So via Kevin Drum, who got it in turn from Andrew Sullivan it turns out if you're a blogger you can paste your URL into the Typealyzer and get back what seems to be a pretty solid Myers-Briggs personality score. For folks who've played along at home it looks like I'm an INTP, which stands for Introversion, iNtuition, Thinking, Perceiving)
Hoo-boy, I'm not sure it's any better-grounded than, say, astrology but it sure felt like the description got me dead to rights. (INTP rundown from Personality Page, Wikipedia.) It's even more accurate in terms of my writing -- introspectively theory based, intuitively extroverted, good at explaining big ideas but a tendency also to overkill the obvious, lousy attention to spelling and grammar. Yup, that's me.
Interestingly (maybe only to me and/or possibly other INTPs?) I nerdily cross-checked the score by running links to my top-level topic categories. All sat pretty firmly either in INTP (mostly) or closely adjacent. Perhaps interestingly the one exception was the now-seldom-updated History and Fantasy category which light up way over on ESFP (Extraversion, Sensing, Feeling, Perceiving.) Which might explain why it's now so rarely updated. :-) Oh, that and maybe because so many more people I know in real life know about my blog I'm a lot more shy.
Anyway, that link again if you want to try it on your own work (or any other website -- all wikipedia entries register INTP, for instance, Obama for President is or was ISTP - The Mechanics) is Typealyzer.
Photo "Half open' by Flickr user Dave Delaney. Used under a Creative Commons license.
Long as I'm on a roll about gender assumptions, Em and Lo answer a good gender-busting letters-from-listeners question over at Daily Bedpost
[Dear] Em & Lo
I am a 31-year-old male in California and have been married for 6 1/2 years. Back in March, my wife came to me one night and said she would like to discuss something with me...I knew it was something serious but never imagined she'd say, "What do you think about an open marriage?" She is conservative by nature so this took me by complete surprise. I have dated her since she was 18, she is now 28, and we have two kids. She says she doesn't want to leave me or the kids, but admits to feeling trapped -- like she never lived out her early 20's. We have discussed it over the last couple of months: she is persistent in wanting this. What are the positives of this and can it be healthy for a marriage?
Confused HusbandDear C.H,
First, can we just say we love that you're concerned, cautious and confused about your wife's request? The cliché male response would be to immediately jump at an opportunity like this. "I can get a free pass from my wife to sleep with other women?!? Hells yes!" Of course, not all men are immune to the powerful bonds of traditional, monogamous marriage. They too can cherish the stability and intimacy that comes from dedicating your life to someone, body and soul...OR, they're so riddled with jealousy that they couldn't stand the thought of their wife sleeping with anyone else and would just prefer to secretly cheat behind her back so they can have their cake (they sleep around) and eat it too (their wives don't).
For the sake of courtesy, let's assume you fall into the former category...
It's a safe assumption that most men would jump at the chance. But then, as Bitchy Jones laments, it's also a safe assumption that dominant women can't or don't love their men, enjoy refraining from sex while denying it of their despised partners, wear provocative-looking but impenetrable attire, and of course secretly exist only to please men...
Oh wait!
As for the jealous, ok-for-me-but-not-for-thee thing Em and Lo mention? Oh yeah, that happens too. But I'm pretty sure we can all agree that's not a sensation exclusive to any one sex or gender. (Actually the mechanism of that particular kind of jealousy's pretty interesting. I've spent quite a lot of time talking it over with different people over the years. One of these days I'll have to post about it. But I digress...)
Note: Just to be clear this isn't a knock on E&L's answer, at all, at all. The part I quoted was just a preamble to some practical, positive advice about ways their correspondent can process his partner's request.
Another follow-up along the same lines of dominance/submissiveness stereotype-breaking I started digging into yesterday. Bitchy Jones of Bitchy Jones's Diary really struggles with assumptions about what it's supposed to mean to be a dominant woman.
I am no good at being dominant. Here’s why. I have emotions. Emotions are your enemy when you want to stomp all over your partner for lame kicks. Empathy? Forget it. That’s helping no one. Remorse? Get thee behind me. Love?
Basically it’s hard enough making ‘I love you‘ and ‘I want to hurt you’ fit into the same person’s box in my brain without the entire world of femdom adding to my troubles by going out of its fucking way to completely ignore questions of love and actual adult human relationships (and essentially anything that doesn’t come up in the prodom/client dynamic).
Femdom hates the feminine: clothing and behaviours that signify it are used to degrade. [i.e. men by forcing them to adopt feminine attire or behaviors. Whereas dominant women are supposed to wear non-conventional feminine attire... like black catsuits.--fl Emotions associated with femininity - like loving and caring - are ignored.
Where is love? Truly. You tell me, in this world of kink that venerates women as it hates and grinds them down. As it worships cunts and feet and immaculate beauty? As it rejects female desire, female sexuality, cunts that aren’t framed in a queening stool like an object d’art. That is okay with the clit and it’s erectile properties and love of friction and down with the hatin’ on the vagina and its dirty ache for penetration. And where is the woman – who is me – falling in love with this man who is her dirt, her filth, hers to grind to powder and crumble to dust.
You know me and you know that when I see him like that my heart burst open like bruised fruit. Not for male submission in general, not for my kink made flesh, but for him. The actual him inside the hurt. I love the one I’m with and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
So in other words once again the cultural concepts of dominance and/or sadism is so closely tied to masculinity, and submission and/or masochism so linked to femininity that an actual dominant, erotically sadistic, and (gasp!) monogamous and loving heterosexual woman winds up being the odd duck out. Kind of interesting, no?
---
Aside: this might be an interesting place to bring up a different post, by Em and Lo of Daily Bedpost respond to a letter from a reader
[Dear] Em & Lo
I am a 31-year-old male in California and have been married for 6 1/2 years. Back in March, my wife came to me one night and said she would like to discuss something with me...I knew it was something serious but never imagined she'd say, "What do you think about an open marriage?" She is conservative by nature so this took me by complete surprise. I have dated her since she was 18, she is now 28, and we have two kids. She says she doesn't want to leave me or the kids, but admits to feeling trapped -- like she never lived out her early 20's. We have discussed it over the last couple of months: she is persistent in wanting this. What are the positives of this and can it be healthy for a marriage?
Confused HusbandDear C.H,
First, can we just say we love that you're concerned, cautious and confused about your wife's request? The cliché male response would be to immediately jump at an opportunity like this. "I can get a free pass from my wife to sleep with other women?!? Hells yes!" Of course, not all men are immune to the powerful bonds of traditional, monogamous marriage. They too can cherish the stability and intimacy that comes from dedicating your life to someone, body and soul...OR, they're so riddled with jealousy that they couldn't stand the thought of their wife sleeping with anyone else and would just prefer to secretly cheat behind her back so they can have their cake (they sleep around) and eat it too (their wives don't).
For the sake of courtesy, let's assume you fall into the former category...
It's a safe assumption that most men would jump at the chance. But then, as Bitchy Jones laments, it's also a safe assumption that dominant women don't love men, enjoy refraining from sex enough to effortlessly deny it of their despised partners, wear 22-inch high-heels, and ought to be charging money for it since they're "a natural at it."
In fact extraordinary numbers of men are contentedly monogamous (even in the stereotypically promiscuous gay male community approximately half are in or would prefer to be in exclusive relationships with a single partner.)
Stereotypes matter. Unfortunately.
---
Speaking of stereotypes, though, and turning to another point in BJ's post, she addresses another stereotype about love, fidelity, and fantasies about "femdoms"
I actively reject the idea that most femdom relationships are conducted by an arch uninterested woman and a series of men who are dropped into the piranha pit as soon as they displease her.
I am still a real person in my fantasies and I care about him. Him. He is not some faceless, exchangeable nothing, he is the most desirable creature that exists. That is who I fantasise about having at my beck. Oh, I know you are going to make noises about am army, a mass of most-desirables, but my desire doesn’t work that way. I am obsessive. I have focus.
He cannot easily be replaced. And who would want a man that could?
