Rings and Surthings

I had the weirdest conversation with The Princess*, my new sister-in-law, when she was in town for my husband's birthday. It's taken me this long to write about because I just wasn't sure how to process it. Translation: I don't know her well enough to know if she was deliberately being rude or if she is just really clueless. I'm erring on the side of clueless, though deliberately rude is a definite possibility.

Anyway, she and my brother-in-law have been married less than a year. I generally hate talking to newlyweds, for a lot of reasons**, and she hit two of them in less than five minutes:

Why don't you guys wear wedding rings? Don't you want people to know you're married?

Why didn't you change your last name? Is this some kind of feminist thing?

So, here's my reply to those questions, feel free to borrow whatever is applicable to you any time you'd like.

1. Wedding rings:

Does anybody even know what the point of wedding rings is, anyway? I guess to show people I'm married, but why does every random stranger need to know my marital status? An unmarried person could buy a wedding ring. It's not like jewelry stores require proof of marriage. A married person with a wedding ring could simply take it off. And I'm still not sure why everyone I meet needs to know whether or not I'm married.

I've been told that my husband will cheat on me if I don't require him to wear a wedding ring. I told them I had no idea circles of metal had such amazing powers.

I've been told our refusal to wear wedding rings means we're not serious about one another. I've been known to say "fuck off". Seriously, seriously fuck off. We've stuck together through both of our chronic illnesses, poverty, and other stuff I don't talk about here, and you're telling me that the ring is what denotes serious commitment? C'mere, I wanna show you something. It won't hurt for long.

So why don't we wear wedding rings? Neither one of us likes the tactile sensation of rings. My husband won't wear any jewelry at all, not even a watch. I regularly wear earrings, bracelets, and necklaces (I'm actually rarely without all three), but rings bother me. I can't really see how "Hey, I know wearing a ring makes you wildly uncomfortable, but you must wear one every day for the rest of your life" means love.

2. Taking my husband's surname.

This is not a feminist thing. Well, actually, some feminists do promote this as a feminist thing, but it has nothing to do with feminism for me. I'd like to say it does. I'd like to claim to be a feminist warrior, changing the world through my bold refusal to change my name, but Hell is all about the honesty***.

I didn't change my last name because I didn't really care about it and I'm lazy about things I don't care about. Actually, thinking about it, I had just spent a very frustrating six weeks getting a new social security card so I could switch jobs and the thought of doing that all over again to change my name was just too much at the time, so I put it off. After a few years went by, I asked my husband if he cared that I didn't use his name and he said, quite reasonably, that while I was welcome to use his name, he didn't see why I should. I didn't become a different person when I married him, why should I have a different name? And, it bothers him to see men stay Mr. John Doe, but women become Mrs. John Doe as if she had to marry John Doe because her parents named her Mrs. John Doe. What if she wanted to marry Frank Doe? It would be tragic!

Yeah, he's as weird as I am.

I've been told that this means I don't love him. I've been told this means he'll leave me, cheat on me, be heartbroken. I've been told feminists are ridiculous, that I hate men and that I'm a bad wife.

People seriously froth at the mouth about this one, more so than the rings.

Multiple people have suggested a "compromise" as if we were fighting about it: hyphenate our names. First of all, this always means I change my name to the hyphenate and he does nothing. Secondly, I have a four syllable Scots/Irish name and he has a three syllable Italian name. Can you imagine?

Mrs. Faith O'Hannigan-Agnoli****.

That's better than Faith O'Hannigan?

People often ask what name our children (will) have. My husband agrees that in the highly unlikely event that we do have a child, they will have my name because I'll be the one doing all the work. This upsets people so much that I've suggested we simply combine our names into one unhyphenated, bizarre Iritalian mix. O'Hannoli, perhaps. Nobody finds that funny, other than my husband.

Anyway, I really want to know why are either of these things anyone else's business? Why does anyone at all care whether or not we wear wedding rings or whether or not I change my name? I have asked people that, but apparently, I'm the rude one for asking.



