's true, you know. It took me a long time to figure out what had gone wrong. It takes me an even longer time to lose my temper. A year and a half, to be exact. But on those extremely rare occasions when I finally do, the fireworks are generally worth the price of admission.

I threw a glass of Sambucca at him. Fortunately, I throw like a girl. I missed.

Did you know Sambucca eats holes in drywall? Or was that the glass?

Anyway, it made for one of those 'funny stories' that aren't funny at the time and I learned an important lesson about myself. It was that if you do something for another person, you must only do it because you enjoy the doing. Never because you secretly expect something in return. I see women do that a lot: we 'trade'. And men react by withdrawing because it makes them feel guilty. They know they are being set up, and they rightly resent being manipulated. Relationships have to be roughly equal. They won't survive long if one party or the other feels indebted.

Women, though, will often throw themselves into friendships, marriages, jobs without considering the personal cost. We are little builders. In an article I read recently, the author uttered a thought I've often had myself: we women often forget that it's awfully hard to help others if we forget to put the oxygen mask on our own faces first. This may well be the mother in us, and not all women are like this. In fact, we don't uniformly behave this way throughout our lives. As my children have grown up and my marriage has matured, I have found myself behaving less like a traditional female and more like a man (though I'll never be exactly like my husband).

And he has, in his turn, become far more thoughtful and considerate than the already remarkable young man I married all those years ago. This is the best thing about marriage; we take on the best parts of our partners, growing and changing over the years to resemble each other. The truly strange thing is that as traditional marriage declines in popularity, I believe societal pressure is beginning to effect the same strange transformation on men and women that matrimony once did. Women are becoming slightly more aggressive and outspoken and men are becoming more considerate and thoughtful. As long as it is not taken to an extreme and neither sex is made to feel ashamed of the essential qualities of femininity or masculinity, I do not think this is a bad thing.

As Rachel observed so insightfully, the "real" man or woman is, after all, a good adult. But I also think women have, for all the bashing they endure in the blogosphere (and it has become something of a spectator sport to bash women of late online) a bit harder job because, in general, we do more things in life. The real woman is expected to perform all the tasks a real man is expected to do. She is already expected to be 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.

You know this woman. After all, she raised you.

She is your mother, and she taught you everything you know about life. And after she raised you, or even while she raised you, she may well have held down a job outside the home, too.

The real problem is that in today's society, it is no longer fashionable to admire virtue, and so we neither recognize nor respect a real woman when we see one, unless she is cast in a male mold. Because women are expected (and rewarded) for doing everything men do each day and for doing these things well, but at the same time we are rewarded by mother nature for pretending to be fragile, feminine, and somewhat clueless, women are the Rodney Dangerfields of the world -- forever doomed to be loved, but to get no real respect.

What a shame. We don't even respect ourselves for all the very real reasons for which women deserve respect. Women are not men. They will never be men. But we have our own virtues that are worthy of admiration in their own right.

And until we learn to love and value ourselves, no one else will ever respect us.

Posted by Cassandra at 06:12 AM | Comments (181) | TrackBack

May 05, 2008

OMG!!! They're So Meeeeeeeean!!!!

Teh Patriarchy is at it again, damn their guts and livers! When we first read this horrifying story, we didn't know whether to run from the room, black out, or throw up. Thankfully, we remembered the sterling example of one Nancy Hopkins, MIT professor of biology and proved our irrefutable equality with men by forcing them to walk on verbal eggshells in our presence, lest they bring on a sudden attack of those gender-specific vapors which should in no way indicate inferiority (much less cause one to treat us any differently -- unless of course we want you to!).

In a tale fit to freeze the very marrow of your bones, not only the administration of Dartmouth College, but those 18-22 year old intellectual bully-boys have inexplicably managed to make a fully-equal and intellectually capable female professional look like a complete idiot:

Often it seems as though American higher education exists only to provide gag material for the outside world. The latest spectacle is an Ivy League professor threatening to sue her students because, she claims, their "anti-intellectualism" violated her civil rights.

Priya Venkatesan taught English at Dartmouth College. She maintains that some of her students were so unreceptive of "French narrative theory" that it amounted to a hostile working environment. She is also readying lawsuits against her superiors, who she says papered over the harassment, as well as a confessional exposé, which she promises will "name names."

The trauma was so intense that in March Ms. Venkatesan quit Dartmouth and decamped for Northwestern. She declined to comment for this piece, pointing instead to the multiple interviews she conducted with the campus press.

Ms. Venkatesan lectured in freshman composition, intended to introduce undergraduates to the rigors of expository argument. "My students were very bully-ish, very aggressive, and very disrespectful," she told Tyler Brace of the Dartmouth Review. "They'd argue with your ideas." This caused "subversiveness," a principle English professors usually favor.

Quelle horreur! Can one imagine anything more unprecedented or alarming to a progressive eco-feminist than a classroom full of American college students arguing about ideas? Unless, perhaps, it is the prospect of a classroom full of young people Questioning Authority?

Clearly the dominant patriarchal hegemony is rife with rigid, authoritarians threatened by anyone who challenges their ideas... by which we mean Ms.Venkatesan, who not only cancelled a week's worth of classes in a fit of pique, but sent the following unintentionally hilarious email to her students:

Yesterday evening, to the students of her winter class, Ms. Venkatesan dispatched this message:

Date: Sat, 26 Apr 2008 20:56:35 -0400 (EDT)
From: Priya.Venkatesan@Dartmouth.EDU
To: “WRIT.005.17.18-WI08”:;, Priya.Venkatesan@Dartmouth.EDU
Subject: WRIT.005.17.18-WI08: Possible lawsuit

Dear former class members of Science, Technology and Society:

I tried to send an email through my server but got undelivered messages. I regret to inform you that I am pursuing a lawsuit in which I am accusing some of you (whom [sic] shall go unmentioned in this email) of violating Title VII of anti-federal [sic] discrimination laws.

The feeling that I am getting from the outside world is that Dartmouth is considered a bigoted place, so this may not be news and I may be successful in this lawsuit.

I am also writing a book detailing my experiences as your instructor, which will “name names” so to speak. I have all of your evaluations and these will be reproduced in the book.

Have a nice day.

Priya

But it gets better (oh yes - you knew it would). Ms. Venkatesan sent a similarly illiterate email to a smaller group of students against whom (she said) she was planning to file suit specifically. Joe Malchow responds with withering commentary:

At least seven members of the Class of 2011 received this grave epistle, indicating that they are to be named as defendants in a legal outing under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination by employers on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin. The students, of course, are entirely safe; as they do not employ the writing instructor, it can only be said that their evaluations of her performance—de rigueur, frank, and ostensibly anonymous—did not flatter, and that she is upset. But of course the students could not have discriminated against her.

Ms. Venkatesan also informs Dartblog that she is “pursuing a legal suit against members/former members of the Dartmouth community,” those being Christopher H. Lowrey of the medical school and his four-person research team. “Another faculty member,” Ms. Venkatesan tells us, “that figures prominently in my list of grievances…is Thomas H. Cormen, Ph. D., Director of the Writing Program (now the Institute for Writing and Rhetoric) and Professor of Computer Science.”

This column solicited a thought or two from Priya Venkatesan, and was rewarded with the following:

The students I am naming in this suit were mostly from Winter 08 term with a few from Fall. Essentially, I am pursuing litigation to see if I have a legal claim, that is, if the inappropriate and unprofessional behavior I was subjected to as a Research Associate and Lecturer at Dartmouth constitutes discrimination and harrassment [sic] on the basis of ethnicity, race and gender. This includes not just students, but a few faculty members that I worked with. At this stage, I am making a detailed list of names in a chronology of what people said and did while I was at Dartmouth in a very factual manner and approaching a New Hampshire attorney who specializes in professional malpractice with the chronology and he will make the determination if I have grounds for litigation.

A redaction of errata seems a suitable place to begin. A class action suit? This involves a population of plaintiffs similarly aggrieved; Ms. Venkatesan is contemplating legal action against a population of defendants similarly, in her mind, guilty. Classes bring suit; they do not answer it. Thus it is not a class action, but a series of civil complaints against students and employees of the College and, perhaps, the College corporate.

Title VII does not include language about harassment—only about discrimination. Courts have occasionally elected to find harassment illegal under the code, but only, like discrimination, employer-perpetrated harassment. Since students are not Ms. Venkatesan’s employers, they cannot be named as defendants in a Title VII case.

Finally, there is the bit about “pursuing litigation to see if I have a legal claim.” This is not an advisable course of action. In fact, legal experts consulted by this page suggest that litigating to explore the possible existence of a legal claim is the precise opposite of how the modern judicial system operates.

The big bully. He is undoubtedly motivated by a desire to crush her strong, womanly essence. And isn't that just_like_a_man?

In a final update, our Derring Doyenne displays more of the singular steadfastness of purpose and mental acuity that have made her a veritable poster girl for the eco-feminist movement.

All of which just goes to prove what we often remark: Charlotte Allen was right. Some women seem determined to play into the worst stereotypes about females. In fact, we just made that a category.

Moron...

Update: The Editorial Staff swears we did not make this up to make Ms. Venkatesan look smarter:

HEH. The biter, bit. "It seems that white feminists and Leftists are a big bunch of racists, too. . . . White Privilege was to blame… No wonder Amanda Marcotte thinks Free Will is overrated."

And doesn't this echo (eerily) our earlier Obama post?

You're not racist because of the content of your character, you're racist because of the color of your skin!

Posted by Cassandra at 08:00 AM | Comments (47) | TrackBack

April 15, 2008

Guess The Party?

This is just plain creepy:

Those who peer at children in public could find themselves on the wrong side of the law in Maine soon.

A bill that passed the House last month aims to strengthen the crime of visual sexual aggression against children, according to state Rep. Dawn Hill, D-York.

Her involvement started when Ogunquit Police Lt. David Alexander was called to a local beach to deal with a man who appeared to be observing children entering the community bathrooms. Because the state statute prevents arrests for visual sexual aggression of a child in a public place, Alexander said he and his fellow officer could only ask the man to move along.

"There was no violation of law that we could enforce. There was nothing we could charge him with," Alexander said.

He attended a talk with Hill a week later and brought the case to her attention. Hill pledged to do what she could, Alexander said, and the result was a change through the Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee in the House, which made the law applicable in both private and public places....

Under the bill, if someone is arrested for viewing children in a public place, it would be a Class D felony if the child is between 12 to 14 years old and a Class C felony if the child is under 12, according to Alexander.

Hill said she believes the move was necessary to correct what she called a "loophole" in the state's criminal law statutes.

*sigh*

It is, apparently, not bad enough that our schools are teaching children to be paranoid about strangers. Now they are going to be terrified of eyeballs.

Wunderbar. When the possession and use of Eyeballs (or more specifically, Evil Men's Eyeballs) near children has been made a felony offense, only The Bad People will have them and violent crime will magically vanish from the face of the earth.

I don't know about you, but I feel so much safer now.

Posted by Cassandra at 06:35 AM | Comments (27) | TrackBack

April 09, 2008

Finally, Some Respect...

It's about time:

Blondes are said to have more fun but it seems brunettes steal the hearts of billionaires.

Brunettes such as Microsoft boss Bill Gates' wife, Melinda French are more likely to marry a successful man than their blonde sisters, a study today said.

Experts checked the hair colour of the wives and girlfriends of the world's top 100 billionaires. Most – 62 per cent – were brunettes.

Fair-haired women came in a poor second with 22 per cent of the world's top billionaires marrying blondes.

Raven-haired women enticed just 16 per cent of the world's wealthiest men, while not one of top billionaires is married to a redhead.

We were going to make some daft quip about the breakfast of champions, but we thought better of it.

Posted by Cassandra at 08:40 AM | Comments (25) | TrackBack

April 08, 2008

Thwan Thong Trilogy

The Editorial Staff returned from a brief (pun fully intended) sabbatical to find her Inbox infested with the following salvo from the perpetually perky Homefront Six:

Diamond thong shown to throng:

Danielle Luminita, a brunette model from Romania, was carried down the runway on the shoulders of two male models wearing only the diamond thong.