Deep down I think this idea of the disposable submissive man is one of those ideas that looks like it is about keeping the man down, sexily in his place, but at the expense of erasing (or nonsensifying) the desire of the dominant woman.
Keen point about erasing desire, and even autonomous desire, in dominant women. (I think it's significant that there's a consensus among nearly all concerned, including law enforcement, that being dominatrixes doesn't really count as prostitution.**)
Another point, though, about the male fantasy of disposability: it models the same stereotype of men that they "pay prostitutes not for the sex but to go away after." In other words it's a common (though not universal) male fantasy, and a dominant stereotype of them, to rack up multiple partners with as few encumbrances and complications as possible. Being "used" and discarded by a string of "femdom" women, however "humiliating," is still about as convenient a way to move from one bed (ok, or dungeon) to the next as it gets.
My guess, though, is that outside of pro-dom (a.k.a. compensated) relationships it's probably as complex for men as it is for Bitchy Jones.
I bring all this up, sometimes over and over, not because I'm a closet submissive (Like a lot of people I'm attentive, and sometimes quite deferential, and occasionally passive-aggressive, but far more warm to topping than not) but because, as I've mentioned before, I think BDSM -- even more than feminism -- is on the cutting edge of this kind of gender analysis. And I bring it up because while the construction of gender, and the stereotypes and assumptions that are it's bricks and mortar, feel like jail for women like Jones, or men like Maymay, they confine all of us.***
[** In fact it might be *really* significant, not just from a law-enforcement perspective but from a feminist one: what does it say if male erotic male gratification carried out on a "submissive" women through penetration is "sex" but equally intense erotic gratification carried out by a dominant woman isn't? Just curious. Also, it seems a lot like the Larry Craig-style defense that "He doesn't count as 'homosexual' because he only penetrates other men." --fl]
[*** And just to be clear, I'm not saying gender isn't fun, interesting, or even necessary. And goodness knows I'm not saying folks should all just switch to unisex clothes and bathrooms! I *am* saying, though, that it's generally constructed *too small* to move freely... that to really make the *most* of the genders we've got we shouldn't have to keep *choking* on it. --fl]
Courtney Martin of Feministing has a list of "feminist questions she's still exploring." Some of them are particularly relevant for the 10th annual Transgender Day of Remembrance.
1. What is the accurate, once-and-for-all differences between men's and women's brains?
...
4. When do I focus on being right and when do I focus on being effective?
5. When do I address sexism directly and when it is best to handle it indirectly?
6. How can society still be so invested in the categories hetero, homo, and bi when sexuality so obviously exists on a spectrum?
If I write about the ways our current constructions of gender confine us, I have to acknowledge that while it merely confines most of us inside too-narrow walls, for some of us... people... human beings!... it brutalizes and too often kills.
So while looking through my photos for something to illustrate yesterday's post about Maymay and Eileen's new project, Male Submission Art, I realized almost all the photos I've uploaded to Flickr tend to be pretty assertive -- not necessarily dominating but at least actively inviting. That's actually ok, I think, but after thinking about their site my photos all started looking a little one-note to me.
I'm coming down with a cold -- must be November. I've been thinking about vulnerability and how to present it. Considering how I felt I thought these photos, taken in very low light, here's my first attempt at mellowing out a little.
Happy HNT (or Half-nekkid Thursday!)
Laura Augustin's essays on migration and sex work, like this one on her blog Border Thinking on Migration, Culture, Economy and Sex resonate for me because of my own experiences with counter-culture homelessness back when I was a very young man. We weren't exactly "undocumented" and the people I traveled with were almost entirely citizens, but our cultural status (draft-avoiding, long haired, "hippie" clothes before such clothes had retro chic) meant we had to be very wary of police, citizen vigilantes, and often of conventional employers.
Photo "Homeless, November 1974" uploaded by
Flickr user figleaf (hey, that's me!) Distributed
under a Creative Commons license.Her descriptions of the experience of arriving somewhere new, with just a name or address, often no money, and having to take what work was available, often at the convenience of our local "hosts" or people who were willing to work with "you people" sounds very familiar to -- including the paradox of unlicensed employers often being the least safe and most exploitative.
Same with one of her points, the vast majority preferred to do anything other than sex work (and, ironically, take a "straight" job... assuming in the depths of the Nixon-era oil embargoes such work could be found.) Most of us preferred to do something else, including day labor, informal agricultural labor, and even being drug "mules," but others, ranging from very reluctant to almost enthusiastic, would agree to sex work. And, as Augustin says, in those circumstances you wouldn't be able to say any of us were outright *trafficked* either for labor or sex. If any of us were by contemporary standards then at the time, at least, we probably wouldn't have seen it that way.
But living as we did, as on or close to the street as we did, we were also aware that there were others almost like us, sometimes in factories or on farms but mostly in sex or maybe drug work, who *didn't* have a choice. And often even they weren't really *that* different from the rest of us, not mindless, not thralls, and sometimes very nearly as locally independent... and sometimes even with warmer clothes or more spending money... as we were. But they were the ones who had to "get back" to someone, "had arrangements" with a guy they couldn't "cross" or mess with. It was all really vague but sometimes they'd be pretty stressed or, when they were on the move, even desperate not to be found.
Anyway, when I hear people say "all 'X' are trafficked" I think that's wrong, and wrong the way Augustin documents in her work. Instead when I hear the word "trafficked" I think about that small subset who really didn't have the same choices we did, who had more than law enforcement to worry about, and who sometimes suffered much more dire consequences.
It wasn't all of us, as maybe an outsider might have concluded, and it wasn't even one percent of us, but they were there. More complicated, sure, and *way* less common, but there. I know my experiences were only somewhat analogous to the undocumented/migrant communities you work in, but I can't imagine it's so different that there isn't the same kind of small subset of people who need... maybe not so much "rescue" the way "anti-trafficking" people mean it but... still in their circumstances need a lot more than relaxed document requirements or more open borders or more local tolerance to regain their autonomy.
Anyway, I left a comment at her site asking if she had any insights into that particular kind of condition and if she knew what might best help them out of *their* circumstances.
I actually wasn't sure she'd have an answer -- she tends to study trans-border, migratory populations and, at least in my former subculture, the people most likely to be "trafficked" or "pimped" were, perhaps ironically, the least likely to be transients -- often there when we arrived, almost never able to "head west" or "head back east" when invited to move on and check out rumors of new possibilities. And so to that extent I wonder if they really even show up in genuinely migrant communities.
Turns out she's traveling (not surprising given the nature of her work) but she sent a link to an opinion piece that, by coincidence, showed up in todays Guardian Online. It's not exactly an answer, but it clarifies nicely why, at least when they're on the move, it's so hard to identify, let alone rescue, actually trafficked people.
Heck, speaking for myself, even though I was sometimes sleeping under overpasses, in cars, or "crashing" at other people's apartments, and even though my diet was so meager I developed nutritional deficiency diseases, it wasn't until the 1980s that I realized I'd been homeless. And it wasn't till very recently that I realized the people we thought of at the time as "in some kind of hot water" probably qualified as trafficked or pimped. So I'm guessing the same is true for a lot of people still in those situations. And not because they're not there but because there's there's so much overlap between the aspirations and difficulties of migration/transience, smuggling, and trafficking that sometimes it's hard to tell even when you're in it, let alone from the outside.
Maymay of Maybe Maimed but Never Harmed, is starting, approximately, a porn site with his sometime partner Eileen. While one might think there were already enough of those in the world his reasons for starting this one are persuasive. (All emphasis his.)
So, here’s the problem: There is not enough porn wherein submissive men are the erotic subject matter.
If you’ve read even a little bit of this blog, you’re probably already well-versed in many of my rants about how paltry the available porn is for submissive men like me (and, by extension, dominant women like Eileen). But the problem is actually two fold. One problem is, of course, that there’s simply an insanely disturbing general lack of the stuff. In fact, it’s so bad that if you Google for the three words “male submission art,” you actually get female submission links littering the first page of results.