*No, I really don't like her all that much.

**Hey, you're happy, good for you. Stop pretending you know anything about marriage. Call me back in ten years and then we'll talk all about it.

***Carefully edited honesty.

****Not our real names. Our real names would be even worse. And longer. Much longer.

How to Tell You Are Not a Feminist

I've seen 1,000 word explanations of feminism, but as the Princess of Pithy, I can boil that down for you into one sentence: Feminism is the belief that men and women are equal.

That's simple, right? Men and women, we are equal. Anything else associated with feminism- control over fertility, criticism of media treatment, concerns about representation in power structures- flows from that simple, defining belief.

Determining whether or not you are a feminist or whether an organization is inherently feminist, is equally simple. Do you promote actions or ideas that treat women and men equally? Does the organization act in a way that results in women and men being treated equally?

If not, neither you nor the organization are feminist. You may wish to be a feminist, but if you don't hold to that belief, you are not. Go find another word. This is not to say that feminism is a monolith and that all feminists believe all the same things. I've heard equally good arguments for and against pornography and sex work from feminists I admire equally. I've heard some fairly silly arguments regarding subjects like wearing colours and skirts* from feminists I otherwise admire. However, even those arguments are within the framework of equality for all sexes**.

For example, is the Catholic Church feminist? The short answer is "no, what the hell is wrong with you?", but you probably didn't stop by for the short answer, and I'm stumped on what happens next in my book, so I'll ramble on a bit.

If you're not familiar with the Catholic Church (hereinafter "RCC"), even a cursory examination of the structure and teachings of the RCC is enough to show it is inherently misogynistic. Men rule the RCC. From priest to cardinal to bishop to pope, the entire power structure is exclusively male. Only men can lead worship services, only men can make policy decisions, only men speak for God. Women have two roles, and both those roles are in service to men: wife/mother and nun.

This is not feminism.

The policies of the RCC flow directly from this misogyny. Women are not allowed control over their bodies, and are fully expected to die in difficult pregnancies and to bear the child of their rapist, even if that rapist is their father, even if they are 9 years old. Women are fully expected to give up any possibility of a career and to bear one child after another until they no longer can. That is the role of women in the RCC and it will never change, because the policy makers will never be women.

This is not feminism.

Having established that, is it possible for a Catholic to be feminist, or for a feminist to be Catholic in good standing holding to the accepted teachings of the RCC? No. Logically, one could not embrace the above and be a feminist, simply because the beliefs of the RCC and feminism are mutually exclusive.

Now here's the thing about feminism: feminism does not promise you a rose garden. Even if feminism overcame all misogyny tomorrow, that doesn't mean every individual woman's life would automatically be perfect. Feminism seeks to remove artificial societal barriers keeping women lesser than men. Feminism does not require that each woman become a doctor or limit herself to two children or abort her rapist's baby. Feminism merely seeks to make those choices available to you. You are more than welcome to choose to be a stay at home mother, to have eleven children and to continue any pregnancy you wish, even if that means risking your own life in the process. I would not make those choices, personally, but I'm not you and I will support your right to make choices, even if I might personally find them bizarre or ill advised.

Basically, in the linked article above (and here, why make you scroll?) Simcha Fisher argues that because she takes advantage of certain advances earned by feminists, she is a feminist. Just soak that in for a minute.

What if I had to argue with the auto parts clerk to buy a headlight bulb, even though I was the one replacing it? What if the bank required me to get my husband’s permission for this and that? And what if I wore skirts because I’d be shunned if I didn’t, and not because I felt like wearing them?

Yeah, that would totally suck, right? That's the world many feminists lived in and worked so hard to improve. When my mother was in college, that was the world. Married women couldn't get credit in their own name, so she didn't. Female college students couldn't attend classes in pants. If you showed up to class in pants, you would be escorted out of the building. My mother is not 1,000 years old. This is very recent history.

So here's Simcha, aware of that history, grateful it is history and is simultaneously patting herself on the back for supporting an organization that is deeply misogynistic.

