As you no doubt know, I love Kate Harding and usually nod firmly at her blog posts. But I have to disagree with this one she wrote about a woman named Neenah Pickett, who gave herself a year to find a husband and kept a blog called 52 Weeks 2 Find Him Blog. I firmly agree with Kate that narratives that tell women they must be passive (or passive aggressive) to “catch” a man are sexist and not as effective as advertised, and that the portrayal of men as being composed of nothing but tender ego and skittishness---where any kind of expectation-setting from a woman is sure to scare them off---is also ridiculous. But I can’t help but disagree with her about whether or not it’s a good idea to make it a goal to find your spouse and give yourself a time limit to do so, and it’s really not a good idea to advertise it.
The passage from Kate I have to argue with:
Funny how that dovetails with long-standing gender roles and sexist expectations, although it’s now dressed up as the self-respecting, even vaguely feminist choice—only the most pathetic, unenlightened woman would openly act like she might be happier in a committed relationship, right? Even if she’s pretty sure she would. Saying you want a man because you happen to be straight and lonely is just too dangerously close to saying you need one and single-handedly sending women back to the dark ages! It’s much safer for your own heart and indeed the sisterhood if you squelch your desires and wait patiently for someone to come along and deem you dateworthy. Just as women have always been trained to do, but never mind that. (Perhaps the popularity of “The Rules” can be explained by the simple fact that it gives women something to do while furiously pretending we’re doing nothing.)
Call me an optimist, but I think there’s a way to find a happy medium between pursuing love in a way that’s laid back and pleasurable, and coming across as desperate. Sure, it’s an art form, striking that perfect balance of showing interest and investment in someone, but not letting your desire to have someone become so overwhelming that they run away because you’re desperate. And some of the choices you can make to avoid seeming desperate are pretty simple, such as not proposing marriage right away, not starting a website about how you’re going to get married this year dammit, not saying “I love you” in the first week, not talking about how many kids you want on the first date, not finding really obvious ways to broach the subject of marriage on the first couple of dates.
There’s no doubt that the stereotype of the needy, ring-hungry woman is used by men who, for whatever reason, prefer to date women who have their self-esteem lowered by emotional abuse. I’ve certainly had a couple of baffling encounters with men who try to flatter themselves by making me seem to be a harpy who is out for one gold thing because I did something that demonstrated self-esteem, such as getting pissed if he didn’t call when he said he would, or “forgot” we had a date. To a degree, this stuff was effective in my youth, less so when I grew up a little---so I’m sure it works on some women. But let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater, here. Both men and women are perfectly capable of getting so obsessed with checking marriage off their life goals or even simply being validated by having a partner that they start to exude desperation, and there’s nothing less sexy than that, for good reasons, as I’ll get into. God knows I’ve probably met more men that give off the stench of desperation than women, though perhaps my sample size is skewed because I’m a straight woman who therefore will attract these men’s attention. Some were kind of grabby, and some were just clearly eager to get married so their toilets were cleaned more often, and came across as impatient with this whole dating process (especially since I’m sure they absorbed the cultural message that a woman is flattered by having a perfect stranger want to get you in a white dress quickly). Not being desperate can and should be a gender neutral standard.
And the reason is quite simple: No one enjoys being objectified. Call us hopeless romantics, but most of us want to fall in love, and to have someone else adore us for our unique selves. Most of us find a way to square this desire away with the general understanding that most people we date---or want to date---should be on the market. We don’t pretend that the ultimate goal is to find someone you’re compatible with and perhaps settle down. We aren’t so eager to be convinced that we’re personally so amazing and magnetic that we seek out people who are proving this by cheating on spouses with us, or some other transgression of basic norms. But nor do we want to feel like going on dates is like being interviewed for a job: “Okay, well your resume shows you have the skill set to fill this role. And you seem to smell okay. When can you start with fucking me and meeting my parents?” For women, and somewhat for men, there’s also the added concern that a person who is just spouse-shopping might be an abuser, who doesn’t really care about your personality because they plan to change you into a submissive, flinching victim.
Someone, male or female, who goes too far into the direction of treating dating like you’re hiring someone for a job isn’t necessarily being punished for being too forward or sure of themselves. It’s that they’re sending signals that they’re disinterested in really getting to know someone and letting love be the exciting ride that makes it all worthwhile. I think everyone realizes that it’s frustrating feeling like dating is going nowhere, but I do think that there is a zen to it, where it is easier to meet someone when you’re not trying too hard, because that’s when you have the mental space to be charming by enjoying other people for what they are, instead of what you can get out of them. It’s not that different from friendship; most of mine didn’t really come from being lonely and desperate, but just hanging out with someone and having so much fun I wanted to do it again.
