“Do as I say, not as I do”
A former youth adviser at a Bridgeport church was arrested Monday after police said he sexually assaulted a 16-year-old Trumbull girl he was counseling about sexual abstinence…
In an interview with police detectives, [the defendant] allegedly said he had been counseling teenage girls, including the victim, on how to say “no” to sexual advances from adults.
Perhaps this fellow, not to mention his church, should spend less time teaching girls how to say “no”, and more time teaching boys that “no means no”.
via Feministe
Mazel tov!
As a resident of Massachusetts, I am proud to welcome the state of Iowa into the Equal Protection Under The Law Club. This is a rather exclusive club right now, but I have every reason to expect that over the next decade, it will become less so. Furthermore, since Iowa, unlike California, has a sober and deliberative process for amending its state constitution, I have every reason to expect that the backlash against its supreme court’s decision can be restrained before the voters do something that their descendants will be ashamed of.
The dignity of labor
I do not have any fundamental objections to any of these newfangled reproductive technologies: IVF, surrogate parenthood, cloning, male pregnancy, whatever. Bring ’em on. And I think progressive income taxes are better for society than sumptuary laws, which is to say, there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with being rich and there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with rich people buying things that regular folks can’t afford.
But I was still squicked by this article on a woman whose fertilized egg was carried in another woman’s uterus, starting with the layout of the magazine cover. While Cathy Hilling, the surrogate mother, stands in flats, Alex Kuczynski, producer of the lucky egg, stands in high heels and upstage and with her hair up. It seems that the Times’s art director wanted to portray the two women bonded at the hip, but also wanted to show clearly who is in charge.
Deep in the text of the article, things get squickier:
No money ever changes hands directly between the intended parents (I.P.’s in surrogacy speak) and the surrogate. All the money goes into an escrow account set up by Brisman’s office, and a third party pays out the monthly fees. I.P.’s and surrogates are discouraged from discussing money. This is partly to remove the air of commercialism from the proceedings.
Shortly after our meeting, Brisman’s office started to send us profiles of potential surrogates. It felt strangely like getting a letter from the roommate who would be sharing your dorm room freshman year. They described themselves, their lives, their ambitions….
While no one volunteering to have our baby was poor, neither were they rich. The $25,000 we would pay would make a significant difference in their lives. Still, in our experience with the surrogacy industry, no one lingered on the topic of money. We encountered the wink-nod rule: Surrogates would never say they were motivated to carry a child for another couple just for money; they were all motivated by altruism. This gentle hypocrisy allows surrogacy to take place. Without it, both sides would have to acknowledge the deep cultural revulsion against attaching a dollar figure to the creation of a human life.
I’m sure that when Hilling’s obstetrician negotiates with an insurance company over reimbursement rates, nobody has any qualms about “attaching a dollar figure to the creation of a human life”. And the insurance company doesn’t give a damn about the obstetrician’s life or ambitions.
In a relationship between a contractor and her client, where money is discussed frankly and changes hands shamelessly, there can be mutual respect. I have something you want; you have a skill I need; let’s discuss an arrangement that benefits us both. Between two people who are related by blood or marriage, there can also be mutual respect. I want you to do me a favor because we are in a bond of mutual obligation, and I understand that some day you may ask the same of me. Hilling petitions for her assignment like a suitor, accepts Kuczynski’s money like a contractor, and then hangs out with her (playing Kuczynski’s piano, giving her a gift) like a relative. So what is their relationship? Ten years from now, if, God forbid, Hilling is abused by her husband or develops a drug habit, how far will Kuczynski et al. go to help out? Now that her skill as a gestator has been praised by the national newspaper of record, can Hilling demand $30,000 from the next aspiring mother? I fear that surrogates, like nannies, are ending up with the duties of both statuses and the privileges of neither.