So what makes me a feminist? Some would say that all faithful Catholics are feminists, because the Church is the most pro-woman organization around: The Church honors and values the particular gifts of women, and demands that men treat women with dignity and even a little bit of fear. John Paul II famously called himself a “feminist pope”; and in practical terms, the Church has probably done more for the physical well-being of women around the world than any other charitable organization.

Catholics who are feminists recognize that, while so many true wrongs have been righted in the last 50 years, the poor treatment of women in America has just been displaced, not eradicated. So now, instead of corsets and disenfranchisement, we have widespread pornography, abortion, and abandonment of every kind. We have gained some necessary ground, but lost so much else that is valuable in the process. Most of my Catholic friends see the world this way.

Yes, pornography and abortion didn't exist until 1964, Simcha. JPII could have called himself a pink unicorn if he had wanted to, that wouldn't make it true. And you know what? I don't care what the RCC has done for women worldwide (health care missionaries? I'm not sure), as long as women are not allowed in the halls of power simply because they are women, the RCC is not feminist, and neither are you.

Find another word. "Feminist" is already taken.

*Admittedly, I wear skirts almost exclusively because I find them to be significantly more comfortable than pants, so maybe I just don't want to hear a feminist argument against skirts. Then again, I'm in favor of men having the option of wearing skirts (you'd think, given the, um, dangly nature of male genitals, that skirts would be the automatic male preference) as well, so I think I'm still falling within the equality test.

**We need to have a discussion about how limiting and exclusionary it is to discuss sex as if it is only male and female. There are those who fall outside the XX/XY paradigm, and it's hurtful to them to be constantly excluded from, quite literally, everything.

Inside a Man's Mind: Modesty, Part II

Taken from here. Part I of my fisk here.

In my last post I described how I went from being completely oblivious to the issue of modesty to completely awestruck with how significant of a principle it is. I was "awestruck" for a number of reasons.

QUOTATION MARKS ARE NOT DECORATIONS.

First of all, I wondered how I could have lived 21 years of my life without once considering whether or not there was a right and wrong when it came to dress.

No, you did not. I imagine you knew that some items of clothing are considered appropriate to some situations where others are not. Stop lying.

Secondly, I was amazed by the beauty of it all.

Can we say "fetish", children?

As you may recall, in my last post I recounted my first encounter with my future wife and her sister sitting across the room from me at a scripture study and what my initial reaction was to their appearance. In my ignorance, I could not conceive of any rational reason that would drive two young ladies to show up to a college scripture study in ankle length, floral pattern jumpers.

Neither can I. There are so many ways to be modest without resorting to something that hideous, if the Muslim women in my area are any guide.

Not only had I never seen anyone don such apparel,

or "wear jumpers"

I honestly didn't know if I ever cared to see it again - not because it was displeasing to my eye, but because it was displeasing to my heart. Why you ask?

I just assumed it was because jumpers are tragic.

Look, I went to Catholic schools growing up. I wore jumpers in blue plaid, jumpers in grey plaid, jumpers in brown plaid and jumpers in green plaid. They're horrid items of clothing, uncomfortable and unflattering. If there is a dress code in hell (assuming hell exists, of course) it involves jumpers.

Seeing them "set apart" in their dress made me uncomfortable - more uncomfortable that I cared to admit at the time. I was used to the short shorts, the tight tops, and the form fitting everything else. I had become much too well acquainted with this sort of revealing dress and if I would have been honest with myself, I would have confessed that it had done nothing but aid in the development of many of the vile affections that then abided in my heart.

Bitches always tempting me! I am a man, I should not be held responsible for my thoughts, feelings and actions, damnit!

Scanning the room that night, my eyes came into contact with something that absolutely shook the foundations of my pitiable understanding concerning the issue of dress.

I can just imagine that moment. Don't you feel like this is what happens when Tim Gunn sees the perfect dress made of garbage bags and dead sewer rats? ("This week, you'll be making a business suit using only broken dreams and empty promises.")