It’s been 19 years since Susan Faludi’s seminal tome on the anti-feminist backlash of the 80s---titled, of course, Backlash---was released. The book covered a lot of ground, indicting everything from the film industry to the legal system, for waging war on American women’s rights and dignity. One of her biggest coups in the book was the devastating expose of Newsweek, for an irresponsible feature story that implied that feminism has run men off of marrying in retaliation, with the notable and completely false claim that a woman over 40 was more likely to be killed by a terrorist rather than get married. Faludi not only disproved this claim, but also attacked the larger narrative about how women are desperate to marry unwilling men, pointing out that polling data shows that men are more, not less, eager to marry than women. Newsweek was so thoroughly and famously devastate by her critique that they actually had to recant the story, albeit 20 years later and with lots of defensive caveats. They even went so far to dig up 11 of the “unmarriageable” women they profiled in the original story, and found that 8 of them have married since then, and others have decided they really don’t want to marry anyway.
You would think after an embarrassment like that, journalists and other writers might think twice about trotting out thinly disguised hysterical warnings to educated, professional women that all those brains and all that independence was going to run the menfolk off. You would think that the fact---admitted in the Newsweek recantation---that college-educated women are more, not less likely to marry would cool the jets a little. But there is no fucking way that some folks will let little things like facts and evidence get in the way of anti-feminist backlash fun. Irina Aleksander has introduced a quirky new take on the whole genre of making shit up about how American women can’t get married (at least, college-educated, professional American women can’t)---proposing that American men hate the idea of committing to those nasty female things so much that American women would be better off marrying foreign men, who are more eager to settle down. Or, to be fair, she’s narrowed it down to New York women, probably hoping the geographic specificity will shield her from those nasty facts and evidence.
Her argument has giant holes in it, even taken on its merits. Here’s how it begins:
It was the boozy hour of 1:30 a.m. during a recent party in Carroll Gardens, and the 30-something hostess was telling a flock of women a story about a friend who moved to Berlin last year, after a series of tragic breakups, and met a man who almost immediately wanted to marry her. There were “oohs” and “aahs” all around. The women had to contain themselves from outright applause.
The hostess looked over at her live-in boyfriend of several years, who was sitting across the room with the other boyfriends. “I guess nowadays you have to go to Europe to find a husband,” she said, looking at the fair, upturned faces around her.
For now, I’m going to set aside my skepticism about the idea that a whole roomful of women would be so impervious to the shame of bullying your boyfriend to love you---or at least, present a realistic facsimile---in front of company. Let’s assume this happened, and that there was indeed a roomful of people that merely lived together, and that this is evidence that no one was committed. Then what to make of this?
Jane Yager, 31, a writer, moved to Berlin four years ago and met a British man with whom she now cohabits and has a 16-month-old son (though they are not married; in Europe, American gals’ preoccupation with “getting the ring” is viewed in many quarters as hopelessly bourgeois).
By her own measure, if an American man moves in with you, it shows his lack of commitment, but if a British man does it, he’s totally committed. Perhaps these recalcitrant New York men also find marriage hopelessly bourgeois? That seems the likelier explanation to me, far likelier than assuming that all men in New York are filled with such loathing for showing that they might like a girl (which is SO GAY) that they’ll put off the wedding indefinitely. But what do I know? I’ve only lived her for a month. Maybe I’ll discover that New York men are a special breed of asshole, though I have seen exactly no evidence for this contention and have instead hung out with a lot of men who are married or otherwise happily committed to their female partners.
Before I begin this post, I don’t understand why Breitbart’s Big Government is called Big Government. They’re supposed to hate Big Government, and they talk about it in every post, but since the title of the blog is also the thing they hate, it sounds like they spend every post talking about what a terrible site they run. Which they should.
For one, those who oppose online poker rights keep Republicans off-message. After all, it is hard to make an argument that we need the government to protect us from ourselves, then subsequently argue that Americans ought to be trusted with credit cards, mortgages, guns, cigarettes, snack food, soft drinks, and other freedoms that are under attack from the left.
[...]
Additionally, the 2006 anti-gaming law — the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act — championed by big government “conservatives” has been a complete failure.
So, you see, using the power of the federal government to ban gambling is Big Government. But...wait. Apparently, government allowing gambling is also Big Government! Sez Timothy in comments:
A law against online gambling has nothing to do with the size of government. Seriously. Absolutely nothing. A bureaucracy created with the goal of “taxing online poker sites, mandating safeguards against underage participation, mandating protections for those with excessive gaming habits, and providing consumer protections for the millions of Americans who play Internet poker every day”, now THAT increases the size of the government. But simple laws ("Don’t murder a dude,” “Don’t come into our country without a visa,” “Don’t gamble online you moron") are the right and proper role of government.
Then ccwasabi says:
And i don’t think the republicans should listen to them - the republican party should be conservative and stick to conservative principles i.e. using big government to determine the morality of gambling etc.