Gender and shopping
The second part of the Boston Globe’s series on a Somerville doctor who got a male-to-female sex change begins thusly:
At age 52, Deborah Bershel made her first trip to the mall. It lasted nine hours. It was July 2006, and there was barely a rack of clothes in the Burlington Mall that she didn’t comb through. The next day she headed to the Natick Mall and logged another five hours shopping. She was making up for lost time. In each store, her approach was usually the same. She’d march up to a salesclerk and explain, “I’m a transsexual, so I’m new to this.” Then she’d ask her particular question, whether it be which cut of jeans would cover the top of her panties or which type of fabrics wouldn’t cling to her arms. “I have questions that no 50-year-old woman should have,” she said.
My wife inferred from this anecdote that Bershel had no female friends, because otherwise, she would be asking those friends for advice, not sales clerks. Women, she said, shop in groups as a social activity; men shop for the purpose of getting something. (The standard “all generalizations are false” disclaimer applies.)
I suggested that she put that observation in her LJ, but she asked me to put it here, since it connects with my previous comments regarding transwomen and platonic female friendship.
The agenda
A few weeks ago, teacher/author/blogger Kathy Sierra announced that she had received death threats as comments on some blogs run by other prominent figures in the tech-blogging community. (The blogs were soon shut down. The fellow who posted the comments that Kathy1 interpreted as death threats has denied any malicious intent.) This led to an outpouring of sympathy from her readers, fellow-bloggers, and other people in the IT field.
One thing that surprised me about the response was the number of other women bloggers who said that they, too, had received death threats. (See, for example, Reclusive Leftist, Min Jung Kim, and apophenia.)
At any rate, most of the follow-up postings on IT blogs that I read shifted focus from the assault against Kathy to the general issue of “civility”, or the lack thereof, in blogs. Credible threats to commit murder and rape were subsumed in a more general category, one which included hyperbole, personal insults, and general bad language.
Then Tim O’Reilly, Kathy’s friend and publisher, drafted a Blogger’s Code of Conduct, posting it just in time for the New York Times to write about it. In the Times article, Tim gets first mentioned in the third paragraph; likewise for Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales. Kathy, “a high-tech book author from Boulder County, Colo., and a friend of Mr. O’Reilly”, makes her debut in the eleventh paragraph, as a member of “the insular community of dedicated technology bloggers2”.
And since then, I’ve seen just scads and scads of commentary on Tim’s proposed code. Meanwhile, Kathy is no longer doing speaking engagements and is wondering what she can do to attract less negative attention.
One of the less-obvious signs of social privilege is the ability to set the agenda. Even the bloggers who have fervently denounced the very concept of a Blogger’s Code of Conduct have, by posting their criticisms, accepted the agenda that Tim set.
I don’t want to impugn Tim’s integrity and I don’t doubt his good intentions. But notice how this is no longer a discussion of online threats to murder, maim, or rape, which (as previously noted) seem to predominantly be issued by men against women. It’s a discussion of online incivility, defined to include a wide range of peccadilloes that both men and women commit. It’s no longer a story about Kathy; it’s a story about Tim. Indeed, in his most recent blog posting on the subject, Tim remarked: “It concerns me that Kathy Sierra, whose bad experience triggered this discussion, thinks that a code of conduct such as I proposed would do no good.”
The agenda has been reset. That’s the patriarchy in action.
Fortunately, there are some people interested in re-resetting the agenda. April 28 will be the day for a…
Take Back the Blog! Blogswarm in support of the rights of women to participate fully in all aspects of our society, including specifically online in the world of blogging but indeed everywhere and at all times, day and night, without fear of harassment, intimidation, sexual harassment, online stalking and slander, predation or violence of any sort.
Sounds good to me.
Amid all the other commentary sparked by what happened to Kathy, I was pleased to discover siderea’s comparison of misogyny with Martians-are-out-to-get-me psychosis, Seth Godin on misogynous bullying by a New York Times author, Liz Henry’s call to action, and…hell, I can’t keep track of them all. So I’m glad there’s a chance for people to write more on this subject and a place where it can all be brought together.
1 Are all bloggers, even those who have never met, on a first-name basis with one another?
2 Insular? What are we, Amish? When the Times manages to write about blogs without status anxiety dripping from the paper, the same issue will have a banner headline on page one saying “MESSIAH ANOINTED IN JERUSALEM”.