This is actually even worse if you go actively hunting for porn with the hopes of finding erotica depicting men who are submissive. Instead, you’re much, much more likely to find erotica depicting women who are dominant. This is actually a major nuisance for a lot of people—including many submissive men, I might add.
Arguably even more frustrating that that, however, is that what male submissive porn is out there is total shit relative to the porn available for other sorts of orientations. In such erotica (unless it’s gay imagery, of course) men are portrayed as impotent, ugly creatures. That is not sexy. It’s also insulting.
The (already, big surprise, not-"work-safe") site is Male Submission Art. The mission statement on their submission-guidelines page says their aim is
...to challenge stereotypes of erotica as it relates to imagery of gender-biased domination and submission. In our experience, such erotic imagery almost always contains images of beautiful female submission or “pathetic” male submission. Instead, we want to showcase beautiful imagery of masculine submissive subjects.
Read more, plus find out how to submit entries if you're interested, here.
Since I reiterated my own frustrations the other day I'm obviously pleased to hear about this site. And I'm pleased not out of some sort of MRA-like plea that "men can be erotic too" but because interest *already exists* and the dysfunctionally, comically-stereotypically gendered nature of porn insures that that interest is *underserved.*
Since I appreciate but don't share May and Eileen's *erotic* enthusiasm for submissive men I'll point out another distinction Eileen alludes to in several of her captions, but especially a comparatively modest one of a young man who's just sitting on a bench counting his toes: it's not that the man has to be actively (note that word "actively") submissive, instead it can be enough for him simply *not to be dominant!*
For all the (entirely appropriate, justified, and important) attention paid to encouraging agency and non-passive consent for women it's also important for men to get over the "no-sex" class paradigm-driven notion that (hetero) sex doesn't happen unless men take the active role. (Even in "Playgirl" style "porn for women" men are portrayed as *actively* presenting themselves... submitting themselves in ways that initiate by *actively* inviting the observer rather than leaving space where the observer can identify as the initiator her- or himself.)
Quick mini vocabulary review: this might be a bit off-topic but since a lot of heterosexuals, men and women, *like* it when the man takes the lead I ought to make it clear that, as in ballroom dancing, one person initiating ("let's dance," "what are you doing later") isn't synonymous with that same person "leading" once the dance... or other activity... begins. Nor is initiating or leading the same as "dominating." Nor does *accepting* an invitation automatically equal to "submitting."
And finally, back to May's, Eileen's and my main point, when it comes to men submission (in either the active, the initiating, or even the BDSM sense) isn't, and shouldn't be, automatically synonymous with pathetic, "effeminate," comical, impotent, or insulting. (Nor, for that matter, need submission automatically imply any of those other things when it comes to women.)
This one's going to be a tough, tough stereotype to overcome, by the way. (It's one place where even mainstream feminism has some catching up to do.) And while it's sort of natural that BDSM folks would be on the cutting edge I think it's important enough that anyone interested in intergender issues can help tackle it.
In a short post titled "Vanilla?" Radical Vixen, who's a phone sex operator, brings up the $64,000.00 question
“The only sex I want to talk about is procreation.”
-regular client
Hugo Schwyzer brought up a similar issue of pregnancy ambivalence last week when he talked about a preview copy of an as-yet unavailable online article a reader had sent him called "Procreation: A Qualitative Analysis of Intermittent Contraceptive Use And Unintended Pregnancy" from September 2008 issue of Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health. The three categories those authors identified were "Active eroticization of pregnancy risk," "Passive romanticization of procreation," and "Escapist pleasures."
Weird, I know, to talk about procreative sex as an (actual psychological-requirement) fetish or kink (eroticizing variation) when, as Radical Vixen notes in her title, that procreative sex (preferably lights off, in bed, man on top missionary position, penis-in-vagina, little or no foreplay, till ejaculation only, preferably for procreation only) is the quintessential definition of "vanilla sex" against which instead *every other sexual practice, period* is supposed to be a "kink."
But there you have it.
As times get tougher and as ad revenue dries up I've started noticing increasing numbers of tip jars appearing in the sidebars of bloggers of all genres. I'm not sure how well they work but if you like someone's work and you've got even a couple of bucks to spare I heartily recommend chipping in.
Anyway, while I've never had much ad revenue to begin with (I've experimented a bit with ads but since I'm *in* the "pink ghetto" of sex bloggers but not enough *of* it to feel comfortable hosting ads for porn or adult-equipment sites that's never really been much of a revenue generator) my expenses are low enough that I'm not going to put up a tip jar either. (I'd far, far rather you donate whatever you can to the independent, and excellent sex-education site Scarleteen.)
Instead I'm going to take a tip from Casual Kitchen, a food blog that nicely combines quality food with cost consciousness. The author, Daniel Koontz, invites readers to
How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by subscribing to my RSS feed, or submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon.
I'd like to make the same request. Wheni read posts that inspire me I quote and link to them. If I consistently read them I add them to my blogroll. If you enjoy reading Figleaf's Real Adult Sex, tell somebody. Quote or reference a post, add a link to your blogroll, subscribe to my RSS feed, leave a comment.
If this blog isn't your cup of tea you can still support other bloggers the same way.
Thanks!
Kevin Drum of Mother Jones passes on a tidbit that helps make sense of the peculiar, even egregious mindset of the largely dominant classes.
TALK RADIO....Via Digby, here is Dan Shelley, former news director and assistant program director at Milwaukee's WTMJ, telling us about his career working with his station's right-wing talkers:
To succeed, a talk show host must perpetuate the notion that his or her listeners are victims, and the host is the vehicle by which they can become empowered. The host frames virtually every issue in us-versus-them terms. There has to be a bad guy against whom the host will emphatically defend those loyal listeners.
Got that? However on top or in charge they might *be* they generally don't *feel* that way. For instance...
The stereotyped liberal view of the talk radio audience is that it’s a lot of angry, uneducated white men. In fact, the audience is far more diverse. Many are businesspeople, doctors, lawyers, academics, clergy, or soccer moms and dads. Talk show fans are not stupid. They will detect an obvious phony. The best hosts sincerely believe everything they say. Their passion is real. Their arguments have been carefully crafted in a manner they know will be meaningful to the audience, and that validates the views these folks were already thinking.
That doesn't mean they're not dangerous either
[The] enemy can be a politician – either a Democratic officeholder or, in rare cases where no Democrat is convenient to blame, it can be a “RINO” (a “Republican In Name Only,” who is deemed not conservative enough). It can be the cold, cruel government bureaucracy. More often than not, however, the enemy is the “mainstream media” – local or national, print or broadcast.
Sometimes, it can even be their own station’s news director. One year, Charlie targeted me because I had instructed my midday news anchor to report the Wimbledon tennis results, even though the matches wouldn’t be telecast until much later in the day. Charlie gave out my phone number and e-mail address on the air. I was flooded with hate mail, nasty messages, and even one death threat from a federal law enforcement agent whom I knew to be a big Charlie fan.
And here comes the first crux, applied by Shelley to 'winger talk-show hosts but applicable to all such members of the "superior" class
This brings us to perhaps the most ironic thing about most talk show hosts. Though they may savage politicians and others they oppose, they fear criticism or critiques of any kind.
And then the final, dangerous irony
It is foolish to enter into a dispute with someone who has a 50,000-watt radio transmitter at his or her disposal and feels cornered.
Thing is, the people with their hands on *very real* levers of power are dangerous not because they're ubermensch harboring Nietchziean beliefs that the weak exist merely for the amusement and exploitation of the strong. They're dangerous because they imagine themselves at the bottom of the heap, only one law, one regulation, one immigrant, one heterosexual proposition declined, one homosexual proposition tolerated, one woman's promotion, one foreign competitor, one adherent to another religion, away from social, cultural, even physical annihilation.
I remember sitting in the lobby of a progressive Portland, OR, publisher's office back in 1980 or 1981, waiting for a friend to conclude a meeting, and reading a report (of all things) about volunteer burnout in progressive organizations. The article cited another study about anxiety among white-collar workers. Allegedly more than 75% of all white-collar workers surveyed in this cited studies believed there was some single question that could be asked that, by their inability to answer, would reveal them as frauds and cost them their jobs. Seventy-five percent!