They start getting Randian, and then fundamentalist, and shit just goes haywire, because there’s no way for anything to happen with respect to the government allowing or prohibiting online poker without some form of government involvement. There’s the option of a laissez faire attitude towards it, just letting it continue on, but there’s no way that a competitive enterprise involving hundreds of millions of dollars passing through unseen hands in multiple countries is going to go unregulated, especially when you start talking about the potential for the American legal system to be involved in settling disputes.
This is the main problem with the “big government” critique - what it essentially means is “the government doing something I don’t like”. Governments have grants of power. Those grants of power may be limited or may be far reaching, and are usually written in such a way that they’ll routinely butt up against unforeseen circumstances like this.
“Big government” is the ultimate No True Scotsman fallacy, and it’s why small government conservatives are always going to be whiny and dissatisfied. Government becomes big when it pursues goals you dislike, and is within its “limited mandate” when you share its goals. It means absolutely nothing, because government is always promoting liberty when it’s promoting the liberties you like. The big/small government frame just places it in a fabricated economic context - which, incidentally, has the bonus side effect of always making “small government” always seem cheaper and more efficient.
It’s the danger but also the downfall of the Tea Party movement. They have a powerful message that encapsulates a wide swath of anger, but the only reason the message is so powerful is because it allows a rather large diaspora of angry people to pretend that everyone’s angry for the same reasons they are. It’s when push comes to shove and you actually have to start describing what it is that you’re angry about that the coalition fractures like some...fragile thing that fractures. I need to work on my metaphors.
More evidence has come out that people like Scott Lively, and others involved in organizing this Ugandan conference about homosexuality that led to anti-gay hysteria that has resulted in the drafting of a bill that would create harsh penalties for homosexuality (including, apparently, 3 years in prison for failure to report people you know are gay---a classic genocidal move, to punish people for “harboring” members of a hated group). In this above video, which was sent to me by Evan Hurst, you really get an earful of both how over the top the hatred was that was aimed at gays, and also how much organizers presented themselves as world-renowned experts on homosexuality. Lively presents himself in this video as the world’s expert on gays, the man who knows more than anything. After that, he proceeds to describe gay men as monsters (he seems to forget about the existence of lesbians, which is a blessing in disguise in this case, since at least someone is spared being painted as murderous monsters)---men who have “nothing” in the world, and seem to be soulless in his eyes. I guess the pseudo-scientific idea is that sex with women has a civilizing effect on men? It must be, because he proceeds to argue that without that specific heterosexual lifestyle, gay men turn into murderous thugs.
Lively’s theory is that being gay is basically behind the urge to murder. He blames gays for serial killing, for instance. In his book, he claims that 68% of serial killers are gay. He then proceeds to blame gays for the Holocaust. This in itself was sadly unsurprising. The Christian right has been flinging Nazi accusations like they were Bibles for a long time now, especially when it comes to abortion, which they say puts the Holocaust to shame. The Holocaust thing has a threefold effect: it’s to make their claims seem more grandiose than they are, but also works to minimize the horror of the Holocaust, and also to distract people from the fact that it’s not liberals who share the Nazis’ view of family, but the Christian right.* Unfortunately, this tactic has been effective, and people have become numb to how awful it is for wingnuts to fling Holocaust accusations willy-nilly, and so Lively decides to raise the stakes by then suggesting that it was probably gays behind the Rwandan genocide.
I doubt the choice was an accident, considering the fact that Uganda borders Rwanda, and so the horror of that genocide is probably not an abstract thing in Uganda.
So here’s why the organizers of this conference and all their buddies who claim to think the Ugandan bill is too severe are full of shit. If they actually believe this shit---that gays are mass murderers, that they’re serial killers, that they have no moral compass and are basically monsters---then they really can’t care if Uganda starts rounding up and executing people for homosexuality, since they don’t believe that gays are really human beings with any value anyway. Or they don’t actually believe all this shit, and so we’re forced to conclude they deliberately set out to write the most appalling anti-gay propaganda, with the intention of creating this sort of genocidal reaction.
Hopefully, the international outcry will result in Uganda backing off. I also hope that this whole incident wakes people up to the fact that the Christian right leadership is completely willing to lie about their intentions to secure their spot in the mainstream discourse. Since it’s obvious that someone like Scott Lively is straight up lying when he claims he didn’t think things would get this bad, we have to think about other times Christian right leadership plays innocent when their rhetoric turns to violence, like they inevitably do when someone shoots an abortion provider.