"It is very comfortable, it's not heavy or scratchy or anything," Luminita told Reuters backstage.

To which we can only reply, "Holy misplaced modifier, Batman!" In our ongoing high-minded attempt to raise the conversational tone of the Blogosphere, we made a brief (albeit doomed) attempt to ignore the lobbing of snark in our general direction. However, our efforts were not greeted with reciprocal restraint:

And, no, Cassie, I didn’t ask if she was wearing a thong.

Hmmpf. “All we can say is that we're hoping Bill will run out of ammunition soon...” How droll…

Fortunately, those who have the audacity to hope will never be without a thong in their hearts. According to lingerie divas in the know, Le Worm Fashionique may have turned for the humble thong. What's next? Diamond Bloomers?

In 2003, about a third of all women’s knickers sold were G-strings, reaching a staggering £100m.

By last year, sales fell to only 12% of the knicker market, which still accounted for some £44m of turn-over.

....Showing how fashion lurches between extremes, large knickers are now poised to take over the world and cover even larger swathes of female flesh.

Bridget Jones’s big pants or boy shorts are seen to be kinder in emphasising the figure. So big pant sales are pulling up, while thongs are coming down (which they’ve probably being doing for years at WAG parties).

It’s one of those paradoxes of life that thongs and big pants are equally effective in eradicating VLP.

This is the visible panty line lurking beneath clothing that some women regard with a horror akin to catching the bubonic plague.

This is a winning reason, says fashion writer Lowri Turner, in spite of the discomfort felt when first worn.

“They are also sexy and – this is a very big AND – they can also make your bottom look smaller. The rule for sexy knickers really is less is more.”

Yet, unlike the thong, big pants hug and hold the posterior in a way which the minimalist clothing could never do.

And as we get older, we need all the extra support we can get. Emotional, spiritual and physical; but above all, physical.

Well, there you have it ladies. VC: your one-stop shopping destination for thong-related news; not to mention those all important bra safety alerts.

Just be careful out there.

Posted by Cassandra at 07:35 AM | Comments (8) | TrackBack

April 07, 2008

Power, Sex, and Housework

The Editorial Staff (wisely) were not going to comment upon this conversational minefield until we saw an opportunity to lob largely pointless snark:

If marriage relieves a man of one hour of chores per week and adds seven hours to the woman's burden, what conclusion does Occam's Razor demand? Obviously, men are seven times more productive at household chores than women.

Those of you who see flaws in my reasoning should discuss in the comments.

Flaws in the reasoning? Aside from the one big enough to drive a truck through?

A few observations:

1. This isn't about housework. It is never about housework.

2. It isn't about money either, though the Editorial Staff once read that money is the #1 subject couples fight about. We find that odd, because in 29 years of marriage, we can't really recall fighting with the spousal unit over money. We've had many a rousing marital 'discussion' over the years, mind you.

But about money? Give us a break.

Sex is worth fighting over. Children are worth fighting over. Certainly your marriage is important enough to fight about (or for) on occasion.

Money, on the other hand, is just about the least important issue you will ever deal with. Nearly always, fights about money are a proxy for something else: power, communication, commitment to the relationship, respect, the setting of boundaries. If you get along, differences of opinion regarding your finances are not difficult to resolve.

Hard to see how housework is much different.

Sure, most women do the lion's share of the housework. Most women are more interested in maintaining an attractive and pleasant home (which is not at all the same as enjoying housework). On the other hand, most women are not particularly interested in seeing that the car is tuned up regularly, or that the weed whacker gets fixed, or that the couple's investment portfolio isn't tanking.

These are gross generalizations which don't hold true across the board even at Villa Cassandranita, but they remain (nonetheless) broadly true.

The Editorial Staff would wager that what really matters to most women is not how many hours of housework a man does, but that (all other things being equal) her husband demonstrates in concrete ways that he is committed to making the relationship work. Being a manly man (and not - contrary to the fevered dreams of Madison Avenue execs) a frustrated mezzo soprano, the manner of making the marital contribution is likely to be in some realm other than housework. However, that is a matter best left up to the parties involved.

"Twould seem that if women truly wish to be thought of as competent and fully equal partners in the boardroom, they might best accomplish this goal by demonstrating the ability to negotiate mutually satisfactory outcomes in the bedroom (where arguably, they hold the whip hand) rather than constantly coming out with moronic studies that contradict the very premises they labor so diligently to promulgate.

But then we always were notoriously insensitive.

Update: We saw this last week - also courtesy of the Murderously Funny One - (Men... can't live with 'em, and if you kill them someone always finds the bodies... go figure) and meant to get back to it. We found it amusing for several reasons:

1. We very nearly (despite the posting date) bought into it hook, line, and sinker.

2. After realizing it was a joke, we found ourselves reflecting that after 29 years of successful marriage - yes, to the same man - we rather thought a few of Dr. Melissa's snarky suggestions, taken in moderation, of course, have quite a bit to recommend them. We thought the following deserved a bit of comment:

2. Call rarely--It's so annoying to have your work interrupted by mindless blather about nothing. One of the biggest myths is that your significant other actually cares what you're thinking about when you're chomping your food on your lunch hour. Newsflash! No one cares.

Oddly enough, we rarely call the spousal unit at work. It's not that we don't love him, or like to hear his voice during the day.

It's that he's working. And so are we.

Also, a tiny little voice in the back of our curly little head keeps whispering that a little absence doth indeed make the heart grow fonder. And we don't really need to interrupt his hectic work day to ask him inane questions about plumbing or car tires or whatnot that we - as a mature adult - are perfectly capable of dealing with on our own. If we need to ask a question, we usually employ email, which allows him to deal with such mundane queries at a time of his choosing.

Life is stressful enough as it is. Why not make our rare times during the weekday pleasant, and why not allow him to deal in his preferred mode (i.e., work things at work, home things at home)? Just a thought.

3. Retreat from conflict--People often deal with conflict by trying to resolve it and talk it out. This can be a big mistake. Most likely, the things you fight about today are the things you're going to fight about forever. Don't resolve it. Accept it. Stay away for as long as possible. The other person will eventually get tired of being angry.

This is something the Editorial Staff has been working on.

While we by no means mean to suggest that serious matters should be ignored, not all ongoing conflicts are serious, and not all in a marriage are solvable either. So why talk them all to death?

Sometimes it may be preferable to employ a Gallic shrug of the shoulders and agree to disagree. In other words if it's just a minor annoyance, maybe you don't really need to talk about it. Shrug it off and let it go. Sometimes a hug and a corny joke - even when you don't much feel like it - works wonders.

5. Spend time cultivating interests that don't include your spouse--One of the biggest problems in marriages is that people think they should do stuff together. Why? If you like golf, and your wife hates it, well, she'll just have to get over it and understand that golf makes you happy. If she likes shopping, she needs to do it when it's convenient for her. Her man will understand. Togetherness is overrated.

Again, of course a couple have to have some interests in common (personally we vote for sex) but there is really nothing wrong with maintaining a few separate interests and/or friends either - it's a great way to keep your relationship from growing stale and I'll guarantee your spouse is a lot less likely to lose interest in you or take you for granted if you have your own friends and your own life and encourage them to do the same.

You were a person in your own right before you got married.

The problem here, I think, is twofold.

Men sometimes push the boundaries by continuing to act, when they are newly married, as though they were still single. This isn't right because in order to make a marriage work it is necessary to do two things: put the marriage first, and submerge (at times) some parts of yourself. This doesn't mean the woman is demanding or needy. It just means that marriage is supposed to be a relationship between two adults, not between a man and his mother.

We all have to suppress parts of our personality to get along with others at times. We do it in the workplace, we do it in line at the store when we don't pull out an Ouzi and waste the lady with the screaming, obnoxious brats who won't stay in the grocery cart. But that is not the same as giving up your identity in the expectation that the other person will "make" you happy. Your spouse cannot possibly satisfy all of your emotional needs. No one person can do that, and it's unfair to expect that they would. In the long run, your relationship will be a lot healthier if you preserve some outside interests and friendships to fill the gaps between your needs and those things your spouse is willing and/or able to provide for you in the relationship.

We hit on men earlier. Women often engage in unconscious 'trading'. We want the man to behave in a more positive manner so we 'trade' favors, unconsciously hoping he will reciprocate with the desired behavior.

There's just one problem with this. Actually, there are several problems:

1. Most guys aren't paying attention, and they're perfectly happy to let you trade your little heart out until steam is coming from both ears. If you're waiting for him to notice and you are holding your breath, you aren't much smarter than this gal.

2. He didn't ask you to do those things for him and may (in fact) be completely uninterested in engaging in the kind of trade you envision, especially with someone who - from all appearances - has not only inexplicably lost the power of human speech but expects him to read her mind. On the other hand, if you just make it plain to him that not only are certain things Extremely Important To You, but that a successful marriage requires the same amount of hard work and dedication as any other commitment he thinks is important to his future (i.e., his career), he will understand. It's just that when two people with different priorities form a partnership, the only way for them both to get what they want is for both of them to learn to communicate and bargain without getting nasty about it.

Marriage isn't a zero sum game. That's probably the greatest single thing about it.

Posted by Cassandra at 07:39 AM | Comments (25) | TrackBack

April 01, 2008

Charlotte Allen, You Have Your Answer....

Just when the Editorial Staff concluded it couldn't possibly be any more embarrassing to be female in America, Jane Harmon beclowns herself (quite an achievement, given the venue) in the LA Times:

The stories are shocking in their simplicity and brutality: A female military recruit is pinned down at knifepoint and raped repeatedly in her own barracks. Her attackers hid their faces but she identified them by their uniforms; they were her fellow soldiers. During a routine gynecological exam, a female soldier is attacked and raped by her military physician. Yet another young soldier, still adapting to life in a war zone, is raped by her commanding officer. Afraid for her standing in her unit, she feels she has nowhere to turn.

These are true stories, and, sadly, not isolated incidents. Women serving in the U.S. military are more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire in Iraq.

The scope of the problem was brought into acute focus for me during a visit to the West Los Angeles VA Healthcare Center, where I met with female veterans and their doctors. My jaw dropped when the doctors told me that 41% of female veterans seen at the clinic say they were victims of sexual assault while in the military, and 29% report being raped during their military service. They spoke of their continued terror, feelings of helplessness and the downward spirals many of their lives have since taken.

Numbers reported by the Department of Defense show a sickening pattern. In 2006, 2,947 sexual assaults were reported -- 73% more than in 2004. The DOD's newest report, released this month, indicates that 2,688 reports were made in 2007, but a recent shift from calendar-year reporting to fiscal-year reporting makes comparisons with data from previous years much more difficult.

We know just how Ms. Harmon thinks feels. When the Editorial Staff read these bone chilling statistics we had to run from the room to avoid blacking out or throwing up.

Rape is a serious crime. But modern military women would seem to be caught in a Catch-22, wouldn't they?

Here they are, volunteers in a line of work full of testosterone charged warriors whose entire raison d'etre is fighting. Advocates for women in the armed services charge that spiteful, authoritarian males are hell bent on preventing intelligent, fully equal females from moving into the combat arms where (presumably) they can compete with men on equal terms with no detriment to unit performance.

Comes now Rep. Jane Harmon to plead their case eloquently with the searing logic unique to our gender:

These strong, tough, intelligent, fully equal combat flowers need the immediate protection of the federal government because 41% of them have been the victims of sexual assault and 29% of them have been raped by their fellow servicemen. The Editorial Staff does not know about you, but we are not hearing a compelling argument for fuller integration of women into the armed forces.

While we're on the subject, Ms. Harmon might want to entertain the shocking notion that reported rapes are not the same thing as actual rapes:

Unsubstantiated or exaggerated allegations have been known to destroy careers. 9 A five-year survey of sexual assault in the U.S. Army found that reports of sexual abuse that proved to be “unfounded” after investigation tripled from 48 to 157 between 1999 and 2003. No explanation for the increase was given.