What is man, that thou art mindful of him?
While reading Self-Made Man, Norah Vincent’s story of spending a year and a half passing for male, I came across an analysis of how men in a bowling league she joined would try to help her with her game. She recounted how, as a female athlete, she got back-stabbing and catty remarks from other women; by contrast, the men in “Ned”’s league, even the men from opposing teams, kept trying to give “him” practical advice.
...[T]hey seemed to have a competitive stake in my doing well and helping me to do well, as if beating a man who wasn’t at his best wasn’t satisfying. They wanted you to be good and then they wanted to beat you on their own merits.
When I first read that, I thought, Oh, that’s an interesting insight into the difference between men and women. But the next day, mulling over what I had read, I realized that it had no connection to my own experience as a man dealing with other men. OK, I’ve never belonged to an athletic league, but I’ve been a member of a writers’ workshop; I’ve volunteered for various political organizations; I was a gabbai and board member at a synagogue. When it comes to helping me be a more competent member of these organizations (or not), I don’t notice a difference between how my male and female co-volunteers have treated me. Certainly I don’t see the drastic contrast that Vincent saw between one group of working-class middle-aged men at a bowling alley and another group of upper-class teenage girls at a tennis camp. Maybe this attitude is confined to all-male sports teams—but I know I’m not the only guy who avoids team sports.
And that, in a nutshell, is my reaction to Self-Made Man. Based on her experience among men in some of the most stereotypically male environments (e.g., a bowling league, a Catholic monastery, and a Glengarry Glen Ross—style sales job), she has drawn sweeping conclusions about The Inner Lives of Men, many of whom don’t want to be in such environments. (League bowling is so unpopular these days that a book on the decline of American communities uses it as a case in point. The Catholic Church in America is having trouble finding young men willing to become parish priests, let alone monks. The sales job that Vincent took had such a high turnover that managers were constantly interviewing new candidates.)
One notable weakness of Vincent’s research is her lack of investigation into how men behave and feel as husbands. She observes them in all-male environments where they are taking a recess from their marriages, so to speak (such as the bowling league), or not married at all (such as the monastery). The closest she comes to a mixed environment is when she investigates the heterosexual dating scene. When she remarks on how reluctant men are to share their emotions, and speculates on how this may be wounding them psychologically, I want to shout at her through the page: “Well, duh! Men are reluctant to share their emotions with other men. They depend on the women they’re intimate with for emotional support. That’s why, for example, men are more likely than women to get depressed following a divorce!”
Given how often men and women see one another as members of an alien species, it’s nice to have books that help people of one gender understand the feelings of the other. But the information conveyed by this book only describes a part of the male population—how large a part, I don’t know—and I worry about female readers who apply it to the rest of the gender.
There. Now I’ve shared my feelings.
Don't try this at home (or in the maternity ward)
Some artist with his finger on the pulse of American taste has made a sculpture of Britney Spears, nude, giving birth (NVSFW)—a sculpture which “reveals the crowning of baby Sean’s head” and “also acknowledges the pop-diva’s pin-up past by showing Spears seductively posed on all fours atop a bearskin rug with back arched, pelvis thrust upward, as she clutches the bear’s ears…”
Free advice to any pregnant women out there who might take a statue of Ms. Spears as a role model: in the early stages of labor, if your baby is sunny-side up, this posture can make you more comfortable and maybe convince the kid to roll over. Once the baby is ready to come out, all-fours can be a good position to push from, but not with your pelvis in the air like a bitch in heat. Unless, of course, you are enjoying the contractions so much that you want to push the baby against the force of gravity.
P.S.: According to Wikipedia, the actual Spears baby was delivered by an elective C-section.
via jwz
see other pregnancy snark from the mother of my sunny-side-up pre-schooler
We're men and friends until the end / and none of us are sissies...
There’s a certain genre of conservative essay, lamenting how today’s society prevents little boys from growing into real men. I think I’ve finally realized why these essays always set my teeth on edge.