*The Nazis banned abortion and sent gay people to the camps. Aryan women were encouraged to have more children, in the same way that modern wingnuts wring their hands about declining white birthrates and plead with white women to have more children. None of this per se makes the Christian right fascist, of course---remember, just because you get the trains to run on time doesn’t make you a fascist---but it does point to the fact that “patriotic” Americans who fall for harsh right wing rhetoric face a paradox that they have trouble resolving. Which is that the America that they claim to love so dearly gave itself over to the cause of fighting fascism and won, and they want to be proud of this. But since fascism springs from right wing thought, this creates dissonance. Their solution is to project wildly, making outrageous claims about how it’s liberalism that gave birth to fascism (or that homosexuality or abortion were beloved by Nazis), which has the twin use of minimizing the dangers of fascism while also confusing the issue. The irony there is that the way that fascism could exist in America is only if the people supporting it could convince themselves that they’re different---or else the nationalism that they need to exist would be compromised by the WWII victory---and so by flailing around accusing liberals of fascism, they’ve laid the groundwork that real fascism would need to grow. I don’t think that it will, but I also don’t doubt that people like Scott Lively, who make accusations against gays that could be straight out of a Nazi playbook in demonizing Jews, would be in the front lines of such a movement. I just don’t think America as it currently exists would have enough people who agree with him to tip over. I would say that even most people who identify with the right wing evangelical churches would start to balk if it got that ugly. Most of them are actually too invested in their lives in the real world to really be 100% bananas.
Something is dreadfully wrong with Michael Steele. His gaffe meter is so off the charts. We learn yet again that it is painfully difficult for Republicans to avoid heinous, hoary, ethnical/racial slurs on camera. The ignorant, it burns...(Media Matters):
On Fox News last night, Sean Hannity hosted RNC Chairman Michael Steele to promote the release of Steele’s new book, Right Now: A 12-Step Program for Defeating the Obama Agenda. During the interview, Steele emphatically denied that the GOP needs “more modern” ideas, calling the party’s platform “one of the best political documents” produced in the last quarter-century. “Honest Injun on that,” he added.
HANNITY: There are those that are saying for the Republican Party to be successful, they’ve gotta quote be more modern.
STEELE: No, no! But that’s what’s gotten us into trouble, when we walked away from principle. Our platform is one of the best political documents that’s been written in the last 25 years. Honest Injun on that.
If you’re a stunner with washboard abs but haven’t shed those holiday pounds you put on because of grandma’s apple pie, your friends at BeautifulPeople.com are giving you the boot.
Dating and social network site BeautifulPeople.com has axed some 5,000 members following complaints that they had gained weight.
The members were singled out after posting pictures of themselves that reportedly showed they had put on pounds over the holiday period.
Of course if you were chubby beforehand, you were never welcome on the exclusive site, which filters out the “fatties” to be able to market itself as ”the largest network of attractive people in the world.”
Beauty standard proprietor and founder Robert Hintze sais that ”As a business, we mourn the loss of any member, but the fact remains that our members demand the high standard of beauty be upheld.” Of course you can’t ignore this blunt money quote:
“Letting fatties roam the site is a direct threat to our business model and the very concept for which BeautifulPeople.com was founded.”
Wow, it sounds like garden-variety people of more ample proportions to Hintze are drooling, slovenly, portly pervs in trench coats trolling his digital island of slender hedonism. It’s a strange tack to take, to say the least, when the site itself has an interesting message for those surfing with a zero chance of joining if they are perceived as not only porky, but “ugly” in general (boy, that’s a grand broad stroke).
No worries, Mr. Hintze, your “hottie” laser-focused membership is safe; “fat” green dollars can be better spent in the dating pursuit of, um, character. Of course to each their own in dating preferences, but this level of cruel, shallow PR asshattery of Hintze (I’m sure he would label it “blunt) is just another sign of the cultural acceptance of sh*tting on the less-than-svelte.
Question for Pandas: Leaving aside the outlandish statements of Hintze in defense of his site’s actions, is this any different than any dating site that self-identifies a preference and does it matter?
It’s worthy of discussion because of the rampant level of eating disorders and other behaviors, particularly in young women (and I’m sure a lot of gay men out there can speak about pressures as well), related to self-image issues that ramp all the way up to severe body dysmorphic disorder.
This article in the NY Times by Hilary Stout is a classic example of how the Times specializes in covering trends that threaten the patriarchal status quo by assuring the audience that the threat is safely contained and really not a threat at all. The topic is the growing incidence of unmarried couples buying houses---something that’s been going on a long time, and both people in my household have bought and sold houses whilst living in sin before we even met each other. So yes, it can be done! And it’s not particularly more fraught than doing it with a spouse, since the latter is just as capable of up and deciding they don’t love you anymore and sticking you with an economic and legal nightmare.
But setting that aside, what’s funny about this article is how it shows how the Times has perfected the art of subtly reassuring readers that this trend poses no threat to the patriarchy. Because, stripped of all pretension, the ugly truth is that women who buy alone or go in with someone (male or female) who isn’t a husband are flouting social conventions that suggest that women (and to a degree, men) don’t deserve to have nice things if they don’t comply with the social requirement of marriage. But not to worry! As this article demonstrates, these people---especially the women---will pay for their transgressions.