In fact, many documented studies have shown that false rape reports are extremely common:

"Forty-one percent of all reports are false."

This claim comes from a study conducted by Eugene J. Kanin of Purdue University. Kanin examined 109 rape complaints registered in a Midwestern city from 1978 to 1987.

Of these, 45 were ultimately classified by the police as "false." Also based on police records, Kanin determined that 50 percent of the rapes reported at two major universities were "false."

A larger Air Force study which Ms. Harmon also found unworthy of your consideration found rates that were even higher:

In 1985, a study of 556 rape allegations found that 27% accusers recanted when faced with a polygraph (which can be ordered in the military), and independent evaluation showed a false accusation rate of 60%. (McDowell, Charles P., Ph.D. “False Allegations.” Forensic Science Digest, (publication of the U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigations), Vol. 11, No. 4 (December 1985), p. 64.)

An expert in these cases comments:

While most of my practice has involved people who are clearly victims, in my image processing consultation practice I have seen multiple cases of false accusation of assault and rape. In one case, a man and a woman, both in the Navy but assigned to different ships, met and had sex while on liberty in Bahrain. The next day, the man approached the ship to which the woman was assigned and asked to see the woman to see if she wanted to go on another date. He was immediately arrested and charged with rape. Upon examination, the physical examination of the woman did not support the kind of assault she said happened, and image processing analysis of the skin injuries showed patterns inconsistent with her story. When asked for samples of the clothing and jewelry she was wearing at the time, she claimed that she had destroyed or burned them. Eventually the woman recanted and admitted the sex was consensual. It turned out that the woman was also sleeping with a noncommissioned officer also serving on the ship she was serving on, who was the person the alleged assailant asked permission of to board on the night he was arrested. When faced with her one night stand asking her lover for permission to board the ship to ask her for another date, she decided to claim rape rather than admit being unfaithful.

Unfortunately for the alleged “rapist,” this did not unfold quickly. The young man was under suspicion (and assigned to a penal detail) for 18 months before the recantation. By that time, his military career had been ruined.

Charlotte and I will be in the bar having a pomegranate martini. I hope we can somehow avoid the tragic fate of millions of other American women while we're there. But let's face it: the odds are against us.

Posted by Cassandra at 07:57 AM | Comments (49) | TrackBack

March 20, 2008

The Male Mind Is a Wonderful Thing

When my boys were small, I painted a small target on the inside back of the bowl with different colors of nail polish. Worked, too, as I recall.

CWCID: my Dad.

Posted by Cassandra at 01:38 PM | Comments (25) | TrackBack

Topic of the Day...

...toe reading. Who knew?

Britney Spears is the best example of how your toes change as your life and emotions change. In the April 2, 2007 edition of STAR Magazine Britney was quoted as saying, "My toes are really ugly."

We can see from the picture taken in about 2003, before all the ugliness started, that she toes were as fair and innocent as she was.
The picture to the right was taken while Britney Spears was vacationing in Las Vegas. As a Toe Reader, I noted back then how sensitive and self-conscious Britney's toes were. In this pictures you can see that the toes were relaxed and bowing in a cautious and reserved way. As a teacher of Toe Reading, I used this picture as a teaching example of how people can be "out there on center stage, and yet deep down, they are shy and very concerned about what people will say.”

Today these same feet have become red, swollen and 'gnarly' as the magazine headline refers to them. The same could be said of her emotional life. In Toe Reading, we refer to anything that is RED as acute to mean that there is a red hot emotion buried alive in the toe. Each toe represents an element or aspect of a person's life. When you look at the close-up insert of Britney's toes, you will see that almost every toe is red and acute, indicating that almost every aspect of her life is out of balance. Especially note the fourth and fifth toes in this picture - they are not only red, they are forming lumps which can be viewed as penned up emotions. The redder the toe, the more the toe is storing stories of frustration, anger or rage. The fourth toe on the RIGHT side is indicative of relationships with others in the world. The bump in Britney's RIGHT RELATIONSHIP toe, her fourth toe, accurately depicts the lumps she is having in her relationships currently. The redness speaks for itself - she is storing lots of red emotions.

The LEFT side holds the story of how we are with our internal self. Note that on Britney's LEFT side her first big toe, known as her DESTINY toe, is very big and swollen - it actually looks painful to walk on. The question a Toe Reader would ask her is: Britney, what part of your DESTINY is internally painful for you to look at right now? Are you having pain or discomfort internally as you walk in the world? One can only have incredible empathy for this confused young woman who is filled from head to toe with red-hot emotions.

The Blog Princess remembers fondly the day of yore, when me toes were as fair and innocent as...

Oh nevermind.

Posted by Cassandra at 08:43 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

How I Learned To Quit Worrying and Love the Thong

In today's issue of Women's MagWatch, the blog princess perused (the things I do for you people) an issue of a women's health mag and found that, as in the seamy underworld of men's reading material, "health" seems to be a polite euphenism for "Do me harder, baby... do me NOW".

Hey. Sex is healthy, isn't it? And words have meaning. The princesses' fave entry (besides the one with the lead-in, "Mentally stripping the pool boy?") was this:

My boyfriend and I have different preferences in lingerie. [Ed. note: Hmmm... ya think?] I like sexy but tasteful pieces; he's a fan of garter belts and crotchless panties. How can I dress to turn him on but still feel comfortable in my own skin-er, nighties?

- Gail

To which several snarky replies seemed apropos:

1. Dear Gail: have you ever considered moving to Saudi Arabia?

2. Gail:

He's a man. Quit whining and order the crotchless u-trau already.

3. Dear Gail:

Men like fantasy, variety, the thrill of the chase and at least the illusion that their options are still open. Women like men who are emotionally available; who commit to making the relationship work. But everything in life has a price tag.

If you expect him to listen to you blather on about your feelings don't want him to stray, it's called "Reciprocity, bay-bee"....

Meanwhile in other news, it's good to see that our brave, murdering, childlike troops are not being depraved deprived by an uncaring BushReich:

Pakistan was the dry run for my current Extended Practical Exercise. I remembered what I figured I'd need but didn't and *did* need but forgot, so I packed the big-item gotta-haves and figured I'd visit the local BX/PX to pick up anything I'd overlooked. Or which happened to break in transit.

My soap dish was a casualty. No problem, I thought -- what's easier to find in a PX/BX than that quintessential item of military hygienic equipment, the plastic soap dish?

Now those of you at home, don't shout out the only obvious answer... thongs:

The PX/BX got eight soap dishes in yesterday. Along with two boxes of designer thongs in designer colors [Cassie -- your e-mail about thongs had *nothing* to do with it].

*sigh*

And while we're on the subject, we have absolutely NO desire to find out what a "buttstock" is.

TMI, my friend.

Just as an aside, you have to love how the NY Times applies 'logic-and-facts' to the issue of marital fidelity and promptly deduces that 2+2 does, in fact, equal 5:

It’s all been done before, every snickering bit of it, and not just by powerful “risk-taking” alpha men who may or may not be enriched for the hormone testosterone. It’s been done by many other creatures, tens of thousands of other species, by male and female representatives of every taxonomic twig on the great tree of life. Sexual promiscuity is rampant throughout nature, and true faithfulness a fond fantasy. Oh, there are plenty of animals in which males and females team up to raise young, as we do, that form “pair bonds” of impressive endurance and apparent mutual affection, spending hours reaffirming their partnership by snuggling together like prairie voles or singing hooty, doo-wop love songs like gibbons, or dancing goofily like blue-footed boobies.

Yet as biologists have discovered through the application of DNA paternity tests to the offspring of these bonded pairs, social monogamy is very rarely accompanied by sexual, or genetic, monogamy. Assay the kids in a given brood, whether of birds, voles, lesser apes, foxes or any other pair-bonding species, and anywhere from 10 to 70 percent will prove to have been sired by somebody other than the resident male.

As David P. Barash, a professor of psychology at the University of Washington in Seattle, put it with Cole Porter flair: Infants have their infancy; adults, adultery. Dr. Barash, who wrote “The Myth of Monogamy” with his psychiatrist-wife, Judith Eve Lipton, cited a scene from the movie “Heartburn” in which a Nora Ephronesque character complains to her father about her husband’s philanderings and the father quips that if she’d wanted fidelity, she should have married a swan. Fat lot of good that would have done her, Dr. Barash said: we now know that swans can cheat, too. Instead, the heroine might have considered union with Diplozoon paradoxum, a flatworm that lives in gills of freshwater fish. “Males and females meet each other as adolescents, and their bodies literally fuse together, whereupon they remain faithful until death,” Dr. Barash said. “That’s the only species I know of in which there seems to be 100 percent monogamy.” And where the only hearts burned belong to the unlucky host fish.

Those who inexplicably chose fidelity over philandering being roughly comparable to that noble creature, the infantile parasitic flatworm fused for life to the gills of a random freshwater fish. Who was it who quipped that conservatism is a refusal to think?

The wag.

Posted by Cassandra at 07:45 AM | Comments (17) | TrackBack

March 17, 2008

Well Slap Us Around And Call Us "Susie"

Tigerhawk is writing about sex again.

Men...

Posted by Cassandra at 05:06 AM | Comments (20) | TrackBack

March 13, 2008

Question of the Day

What do you all think?

Is the ability to make a woman laugh critical in order for a man to be successful with the ladies (or just that special woman who catches his eye?)

Yes or no, and why?

I'll keep my opinion to myself for now. As usual, I have an opinion and it's a fairly strong one, but I'm interested in hearing what you all think so I'd prefer not to say anything just yet.

And yes, there's a mini-rant coming up :p But then you knew that, didn't you?

Posted by Cassandra at 12:11 PM | Comments (79) | TrackBack

March 10, 2008

That Terrifying Place....

Rev Mother Gaius: Enough! Kull Wahad! No woman child ever withstood that much. Take your hand out of the box and look at it...young human. Do it!
Rev Mother Gaius: Pain by nerve induction. A human can resist any pain. Our test is crisis and observation.
Paul: I see the truth of it.
Rev Mother Gaius (voiceover): Could he be the one? Maybe...but will he be ours to control?
Girl: Tell me of your homeworld, Usul.
Rev Mother Gaius: Do you know of the Water of Life? The bile from the newborn worms of Arrakis.
Paul: I have heard of it.
Rev Mother Gaius: It is very dangerous. The Bene Gesserit Sisterhood use it to see - within. There is a place...terrifying to us, to women. It is said a man will come - the Kwisatz Haderach. He will go where we cannot. Many men have tried.
Paul: They tried and failed?
Rev Mother Gaius: They tried and died.
- Dune

Since Ace was man enough to go into that terrifying place the other day (God help him!) the blog princess attempted to answer his question. But her answer appears to have stirred up a good deal of confusion on its own. This post is an attempt to address clarify those issues.

On the Hornet's Nest post, Gregory asks a question that seems to be causing enough confusion that I thought it merited its own post:

OK, Cass. As both of us said, the final arbiter is the blog owner. I even agreed that it's rudeness to do what is being done.

Having said that, I still don't see what you are trying to accomplish. Are you trying to get Ace to clean up his site? Cannot be, since it's not gonna happen. Are you trying to shame guys to clean up their act in teh intarwebs? Again, that cannot be, because it's not gonna happen. But if you're just blowing off steam, then yeah, men can be and often are bozos. I admit it. I act the goat more often than not too - and I'm not very nice to my parents, to boot. So they'd say, anyways, and in my introspective moments I would agree that I am often unthinking.

I mean, I'm not exactly advocating that you just throw your hands up, say "men!" and wash your hands of the whole thing. Your blog, your bandwidth, your money, your rules. And if you're gonna be Don Quixote, there are worse windmills to tilt at. (I'm sorry, but you did ask for our thoughts.)

Allow me to state what I want to state in point form, so that I don't clog it up with verbiage.

1. Speech is free on the Net. Men and women alike should and are allowed to be utter and complete boors. Likewise, others should be and are allowed to express their disapproval.