As it was, however, I quickly took shelter in counsel of my heart (not the safest place to be) and reemerged from this cellar like nothing had ever happened.

Dude, you know, I love me some clothes, but wtf is wrong with you? I've seen less overwrought descriptions of visions of Hell.

To be sure, I could not deny that there had been an earthquake, but it hadn't phased me. Strange that it even shook me at all. And so, I settled myself by allowing a single word to characterize what I had seen - weird. Case closed. Back to the real world.

It was strange that an earthquake shook you?

Fast forward almost a year later and I was to discover that this earthquake had aftershocks like you wouldn't believe. Passing through the room of this same scripture study, I spotted one of these young ladies (Caroline in this instance) sitting meekly in the corner and the words came to my mind so clearly, "That is the sort of woman you ought to marry."

Meek: Easily imposed on; submissive. Yeah, aren't you just a pleasant fellow.

I had come a looooong way - from "weird" to to wedlock. Now, what I would have you to understand is that I wasn't contemplating marriage on account of what Caroline was wearing, but how she wore it. Her clothing was modest, yes, but more importantly, she was modest. This was what I had but dimly apprehended at the first. My wife was not wearing jumpers because she liked them (she didn't and still does not)

That is so sad. I can understand having standards of dress. I can understand having difficulty finding clothes you like, or that fit or that you can afford. But to where clothes you hate when you could be wearing clothes that make you happy- it's like eating only cream of wheat and never anything with flavor, on purpose.

or because she believed them to be particularly fashionable (they passed out of vogue, oh, some 30 years ago), but because she felt that they were accessory to a modest spirit (that, and they were all her mother could sew at the time, it being very difficult to find anything in the department store agreeable to modest deportment.)

Couldn't she or her mother find another pattern, or visit another store? I see plenty of modestly dressed women during my day and not a one of them is dressed in a jumper. There's no reason for that other than to mark yourself out as being loudly modest.

Here follows a very long, very ignorant discourse on why jumpers are good, but hijab and plain are bad. If you can make heads or tails of it (other than "things I like are good, things I don't like are bad") please let me know.

Then comes this:

After meeting Caroline and her family, I was introduced to quite a few other ladies who were careful and considerate of their appearance - not too be revealing with the clothing they wore. Not all of them were modest. The one's that were the most modest in their dress were, in many instances, the least modest, if you follow me.

It's not enough to put on a jumper and assume you're good enough for me! You're going to have to work harder than that!

I could go on and on about why I think this is, but I shan't, for the Modest Mom says I should draw this post to a close.

When the meekly meekest meek woman tells you to shut the fuck up, you really need to shut the fuck up.

I hope you will not take my comments as license to dress like everyone else for they are in no way intended to encourage such a course, for although it is possible to be truly immodest while modestly dressed, it is impossible to be immodestly dressed and truly modest.

I think they may require some sort of chart to follow.

No, my post is intended to encourage the cultivation of a modest spirit and all that it implies - and yes, this process involves taking a good hard look at your standards of dress and adjusting them if necessary (whether you dress modestly or not).

So . . . if I'm dressing modestly, I need to adjust my manner of dress until I am modest? lolwut?

In the end, modest clothing does not the Modest Mom make, but they are an appendage unto her.

What kind of appendage? An arm, a leg, oooh! Is it a tail? Wing? Are wings appendages?

If it were merely modest clothing that adorned my wife when first I met her, I would have dismissed her taste in clothes as sadly misinformed by some obscure, puritanical interpretation of scripture. As it was, however, she wore a meek and quiet spirit which was, and is, of great price in the sight of God, and it had the blessed effect of drawing me nearer to my Savior.

Ugh. I would hope you found your wife special. You did marry her, after all.

Inside a Man's Mind: Modesty, Part I

(sigh. I already wrote this post and then blogger killed it, so, you know.) A man's view of modesty:

I wanted to rehearse for you how I first became acquainted with the principle of modesty, how it radically altered my perspective concerning women in general, and how it has continued to shape my interaction with them.