And yet, even by the lax standards of the 1970s, dominated by the Peter Principle that everyone rises to their level of incompetence** and by stagflation and chronic layoffs, it simply wasn't the case that everyone was separated from the street by only a single question.
That's just what people... still mostly men back then... *believed.* Of themselves far more than of others. Remember, the *fear* was, and I think is, real. The *basis* for that fear was not.
Again, that doesn't make that illusory fear less dangerous. Remember, *death threats* for publishing *tennis scores!* Just as today you see immigrants, in the land of the free and the home of the brave, murdered by cowards goaded by a culture of cowardice. Just as you see unassuming Unitarian churchgoers murdered in their pews not *like* cornered rats but *by* self-imagined cornered rats, goaded in turn by those who imagine themselves just as cornered.
I mention all this not as some kind of call for compassion (which would be received only as condescension anyway) but as an admonition to *understand* the peculiar mechanics of contemporary oppression, misogyny, racism, xenophobia, religious intolerance, homo- and transphobia in order to more effectively address it rather than exacerbate it, to mitigate it instead of magnify it.
[** Not as harsh as it was made out to be: restated more generously, you'd keep getting promoted until you reached, or barely exceeded, your full competency -- in other words till you reached a maximum, not optimum, equilibrium of skill and workload. Naturally nobody saw it that way. --fl]
Peridot Ash of had a nice discourse last week on the difference between how many sex-worker customers behave towards sex workers (evidently mostly politely) and how they often** think and/or talk about them in "escort review" venues. Ash, a sex-worker herself, wrote an informational post about pre-screening customers. Her tip got picked up on one of the "review" sites and was... poorly received.
I really did not mean she was intelligent. I was showing how these girls think.
I do agree with you.
The links were also enlightening.
After all she is a hooker,not smart to begin with.There's quite a bit more of the same, and her very level-headed reactions, here.
I'm... pretty sure there's some bluster and/or self-loathing involved in such deprecating, denigrating language but even so, as we used to say down southern Appalachia it tain't right and it cain't be healthy.
Part of why I advocate legalizing prostitution is so sex-workers can have better, legal avenues for screening customers, not because it would make life easier for the customers who write these kinds of reviews.
(Note: And no, it doesn't help to say "well, there are millions of trolls on the internet to begin with. Because, um, who *are* they then?)
(Via Amber Rhea.)
[** But sure, not always. --fl]
Jill of Feministe illustrates the difference.
Restricting reproductive freedom is wrong in all directions — and China is a good example of what happens when you allow the state the right to decide how many children women can (and can’t) have.
A STORM of international protest is building over a Chinese ruling that a Muslim Uighur woman who is six months pregnant must have an abortion or lose her home.
Chinese authorities have ordered Arzigul Tursun, who is 26 weeks pregnant, to abort her unborn child because she has two other children.
She is under watch at the Municipal Watergate Hospital in Yining in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region, which is populated heavily with Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking Muslim minority. Supporters are concerned a forced abortion at such a late stage could threaten Arzigul’s health.
Health concerns should be taken seriously, but that doesn’t get to the heart of the problem. This would be wrong even if the procedure was guaranteed to be safe.
In the late 1970s or early 1980s, after Roe v. Wade was handed down, abortion rights were generally accepted, and access to women's health services including abortion service was well distributed two groups made two market-driven decisions.
Anti-abortion activists, recognizing they were getting *very* little traction in their crusades, made the conscious decision to rebrand themselves as "pro-life." They weren't pro-life at all, of course -- they were as absolutely indifferent to miscarriage, stillbirth, life-threatening conditions of pregnancy, labor, or delivery, post-delivery death, maternal mortality, industrially distributed environmental abortifacents and tetrogens, and, say, the continuing employment of Joe Arpaio as they are today. But by lying about it, and by disguising their lies as "concern for the unborn" they were able to reframe the debate in what turned out to be a very effective way. And because they were liars their rebranding made no, zero, none difference at all in their overall outlook and, since they didn't believe it themselves their label *as a concept* hasn't expanded into more ways of saving lives. (Making shit up about ordinary hormonal contraceptives being "abortifacents" doesn't meet the criteria for "expanded.")
As a result, just a year or two later, once-complacent abortion-rights activists, who had never *wanted* people to have abortions in the first place in preference of, oh, say, avoiding unplanned, unwanted pregnancy in the first place, made a marketing decision of their own and began calling themselves "pro-choice. The difference being that since they *weren't and aren't* lying neither effort nor cognitive dissonance is required to oppose *forced* abortion as bitterly as *forced* pregnancy.
Taking the concept a bit further, Jill notes a "compromise" suggestion from the "pro-life" camp that again illustrates the contrast.
One of the only comments on the first linked article is particularly telling about the “pro-life” mentality:
Cant she just give the baby up for adoption????????
Because forcibly removing a wanted baby from a new mother is the solution here. The concern for life really does end at birth.
Choosing to have a baby is choosing to *have* a baby, not choosing to risk your health and life, endure three trimesters of pregnancy and the post-partum "fourth trimester" so *somebody else* can the baby *you wanted?* Yeah, right.
Bottom line: "Pro-life" activists were and remain only anti-abortion. "Pro-choice" activists meanwhile, are and always have been *pro-choice!*
Update: Also via Jill, Jessica of Jezebel says
It's been less than a month since the staunchly pro-choice Barack Obama has been elected President, and already anti-abortion advocates are reassessing their goals. Some anti-choicers are taking a practical route, according to the Washington Post, supporting legislation that may cut down on the need for abortion, like providing poor women with health care, child care, and money for education. However, the hard core anti-choicers see support for such social programs as "selling out." "We don't think it's really genuine," Joe Scheidler, founder of the Pro-Life Action League, tells the Post. "You don't have to have a lot of social programs to cut down on abortions." In fact, uncompromising abortion foes are actively against these bills, for reasons that don't entirely make sense.
"You don't work to limit the murder of innocent victims. You work to stop it," Judie Brown, the president of the American Life League adds.
They're entitled to their opinion that abortion equals murder, but if that's really the only thing they care about then they're still liars to claim they're "pro-life." And if people like Joe Scheidler and Judie Brown are indifferent to *every other single factor* affecting pre- and postnatal and maternal death (they are), and if they are in opposition to every effort to mitigate either those conditions or to mitigate any need for abortion in the first place (they are), and if in fact they fund and promote "crisis pregnancy" centers who's practices actually *increase* the risks of miscarriage, stillbirth, and maternal and infant death (they do) then they're liars and worse. (They do, therefore they are.)
Image: Schoolboy by István Nagy, Hungarian National Gallery, Budapest
Imagine that you are a young boy. Your tenth birthday is less than two months away. It is late fall and those few days are gone, when the leaves turned yellow and scarlet and the sun was so hot that the chilly autumn breeze felt refreshing. The rainy cold that precedes winter has arrived, her suitcase filled with grey wet things.
You are late for your music lessons, so you walk, then run until what you see and hear makes you stop. You see a crowd of people along Bajcsyezsilinszky Ut, the east-west thoroughfare that crosses the city of Miskolc. It is also the street that serves as the major artery between Hungary and the northeastern territories of the U.S.S.R. It is not unusual to hear the roar and drone of Soviet trucks as they traveled through the city, certainly not so unusual to form a crowd that is oddly silent. But what you hear does not sound like trucks.
You are not tall enough to see above the shoulders of the grown-ups, so you slip in to the crowd, minnow through the overcoats until you emerge in the first row, face to face with the steel hide of a Soviet tank as it rolls past. The next tank approaches but does not move past you. It groans, then stops. No one speaks, but something akin to a warning moves through the crowd, not unlike the awareness of a predator that is felt instantly throughout a herd. You do not need to look around you to know that the crowd is backing away from the tank. Your eyes remain fixed on the flank of the beast but your feet are moving of their own volition, inching backwards until the first rifle shot cracks the air. Then you run and run and all you want is to get back to your home.