2. I have no personal beef with people online being morons. Knowing as I do that I can avoid them if I want to.

3. The public square is becoming less and less civil. This is deplorable, immoral and quite possibly fattening. But it is a fact.

4. Men and women both are having their sensibilities shocked on a daily basis, and their natures coarsened.

5. You said that you thought the same as 'Jane' the commenter did - that a sense of limits exist on every and all blogs. Very good. The limits are defined on Ace's blog as on yours. I try to abide by the limits both - you will notice I try not to use expletives. Which means, if the limits are a lot looser on Ace than here, then that's what it is.

Was I building up strawmen? I don't think so, but you know what you write and what I understood from it may be two completely different beasts. Hence we are divided by a common language.

Let me see if I understand you correctly. Blogs are not ordinary 'public arenas' like the town hall, or the park, or even a social milieu like the church or community centre. Blogs are private areas which the owner has opened up for people. As you do, and your humble servant is grateful. Even moreso that you are back blogging, since I missed you during your hiatus. In that sense, it is more like the corner pub or country club.

Ace has set the standard, as you rightly put. A grand majority (you can see over 550 posts generally agreeing) is fine with the standards as they currently stand. I'm afraid you'll have to write off AoSHQ as a stag club - with exceptions.

And I am very glad that you believe everyone should be held to specific standards. So do I. And the standard set at Ace is one I will hold to at Ace. I hope I hold to your standard here.

A few points.

Over and over again in the comments on this post I kept seeing the same refrain: what are you trying to accomplish? What are you trying to change?

To which I can only respond, why on earth do you assume I mean to accomplish or change anything? For Pete's sake - VC is one tiny site amongst literally tens of thousands of fairly insignificant blogs out there. I don't even have a blogroll. I don't have trackbacks. I don't shop my posts to other bloggers. What objective behavior on my part indicates that I'm the kind of blogger who goes around trying to change anything? Or even interacts, in any significant way, with other bloggers (especially ones in Ace's league)?

Wouldn't that be just a tad hubristic on my part, thinking I was going to change the way the blogosphere works with one post on a site that, by virtue of the way I have chosen to run it, doesn't get a whole lot of traffic and/or attention? Does this really make sense?

I think if I were trying to change people, I'd be behaving differently, don't you? It would be more effective if I took a more active stance, such as (say) pleading my case assertively at the sites in question; which is something I'm certainly capable of doing. I have never shrunk from arguments in the past when I feel strongly about an issue, and those of you who know me also know how tenacious I am when I feel strongly about an issue. Yet I have done none of those things.

So let's walk through this, because I think it's an interesting comment (at least to me) on the differences between the way women and men think. Don't know how many of you recall the men vs. women cheat sheet. Admittedly it was an oversimplified model, but there's more than a grain of truth to it. One of the things I've often observed about conversations between men and women in general is that when a woman brings up a topic, a guy generally assumes she wants him to do_something_about_it, whereas oftentimes she merely wants to discuss it without doing anything about it.

She is not doing this to be confusicating and make your heads explode. We just don't think the way you do, guys. Not everything in the universe is an action item for us. I think this is a huge source of friction between men and women; moreover I believe it's a major reason guys often think we're being 'controlling'.

Sometimes we are. Women have been known to be maddeningly indirect (i.e., we bring things up in an infuriatingly sideways fashion instead of simply stating what we want straight out and then the man is supposed to read our minds - because 'if you truly *cared* about us, of course you'd *know* what we wanted!). To make matters even worse, we often don't realize we're even doing this, just as men often don't realize they're being maddeningly obtuse when they pretend not to notice the light of his life stopped speaking to him four weeks ago and put fire ants in his jockey shorts because anything would be preferable to having to talk about his feeeeeeeeeeelings :p

But other times, we raise topics because we want to talk about them. We may be irritated and want to vent. We may be trying to decide what to do, or what we think about an issue, and need a sounding board. We may simply enjoy the pure pleasure of having a discussion with someone we like (and Lord knows, women love to talk). It could just be a topic or idea that is bothering us - something we can't be off our minds, and sharing our thoughts about it helps us to process it and put it to bed, so to speak; to stop thinking about it. It may be some combination of these things, or some other reason entirely.

There may well be elements of some or all of these here.

Primarily, I think, my motive pretty straightforward, and it's right out in the open. I wanted to address the question Ace asked in my post:

Are you telling me that it is de facto out of bounds for man to comment on a woman's looks, ever, even if the looks being commented on are purely a choice of the woman's....

I want to know precisely what standard -- applicable to either sex -- I violated or I'd like to know if you yourselves are indulging yourselves in an unfair double-standard.

I thought that was a great question, and I thought it deserved a thoughtful answer.

I also knew I couldn't deliver a thorough answer in the comments section of the Jawa Report, so I chose to do it here. I thought it would make for some interesting discussion.

I still think it's an interesting question.

In the course of answering that question, I decided that while there is probably nothing wrong with commenting on someone's personal appearance, that sort of remark will get you in hot water in real life. It is considered rude, and for good reason.

It's the kind of thing that hurts people's feelings: the kind of comment adults refrain from out of common decency and respect for the feelings of others; in other words, ordinary politeness. Furthermore, I commented that what had specifically upset some of the women in this case was some unnecessarily crude and ugly derogatory sexual commentary (and by the way, I didn't direct anyone to the objectionable comments, but they weren't limited to "I'd hit that", which IMO is eminently shrug-offable. Some of them were just way over the line).

So, what was the point of that post? Did I think I would change anything?

On a macro scale, no not really. I certainly didn't expect Ace or Rusty to do anything. I fully believe that, regardless of what I may say or do, people make up their own minds about what my subjective motivation is. I also think (and this is from reading repeated comments which totally disregarded what I said over and over again in my post and comments) a lot of men seem to have it in their heads that women are - by nature - 'controlling'. This seems to be some sort of innate bias that exists independently of any objective evidence to the contrary; as several commenters who came over here to engage remarked, they will simply discount anything I say or do that conflicts with what they've already decided: I want them to do what they think I want.

There is really nothing I can say or do to change this impression. And I see no reason to try. If men want to view women as overemotional and/or controlling even when they (in fact) remain calm and unemotional when they're told they're being emotional and don't (in fact) do anything to try to control men, that is their right :p

A final question. If you do think that addressing Ace's question on my own site (I did this); pointing out that certain behavior is (I did this too) normally considered offensive by objective societal standards; or even (I did not do this, though several people seem to think I did) calling for people to stop doing what they're doing amounts to an attempt to:

(a) coerce a grown man into changing the policy on his site against his will, or

(b) shame grown men into behaving contrary to their desires on sites that aren't my own

Isn't that completely illogical? Isn't my supposed complaint that they don't "care" about what women think in the first place?

So why on earth would they suddenly start "caring" about what I think now? People are going to think what they think, and act accordingly. I cannot control what they think.

I can, and do, like to throw ideas out for discussion. People can take whatever they like on board and act accordingly. None of that is within my control.

So much for my 'agenda' :p

Posted by Cassandra at 07:34 AM | Comments (62) | TrackBack

March 08, 2008

Poking The Hornet's Nest

First of all, I'm not a big fan of gender wars. Nonetheless, I feel a strong need to uphold the honor of the fairer sex and so, as an olive branch (and to show that I fully understand the male need to indulge in a bit of harmless fantasizing whilst wallowing in oodles of abundant feminine pulchritude - no half-starved starlets here!) I offer to Ace, Rusty, and yes, Vinnie this eminently shaggable bit of eye candy:

Yeah. I'd hit it :p

Serious commentary coming up soon after the fold. It's been a long week guys.

It all started with this post:

What is it with some male bloggers?—"Too fat, too thin. Too out-of-shape. Too fat. Too buff. Too old. Too young." (Oops! That last one never happens. Just trying to see if you're paying attention.)

...I like Ace and his crew. I even like Rusty and (most of) his crew (at least, when they aren't waxing anti-gay). But, WTF? Maybe their fans should be required to post pictures next to their comments—these fine gourmands of female flesh. I'm sure they are all prime beef. Uh-huh.

....why is it necessary to slam women who are making the best of this whole getting-older thing?

That morning, I checked out the posts in question. In most cases it wasn't so much the posts as the comments that were objectionable; at least to me. The debate raged on throughout the day - I won't bore you with the details. But that night, Ace weighed in with an interesting question that I do want to address, because I think it gets to the heart of the disconnect between the way men and women see much of what happens on the Internet:

Are you telling me that it is de facto out of bounds for man to comment on a woman's looks, ever, even if the looks being commented on are purely a choice of the woman's?

I mean here, we are not even talking about women being fat-- we are talking about Madonna and Sarah Jessica Parker weightlifting and dieting to the point of having bulging muscles and (in Madonna's case) a bodyfat percentage that actually seems to be in the negative 20's.

I write about Michael Moore being morbidly obese all the time. Never a word. Now I do a post on another celebrity for jacking her biceps up bigger than Mark Maguire and the red flag gets thrown? By what standard? That it's her "choice"? Why is fair to skewer men in this admittedly juvenile and mean spirited fashion but when it's a woman it's suddenly far, far out of bounds?

If I'm missing the nuance please explain it to me. Apparently I'm in dutch with you fellers and I don't want to be. But I want to know precisely what standard -- applicable to either sex -- I violated or I'd like to know if you yourselves are indulging yourselves in an unfair double-standard.

Not at all trying to bait, just trying to figure out precisely what the hell is going on here?

To be fair, let me say that I understand his confusion to a certain extent. Most women I talked to that day didn't really have any problem with his post. It was the comments that upset them. A lot of things were raised during the debate that I think were interesting, but didn't really cut to the heart of the problem the way Jane's comment did. I thought her remark was unusually perceptive, in that it avoided the usual minefields while neatly summing up the real issue here. I'll let you read it, and then add my comments:

It's a fact of human nature that both men and women speak in a more raunchy way when they are in a gender segregated group. I think the point here is to maintain a level of respect for the mixed gender nature of the internet.

Sarah's [Connor] muscles are an appropriate topic, and negative comments about her resulting appearance are also appropriate. Rating her screwability is tacky. It's locker-room. And it makes many women feel somewhat insulted or trivialized, not because it's a question of comparison with any movie star but a lack of recognition of our existence as females in the comments and as readers.

If male blog proprietors honestly don't care about insulting their female readers, then it becomes a guy only blog after time. And we all miss out. I understand commenters are not under the control of anybody, but an informal or formal sense of limits exist on every blog. It's about decency and respect for us as ladies. Yes as ladies, not women.

To me, this is the heart of the issue. As I said, I can't speak for others.

Almost every day, I see men react like scalded cats at the notion that women are trying to "control" them on the Internet. Let's examine this for a moment.

What is really missing here is any recognition that the Internet is essentially a public social medium. What you do and say on the Internet is not private. It is really little different than standing on a street corner in town with people you don't know walking by, or standing in a crowded hallway at work or at a Metro station.

Now a question: how many of you would stand in any of these venues with a Hustler magazine open, staring at nude photos of some celebrity and making crude sexual remarks like "Yeah, the body's OK but she'd better cover up that horse face. Maybe she could turn around so I could do her from behind."

Is there any social milieu you are aware of where this is considered acceptable behavior for grown men? If so, I am not aware of it. And yet, women are confronted with this sort of thing every single day on the Internet. And if we dare to object, we are told "Stop being emotional and controlling. Men are pigs. They like to look at women's bodies and they will never change. If you weren't ugly and fat, you wouldn't be so threatened by the way we are."

Wow.

There are sites (and blogs) on the Internet which are almost exclusively devoted to this sort of thing. As a woman, if I see a site like that, I know exactly what is going on there and I don't go there because I know the atmosphere there is neither welcoming nor conducive to my participation. Frankly there is no purpose to my presence there.

And that's fine - they are free to carry on without me. I'm not going to conduct a campaign to get them ejected from the Internet, nor will I try to shame them into stopping. I just ignore them, much as I would step around a wad of gum on the sidewalk or make sure not to see a Michael Moore's latest movie. I'm not interested, but I don't try to stop it either.