Because the narrative that’s implied, though not outright stated, is that this whole trend is more proof that Feminism Is Bad For Women. Because men, who of course are so much cleverer and more ruthless than women can even imagine, will happily exploit lowered social standards to get what they want (sex, real estate) while depriving women of the deepest, and really only desire women really possess, the wedding ring with a side of babies. Somehow, quotes upholding this point of view magically appear in the piece.
“My whole thing was with this market, get the house — the one you want and love — first,” Mr. Haberstroh said.
That wasn’t entirely her whole thing. “I was itching to get engaged before we bought the house,” said Ms. Horelik, 28, a teacher who works with special education students. “Chuck definitely felt the pressure from me and both of our families.”
But, she added, “now I see why he wanted to wait. He saw the prices and rates were dropping and we realized we may never see such a buyer-friendly environment again.”
What I especially liked was that last bit, which makes it clear that women are personally too weak to stand up for what they want, and so they need patriarchal strictures to step in and force men to do the right thing. The notion that this was something that actually happened is a joke that makes this jolly spinster feminist laugh, of course---there’s no evidence that back when women knew their place, there was less raping, stringing women along, or abandoning dependent women. But I digress. You can’t subtly intimidate the rebels with just one example, after all.
“New York rents are very high and you never see that money again,” Ms. Matthews said. She went on to list the benefits of buying: “We got a great mortgage rate, 4.75,” she said. In addition, owners of units in new developments in New York City can take advantage of a program that phases in property taxes over a period of 10 years. And then there’s the federal tax credit for first-time home buyers, to expire on April 30, 2010, which will provide several thousand dollars in income tax relief.
“We will eventually get engaged and get married,” Ms. Matthews added. “We’re kind of like, let’s get this apartment now, then let’s make it official.”
Mr. MacLaughlin said: “We were talking about getting married and I said, ‘Wait a minute, if we just put off the ring, we’ll get the apartment first.’ ”
You or I might see this as just chatter, but rest assured, it’s pitch perfect for a conservative to swoop in and point out that women are just so dumb they can’t see how men are exploiting sexual liberation to get the milk without buying the cow. That this woman actually lists the arguments are no matter---it’s made very clear that she’s parroting what her boyfriend told her. The point is that even though this story purports to be about couples breaking the mold, they went out and found quotes to reassure you that your stereotypes are still upheld.
“I am not saying everyone has to be Christian; this is not a homogenous nation. What you have to be is someone who believes in a Judeo-Christian ethic, in other words, in knowing there’s a right and wrong. Not all lifestyles are equal; not all religions are equal...My Lord made it very clear to me that I’m a cultural warrior for Judeo-Christian values.” -- The wisdom of Oklahomobigot, illegal pistol-packing legislator Sally Kern
Tee-hee. Of course she was referring to the HO-MO-SEXUALS in the above quote a few months ago, but as those of us who follow the radical hate agenda of the religious right on regular basis know, the fringe bigots have no problem going after divorce bans as well. And when I was pointed to this article by Blender Christopher G., it was no surprise that Oklahoma state legislator Sally Kern would be leading the charge in her state.
Scheduled for introduction in the 2010 legislative session by state Rep. Sally Kern, R-Oklahoma City, House Bill 2279 would restrict the “use of incompatibility as a ground for divorce” in Oklahoma.
The bill would not allow for divorce on the basis of incompatibility if:
* There are living minor children of the marriage * The parties have been married 10 years or longer * Either party files a written objection to the granting of a divorce
Note that the KOCO poll shows overwhelming disapproval for the bill—gee, do you think you’d see this level of disapproval (87%) for meddling with the rights of gay folks? Hmmmmm...NO.
The queen of queer-bashing, whose constituents in OKC apparently have all their needs met by Kern, remarked:
“Something is wrong when you can get out of a marriage easier than a loan for a car.”
She might want to take a gander at the state’s economy and whether her constituents can actually get a loan for a car. Sally is benevolent though—a divorce is ok if abuse or adultery are present.
Yes, the color-aroused yahoos are already off to a nice start in 2010. (WALB):
A doll found hanging off of a building in Plains is causing controversy. Controversial enough to get the United States Secret Service involved.
Witnesses say it was an image of President Barack Obama with a rope around his neck and the display was found hanging in one of the city’s most recognizable sites dedicated to former President Jimmy Carter.
A few people were able to snap pictures of the black doll with the rope hanging off that building right in the center of town before it was taken down.
...Store owners we asked for comment said this shines a bad light on the home of the nations’ 39th president.
And they would rather not say a word, but one did say off camera she hopes whoever did it is caught. “I don’t think it’s right I don’t know if it’s someone horse playing or what,” said Davis.