"Rehearse"?

To be brief, my first exposure to modesty (not sure those two words are comfortable in the same sentence)

I SEE WHAT YOU DID THERE.

was upon seeing my future wife and her sister sitting across the room at a scripture study at college. I was 20 years old and I believe I can honestly say that the issue of modesty had never crossed my mind - ever. I hadn't, up to that moment, paused to consider if there was a right and a wrong when it came to dress, much less the behavior which endues our appearance with a particular spirit.

Really? You never considered if there were a right and a wrong when it came to dress? Not ever? So you felt perfectly free to wear saran wrap to a wedding, huh? C'mon now.

So, there they were, meekly

Get used to that word, "meek(ly)". He likes it. A lot.

seated across the room from me, completely separate in their attire from every other young lady in the room, very nearly glowing in their probity, and I had the thought come to me, "Those girls are just plain WEIRD."

". . . glowing in their probity"? You know, I have a permanent crick in my neck from looking sideways at this sort of writing, as if it might help to view them from a 45 degree angle. It doesn't.

Perhaps not the epiphany you were expecting. Something significant, though, had happened to me, something which set the stage for the cluster of revelations which were to come regarding this issue - I had actually seen modesty, and everything it implies, with my own eyes.

Dude, it's a woman in a jumper, not the Ark of the Covenant. Calm down.

Strange as it was to my carnal mind at the time, it was undeniable in its distinctiveness - that is, there were definite, purposeful motivations driving the young ladies to dress as they did, and in the nearly abandoned, certainly neglected center of my heart, I knew it.

Or they have no sense of style. Pick one.

It would take me another year or so to acknowledge this and summon the courage to ask at least one of the young ladies - WHY?

WHY ARE YOU SUCH A FREAK?!*

If I shared all of what transpired on this little journey of my mine, it would make for lengthy reading.

Considering the length of the two posts he wrote on the subject, I can only imagine what he considers length- long. Long is a fine word. I never met an adverb I didn't like and you're pissing me off.

Suffice it to say that only God could have arranged matters in such a way that a year later, I found myself the head of a small group study with a certain young lady assigned as one of my "students."

Yes, because in a small city with a limited number of people meeting your definition of Christianity it is absurd that you would run into her again. The odds were like, what, 95% that you would? Had to be god. Also, the sarcastiquotes around student make me uncomfortable. "Oh, yeah, she was quite a student, yes she was."

I expect it is rare when a teacher learns more from his student than she from him, but such was my experience over the course of the next few months.

No, this is a fairly common sentiment among teachers.

I am not ashamed to admit this, but I sat at my future wife's feet that semester and was schooled in the ways purity.

Is there any part of this story that isn't going to sound like poorly written BDSM erotica?

She never would have done this had I not been so inquisitive. By this time, the thought in my heart concerning her appearance had greatly matured from "strange" to "I absolutely must know why this lovely young lady dresses, no, more than dresses, IS the way she is! What scriptural exegetic is she tapping that drives her to live thus?!" I was transfixed by her "way of life" and I absolutely had to get to the "why" and "what for" behind it. Her answer came with a gentle and quiet confidence, "It's really quite simple..."

And it is, and always will be.

Look, I'm not going to question what attracts one person to another. You may look at a square-jawed, clean shaven GQ sort with neatly cut hair and think "Hot!" while I'm salivating over the guy with the stubble and the unkempt hair and the dirty jeans and that's okay. There's no right or wrong to it.

So I don't care that jumpers turn this guy on. More power to you, buddy. What does bother me, among other things, is this apparent assertion that his turn on is a commandment from god we should all be following.

You see, as I scheduled a curious number of group "discussions" that semester,

Was it 7? I've always thought that 7 was a particularly curious number.

I took the opportunity to probe Caroline

LOL!

concerning the decisions she had made concerning her walk with God. Nearly all of her decisions could be viewed as accessory to her decision for modesty.