However, a site like The Jawa Report or Ace o' Spades discusses lots of topics that I happen, as a woman, to be interested in. The war on terror, for instance. And politics. So they're a mixed bag. Ace just won some big award at CPAC. Not sure what it was - I don't pay much attention to those things. And I like Ace. I like his writing on those occasions when he is serious. He has written some incredibly perceptive things that I've enjoyed greatly. He is one of a very few bloggers on my RSS feed for that reason.

But I'll be honest. I avoid his site, because I've tried participating in a few discussions and the commenters often make me angry and uncomfortable, which is saying a lot because I'm more confident and assertive than probably 98% of women I've encountered either in real life or in the virtual world. I don't give a rat's ass about traffic or whether other bloggers link to me - that's why I don't have trackbacks - if they like what I write, great. If not, they're free to blast me or ignore me. Either way, I don't back down from confrontations I think are important, as I think this post ought to demonstrate.

I would like to think I'm a thoughtful person and I believe I have a lot to offer in a serious discussion. But life is just way too short to subject myself to unnecessary aggravation. As Jane said so eloquently, if male bloggers choose, for whatever reason, to either cultivate or allow that kind of climate to develop on their sites, it will have the effect of driving women away. Personally, I view that as their choice. They've decided I (and women like me) are not the sort of persons whose respect is important to them. And that's OK. Choice is good :p I'm all about choice.

But the real point I'd like to throw out for your consideration is this: I don't think women are being oversensitive here. In real life, remarks about a person's appearance, whether it's Michael Moore's obesity, the size of Madonna's breasts or whether Ace or Rusty's commenter (as distinguished from Ace and Rusty, who did not say any of these things) think various celebrities are bangable, push the envelope of social acceptability. In short, they're considered rude. But the faceless nature of the Internet encourages us to do things we would never dream of doing in real life.

And then we are surprised when some people get offended by acts or statements which would be considered unequivocally offensive, had they been encountered in real life; by things I'm fairly certain none of these commenters would dream of saying if they were face to face with live human beings in a real conversation. Except that blogging IS a conversation.

With real, live human beings. And none of the age-old social conventions, taboos, emotions, differences between the genders changed just because you're on the Internet instead of standing on the street corner. And telling a woman she is pathetically insecure, or controlling, or that she's engaging in a double standard, because she objects to something that would offend and embarrass her in real life, doesn't make a whole lot of sense, does it?

I don't think women have the expectation that no one is ever going to say anything crass. We don't dry up and blow away like fragile wildflowers just because someone makes a crude remark, and we certainly understand that busy site owners can't catch every comment. But when it's not just one comment but several, when a thread goes on and on and not one person objects, a very clear message is being sent: "This is OK." And it's not just the site owner. It's the other readers. I think the general tone is set from the top, and if that is done, the readers themselves will help to enforce it. I've seen that happen here at VC because I insist on civility during heated debates, and when Salon or Slate or other liberal sites have linked here, their commenters have uniformly been surprised at the reception they've received, even when they've initially been quite rude and provocative. As a result, we've had some good discussions. This is not to say we're perfect; we're not. But it does show that setting a clear expectation and reinforcing it DOES work. I believe that with all my heart and four years of blogging reinforces that belief.

So I think male bloggers, and particularly conservative male bloggers, have some thinking to do. It's harder to police the comments on a large site. I know this. It's one of the reasons I've quit several times when VC got to 2000 visits a day. I knock it back to something more reasonable, because it is more difficult to make this the kind of place I want it to be if it gets too much traffic. And for me, too much attention kills everything I love about blogging, which is the interaction with my readers. The world is full of crappy tradeoffs like that, but what are you going to do? As a blogger, you decide what your values are. Do you want lots of traffic? Do you want to accomplish other things? Are you just in it to have fun? Hopefully your blogging reflects your goals and your values.

The Internet presents us with some interesting moral dilemmas. I am going to be brutally honest here. Email and comments are too easy. You type into a little box and hit "Send" and in an instant, some random synaptic misfire of yours can travel halfway across the world. It's true, there is a bit of a 'buffer' to virtual interaction between the genders, because we don't see each other face to face. I like that in some ways because it 'preserves the decencies'. But it can also tempt us into forgetting we are speaking and acting in an essentially public forum.

And we are. If you don't care who's watching, or how your words may affect others, by all means carry on. If what you're doing is consistent with your values I think you have nothing to change.

But if you think about this, and conclude that (in real life) adults generally don't find this sort of thing socially acceptable in mixed company, I think you have to ask yourself: why is that? And I also think you have to ask the next logical question: is this such a valuable activity that it's worth offending so many people? I know that every day I wave off I can't tell you how many posts because I know they would offend liberal readers. Or men. I censor what I write out of a general feeling that there is no reason to say absolutely everything on my mind. This is not to say I never cross the line or make mistakes. I've done that more times than I'm proud of.

But the notion that just because we're on the Internet there should be no limits, or that we can throw out all social conventions, is not one I believe conservatives want to hang their hats on.

Just a thought, guys. Feel free to let me know what you think, tactfully and thoughtfully.

Posted by Cassandra at 09:00 AM | Comments (85) | TrackBack

March 06, 2008

How Dumb Can WaPo Readers Get?

Well, to all appearances the bar is set pretty low. Over the past few days erudite readers of my hometown paper have fallen all over themselves protesting the fact that Charlotte Allen was "allowed" to insult their intelligence with this travesty of a column in Sunday's Outlook section.

They may have a point. Surely it didn't take a rocket scientist to predict that readers who consider this an appropriate response to an opinion piece might be a bit defensive on the subject of IQ:

Hey, did you hear about that time some dumb, past-her-prime, femme-hating lady penned the worst single opinion piece in the history of the Washington Post? Yeah, we thought you had. I've already had a couple of riveting things to say about it elsewhere. And, recommended: Jezebelles Moe and Megan give it the point-by-point takedown it deserves.

Obviously, compounding the stupidity of the original piece is the lame walk-back attempt made by Outlook editor John Pomfret this morning, who defended the piece on the grounds that it was a "tongue-in-cheek" attempt at humor. That would be a decent enough excuse if Charlotte Allen was some sort of noted humorist, but so far as I have been able to ascertain, she's only notable for misogyny.

Still, this "tongue-in-cheek" style that Pomfret describes sure is intriguing, and sounds like an enjoyable milieu in which to write. So if I were to attest to the fact that Outlook Editor John Pomfret was a dumb son-of-a-whore who lacks the common sense that God gave a wet bag of grapefruit husks, and whose lack of evident competence at his job points to the sad truth that his upward career trajectory has been earned mainly on the strength at how willing he was to blow his bosses with the eagerness and aggressive enthusiasm of a rabid raccoon ferreting through a dumpster for tiny scraps of spoiled food and thus is in no way deserving of a post of responsibility at a major daily newspaper, I would certainly hope that Mr. Pomfret takes it in the "tongue-in-cheek" spirit of this wretched Charlotte Allen piece that he continues to champion.

Hope I've "packaged" this piece with sufficient clarity, asshole.

I suppose we may be thankful the author did not insult our intelligence by engaging in hyperbole or ad hominem attacks.

Seriously, I've read Allen's original column three or four times now and for the life of me I still can't understand what all the fuss is about. If one absolutely, in the face of all that is reasonable, insists on taking it as some sort of scholarly treatise on female intelligence rather than a lighthearted poke at the foibles of the fairer sex, I suppose it's possible to work up a really righteous wad of indignation.

But what then? Do various commentators really mean to suggest that it's now off limits in the United States of America to voice opinions they disagree with in a publicly owned newspaper? Since when did the Taliban move here?

Or, perhaps, is it their intent that a vocal minority of readers ought to be able to shout down unpopular opinions? For instance, if the editors of the Post get enough hate mail, should they shush up writers who pen anything controversial? Great, because I really detest liberal writers and I'm sick of having my blood pressure go through the roof when I see them in the Post. Now I know how to ensure the Post only prints what I want it to print: my friends and I will just engineer hate mail campaigns every time we see something we dislike and intimidate the Post into refusing to publish anything that might inflame the huddled masses. How is this any different than what went on over in Denmark with the Mohammed cartoons?

Oh. You mean intimidation is acceptable when it's used to suppress ideas you disagree with? Got it.

If women wanted to prove Ms. Allen's point, they could hardly do better than to behave exactly as they have this week: i.e., erupt like a bunch of overemotional harpies on a PMS jag. And pardon me, but it doesn't help to have Ed Morrissey fanning the flames:

Allen also does something else in this essay that deserves condemnation, albeit slightly more subtly. She denigrates those who choose to stay home and make motherhood and family their primary ambition. Instead of recognizing it as a valid choice for strong, independent women, Allen makes it sounds as if women are suited for nothing else. That shortchanges women whose capabilities allow them a wide range of choices but whose priorities unselfishly focus on the people closest to them.

Pardon me. Ms. Allen did nothing of the sort. Mr. Morrissey should work on his reading comprehension skills. How do Ms. Allen's words "denigrate those who stay at home"?

I don't understand why more women don't relax, enjoy the innate abilities most of us possess (as well as the ones fewer of us possess) and revel in the things most important to life at which nearly all of us excel: tenderness toward children and men and the weak and the ability to make a house a home.

I was a stay at home wife and mother for 18 years. I don't know about you; perhaps it's those superior female verbal skills of mine, but being told my own sex excels at "the things most important to life" sounds more like an accolade than an insult to these all untutored ears. Your mileage, of course, may vary. One must look awfully hard to find disparagement, but Ed manages to reach for the rose and find the thorn. But he's hardly alone in the humor-impaired crowd screaming "off with her head"! Lisa Schiffren perceives rank sexism in Allen's send-up of ditzy chicks who faint at Obama rallies:

The rationale for the piece appears to be the admittedly quite disturbing phenomenon of adult women literally swooning at Obama rallies. Allen makes the same analogy that has occurred to me: These women look like the teenage girls at Beatles concerts, fainting and wetting their seats, circa 1964. Disturbing, to be sure. But that was a mass phenomenon in a repressed age. The Obama business is considerably more limited in scope. Anyway, what does this prove about women's intelligence? It proves, for sure, that certain kinds of generally sexualized "fan" behavior have become acceptable, and leached from the popular culture to the political culture, which, post-Bill Clinton, is no surprise at all. More specifically, it suggests that some "fans" (and this applies equally to men and women), don't really know in which realm "Obama the phenom" belongs. And thirdly — yes, it's just plain embarassing behavior. You'd think the Obama campaign would want to squelch it, since he isn't really angling to get on the Ed Sullivan show, and it trivializes his appeal.

Let's walk through the "logic" of Lisa's argument, such as it is:

1. The "women" who swooned over the Beatles were really only girls.

2. Plus, that was in a "repressed age" where such pent up feelings naturally might become overwhelming, especially to an immature and unsophisticated person; hence the fainting.

3. The women who swoon over Obama are full grown adults.

4. We no longer live in a repressed age.

5. Therefore, these full-grown, unrepressed women are fainting because....

Yeah. And while we're at it, how dare Charlotte Allen imply fainting is a sex-linked characteristic!

Does a certain type of man swoon and faint in the same way? I don't know.

Well gosh, Lisa. Maybe someone in the media can tell you. Have you asked?

Exactly how many men have fainted at Obama rallies? Could it be that Ms. Allen's criticisms contain more than a grain of Inconvenient Truth? Could it be, possibly, that this is precisely why you (and apparently others) find them so upsetting?

I don't know about you, Lisa, but as a woman in a technical field I've spent years fighting the perception that women ARE ditzy, overemotional, and prone to making ill-informed decisions. So I really don't appreciate it when I see other women playing into those stereotypes.

On the other hand, it doesn't bother me one bit when a women points out that women who DO play into those stereotypes are acting like jackasses because that shows that not all of us approve of that sort of behavior. And I don't think much of people who apologize for that sort of behavior.

The phrase "the soft bigotry of low expectations" comes to mind. You may have heard it bandied about. Sorry, but I expect more from women in general. If you find that harsh, I'm afraid you'll have to dislike me too.