You run up the stairs of the apartment building where you live with your mother and father. You do not know that your mother was watching from the window as you ran back, even though the bullets arrived before you did. You rush into the apartment, calling for her and are too stunned to say anything when she pushes you face down onto the floor of the sitting room. She is on top of you, cradling your head with her arms. From the corner of your eye you see the floor is littered with broken glass and plaster.
When the gunfire subsides, your mother warns you not to move. She crawls past the broken window, to the sofa and pulls a thick down comforter to the floor before the sound of gunfire resumes. She crawls back, wraps you in a cocoon of down and places your body beneath hers. Then, like an insect that has taken its young back into its belly, she crawls beneath the bullets, out of the apartment, through the hallways to the safety of the inner courtyard.
Two nights later you are wrapped in that same comforter, lying between your mother and father in the hayloft of a deserted barn. You fall asleep before your mother finishes tucking the down around you. Two days spent walking , hiding then more walking to escape the fighting in the city.
"Rope! Remember to bring rope!" Years later, when you introduce me to your mother, you tell me about those nights spent in hiding and poke fun at your mother's insistence about the rope: "Apparently my mother thought we might have time for mountain climbing during our extended holiday." Your mother does not laugh at your joke but turns and looks at me across the room. In that moment, when I look into her eyes and see a sadness so deep, I understand why you joke, poke fun, do anything to avoid looking into those depths. For hanging was and is the last resort for the poor, for those without money for a gun or time for poison. For those who lived through one Holocaust, but doubt their chances of surviving a second. And in that moment I realize that I never would have known you if the sounds outside that barn had been footsteps and gunshot instead of rain, wind and the scratching of mice.
More than fifty years have passed from that night when you slept between mother and father, between life and death. You rarely sleep as deeply as you did on that night. Each night sleep eludes you until the moment when you reach for the comforter and burrow into a cocoon of silk-covered down.
Mathematician, and developer of the BitTorrent algorithms, and diagnosed genius Bram Cohen of Bram Cohen's Journal asked one of those so-simple-only-a-genius-asks-them question about the current financial meltdown/bailout business.
the credit default swap market is many times the size of the actual mortgage market. How'd that happen? Well, overzealous investors ran out of actual mortgages to invest in, so they simply started placing side bets on how the mortgage market would do, totally many times how big the actual market underneath is. AIG is in a position of being the biggest insurer of the garbage. These two facts put together make for an interesting possible scenario. Since the amount of money on the line is greater than the actual size of the underlying market, AIG could potentially agree to cover every mortgage company's loss in any short sale (a short sale is where the mortgage company agrees to forgive part of a loan to make a sale happen, as a way of avoiding forecloser). That would immediately result in the number of foreclosures being near zero, and AIG would magically have made it so it didn't have to pay out on any of its side bets.
Given the division of ideas between whether bailouts should benefit a) financial markets or b) end users of mortgage credit, and given that the meltdown really does have more to do with the side bets described in Cohen's introduction to the question, Michael Lewis's analysis in Portfolio last week, and Matt Yglesias's similar explanation today it *does* seem like an interesting way to kill at least two birds with one (um?) fire-extinguisher.
Yeah, this post isn't even remotely related to sex, relationships, or gender**... except *maybe* in the sense that if the meltdown continues we're all screwed. But Cohen's question has been nagging at me enough that I figured I might as well get it out of my system. And it's not like *he* blogs about financial markets all that much either.
[** Of course money problems are actually a *huge* stressor in most relationships. --fl]
Photo by Flickr user synaethesia. Used under a Creative Commons license.
The sentence "I want your body."
Compare it to either "my body wants your body" or "I want you."
The first is a expression of desire from an autonomous entity -- an "I" -- for so many kilos or cubic feet of skin, muscle, and bone -- a body. The second two are personal in the sense that they communicate level to level.
This popped into my head while I was waiting in line for coffee and thinking about ways to more briefly state concerns I raised about "bodying" people in Prostitution and Shared Objectification and institutional (but pretty clearly not actual) resistance to the idea that men can also be objects of desire for women in Uncovering Covers.
Anyway, I'm not necessarily saying objectification by itself is wrong or bad. Though it *could* explain why it's not always well received.
"Jeans 020" from my "Sizing Jeans" photoset on Flickr.
Also, why these photos?
Ms Naughty of Ms Naughty Porn for Women Blog raises an issue that's dear to my heart
[Note: All links go to pages containing nudity. --fl]
Thanks to The Girl for pointing me in the direction of Erotica Cover Watch. This is a new blog that asks the question: why are only women featured on the covers of erotic books?
It’s a very good point and the topic naturally delves into the whole feminist issue of the male gaze and the continued way that straight women are still considered to be non-visual.
It all comes down to official marketing wisdom which says that women on covers sell and men don’t.
...
I’m glad someone is making a fuss about this. Maybe next year’s Best Women’s Erotica, which is absolutely and utterly aimed at women, should have a guy or a couple on it.
I'm not as diligent about it as I used to be but I got started posting my own photos because I was frustrated that, while it was conventional wisdom that "men are visual and women aren't" it seemed like nobody was even *bothering* to try to make erotic representations of men specifically for heterosexual women. What made it frustrating was the number of women bloggers, then almost exclusively anonymous, who said *they* were frustrated. And it seemed to me (as I've said elsewhere) that since virtually all visual porn was made for straight or gay men, and almost always made *by* men, that nobody was even trying. Men in straight porn are usually featured as either foils (comical, non-threatening) or proxies for the assumed viewer and in almost all cases they're positioned as accessories to women. In gay porn men are at least presented as erotic in their own right but even then the representations were (obviously) still coming from a male perspective. (Incidentally a lot of those anonymous bloggers said they preferred, and could more closely identify with, the activities in gay porn to the stylized hump/thump/dump male antics in straight porn.)
So anyway, since I was a lot more daring in my youth (ok, three or four years ago anyway) I swallowed quite a lot of reluctance and took photos I thought might appeal to, you know, actual straight women. Actually since I didn't really know what that would even mean my main method was trying to avoid what mostly shows up in conventional porn and self-photography. And mostly that seemed to involve photos and poses that created space where the viewer could imagine putting herself instead of being put, of acting instead of just being acted on, of having *agency* instead of subjectivity. (Not that big a leap, actually, since, after all, that's what photos tend to do for men in *their* porn.)
No one was more shocked than I that it hit a chord. It was popular, and since in real life I'm kind of shy and unassuming, a little embarrassing. Web stats suggest some of those photos have become *very* popular with other posters. (Yikes! If I hadn't been anonymous I don't think I could have done it at all! And good thing I'd probably submit a job application to the Obama Transition team!)
I still post photos now although to be honest I feel like I'm losing my touch. I'm also getting pretty restless about my anonymity. And so except for Thursday photos I think I'm slowly winding down. Which is fine -- it looks like people like Ms. Naughty and the folks over at Erotic Cover Watch are taking up the torch.
One last point: whereas I don't think more erotic representations of straight men is especially progress if everyone just winds up being objectified I *do* think it's progress when assumptions based on what stereotypes "want" are broken down. I'd also suggest that what's traditionally made the "objectification" in porn so objectionable has been its highly unilateral, not to mention exclusive ("you're a woman, you're not *supposed* to like it!") nature. And finally, creating erotic imagery that acknowledges *women's* erotic agency (something conventional male-oriented porn decidedly and consistently fails to do) helps break down the really terrible idea that women *don't* have agency of their own... and that consequently their fallow sexuality is available for male appropriation.
Em and Lo of Daily Bedpost have a nice Q&A feature where they ask three different men, usually a single straight man, a single straight man, and a committed gay man, for their take on a question. Their take on the question "Do you think guys cheat more than women?" was pretty interesting.
The straight single respondent, "Max," said men are just lousier than women. Also, succumbing the dominant women as the "no-sex" class ideology, he adds
A girl, on the other hand, is more likely to be satisfied with the attention and flirtation alone. She doesn't NEED the physical confirmation to get an ego boost.