Okay, color me amused. There was a time when the standard feminist response to new evidence demonstrating that the G spot doesn’t exist---at least in the sense of being a real spot that has a specific sensitivity, like the clitoris---would have been to say, “Of course. The G spot was invented in response to feminist skepticism about the ‘maturity’ of the vaginal orgasm over the clitoral one, to justify men who didn’t want to engage in stimulation outside of the pump and dump.” Which is why I was amused to see Mary Elizabeth Williams at Broadsheet get ruffled about a new study, involving twins, that demonstrated that the genetic arguments for the existence of a G spot have produced nada. I will say that some of the statements from the researchers incline me to worry about their objectivity---they are very committed to the idea that the subjective experience that could all be in your head is not “real” somehow, and they have strong opinions on the injustice of G-spot pressure---but hey, I’m willing to believe that there’s no G spot if that’s what the research finally concludes, after multiple, rigorous studies of course.
Feminist willingness to entertain the reality of the G spot is definitely an innovation of the past couple of decades, and it’s for good reasons. One reason is that a lot of women stimulate this part of their vaginas while masturbating, and also that many lesbian-identified women report G-spot orgasms. This would incline one to think that there’s an explanation for reporting of this beyond just men wanting to believe and women needing/wanting to please men. But I think the overwhelming reason is that the desire to believe women when they report subjective experiences is ascendant, while willingness to believe that women might trick themselves into believing something because it’s what men want to hear is descendant in feminist thought right now. Women say they have G spot orgasms, we believe women, end of story. I respect where this desire comes from. Being a woman, I’m well aware of how much your ability to perceive objective reality is dismissed under the rubric that bitches are crazy. Especially when it comes to biology, there’s a long-standing, ongoing problem of women’s experiences being dismissed as being “all in their head”, particularly when you’re talking about issues such as chronic pain. Dismissals of the G spot can and often do come from that urge to believe that women are especially stupid and out of touch and probably mental. (To be fair, many feminists still are skeptical of the G spot, because so many defenses of it come from those trying to guilt women about desiring clitoral stimulation.) The other reason many feminists have moved into the pro G spot camp is because the amount of work it takes to produce that kind of orgasm puts mere 20 minutes bouts of cunnilingus to shame, and so you can’t really say devotees of it are doing so because it appeals to male laziness.
But what this struggle ends up doing is obscuring that there’s a third possibility, one that neither G spot defenders or dismissers seem willing to entertain, which is that the women’s experiences can be totally real and also that there’s no such thing as the G-spot. I mean, it’s not like it’s behind your ears or something; it’s right by the clit, and inside the vagina, which is no slouch in the sensitivity department. Considering that some women can orgasm with very little stimulation or often just by willing themselves to come hands-free---and that both men and women are capable of orgasming in their sleep without masturbation---then it’s certainly well within the range of possibility that women who get the specific G spot stimulation can have an orgasm without there actually being a specific G spot.
I suppose I see why this possibility (which I’m not married to or anything, just suggesting is a likely possibility) bothers people, and it’s for the same reason that the placebo effect is unnerving. There’s still a shame attached to the idea that something is “all in your head”, as if that makes it less real. But if you think about it, it doesn’t, because all experience happens subjectively. And by all, I mean all---the most extreme example is that you can’t hurt a corpse by shooting it, but there are other ones as well. Pain feels very different depending on context, and it’s been said that hangovers feel worse if you did something stupid while drunk. Our tendency is to want to say this experience is less real than that because our brains are constantly recalibrating how we feel something, but it’s all equally real. If someone is more likely to have a G spot orgasm because she believes in the G spot, then that doesn’t mean her orgasm was one teeny bit less real.
I realize it’s early in the morning to deal with the sociopathic levels of dishonesty that characterizes the leadership of the religious right, but I have to highlight this excellent piece of reporting in the NY Times on the responsibility that American evangelicals have for the Ugandan “death penalty for gays” bill. Of course, what said evangelicals were counting on was the relative indifference the America press has towards foreign countries, especially developing nations. The evidence on hand suggests that the Americans involved in encouraging and writing this bill figured that the press would blame the Ugandans solely---under the assumption that they’re living in a backwater, etc.---and not look into the role that Americans played. And they would have gotten away with it, if it weren’t for that incredibly appealing lesbian show host on MSNBC! Maddow refused to let this story go, and now the NY Times is coming forward and demonstrating how the cries of protestation from the evangelicals with ties to the Ugandan anti-gay movement are basically dishonest.
Like this dishonest piece of shit:
“I feel duped,” Mr. Schmierer said, arguing that he had been invited to speak on “parenting skills” for families with gay children. He acknowledged telling audiences how homosexuals could be converted into heterosexuals, but he said he had no idea some Ugandans were contemplating the death penalty for homosexuality.