So I guess she wasn't helping the poor or comforting the sick, huh?

In other words, her decision for modesty governed her decisions in many other areas of Christian import. Having said that, modesty itself is an appendage to femininity and femininity to godliness.

Hee! I'm so feminine, I'm lucky I haven't transmogrified into Barbie and I'm an immodest atheist. But thanks for the diesel dyke reference there.

Caroline never came right out and said this, (would never have even thought it) but what I kept hearing throughout our discussions was, "I am a woman, made in the image of God, and if you were a true man of God, you would treat me, with all dignity and honor, according to the rights and privileges afforded to me by my Creator."

The right to wear ugly clothes and the privilege to be submissive to men.

This was completely new to me. I just thought that, well, I'm not sure what I thought about women. With a few notable exceptions (my mother, grandmother, precious few church women) seeing women aspire to and attain unto every role men traditionally displaced was all that I had ever known.

Fucking bitches, thinking they can be doctors and lawyers and mow the lawn and fix the leaky toilet! How dare they? I have a penis, damnit, and I should get to be superior to half the population just by an accident of birth. Why should I have try at things and earn people's respect and praise? Whores!

Even most of the dwindling number of housewives in my experience looked and acted like feminine men with slightly longer hair.

Given that men and women are both human, what exactly is the difference other than that, really? I mean, what do you want? Oh, right, jumpers. Submission. Meek.

Yet here I was was talking with a woman who hadn't the slightest desire to look, act, or compete with, me. And bless God, it affected her appearance (for the better I might say ; ).

Hur! Ugly feminist lesbos, hur!

Side note: remove "or compete" and what he said was "look or act with me". Okay then. I can see why you wouldn't want me in the game with you. I'd trounce you in the first five seconds and spend the rest of the time making fun of your shirt.

That's really what it is, what all this boils down to, isn't it? He knows he's not the smartest person around, not the most accomplished, probably a bit lazy, and it just grates on him, all those women outshining him effortlessly. Don't they know he's better than they are? Don't they know that having a penis is supposed to be an automatic win? Sluts.

Now, hear me, I have no desire to disparage any of the other young ladies that I attended the scripture study with for I believed, and still believe them to be sincere in their devotion to Christ and they blessed me in many ways.

But they are ugly and probably lesbians.

When I think of my wife, however, in chastity, virtue, and yes, modesty, my heart can only borrow the words of King Lemuel's mother, "...but thou excellest them all." It was on account of these undeniable qualities which my eventual wife exhibited that completely captivated my heart, and I, with much trembling, resolved to win her.

It proved only to be the beginning.

Read that last line in movie guy voice. It's awesome.

Wait until I snift? no. fist? no. oh, fisk, that's right. Part two. Most of it is a bizarrely ignorant rant about Muslims and the Amish. Yes, the Amish.

*Sorry, I'm eating falafel in a pita as I type this, which apparently makes me a bit shouty. OM NOM NOM NOM.

Roissy Is a Rude Mofo

A tweet from Holly Pervocracy (@pervocracy) sent me to Roissy's Dating Market Value test, and I have to say, Roissy is one rude mofo. Seriously fucking rude. So rude I'm reading the test with my head cocked to one side and my eyes narrowed as if perhaps I am simply not seeing it correctly.

The first questions have to do with stereotypes about jobs and cars and such (women only fuck rich guys because we use our vaginas to get stuff, not because we might like sex!), the rudeness really starts at question 22 (keep in mind, points are good, so -1 or 0 answers are bad):

22. The pickup has been going well. Later in the night she leans in and begins making out with you passionately. You feel like a king and your jeans suddenly feel much tighter. Do you:

(A) immediately grope her boob in return.
(B) continue making out with her for as long as she wishes.
(C) kiss for a little bit then push her gently away and look distracted for a second.

If you answered (A), subtract a point.
If (B), no points.
If (C), add a point.