"Matt," the straight married respondent, also bashes men, blaming what he sees as more cheating as a result of poor impulse control. He also says "variety is a more constant drive" for men. Also, without considering, say, this point by Audacia Ray he says (emphasis mine)
They would sleep with someone different every day--maybe even several times a day. I just don't believe that would be appealing to most women over the long term. (I'm not talking about on occasion here, I mean different partners every day, for years. If you offered women the choice between that and a daily massage, they'd take the massage.)
And, getting closer to what I think the real answer might be, adds
This inherent desire for variety is a constantly suppressed impulse for pretty much every guy I know--even the ones who would never, ever stray.
Hmm... really? Wonder if anyone besides men has to spend time suppressing impulses?
Finally, though, "Terrence," the gay committed man, brings up the most interesting points. (Emphasis also mine.)
Do men cheat more than women? My intuition is screaming yes. But I also think our perception of men as cheaters feeds their cheating behavior -- which is another column entirely.
...
[I]f we've got to look at it in absolutes, then I believe yes, technically, men cheat more than women. But with life's continuous chaos and change, I'd rather stick with a partner who may have some random shags here and there if he's consistently emotionally monogamous with me.
Actually I'm with Terrence on the cheating question. Sure, men cheat at... rates only a little bit higher than the rates women cheat.
What's the difference then? Why do men (at least Euro/Anglo men) get the label? I think Terence touches on that but doesn't land square.
There are any number of kinds of intimate relationships where sex isn't involved at all. Think lifelong platonic friendships, family ties, and partnerships in intensely competitive and/or adventurous environments. Conversely, sad to say, in many monogamous relationships the partners themselves can be quite distant from each other.
What (heterosexual) monogamy *does* have going for it is a guarantee that men's family's property will be inherited by the "right" person's offspring. For most of the history of marriage, in virtually all history-leaving cultures, that's been the biggest consideration behind virginity, abstinence, fidelity, and monogamy. (Compare the meanings of the words "adultery" and "adulterated" for instance.)
Anyway, in cultures where men and their families have tended to control economics, and where it matters to their families that offspring really is "theirs," and where women have been kept completely economically and even legally dependent on men (even here their fathers "give them away" to their husbands at wedding, remember, a vestige of what used to be cold, hard, Common-Law legal truth) the deck has been substantially stacked against *women* who cheat (stoning, anyone?) and... stacked pretty flipping indifferently against men who do.
Anyway, since the rules of monogamy were initially created to protect men's interest in women as their *property* ("thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife... no his house nor *cattle* nor any *thing* that is thy neighbor's!) you'd sort of expect to see two things: first, that men wouldn't see much wrong with collecting a little extra "property," or even that they'd judge each other's status by how much "property" they could accumulate (unless, of course, they were married to that "property" in which case it would be "theft.") And second that as the metaphorical, and sometimes *real* property even when women did cheat they'd have to be a lot more circumspect -- the consequences, at least of being *caught,* (stoning, divorced, faced with raising children on their own) have tended to be way, way, way higher for them.
Anyway, I think all that adds up to explain why men have the greater reputation for cheating... and the statistically significant but not *that* much higher actual *rate* of cheating than women. A difference, by the way, that's therefore more cultural and not nearly as "natural" as Matt and Max suggest. Take away those cultural different consequences, and throw in more legal and economic parity, and I'm pretty sure the statistical difference largely disappears, with men not feeling sex with multiple partners is a *status* builder, and women not seeing fewer partners as a survival mechanism.
I happen to think, by the way, that if we could get closer to real economic, social, and legal parity we'd wind up with Terence's position: perhaps a little more sexual "cheating" (which might not even be considered *cheating*) but a lot more room for intimate and *emotionally* monogamous *partnerships* inside relationships.
Lisa of Sociological Images points to a fascinating variation on the male worthiness trap.
Text: “Becoming a donor is probably your only chance to get inside her.”
There are some interesting implications here about why we engage in altruism and who is deserving of that altruism.
From a Belgian men's magazine.
The worthiness trap, remember, has its origin in heterosexual men's belief that women are interested only in men, or more accurately only interested in sex with men, when they've earned it. And in the tradition of pledging to cross burning deserts, swim shark-infested waters, or slay fierce dragons in order to "win" an otherwise "out of your league" woman's affection what could be more ultimately sacrificial than *dying and donating your organs?" The Belgians, evidently, have figured it out: dying and donating your organs so they'll be put *inside her!*
Never mind that women don't seem to base their partnering decisions on which man most deserves their booty (hmm, interesting term that, eh?) as a reward/trophy/score-counter.
So this summer I got a bike that actually fit me and wound up riding it quite a lot. Now that winter's setting in I started taking a "spinning" class at a nearby gym. Spinning is where a bunch of people ride stationary bikes while an instructor blares intolerably loud, fast techno-bump and runs you through a structured set of exercises that simulates a bike ride over variable terrain. The main benefits? It's indoors and it's excellent exercise for your heart, lungs, and legs.
But enough about that, what I really wanted to talk about are bike shorts. Getting pounded on my ischial tuberosities bugged me a little last summer, and because you "ride" a lot harder in class I was winding up even more sore. So I broke down and bought a pair of bike shorts.
Now bike shorts are interesting little devices. Because bicycle seats, even the ones that claim to be padded, are so notoriously uncomfortable they sew padding into the seat of the pants instead. They'd always looked as though they were probably pretty comfortable while you're actually *on the bike.* But they always looked kind of awkward on people who are just walking around.
And I discovered that, in fact, they *are* comfortable on the bike. So that's pretty cool.
I also discovered, however, the first time I put them on, that they also trigger almost pre-verbal-childhood memories.
Of toddling around in a diaper.
Eww.
Consequently, except for biking, I think bicycle shorts are better off, well... *off!* :-)
Happy HNT (or Half-nekkid Thursday!)
Benedict Carey, science reporter for The New York Times has an article that lots of largely dissatisfied people are linking to, about a, um, novel hypothesis that autism and schizophrenia might result from gendered expression of a single gene.
Here are the two most commonly quoted paragraphs
Their idea is, in broad outline, straightforward. Dr. Crespi and Dr. Badcock propose that an evolutionary tug of war between genes from the father’s sperm and the mother’s egg can, in effect, tip brain development in one of two ways. A strong bias toward the father pushes a developing brain along the autistic spectrum, toward a fascination with objects, patterns, mechanical systems, at the expense of social development. A bias toward the mother moves the growing brain along what the researchers call the psychotic spectrum, toward hypersensitivity to mood, their own and others’. This, according to the theory, increases a child’s risk of developing schizophrenia later on, as well as mood problems like bipolar disorder and depression.
In short: autism and schizophrenia represent opposite ends of a spectrum that includes most, if not all, psychiatric and developmental brain disorders. The theory has no use for psychiatry’s many separate categories for disorders, and it would give genetic findings an entirely new dimension.
I think it's reasonably well-established that selection-based dynamics between male and female copies of genes can determine the development, size, or even behavior of offspring. Carey cites two probable cases in humans, one affecting infant size (when the mother's version of a gene is recessive her pre-birth babies can be much bigger and smaller if her gene is dominant; another candidate might lead to an offspring being higher or lower maintenance.) Thing is that while those effects are determined by the *sex* of the dominant gene they aren't *gendered:* the effects are pretty much the same whether the offspring is male or female.
What Crespi and Badcock are proposing, however, is that the outcomes are gendered. And more to the point, gendered in ways that are specific to contemporary human behavior. I'm really skeptical about that.
Again, leaving aside practical questions like, oh, I don't know, maybe that autism and schizophrenia can both show up in one person, which kind of cocks up a gendered-expression hypothesis, there are others that are... well, they're practical too.
For instance if a well-managed "autism gene" produced more "manly" male offspring, and if "manliness" made male offspring more reproductively successful** then supporting those traits would be in the reproductive interest of *both* the mother and father. So what would be the point of their genes competing? Same for female offspring and well-balanced "schizophrenia" genes.