“That’s horrible, absolutely horrible,” he said. “Some of the nicest people I have ever met are gay people.”
Except, of course, that Schmierer was there to do a talk on how homosexuality is a choice and that people leave the lifestyle behind, which is a belief promoted by the religious right in order to justify throwing people in jail for being gay. (He calls this “parenting skills”.) Like with the anti-choice movement, you have to ignore their claims about what they’re doing, and look at the big picture, especially legally. A lot of legal justice for gays and lesbians has come about as people start to see it as an identity, like race or class status---and you can’t arrest people for what they are, just what they do. By claiming it’s a choice, the religious right hopes to get homosexual sex reclassified as a choice that can be criminalized.
As Rachel Maddow showed, the religious right putting forward “ex-gay” people as shield against criticisms that describe them as hating gay people isn’t working. The implication of having “ex-gays” around has always been, “Hey, we let them use the toilet even though they’ve sucked a cock, what more do you want?” But of course, the real reason to have ex-gays around is to give the hateful lies about gay people some authority, the implication being that those who actually did the deed know for a fact that gays are the evilest evil to ever evil. When an ex-gay claims that gays recruit by raping children, wingnuts can feel good about themselves, because they say, “Hey, he should know.” But of course, that’s simply not true, because the religious right has created huge incentives for so-called ex-gays to lie about their previous (and often ongoing) sexual behavior and habits, in order to keep the esteem and the paychecks coming. And to get all expense paid trips to Uganda to do seminars on how gay men want to rape your children. Here is the description given by the NY Times:
For three days, according to participants and audio recordings, thousands of Ugandans, including police officers, teachers and national politicians, listened raptly to the Americans, who were presented as experts on homosexuality. The visitors discussed how to make gay people straight, how gay men often sodomized teenage boys and how “the gay movement is an evil institution” whose goal is “to defeat the marriage-based society and replace it with a culture of sexual promiscuity.”
Buddhism is inferior to Christianity when it comes to forgiveness of sins, according to Fox News pundit Brit Hume. Tiger Woods should turn his back on Buddhism and become a Christian to be forgiven for cheating on his wife, Hume told Fox News Chris Wallace Sunday.
The extent to which he can recover seems to me depends on his faith, said Hume. He is said to be a Buddhist. I dont think that faith offers the kind of redemption and forgiveness offered by the Christian faith. My message to Tiger is, Tiger turn to the Christian faith and you can make a total recovery and be a great example to the world.
How does this prescription for redemption explain Ted Haggard, Mark Sanford, John Ensign and all of the rest of the Christian GOP sexual hypocrites?
So, one day, the President of These United States was talking to the Vice President of same. A photographer of said President’s court took a photograph of them talking, and it was posted to the Presidential Internet. Here is the picture.
This picture communicates many things to me. It communicates that Barack Obama believes that walls are a vital part of his leaning strategy. It also communicates that he is a couple of inches taller than Joe Biden. Both men also own tuxedos.
However, I am missing something vital in my analysis. It is apparently because I don’t see what others see, which is never quite said outright. Ann Althouse, however, is not afraid to say it, and I trust her interpretation of pictures like I trust Chris Farley’s interpretation of cocaine and morphine.
People who like Obama are blinded to the way other people see him. This picture strongly says cool to people who love him, but it doesn’t read that way to others… including the many, many people who don’t even want a cool President.
Photo via Instapundit, who has a closeup of the facial expression. The main thing I see when I look at that face is: He’s tired.
Wouldn’t it be funny, Barack, if, after all of this, you wake up one morning, and you think: I hate my job?
What’s he thinking now? Oh, my God, I’m only one-quarter through this thing. And they’re going to expect me to campaign again too? Bleh!
Prediction (longshot): Obama will not run for reelection. How can he do it?
You see? He looks cool. And tired. And maybe like he’s checking Joe Biden’s tie to make sure it’s straight, because Joe Biden is a blubbering manboy who is currently asking Barack Obama for a corn dog, which Barack Obama is tired of hearing, because the place they’re going doesn’t have corn dogs.
Now, it might be that people who don’t like Barack Obama are inclined to believe that a neutral facial expression and a wall lean are signs of his deep and abiding contempt not just for Biden, but for his job itself and perhaps even his own life (Muslims are suiciders, after all). Other people will look at this and believe that Barack Obama licked his thumb, wiped a smudge off of Joe Biden’s face, and told him that he loved him like a brother immediately after this picture was taken, and then they rode wish-powered unicorns into the dinner hall to thunderous applause from all of the forest elves in their kingdom.
There are no other options, by the way. Just those two.
Let’s test out a theory here. I contend that Professors Reynolds and Althouse are disingenuous hacks who lack anything even resembling a rational context through which they could interpret a picture of Barack Obama, and that the picture above was an effort by the White House to show some legitimate downtime between the two most powerful people in America where they weren’t gladhanding and making small talk. We shall test this...by looking at another picture.