Ahem, I'd negative 1 for "boob groping", too, but only because my boobs are not for "groping". Do not grope. No groping, seriously. There are like 1,000 other things you could do to my boobs that I might enjoy, groping isn't one of them. Also, "in return" implies that she is responsible for your kingly, jean-tightening erection and the boob groping is some sort of reward. People never to have sex with: Roissy!

B) is the wrong answer, too. Keep making out for as long as you want to and she wants to. Making out is a group activity. This answer is caused by the notion that men feel desire and women don't, so men will want to make out until their lips fall off and women are just doing them a favor by making out at all.

C) is . . . weird. Um, "look distracted"? I can't even imagine what I would think was going on there. Is he questioning if he left the burner on? Is he having a stroke? Did he just remember he's married? Any way this pans out, so not hot. Do not ever give me the impression- while making out with me- that I am not tops on your mind. Not at all sexy.

23. You go to a bar. Twenty feet away are a pretty girl, a fat girl, and an average guy talking amongst themselves. The pretty girl briefly eye flirts with you. In reponse, you:

Fat girls, no one loves them. Except literally half the men I know. Seriously, in real life, I know as many men seriously turned off by my size as there are turned on by it. Fuck you, Roissy.

24. Who do you address first?

WHOM! WHOM DO YOU ADDRESS FIRST! "Who" is a subject! "Whom" is an object! The subject of that sentence is "you", therefore "whom" is the object.

25. After getting the whole group engaged in conversation and having a good time, your target blurts out “Hey nice pink shirt! Are you gay?” You:

(A) say “No, I’m not gay!”
(B) ignore her.
(C) say “OK, who brought their little sister to the bar!”

I actually agree with C) being an acceptable approach, but not for the reason Roissy does. Roissy just generally believes that being rude and dismissive to women will get you sex0red (not in my house), but the question in the example is rude, so have at it.

26. In the middle of the conversation you have to pee. You say:

(A) “I have to go to the bathroom. I’ll be right back.”
(B) “Excuse me.”
(C) nothing. Just go.

C) is the correct answer in Roissy's book, but if you did that to me, I'd simply ignore you after you got back. You don't have to tell me you're peeing, but "Excuse me" is simple manners. If you don't think I'm worthy of 2 words worth of manners, fuck off.

27. You’ve managed to get her outside your front door. There is obvious sexual tension. You want to close this deal. You say:

(A) “So, um, ah, see you around.”
(B) “Why don’t you come inside?”
(C) “I’m thirsty. Are you thirsty? Let’s go inside and taste DC’s finest tap water. But you can only stay for a minute, I have to get up early.”

C) is the correct answer, and if you tried it on me, you'd get maced. At the least. That is rapist tal- ooooh, got it. Yeah, so the correct way to use this test is to give it to prospective dates and anyone who scores over a 0 is a potential rapist, change your phone number. Useful!

In the interests of full disclosure, I tested my husband and he gets a -2: -9 to 0: Lesser beta. You don’t immediately disgust girls; they just don’t notice you. With much painful effort you can redeem yourself. My husband was quite surprised to learn that "redeem" means "turn yourself into a rapist".

Manly Masculinity Malaise

It's a droopy, dusty penis.

I have this website in my reader called The Art of Manliness. For the most part, it's the sort of misogyny that's hard to pin down, let alone write about. (You know, teaching men how to make fires with two sticks or fix a car, as if women couldn't use those skills.) This, however, is over the top, with a bonus round of evo-psych. Oh, yeah, I got me a fisking.

A few weeks ago, I caught the premiere of the Discovery’s Channel’s “Human Planet,” a television show about the ways people have adapted to survive in Earth’s most extreme environments. Perhaps a better name for the program would have been “Man Planet,” as the show primarily chronicled the incredible feats of men around the world–men the tentacles of civilization have barely grazed.

Yes, because women say, giving birth, in those situations weren't engaging in "incredible feats". Man Planet, indeed. Without those women, it would be One Generation of Planet.