For instance, going a step further, why assume it's the *male* version of the gene that would produce more "manliness?" Or the mother's copy of the gene that bolstered "femininity?" Again is there any reason to believe that a mother wouldn't be at least as well-off with more "manly" son? Or that a father's daughter would have better reproductive success if she was more "feminine?" I'm not saying those *are* beneficial, just that even if they were it's not clear why one parent would benefit more than the other, or why male fathers would necessarily code for male characteristics. (Remember also, in humans sex is determined by the male's X or Y chromosome, not the females XX chromosomes. Even more reason to doubt why the father's genes, in particular, would discriminate more than the mother's would when it comes to gendered behavior.)
And then there's the problem of determining how dynamics among copies of the same gene, which necessarily have to be on chromosomes that are *shared by both parents,* could affect outcomes expressed by activity on the non-shared male or female chromosomes.
Oh, and finally is it *really* the case that socialization is unnecessary in boys? Really? No use at all in, oh, say, the ability to read the emotional state of a stereotypical adversary in order to determine whether to attack, negotiate, flee, or even recruit and lead? Really? And given that maternal groups forage up to 90% of the calories and construct more than half the infrastructure in the hunter-gatherer groups that were the dominant social organization for most of human evolution is the handwork and attention to objects that's often so exaggerated in people with autism really of no benefit to female offspring?
And finally? Genes that would differentially affect something like the robustness of a child (or, since I think research has been done on those lines too, on peas) of vegetable seeds have had a *very* long time to work themselves out. Something like schizophrenia/autism, though, that would tend to benefit mainly the stereotypically-assumed, *gendered* behavior of recently-evolved humans though? That's a *very* sophisticated development and (since, remember, *both* parents ought to benefit) an extremely subtle one. That doesn't seem like a whole lot of time for what would surely require a whole lot of evolution since humans branched off from common ancestors, or, for that matter, since primates branched off from... whatever we branched off from.
Anyway, all this is by way of saying while I think there's some merit to the idea of looking for behavioral and developmental patterns that are affected by dynamics between male and female copies of genes there's another paragraph in the Times Article that ought to be quoted more often...
“The reality, and I think both of the authors would agree, is that many of the details of their theory are going to be wrong; and it is, at this point, just a theory,” said Dr. Matthew Belmonte, a neuroscientist at Cornell University. “But the idea is plausible. And it gives researchers a great opportunity for hypothesis generation, which I think can shake up the field in good ways.”
In other words, it's an interesting area to try exploring, especially behavior or development that's affected by gene dynamics but provides benefits or harms regardless of the sex of the offspring. But the researchers are probably barking up the wrong tree about their theory that schizophrenia/autism has a gender component... and possibly barking up the wrong *forest* if they think such gendered expressions are common at all.
[** Remember, for evolution to work it's not enough for *you* to have lots of offspring. If *they* don't also have offspring then evolutionarily speaking your genes aren't successful. --fl]
Maria of Jezebel says
The March of Dimes has given the U.S. an overall "D" grade on its premature birth rate, which is currently at a rate of one in eight babies per year.
Image from MarchOfDimes.com.
Color Key: Blue="B," Yellow="C," Orange="D," Red="F"Interesting.
For the last eight of the last eight years we've had a "pro-life" administration and for at least four of those years we had a "pro-life" party in the majority of both houses of Congress (and at least one house in the majority for six) and for... hard to say but most of that time we've had a "pro-life" majority in the judiciary.
And yet we're down to one out of *eight* babies are now premature? And that's just nation-wide. If the U.S. as a whole rates only a 'D' what are we to make of some of the state figures?
From Maria's source, CBS News online we learn
In Vermont, 9 percent of babies were preemies in 2005, the latest available data. In Oregon and Connecticut, just under 10.5 percent of babies were premature.
Which isn't that great but then check out some of the states with harsher anti-abortion most "compassionate" "pro-life" state and local governments...
Travel south, and prematurity steadily worsens: In West Virginia, 14.4 percent of babies were preemies; more than 15 percent in Kentucky and South Carolina; more than 16 percent in Alabama and Louisiana; and a high of 18.8 percent in Mississippi.
Woo-hoo, you go Mississippi! That's sure some commitment to life!
Photo "Rock Inclusion" by Flickr user Travis S. Used under a Creative Commons license.
Alexander Bolton, writing for the political-insider journal The Hill has good things to say about outgoing Democratic National Committee chair Howard Dean, who's much-reviled bottom-up "50-State Strategy" party building strategy laid the foundation not only for Barack Obama's presidential victory but dozens of other successful, nearly-successful, and not-successful-but-still-unprecedented down-ticket races in... well... all 50 states.
This is ostensibly a sex and gender blog, and I'll connect the dots in a moment, but for now here's what Bolton said about Dean.
Dean envisioned the Democratic Party building a new base in solidly Republican strongholds, and should Barack Obama win the presidency and Democrats expand their margins in Congress on Tuesday, as most polls predict, Dean will walk away from this election as one of the unsung heroes.
“Quiet” is not a word most people would have used for Dean four years ago, when he bowed out of the 2004 presidential race with a now-infamous scream.
But Dean, the former Vermont governor, took control of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) in 2005 amid cries that he would embarrass the party — and from there, built the party’s political machine.
Dean relied on his own brand of grassroots organization, ventured into rural districts that typically vote Republican and recycled the language of empowerment from his failed presidential campaign, which has become the template for Obama’s historic run for the White House.
...
Dean paid for national-party staff in all 50 states and developed a single voter database for every Democratic candidate to use in 47 states.
Democratic Party officials are convinced this enabled Obama to build a strong grassroots operation in Republican strongholds, such as Idaho, Nebraska and North Dakota, that pushed him to victory over Clinton in the primary.
...
Democrats have since won special elections in solidly Republican districts in Louisiana and Mississippi and are now poised to capture at least 15 more seats, according to Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).
“He was reviled, and this is his ultimate triumph over [then Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chair] Rahm Emanuel, who was one of the most vocal opponents of the 50-state strategy,” said Ross K. Baker, a Rutgers University professor who specializes in politics.
The idea for the 50-state strategy germinated in 2004, when Dean traveled off the beaten campaign path and discovered how dilapidated his party had become in the South and the West.
...
Dean became more convinced of his strategy after Kerry’s campaign aides told him after the election that the weakness of the party infrastructure was a major reason for the loss to President Bush, as was the DNC’s hoarding of cash until the final weeks of the campaign, instead of spreading it around the country.
Dean told The Hill the DNC’s low cash on hand compared to the Republican National Committee during the past four years has created the wrong impression that he hasn’t focused on fundraising. (For example, the Republican Party had nearly 10 times more cash on hand than the DNC at the end of April.)
“We spent it, much to the chagrin of some of the people in Washington who wanted to get their hands on it,” said Dean.
And just to be clear I'm not saying other party people were wrong to worry about Dean's long-term-investment approach to party building -- Rahm Emanuel, sitting in the minority under the likes of mercilessly partisan Republicans like Tom Delay and John Boehner, felt he had more obvious, immediate concerns... like not getting further wiped out every election cycle. But if they weren't wrong to oppose him, Howard Dean was still right to remember that there are members of his party even in the reddest, most beleaguered precincts in the country. And that *they* deserved to be recognized, acknowledged, encouraged, included, heard. And that even in the wing-nuttiest districts plenty of others who, while not exactly the deepest blue were drifting purple... were becoming increasingly alienated from the parties they'd always thought of as theirs. And Dean understood *they too* deserved to be remembered.
And just to be bipartisan I'll say almost the only thing I respected about Newt Gingrich was his passionate belief that anyone willing to become a candidate in *his* party should receive support, no matter how ill-prepared or how daunting the odds. (In the infamous 1994 "Republican Revolution" wave election one of Gingrich's utterly obscure wingnut challengers from Spokane, WA, unseated Speaker of the House Tom Foley. Who over the years had often run with no opposition at all.)
In his election victory speech President-Elect Obama reflected that same universal acknowledgment when he said "while the Democratic Party has won a great victory tonight, we do so with a measure of humility and determination to heal the divides that have held back our progress. As Lincoln said to a nation far more divided than ours, 'We are not enemies, but friends though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection.' And to those Americans whose support I have yet to earn -- I may not have won your vote, but I hear your voices, I need your help, and I will be your President too."