When I was in middle school, I had to endure a lot of malicious teasing from my peers, because I fell way short of twelve-year-old boys’ standards of masculinity: I had no talent for sports, I cried easily, I was introverted, etc., etc. Through four and a half years of college with other geeks, I managed to find a niche in a social network of people kinda like myself, and within that network I developed enough social skills that I can deal with people who are not so much like myself.
These authors are telling me that the boys who made my childhood miserable actually were closer to the masculine ideal than I was:
The ancient Greeks in particular had ideas about manliness that Mansfield considers instructive for the contemporary mind. Both Plato and Aristotle described an element in the human soul called thumos, a kind of animal spiritedness or “bristling” that vies with our reason, especially in men. Thumos, Mansfield observes, has “no natural end beyond itself.” It is an impulse that must be tamed and trained, channeled into the virtue of manly courage. Even while recognizing the danger of men’s natural assertiveness, the philosophers understood that a good society had to “give it its due.”
From this theory, we can infer that:
- If a boy lacks this unreasonable animal spirit, his peers have a right to insult his masculinity. Real Men have thumos.
- If a boy applies his thumos to, say, throwing a younger boy in a locker room and soaking him in the showers, this is not good, but boys will be boys, and we can’t do too much to change them.
Compared with some of the stories I’ve heard, my treatment in middle school was mild. At least I always felt that the adults around me were on my side. The folks who whinge about The Decline Of True Manhood, by contrast, stand with the bullies.
via Nancy Lebovitz
Family-values news of the day
- Gainesville, Georgia — A 37-year-old woman who married her son’s 15-year-old friend, and who gave birth to a boy earlier this month, pleaded not guilty to charges of statutory rape, child molestation and enticing a minor. (The minimum age for marriage in Georgia is 16, unless the bride is pregnant.) The marriage occurred a few days before the woman’s arrest; the young husband’s grandmother claims he is seeking a divorce.
- Laurens, South Carolina — An elementary-school teacher was arrested on two counts of criminal sexual misconduct with a minor after a parent accused her of having sex with an 11-year-old boy at the school.
I just love how you wave your hands
Today’s New York Times gives us the lowdown on girl crushes. A girl crush, if you’re too lazy to read the article, is what happens when a straight woman has feelings of infatuation, completely nonsexual feelings, mind you, for another woman, and you shouldn’t think that she’s a lesbian for having these feelings. One of the women quoted in the article used the word “sexy” twice to describe her admiration for a colleague, but she must be regarding her co-worker as sexy in a strictly Platonic sense.
What struck me about the article—aside from the author’s apparent hangups—was this line: “Social scientists suspect such emotions are part of women’s nature, feelings that evolution may have favored because they helped women bond with one another and work cooperatively.”
Scene: Somewhere in Africa, 100,000 years ago. Two women are digging for yams.
Uggah: Hey, umm, Squeak, there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you for a while.
Squeak: What?
Uggah: I just want you to know how much I really like you. When you were picking berries a few days ago, I was really impressed by how confident you were about which ones were ready to pick and which ones weren’t ripe, and I looked at how your fingers were holding the berries and—you know—like—I think you’re a really cool person and I want to be your friend.
Pause.
Squeak: Uggah, that’s really sweet of you.
Uggah: I mean I want to be your friend in a totally non-sexual kind of way. I don’t want you to think I’m a dyke or anything.
Squeak: No, I don’t think that at all. I want to be your friend, too.
Uggah smiles shyly and returns to her digging. Squeak looks out to the horizon and sees a band of mightily thewed single male hunters, dragging a carcass behind them.
Squeak: Hey, Ug? Can you do me a favor?
Uggah: Sure. What?
Squeak: It’s starting to get cold here. Can you run back to my hut and get a couple of blankets?
Uggah: I’d be glad to.
Squeak: I’d do it myself, but we’re so far from camp, and I have such a sore back from all this—
Uggah: It’s no problem. Really.
Squeak watches Uggah until the other woman is a few hundred yards away. Then Squeak brushes back her hair, faces the approaching hunters, and watches them as she digs, leaning forward to show them her cleavage.
Pop quiz for aspiring evolutionary psychologists: which character in this drama is going to leave more copies of her genome behind?
via rm