I'm not sure this particular column was Charlotte Allen's best work, but it certainly isn't worth the snit fit it seems to have provoked among humor impaired folks who ought to know better. Both men and women as general classes of people have their funny quirks. Not all of us behave in these ways, but when we lose our ability to laugh at the funny (and often painful) sides of both personal and political life, we are in danger of losing a part of our souls.

Grow up. And more importantly, lighten up. It was just a column, hardly the sort of thing that imperils the Republic. If we're going to begin censoring lighthearted commentary about the differences between the sexes out of some misguided feeling that women are too fragile to handle a little criticism, then we aren't ready to compete with men in the boardroom, the battlefield, or the classroom and this childish outcry, far from than strengthening confidence in our rightful place in American life, both undermines and erodes it.

Posted by Cassandra at 09:59 AM | Comments (20) | TrackBack

February 19, 2008

I BELIEVE!!!!!

And The Holy Spirit Descended Upon Them and anointed them and they began to testify and to speak in tongues of devils and of angels...

You've gotta love Southerners. These are God fearing people.

Posted by Cassandra at 06:20 PM | Comments (26) | TrackBack

February 10, 2008

Grow Up Already: Why Married Love Isn't "Settling"

Whilst drinking her morning coffee, the Princess ran into a rather perplexing piece (via Glenn Reynolds) on Settling for Mr. Good Enough:

... while Rachel and her supposed soul mate, Ross, finally get together (for the umpteenth time) in the finale of Friends, do we feel confident that she’ll be happier with Ross than she would have been had she settled down with Barry, the orthodontist, 10 years earlier? She and Ross have passion but have never had long-term stability, and the fireworks she experiences with him but not with Barry might actually turn out to be a liability, given how many times their relationship has already gone up in flames. It’s equally questionable whether Sex and the City’s Carrie Bradshaw, who cheated on her kindhearted and generous boyfriend, Aidan, only to end up with the more exciting but self-absorbed Mr. Big, will be better off in the framework of marriage and family. (Some time after the breakup, when Carrie ran into Aidan on the street, he was carrying his infant in a Baby Björn. Can anyone imagine Mr. Big walking around with a Björn?)

When we’re holding out for deep romantic love, we have the fantasy that this level of passionate intensity will make us happier. But marrying Mr. Good Enough might be an equally viable option, especially if you’re looking for a stable, reliable life companion. Madame Bovary might not see it that way, but if she’d remained single, I’ll bet she would have been even more depressed than she was while living with her tedious but caring husband.

What I didn’t realize when I decided, in my 30s, to break up with boyfriends I might otherwise have ended up marrying, is that while settling seems like an enormous act of resignation when you’re looking at it from the vantage point of a single person, once you take the plunge and do it, you’ll probably be relatively content. It sounds obvious now, but I didn’t fully appreciate back then that what makes for a good marriage isn’t necessarily what makes for a good romantic relationship. Once you’re married, it’s not about whom you want to go on vacation with; it’s about whom you want to run a household with. Marriage isn’t a passion-fest; it’s more like a partnership formed to run a very small, mundane, and often boring nonprofit business. And I mean this in a good way.

It's hard to know what to make of this. On the one hand, I think the author has hit on something here. Too many young women run about with an Unrealistic Marriage Template in their heads. It seems to be composed of a laundry list of non-negotiable qualities which either don't exist in real, human males or do exist but effectively price them out of the marriage market (in the sense that any man who possesses all of those qualities isn't going to be willing to "settle" for them). Men are not our personal meal tickets. They shouldn't have to shower us with material things to win our affection; nor should they be expected to read our minds or surrender their independence to The Relationship. If we are adults, we will take responsibility for our own happiness and not expect a man to "make" us happy. Oddly enough, if we do this most men will bend over backwards to make us happy without our ever asking them to. It's just that they dislike traps.

But I hear the same kind of complaints coming from single men. "There are no good women out there." This is unreconstructed bunk. There are plenty of decent women out there. Contrary to the peevish meme that pervades too many comments sections, not all American women are spoiled brats. Look no farther than the nearest military base and you'll find women who regularly give up careers, friends, interests, virtually their entire lives to ensure their families and their husbands' careers are a success. And they have plenty of civilian counterparts.

One does not have to leave the continental U.S. to find a partner willing to take on her fair share of the marital workload. On the other hand, if your idea of the perfect wife is a 19 year old compliant Czech super model with pencil thin, cellulite-free thighs and DD-cup bustline whose fondest ambition is to have 4 children, stay home and do housework (and whose body will magically look just like those airbrushed girls in Maxim even after multiple childbirths) then perhaps it is your attitude that needs a bit of adjustment.

Nine tenths of marriage is work; the decision to get along with your partner and be happy. It's really no mystery. In that sense, the author has a real point. It's the gap between many people's unrealistic expectations and reality that makes them miserable.

On the other hand, marrying an unsuitable person; one with whom you are unevenly matched, makes marriage an uphill battle. If you find someone "tedious" at 20, odds are you're not going to warm to him as the years pass. But if you can talk for hours at 20 and the only thing standing in your way is that Roman Candles don't shoot out of your ass every time he kisses you, you'd be a fool to pass him up for the devastatingly handsome guy who makes you weak in the knees, but never listens to a word you say. That's infatuation, not love. Adults are supposed to know the difference between the two.

One of the biggest lies of feminism is that men and women are equally willing to don the yoke of marriage and childbearing.

They're not.

From the time we're children, women dream of our wedding day. Little girls dress up as princess brides. When was the last time you saw a little boy dress up in a bridegroom outfit?

Yeah. I thought so.

Girls envision, even if they plan on college and a career, that white picket fence, a loving husband, and 1.5 children somewhere at the end of the rainbow. Truth be told, this vision is somewhere in the back of most young men's minds too but there's a crucial difference: it's in the back of their minds. Way in the back.

When a man and a woman begin dating, he doesn't instantly begin assessing their "relationship potential", how willing she is to "commit", or where they'll be 5, 10, or 24 months down the road. He is focused on today (and very likely hoping she won't object if he sees other women on the side). In the mean time, the old biological clock keeps right on ticking with consequences that don't bode well for her. A woman's shelf life on the marriage market can only decrease with age while a man's remains fairly flat for decades. He is just as attractive (if not more so) at 45 as he was at 25 because women look at a whole host of attributes other than just looks: education level, range of interests, personality, maturity, stability, income. And all of these qualities are enhanced rather diminished by the increasing maturity that comes with age. And to add insult to injury, he can still father children at 50 while her fertility begins to decline after 35.

Given all of these considerations, it's hardly surprising men are quite willing to bide their time before entering into holy wedlock. Kay Hymowitz, in a provocative article for City Journal, bemoans what she calls an epidemic of child men hanging out in a hormonal limbo between adolescence and adulthood:

It’s 1965 and you’re a 26-year-old white guy. You have a factory job, or maybe you work for an insurance broker. Either way, you’re married, probably have been for a few years now; you met your wife in high school, where she was in your sister’s class. You’ve already got one kid, with another on the way. For now, you’re renting an apartment in your parents’ two-family house, but you’re saving up for a three-bedroom ranch house in the next town. Yup, you’re an adult!

Now meet the twenty-first-century you, also 26. You’ve finished college and work in a cubicle in a large Chicago financial-services firm. You live in an apartment with a few single guy friends. In your spare time, you play basketball with your buddies, download the latest indie songs from iTunes, have some fun with the Xbox 360, take a leisurely shower, massage some product into your hair and face—and then it’s off to bars and parties, where you meet, and often bed, girls of widely varied hues and sizes. They come from everywhere: California, Tokyo, Alaska, Australia. Wife? Kids? House? Are you kidding?

It's interesting to see the explanations for this phenomenon. Dr. Helen thinks it's because men aren't being treated well by society:

Nowadays, for many men, the negatives of marriage for men often outweigh the positives. Therefore, they engage in it less often. Not because they are bad, not because they are perpetual adolescents, but because they have weighed the pros and cons of marriage in a rational manner and found the institution to be lacking for them. It’s a sensible choice for some and the video games, magazines, and humor websites that Hymowitz disses are a way to fill one’s time with fun activities that don’t tell you that you suck, are an “unfinished person,” emotionally detached or on your way to jail for fake domestic violence charges. People used to treat men better than this.

I question this assumption. A lifestyle that consists of filling their free time with video games, serial bouts of promiscuous sex and porn somehow:

(a) doesn't remind me of how society "used to treat" my husband, father or grandfather, who all settled down and got married, and

(b) doesn't impress me as particularly convincing argument for "how grown-up, adult and rational single young men really are".

I don't contest their right to spend their time as they please, and if they choose to spend their free time in that manner they are probably not particularly good candidates for marriage and fatherhood anyway. But don't expect me to call their choices rational or mature. I wouldn't condone the same choices in young women, and my father's and grandfather's generations would have been far quicker to condemn such behavior than I. In fact, they would have been downright scathing in their condemnation; which explains why (at 26) the young men in Hymowitz' article settled down and got married. They were expected to.

Grim, on the other hand, argues that young men are somehow "letting young women win" out of some misplaced sense of chivalry, an argument I find equally unpersuasive:

City Journal, having previously pondered young women who won't get married, now looks at young men who won't. The two articles posit a view of women who've decided they can go to college, "hyper-achieve" at jobs, and put off families until much later; and men who've decided to put off growing up until they're 30-something.

The problems they posit for this new arrangement are, for society, fewer children to grow up into the next generation; and for women, fewer men who are suitable mates. For young men, the only problem is that they're jerks, but they seem happy that way.

Before we engage in a thorough examination of the specifics of these articles, let me offer this analysis: what you see here is how post-feminist society has achieved a new equilibrium.

We read that women are getting the majority of college diplomas, 'hyper-achieving' (meaning achieving early), and then still wanting children -- but fewer, later. We read that men are taking on slower paths to the job market and obtaining fewer college degrees as a percentage. What does that mean?

What it appears to me to mean is this:

1) Young women have decided they want both a family and a career; so they "do" a career seriously-and-in-a-hurry, so they'll have time for the family too.

2) Young men recognize that the women are going to compete hard for promotions and such early, and rather than 'fight the girl,' which they've always been taught not to do, they let the girl win. Fewer go to college, so there will be more room for women in women-friendly careers (i.e., careers built around offices); more work in jobs most women didn't want anyway (such as construction or policing).

Then, around the 30s, the women start opting-out of the fast track, letting the men who did get degrees move up and marry them; and they start families at this point.

I think this indicates a sort of stability, in which most of these folks are getting what they really want: for post-feminist women, the chance at both a career and a family; for men, a longer period of freedom and play, and a softer landing into family and career. Young men now often only have to support wife and progeny for a few years until the wife will want to return to her (now more-balanced) career; so there will be two incomes, even if hers is no longer what it once was.

I'll tell you what I find more convincing than arguing that young men are nobly standing aside from competing with young women. Any mother could tell you what is wrong here - two sayings that have come out of the mouths of Moms from time immemorial both apply:

1. Give them an inch, and they'll take a mile. And,
2. No one buys the cow when they can get the milk for free. People behave up or down to the standards we set for them. If society no longer looks down on young men who don't marry by a certain age, who spend their time playing video games, sleeping around, and consuming porn, why should they spend their free time working? There is no penalty for goofing around, and a demonstrated reward for doing so.

Regarding the delayed marriage phenomenon, if you wish to entice someone into entering into a partnership, you offer something the other person desires greatly. In this case (unlike their fathers' and grandfathers' generation) these young men already have all the sex they want without the responsibilities that come with marriage. But what happens to these overgrown boys when the prospect of sex with someone they care about is withdrawn - when suddenly it's no longer free?

Just 18 months ago, I was your average bachelor dude, bumbling into my late thirties with a girlfriend stashed across the country. As such, I spent a lot of time strolling down less-than-wholesome cultural avenues. To be specific, I wasted approximately a week and a half (if you add up all the 20-minute segments) trolling the Internet for a free version of the Paris Hilton sex video. My friend Karl had told me it was hilarious, that she actually answers her cell phone in the midst of the action. Then there was the Britney saga. And the Lindsay saga. And whatever stray cleavage those might offer.