One of the less fun controversies I’ve stepped into at Double X was when I questioned whether or not there was such a thing as “sex addiction”, pointing out that its biggest proponents are prudes who are looking for a cover story so they can continue to promote themselves as experts without having to get dinged for being sex negative. The most famous, of course, is Dr. Drew, who seems to think female sexual desire that isn’t properly contained by his own exacting standards is always the result of sexual abuse. (This little party trick he pulled on “Love Line” always annoyed me, because it’s so dishonest. The hit rate when you ask random women if some man has every molested them is extremely high, and so the fact that you “guessed” that someone has been abused is proof not that you have a read on them, but that sexual abuse is that common.) Of course, people invested in the idea of “sex addiction” are going to erect straw man arguments, accusing you of saying there’s no such thing as people who act out sexually, people who use compulsive sexual behaviors to self-soothe, etc. No one is saying that, of course. The skeptics merely point out that the addiction model is all screwed up, in no small part because they lean on prudery to convince people that sex itself is the problem---that it’s an addictive substance---and that the only way to be healthy is to strictly control your sexual behavior. And that the way to contain it is---surprise surprise---to suggest that sexual behavior outside the Christian Right® approved romantic, monogamous behavior is unhealthy.
Anyway, I bring this up because, even as defenders of “sex addiction” scoff at the idea that their framing promotes sex negativity under a pseudo-scientific veneer, the ugly reality is that “sex addiction” as an idea is creating substantial harm in the real world, to people’s happiness and mental health. Check out this letter Heather Corinna got from some teenage girl in her first sexual relationship:
My boyfriend and I have been together for almost 7 months. We had sex after the 1st month because we felt that special connection with each other. Ever since the first time with him, I keep wanting more. I think I’m addicted to sex with him. That is all I think about constantly. He is the same way but for my sake (he doesn’t want to be a father yet, if you get what I mean) he tries to control himself as much as possible. He can’t always though. To be safe I’ve asked him to buy condoms but since we both realized we are doing it too much, he says we aren’t going to do it anyway so why have them. Well then he comes over and we wind up doing it without a condom. It was a close call one time where he almost ejaculated inside of me, but pulled it out just in time. Do you have any suggestions on how we can overcome out sex addiction and try and be safer? I’m not allowed to go on the pill and my boyfriend and I have a lot of time to be alone together. We are just teenagers. Thank you for the advice.
Here’s the thing: I’ll bet a lot of folks like Dr. Drew and other “sex addiction” proponents would not see a problem with this letter, because they’d say that she’s too young and anyway, she’s acting irresponsibly. Which proves the point, of course. Not that abstaining is wrong, but if you’re planning to do so because you’re tricked into thinking that having a lot of sexual desire as a teenager is unhealthy, then what you get is this kind of crap, where a pregnancy is almost sure to happen.
This is why the addiction model is so dangerous, and a mask for prudery. After all, if sex is “addictive”, then surely you’re an addict if you want to do it all the time with your new amour, right? What’s moderate levels of “sexing”? Is there “binge sexing”? This poor kid thinks so. Worse, she thinks the incredible desire to have sex is comparable to an overwhelming desire to get smashed every night, as if she were an alcoholic or something. Reading this, I get the strong impression she probably thinks once a month is probably the moderate amount of sex. She’d probably be blown away to find out that it’s perfectly normal and healthy to go at it four times a night when you’re young and in your first sexual relationship.
Using the wrong framework to describe a problem has consequences. I would argue that for Dr. Drew, the consequences that we see here---where young people, especially young women are afraid and ashamed of being sexually voracious---are not a drawback, but the whole point. But all that’s going to happen here is that people who may not have had sexual dysfunction before are going to be facing unintended pregnancy, faulty relationships torn up by sexual guilt, and possibly health problems from not responding to your body’s signals for healthy amounts of sexual release. Nor are people who act out sexually going to be helped by this. Framing sex as some problem to be conquered instead of looking at your problems in a more holistic way strikes me as a really bad idea.
It’s been 19 years since Susan Faludi’s seminal tome on the anti-feminist backlash of the 80s---titled, of course, 
Related:
Yes, the color-aroused yahoos are already off to a nice start in 2010. (
Okay, color me amused. There was a time when the standard feminist response to new evidence demonstrating that the G spot doesn’t exist---at least in the sense of being a real spot that has a specific sensitivity, like the clitoris---would have been to say, “Of course. The G spot was invented in response to feminist skepticism about the ‘maturity’ of the vaginal orgasm over the clitoral one, to justify men who didn’t want to engage in stimulation outside of the pump and dump.” Which is why I was amused to 
One of the less fun controversies I’ve stepped into at Double X was