And for that matter Lincoln himself, while allegedly somewhat personally uncomfortable around African Americans, was unable to abide the idea that some people could be so othered they could be owned like cattle.
Going back still further the, um, complex and paradoxical Thomas Jefferson -- unable to derive equality from first principles -- made it instead an axiom, a self-evident truth, that "all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights." And yes, by "men" Jefferson had in mind his white, European, male, land-owning, possibly heteronormative, generally Jehovahnist contemporaries. But (he was complex, remember) whether by accident or intention his axiom was expansive rather than contained.
Stepping back yet another some seventeen hundred years a Palestinian Jew articulated a fundamental principle of progressive liberalism: "as you do to the least of my brothers so you do unto me."
One could go further back but zoom forward instead to the quintessential literary form of the 1970s, the bumper sticker slogan "Feminism: the radical proposition that women are people" and you get... pretty good coverage for the principle that drove Howard Dean's tenure as well.
And if he's stepping down it's not because he's done all that needed to be done. Any more than Buddah did, or Jesus did, or Jefferson did, or the author of that bumper sticker. Proposition 8 and other referenda, defined homosexuals as not-people. Proposition K, which would have acknowledged that sex-workers are people not body/things, failed. In the outfall of Proposition we see a bit of renewed othering of African Americans. Anti-feminists still either dump on or, no better, pedestalize, women. And while third-wave feminism has become magnificently inclusive, anti-feminists and some earlier waves of feminists view men as unmanageable, impulse-driven beasts.
So no, the work's not done, but the way I see it Dean was instrumental in shaking progressives from of our insular, often shrinking enclaves and laying a framework for, well, including everybody.
And I mention all of this, here in my sex and gender blog, as prelude to a comment Dw3t-Hthr of Letters from Gehenna left on a recent post about the othering of prostitutes.
So long as prostitutes are degraded and denied human equality, every woman must face the risk of being demoted to that status.
Dw3t says it's been said more pithily elsewhere but I think the way she put it is just fine. Because as long as *any* of us are degraded and denied human equality, *every one of us* must face the risk of being demoted to that status.
So way to be there, Howard.
Photo from Wikimedia Commons.*Don't* ask why (I might explain at the end) but I happened to start re-reading an old college textbook -- social theorists Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno's 1994 Dialectic of Enlightenment.
I think the rest my college education must have paid off because it's much easier reading 25 years later than it was when I was a feverish 2nd-year student.
I hadn't remembered that one of the chapters ("Excursus II," no less) contemplates how De Sade's Juliette foreshadows the Enlightenment's tendency towards systematization and Nietzsche's rationale for ruthless exploitation rather than compassion by strong against weak.
Anyway, in a passage that, I think, nicely skewers the attitudes, especially, of members of the current Vice President's inner circle and an unfortunate plurality of the Supreme Court (As expressed by Sade's character Francavilla: "What does the idea of a curb which they never experience themselves mean to the rich, if with this empty semblance they are able to preserve a justice that allows them to crush all those who live under their yoke? You will find no one in that class who would not submit to the worst tyranny so long as all others must suffer it?") Horkheimer and Adorno incidentally criticize an impulse in De Sade that... I think applies to a lot of contemporary pornography.**
What Kant grounded transcendentally, the affinity of knowledge and planning, which impressed the stamp of inescapable expediency on every aspect of a bourgeois existence that was wholly rationalized, even in every breathing space, Sade realized empirically more than a century before sport was conceived.
The teams of modern sport, whose interaction is so precisely regulated that no member has any doubt about his role, and which provide a reserve for every player, have their exact counterpart in the sexual teams of Juliette, which employ every moment usefully neglect no human orifice, and carry out every function.
Intensive, purposeful activity prevails in spirit as in all branches of mass culture, while the uninitiated spectator cannot divine the difference in the combinations, or the meaning of variations, by the arbitrarily determined rules.
The architectonic structure of the Kantian system, like the gymnastic pyramids of Sade's orgies and the schematized principles of the early bourgeois freemasonry -- which as its cynical mirror-image in the strict regimentation of the libertine society of the 120 Journées -- reveals an organization of life as a whole which is deprived of any substantial goal.
These arrangements amount not so much to pleasure as to its regimented pursuit -- organization -- just as in other demythologized epochs ... the schema of an activity was more important than its content.
Source: Horkheimer and Adorno "Dialectic of Enlightenment", Continuum Press (paperback 1982): pg 88
Case in point, the "pterodactyl porn" clip I referenced last month (you don't need to see the link to get the, um, picture... or if you *do* need to see it again it you can Google for it.) Someone decided that it wasn't interesting enough to film a hetero couple having sex with one of them*** was naked and the other one**** wore a pterodactyl costume. No, instead they chose to show hetero sex between one naked woman and *three* men in pterodactyl suits.
One can make the case that the extravagant variety of fetishes represented in internet porn as a whole simply mirrors both the diversity of individual interests, on the one hand, and relatively low financial barriers to entry. One would have a harder time making that case with individual authors of pornographic books. Especially book series. Like Sade pornographers from the Anonymous Victorian Pornographers to Ann Rice's pseudonymous "Claiming Beauty" series to various psudonymous and/or anonymous internet novelists find themselves digging further and further to retain, um, novelty.
Again, there's nothing particularly wrong with that... at least as long as, unlike Sade, any activities involving actual live human beings are confined to non-coerced, non-conscripted adults. Nor, for that matter, is there really *that* much wrong with the Enlightenment and its reductionist tendencies... as long as one recalls that it's an unnecessary conceit to try to build rational systems without any first-principle/axioms like, oh, say, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness." But still, one wonders if there are any pornographers who've excelled at portraying, in their chosen medium, the erotic appeal of the small subset of sexuality typically expressed over the lifetime of a single couple... ok, or the same couple of singles. And if so then why they're not more widely recognized.
Or, since this really isn't meant to be a solemn bit of prudish libertinism, maybe it's just that our appreciations of representations of sex simply invert Tolstoy's dictum that "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." That "boring sex stories are all alike; every erotic story is erotic in its own way." :-)
Update: Doh! I originally said why I started looking through the book to begin with. I remember hearing in a lecture that one or the other of the authors had quipped that in order to escape the confining logic of Enlightenment thinking it would first be necessary to "repeal Beethoven's Ninths Symphony." The phrase comes up every now and then when I'm writing about paradigms and traps and, since I'd like to get quotes right... or at least correctly sourced... I finally broke down and started looking. So far no luck, but it's still pretty interesting. Among other things I realize my penchant for grievously long parentheticals comes from learning how to write while reading dead German philosophers in college. Oh, and speaking of dry humor, the title of the book itself is an bit of a joke given their thesis that the Enlightenment only runs one way. So there you go -- even more that you probably didn't want to know about obscure mid-20th-Century neo-Marxist social theorists. :-)
[** No, I'm not engaging in porn bashing per se with this post, just a recurring problem in it. --fl]
[*** Guess which one? There's not *that* much variety after all. --fl]
[*** Though surely *someone* would be interested if, occasionally, the man was naked and the woman got to dress creatively. --fl]
Tony Infanti of Feminist Law Professors, quoting a Utah-based lesbian and gay rights group, points to a sliver of possible upside to the recent passage of California's anti-marriage Proposition 8.
But leaders of the rights group here, Equality Utah, said statements made by Mormon leaders in defense of their actions in California — that the church was not antigay and had no problem with legal protections for gay men and lesbians already on the books in California — were going to be taken as an endorsement to expand legal rights that gay and lesbian couples have never remotely had in Utah, where the church is based.”
Read the rest of the article, and follow the included links, here.
Yeah, it's always seemed a little funny that opposition to the marriage of "Adam and Steve" would come from anyone so recently persecuted for the marriage of "Adam and Eve and Genevieve."
(Note: One can condemn the exploitative manifestations of multiple marriage of, say, the Warren Jeffs schism of the FLDS while tolerating at least the theory of non-exploitative marriages of more than one husband or wife.)