But in 2006, a number of things happened very quickly. I realized I was turning 40. My girlfriend announced that she would be staying across the country if I didn’t propose to her. I proposed to her. A week later, she called to say she was pregnant. In the space of six months, we eloped, bought a house, moved in together, and welcomed the arrival of Josephine.

Suddenly marriage becomes attractive again. Amazing how that works, isn't it? It was just a question of applying the proper incentives.

Men are not animals. Like women, they select a mate on the basis of a range of attributes (like compatibility). But at the heart of it, few men want what they think they can get too easily. Men are driven to compete and win; this is part of our basic biological drives. It helps us improve the gene pool. So in a sense, nature doesn't want us to "settle" for anything less than the best we can realistically get in the marketplace. On some level, we instinctively know this.

The key word in all of this is "realistically". Often, the guy or girl who makes our head rush or our heart pound like a triphammer is neither our soul mate nor our true love. That's biology, not love talking; and that's why the rational blend of attraction and compatibility that goes into selecting a mate isn't "settling". That's why, though every parent must judge what their child can handle, I've never agreed with not letting kids date.

I dated early, and often, and that's how I learned to tell the dizzy rush of infatuation from the more permanent glow that comes with true love. It takes practice; trial and error of many relationships over the years. Some people never do get it right.

What if the prince on the horse in your fairytale
Is right here in disguise
And what if the stars you've been reaching so high for
Are shining in his eyes?

Don't look at yourself in the same old way
Take another picture
Shoot the stars off in your own backyard
Don't look any further
And you will see
It's the stuff that dreams are made of....
It's the slow and steady fire
It's the stuff that dreams are made of
It's your heart and soul's desire

It's the stuff that dreams are made of.

Posted by Cassandra at 10:45 AM | Comments (113) | TrackBack

February 03, 2008

Men In Tights XLII

There are many things the Princess does not understand about the Male of the Species.

Chief amongst these arcane mysteries is a deeply disturbing gender-linked tradition called "football". She knows, from decades of reading womens' magazines, that it is tremendously important to the delicate, flower-like male psyche that men be allowed to indulge this primal need; that not interrupting or infringing upon this important ritual is (quite literally - no sarcasm here) vital to the continued existence of freedom, democracy, and the American Way of Life, not to mention the perpetuation of the human race.

She also realizes the importance of keeping a constant supply of beer and munchies flowing to replenish the priceless man-essence consumed by yelling, pounding various household objects, and throwing small domestic animals at the TV screen.

What she never quite understood, however, was why men enjoy football so much? Football, to women, looks quite a bit different than it does to men:

Football is a sport for men only, preferably of the muscle-bound variety, who wear tight spandex pants and play with an awkwardly-shaped ball. The object of the game is to score, whatever the hell that means, and one of best ways to score is by making passes. With positions called tight end and wide receiver; and team names such as Packers, Rams, Giants, Cowboys, Raiders, and Oilers, we simply cannot continue to overlook the gayness of this beloved American sport.

Oh, and one cannot possibly forget the almighty Saints, a moniker whose concept didn’t succeed at keeping the gays out of Catholicism either. The ruse is most definitely over, boys.

Now onto the exhibits. Let us get started with an easy one. What in the holy hell is this?

*cough*

Football... a manly sport, for manly men, to help them get reconnect with The Man Within.

On the otter heiny, this is inexcusable:

CWCID, dri at Ace o'Spaces

Soooo...... who do you like for tonight's game, guys????

Posted by Cassandra at 09:03 AM | Comments (25) | TrackBack

January 29, 2008

Men vs. Women, The Crib Sheet

This is hysterical.

FWIW, I heard this couple on the radio a while back expounding a similar theory and it was riveting (and hilarious). Their take on men and women explained a lot of things I've found frustrating when my husband and I get into those special "discussions" that make you want to gnaw your own leg off in frustration.

I did a lot of thinking after listening to the show. I thought back on a lot of things my husband had said to me in the past that I didn't really understand and suddenly they made a lot more sense to me - I was able to put them into context from his point of view; something I'd never quite been able to do before. Even the best relationships have sticking points: areas where despite your very best intentions, you simply can't understand why the other person acts the way they do.

Thanks to Sly for sending this. Outstanding.

Posted by Cassandra at 07:05 AM | Comments (30) | TrackBack

January 23, 2008

Maridise Lost

I went home with Michael the night we met, and figuratively speaking, I didn't leave again for those 7 1⁄2 years. The breakup sucked, the more so because it was no one's fault. Our relationship had begun to suffer the inanition of many marriages at seven years. (The seven-year itch isn't a myth; the U.S. Census Bureau says the median duration of first marriages that end in divorce is 7.9 years.) Michael and I loved each other, but slowly--almost imperceptibly at first--we began to realize we were no longer in love. We were intimate but no longer passionate; we had cats but no kids.

Things drifted for a while. There was some icky couples counseling ("Try a blindfold") and therapeutic spending on vacations, clothes, furniture. We were lost. The night Michael wouldn't stay up to watch The Office finale with me, I knew I had to move out. Yes, he was tired, but if he couldn't give me the length of a sitcom--Jim and Pam are going to kiss!--then we were really done.

We'll say! Finito! Caput! Or as they say on reality TV, "Duh..."

Reading this, the Princess found herself biting her knuckle to hold in peals of laughter. The title of the article made it particularly delicious:

Are Gay Relationships Different?

Is there some special Hell reserved for those who would fight to the death for the right to get, but not to stay married or should that prime parking spot in the Afterlife be held for Time magazine for publishing such self-pitying, self-absorbed, self-congratulatory drivel? Who do they think they are: Slate Online?

Several months ago, the Princess was asked for a few verses on the subject of love and marriage. The occasion was the upcoming wedding of one of her male progeny. Later that summer, it occurred to her while listening to the readings that hers had been rather strikingly different than the ones being read at the ceremony.

To longtime readers this may come as no surprise. Most have managed to suss out by now that the Blog Princess is a bit of an odd duck. But she couldn't help but notice most of the verses were all about togetherness and the joys of connubial bliss. Hers, on the otter heiny, were about the importance of recognizing that when we marry, we are not (in reality) Twin Souls Joined in One Body.

Oh, don't get her wrong - she can get as dewy eyed as the next female about love and marriage. She cries - reliably, like a baby - at chick flicks. But love is more than just a rapturous, transcendentally soul searing emotion that grabs us by the heartstrings (or the G-strings) and transports us in waves of ever-ascending ecstasy straight to the heavens where thunder rolls, lightning flashes and the very clouds roil about in a cataclysmic release of pent up energies as doves, butterflies and unicorns frolic in a joyous display of primeval vitality as old as Adam and Eve.

Especially when your Twinned Soul eyes you warily in the middle of an argument an Extremely Important Discussion and utters the fateful words, "Ummm, are you finished yet? Because you know... the alarm goes off at 4."

Not for nothing is this man a Marine. Any man who can utter those words (well that may not have been *exactly* what he said, but then he's not here to defend himself, is he?) while staring down a diminutive banshee riding a wave of estrogen that would make a tsunami look eminently surfable would not only track Osama bin Laden to the gates of Hell, but laugh in Death's grinning face as he did it. No, her verses celebrated the virtue of separateness, of space within a loving marriage: of realizing there is no one person who can possibly fulfill your every need. Much less make you happy.

Happiness is a responsibility that cannot be delegated.

All of which leads the Princess to think that it matters little why we flirt or even why we love. The whys and wherefores aren't nearly so important as the simple fact of love. The inescapable truth is that love is, above all, an active verb and what we cannot mend in ourselves, in our partners, or in life, we may as well join hands and have a good chuckle at.

Or as spd rdr quipped in answer to that age old question, "Are gay relationships different":

Cruel sitcom kisses
Sofa pillow playmate cold
Maybe some new drapes?

Posted by Cassandra at 12:52 PM | Comments (30) | TrackBack

January 16, 2008

Facing Reality With Humor

I think I just fell in love with this man:

Just 18 months ago, I was your average bachelor dude, bumbling into my late thirties with a girlfriend stashed across the country. As such, I spent a lot of time strolling down less-than-wholesome cultural avenues. To be specific, I wasted approximately a week and a half (if you add up all the 20-minute segments) trolling the Internet for a free version of the Paris Hilton sex video. My friend Karl had told me it was hilarious, that she actually answers her cell phone in the midst of the action. Then there was the Britney saga. And the Lindsay saga. And whatever stray cleavage those might offer.

But in 2006, a number of things happened very quickly. I realized I was turning 40. My girlfriend announced that she would be staying across the country if I didn’t propose to her. I proposed to her. A week later, she called to say she was pregnant. In the space of six months, we eloped, bought a house, moved in together, and welcomed the arrival of Josephine.

What did this radical paradigm shift mean for me? It meant that I began visiting the mall. The mall is a terrifying place for a new dad, because it offers a concentrated dose of all the cultural messages aimed at your daughter. It was at the mall that I first encountered a pair of moppets playing with a Bratz doll. How cute, I thought. Until I saw the doll’s ensemble: a miniskirt and a tight T-shirt emblazoned with the phrase So Many Boys, So Little Time. Next, I passed by Club Libby Lu, where prepubescent clients get makeovers and learn a sexy dance while a soundtrack offers helpful tips such as “Wet your lips and smile to the camera.” Then the girls select miniature stuffed dogs to carry around in a faux-couture carrier, just like, well, you know who.

The adult stores were no better. Victoria’s Secret had a section for young women that featured bras and panties small enough to fit a sizable toddler. Yes, it’s Baby’s First Thong.

See, this is what happens when you have a daughter. You start looking at the world around her and you start realizing how much of that world seems determined to turn her into a world-famous media slut. Then you start looking at the world-famous media sluts themselves—at least I do—and for the first time in your life, it occurs to you: Hey, that’s someone’s daughter! I wonder how her dad feels about that picture in which her boobs are hanging out for the world to see? And I wonder if her dad’s behavior in some way contributed to this boob hanging?

Here’s where things become complicated. Because despite being a dad and having all these noble dad concerns about my daughter and all the daughters of the world, I still gaze at media sluts on occasion.

What I’ve come to realize is that there are really two people inside me: the Dude Self and the Dad Self. The Dude Self has an evolutionary mandate. Namely, to get his DNA into all available fertile females. This is how I explain the compulsion toward media sluts, who, after all, sow the fantasy that women exist only for the carnal pleasure of men.

But then there’s the Dad Self. The Dad Self has to worry about the survival of his wife and offspring. It might be said that his genetic material is heavily mortgaged. He regards women differently, especially if he has a daughter. Now he must think about the kind of world in which he’d like her to grow up, and especially how he’d like other males to treat her, which is to say not as a sexual chew toy, but with kindness and respect.

It’s here that my old Dude Self and my brand-new Dad Self come to blows. Because as much as I want to check out Paris and Lindsay, I know I’m harming my daughter by doing so. For one thing, I’m sending her a very clear message: Daddy loves sluts. Be a slut and Daddy will love you. And if you don’t believe that a 1-year-old picks up on messages, you’ve never seen my daughter in action. She is intensely focused on everything in her environment, especially whatever I happen to be looking at.

But even if I ogled Paris in private, I would still be contributing to the Culture of Paris, helping to shape a world in which young women win adulation for making porn videos and getting arrested, rather than for, say, curing cancer or brokering peace in the Middle East or being a mom. If we all stopped consuming celebrity scandals, they would cease to exist. If a media slut goes to jail and no one’s there to film the perp walk, does it really matter?

So this is what I’ve been working on: not pretending I’m deaf to all those salacious sirens, but curbing my own prurience on behalf of my daughter. As much as I can, I’m sending her the message that happiness comes from inside. Will this work? My Dad Self certainly hopes so. But he knows that we live in the age of the Dude Self. My trip to the mall wasn’t an anomaly. It’s good business to make little girls believe they can buy love in material form. If that means pushing sex on 6-year-olds, so be it.

We newbie dads would be fools not to worry about the way this is trending. What is the cultural landscape going to look like in a dozen years, when my little girl is heading into adolescence? Will there be packs of roving slut enforcers? Triple-X slumber parties? Can you see why a concerned father—even a socially liberal fellow like myself—might be tempted to declare martial law on his 1-year-old?

I want Josephine to grow up in a world where her ambitions will be about what she wants, not what the panting men of the world want from her. My daughter is not a commodity. Her heart can be broken. Her spirit can be wounded. And there is no accessory that can rescue her from these dangers.

Which brings me to rule number five, the only one I plan to enforce: Josephine can do anything she likes with her life, so long as she asks herself first: Is this behavior worthy of the love I deserve? If she flouts this rule, the failure will have been her parents’, not hers.

I'm not sure it's that simple. Steve's daughter, when she grows up, will be responsible for her own choices.

What I am certain of is that every time my determinedly rose-colored view of the universe starts looking dingy, something comes along to brighten it up again.

The world, as always, continues to amuse and delight.

Posted by Cassandra at 08:48 AM | Comments (12) | TrackBack

January 15, 2008

I'm So Tired...

Via McQ comes this timeless lament from authoress Erica Jong:

I am so tired of pink men telling women (of all colors) what to do with their wombs—which connect with their brains—in case you forgot. I am so tired of pink men telling us we should stay in Iraq for generations. I am so tired of pink men buying bombs and cheating schools. I am so tired of pink men having wives who stand behind them and nod sagely on television. I am so tired of pink men expecting that someone—a brown, black, yellow or white woman—will trail behind them changing light bulbs, taking out garbage, washing laundry, keeping food in the house, taking care of kids of all ages, of parents of all ages. I am so tired of pink men whose wives double or triple the family income thinking they can spend it without doing a damn thing at home. I am so tired of pink men spouting nonsense on TV. I am so tired of pink men arguing, blathering, bloviating, predicting the future—usually wrongly—and telling women to shut up. I am so sick of hearing that another pink man has dropped his children out a window, off a bridge or killed his pregnant wife or killed his unpregnant wife because he was infatuated with another pregnant woman. I am so sick of pink men making war and talking about peace. I am so sick of pink men appointing their mediocre cronies to judgeships, to political advisors, to cushy jobs, to columns in the paper, to multimillion-dollar posts as CEOS or actors (while the actresses make less) or producers or writers or newsreaders or talk show bloviators or supposedly sage counselors at law. I am so tired of pink men.

Right on, sistah-womyn. The Princess is exhausted too. But she doesn't want to get rid of the pink men.

She just wants them to do her laundry.

Posted by Cassandra at 08:03 AM | Comments (20) | TrackBack

January 09, 2008

Shameful. Just Shameful.

One of the Elite Legion of Beths points to yet another sign of the vicious hate mongering and deep partisan divisions that are tearing this nation apart:

HAIRLESS says Claudia Connell

When I saw the pictures of dancer Anton Du Beke on the beach in Barbados, my first thought was not how wonderful it would be to run my red painted fingernails through his thick, manly thatch - it was that I must get myself a new living room rug while the sales are still on.

He reminded me of that famous (faked) picture of the yeti - half man, half beast - walking in the wilderness with his head bowed and hairy arms swinging in the wind.

Despite it supposedly being a symbol of masculinity, I am afraid hairy men do nothing for me and never have.

HIRSUTE says Ursula Hirschkorn

Like fine wine, and expensive moisturisers, my taste for hairy men has developed with age.

When I was a callow teenager my crushes were all on smoothly sculpted boys, but as a woman I've realised that real men are at home with their hairyness.

I will admit that the sight of Duran Duran heart-throb John Taylor's silky smooth pecs rising from a frilly New Romantic shirt left the teenage me hot under the collar, while my bedroom was wallpapered in posters of Adam Ant's alabaster torso.

As a girl, the idea of running my hands through a man's hair anywhere other than on his head filled me with revulsion.

But then I also thought that peach schnapps with lemonade was the height of sophistication, and that foundation was meant to be applied with a trowel, so what did I know?

After 8 years of the worst administration since Adolph Hitler Herbert Hoover, can America be healed? Discuss amongst yourselves.

Posted by Cassandra at 08:20 AM | Comments (27) | TrackBack

January 03, 2008

We're From *Hollywood* and We're Here To Help You...

Well, you can just stop 2008 right here and now. Sometime while the Princess was napping the nation officially flat-lined, and surprisingly she's not talking about Iowa.

Oh, go ahead. Close your eyes, boys and girls, while she whisks you away to a far off time and place, courtesy of the Lifetime Channel...

His first guest is 32-year-old James Morris, who has spent most of his life dieting and feels he needs to lose 40 pounds to look good.

“He’s hated his body for two decades,” Kressley says. “But that’s where I come in. Because I’m here to teach him to unlearn his terrible self-image.”

In the age of “Dr. 90210” and “The Biggest Loser,” it is refreshing to see a show not focused on plastic surgery or dramatic weight loss. It’s even more invigorating to hear Kressley speak affirmatively about real bodies. When Morrel cries upon seeing himself in his brand new, flattering suit, Kressley says, “I think you are finally just seeing you. Let’s try to see ourselves more the real way.”

Kressley, who comes off as a less obnoxious but just as supportive Richard Simmons, offers the pitch-perfect amount of encouragement. The final triumphant moments come when the show's men agree to be photographed (tastefully) in the nude and Kressley has, as promised, turned body loathing into body loving.

...because Lord knows, the only triumphant true path to lasting body acceptance is to be photographed (tastefully) in the altogether. Though if all you're after is to make a few new friends, a trip down to the local sporting goods store may be just what the doctor ordered, too:

There was a lovely young lady there as well, alongside of us. With a pert brown pony tail, Kevlar vest, fast draw holster and speed loading rig. The handcuff holder at her six o’clock assured me that she was a law enforcement agent. Or else the kinkiest woman I’d ever laid eyes on. Either one. Or both.

And at the end of the day, does it really matter?.

But I digress.

This sort of idiocy, in a nutshell, is why the blog princess refuses to watch television. At the first flickers of reality TV, the few grey cells in her pea-sized brain not already pickled in a vat of delightfully impertinent yet unassuming Petit Syrah begin arm wrestling each other for the remote control. But as God is my witness, for some insane reason after all these years, I still find myself fascinated by the seemingly endless differences between men and women.

Why is this?

Why can't I read about differentials, guns, or smashing things up? Why do women waste so much time wondering how the other half of humanity thinks? I couldn't resist the intro because it occurred to me, while reading Jules this morning, that quite possibly the only thing more completely cretinous than watching a bevy of bodacious lovelies reclaim their self respect by posing nude for some gay dude would be a show about a bunch of amply-girthed fellas who find the path to Ultimate Man-bliss by indulging Carson Kressley's taste for zaftig manflesh. In white underwear.

Yeah.... like *that's* gonna happen.

Ladies, pose nekkid on TV all you like. Maybe the appearance of your cellulite will even be "visibly improved". But the voices in Frodo's head a wee, small voice tells me your knight in shining armor did not go through any such joyous voyage of self-discovery (especially with the Bra Whisperer) on the road to body image nirvana. It's just a hunch, but I'm feeling pretty good about it.

Of course I shouldn't beat up on women. We may be a bit dopey about things like the causal connection between taking our clothes off and a sense of self esteem, but one thing we women *are* is friendly and concerned. We don't, for instance, go about committing random acts of aggression against unicyclists:

This study observed the response to a sudden, unexpected exposure to a new phenomenon—unicycling. The response to this stimulus was surprisingly consistent but varied with age, sex, and stage of sexual development. Young children were curious, but as boys grew older their response became physically and verbally aggressive. As boys matured to men their response became more verbal and evolved into the concealed aggression of a humorous verbal put-down, which was lost with age. In contrast, the female response was praise and concern for safety.

The physical responses corresponded to the verbal ones, and added little to them. Most men clearly meant their responses to be funny and snide, and they were often given as a put-down. Women, however, usually responded with pleasure and admiration and were concerned about safety. The consistent content of the male "joke" and its triumphant delivery as if it was original and funny, even when it was neither, was remarkable, and it suggests a common underlying mechanism. The evolution of the response provides the clue to what this might be.

Children showed curiosity and interest, which changed in young boys. In older boys, curiosity was replaced by minor physical and verbal aggression—attempts to topple the unicycle coupled with first attempts at simple, mocking humour. In teenage boys, the physical aggression was replaced by verbally aggressive mockery, with elements of adult humour. This response "matured" to its adult male form as a mocking joke, which partly disguised its aggressive origins, an origin that was again revealed by the gross response of motorists, in whom aggressive behaviour is often exacerbated. This adult stage corresponded to the peak of virility and ameliorated in older men, who were more neutral and amicable, with few attempts at a jovial put-down.

The idea that unicycling is intrinsically funny cannot explain the findings—particularly their repetitiveness, evolution, and sex differences—and the notion that males are just expressing a greater sense of humour simply restates an observational fact....

Particularly interesting for the evolution of humour was the way the initial aggressive intent channelled the verbal response into a contrived but more subtle and sophisticated joke, in which aggression is concealed by wit. This shows how the aggression that leads to humour eventually becomes separated from it as wit, jokes, and other comic forms, which then take on an independent life of their own.

These observations lead to the conclusion that humour evolves from androgen primed aggression. But can that conclusion be generalised? Repartee and banter have many of the characteristics of controlled aggression—so often revealed when control is lost—and it may be no coincidence that quick wit is likened to a rapier. The findings may also be relevant to the great male-female divide in humour—women tell fewer jokes than men and most comedians are men, despite some notable exceptions. The findings also suggest that the difference is sexual rather than social. I will not generalise into the many writings on humour—too many of which take an armchair view of the bedroom—from Freud on male humour as an aggressive response to women to the priapic interpretations of Roman sculptures and the effect of salacious comic cartoons on subsequent aggressive behaviour. The range of theoretical options on offer is too great and unproved for interpreting or extending a simple experimental study such as the response to unicycling.

You can say that again.

So now even having a sense of humor is a male characteristic? Now that is an amusing thought. Certainly there are enough male bloggers who will fall right in line with it (she said, flouncing away). But for all that, it still strikes me that it just shouldn't be this hard for men and women - even with all our famous differences - to get along with each other.

The human race has had centuries to work it all out, and tired screeds about how all women are fickle and uppity or all men are dull, insensitive clods smack less of intelligent introspection and a genuine desire to meet the other side halfway than of defensiveness and heartbreak. The basic nature of male-female relationships, like human nature, hasn't changed. Now that divorce is so easy and women have more options, though, marriage may well be less forgiving of error.

It's something to think about.

It's something I don't often hear brought up, when these discussions come up: the possibility that it's not evil men or cold, calculating women, or even (perhaps) fiendish societal incentives that are queering the marital equation (so to speak). Maybe something has been very wrong all along and it is only now, that women truly do have a choice, that they are acting upon their dissatisfaction? It's a disturbing thought for many reasons, not the least of which is that I don't think much of divorce in general as a remedy for marital problems. But still, it is a possibility that bears thinking about. Maybe, along with all the other things we spend so much time getting better at, we need to spend time getting better at being married, now that marriages have so much competition.

Men and women can hurt each other, so easily.

But we don't have to. If something is important, you work at it.

I also can't help but wonder if we aren't simply letting all the easy distractions of modern life become more important than our human relationships? How does a modern marriage compete with your iPod, the TV, the computer, your career, the kids, your friends?

Turn off the Lifetime Channel, or ESPN, or the computer and pick up a book, or twelve if that's what it takes. After all, you're learning a foreign language. Learn how the other half of humanity sees life.

Or just turn out the lights a little early, tonight. Sometimes it's easier to see in the dark.

Posted by Cassandra at 07:49 AM | Comments (39) | TrackBack