Anyway, this is followed by a fuckton of stats that show that women are more likely to be in college, get higher gpas, graduate and move on to advanced degrees. What is not mentioned is that women, despite all this, make 78 cents on the man's dollar. Never mentioned. Women have more college degrees, more advanced degrees and make 78% what men make. Now that's impressive. Poor, poor menz making 22% more than women. It must be tough.

Over tens of thousands of years, our manly ancestors evolved unique psychological traits that helped them survive and thrive in a dangerous, hardscrabble world. While we like to think that we’re cultured and sophisticated and quite a distance beyond all that, all men still have these primitive psychological traits embedded deep inside them. As we can see from a show like “Human Planet,” there are still men who live this way right now. The modern society we enjoy today represents a mere blink in the long history of humanity.

And so we have a mismatch, where for men in the developed world the inner elements of masculinity remain unchanged, while the outer landscape in which those elements exist has been dramatically altered.

Okay, I'd like to point something out here. Women were also living in that "dangerous, hardscrabble world". Women also should have "primitive psychological traits embedded deep inside them". So why are the menz adrift and lost and saddened beyond measure while women get advanced degrees for the sake of making only 78% what their sad, primitive male counterparts make? I dunno, evo-psych, it's for the menz! For explaining why menz are so sadness. Men built out culture, you know. It was all men, all the time. And now they are adrift in the hell of their own making.

C'mon now.

Two of the stats mentioned were that men lost 75% of the 8 million jobs lost during the recession and now there are more women in the workplace than men. To me, that's called being hoisted by your own petard. You ever heard of the "pink ghetto"? It's a term for the way women have been traditionally funneled into certain (low paying) careers to the point where those careers are feminine by very definition and men in them are regarded with suspicion and mockery. Nursing*, teaching, secretarial work, that sort of thing.

Meanwhile, men dominated in other, (much) higher paying careers: construction and manufacturing, to name a few. Now what imploded in 2008? Oh, that's right the housing market. No more construction. Manufacturing has been on its way out for a while, but the final blow was probably nobody having money to spend on manufactured items.

So, men reserved, with ruthless efficiency (ask any women who has tried to get into construction) their stranglehold on better paying jobs that don't require college degrees- and stayed there. Meanwhile, women eked out an existence in their pink ghetto- jobs that are, to a large degree- recession proof. People will always need medical care, children will always need to be educated and letters need to be typed.

So, really, I'd just like to say Ha! and HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA and Shoulda listened to the feminists, buddy. Am I sympathetic to these jobless men living in a country and economy that doesn't have a place for their skills? Yes, I am. Do I think unemployment compensation should be extended past 99 weeks? Absolutely. Do I think this is an evo-psych issue? No. It's a patriarchy issue.

Just to be clear, I don't blame any particular man or group of men for this. In the main, men are pretty clueless about their privilege and how it affects them and women. They're not deliberately benefiting from or enforcing the patriarchy. Some men are, but most by far aren't even really aware of it. Still, it is the sort of karmic justice that make me think I should fear Shiva, because the Hindus** could be right.

There are many more pundits who like to describe the problem with men today than actually propose a solution. And when a solution is proffered, it typically takes the form of “Get over it men. Your sun has set. Move on. It’s a woman’s world now.” And what this typically translates to is this: become more like women. Get in touch with your feelings, become more nurturing, and train to join the thriving, and traditionally female-dominated careers like nursing. The square peg is told to smooth off his sharp corners.

Oh, honey. That's just so sadness. Men and women are different and asking a man not to spit on the floor and follow it up by sodomizing a potted plant is asking too much! We are men! Manly men! In tights!

The other solution that some men take is to put themselves back in an environment similar to our caveman ancestors, so those unique male attributes are actually useful again. Men likeChris McCandless and Eustace Conway returned to the wild to live a more primitive lifestyle in order to reclaim their manliness and find themselves.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Ooh, that's hilarious. Can you imagine the average American man tromping through the woods with nothing but a pocket knife and a pack of matches? Here's the thing: I don't know a single man who isn't relatively happy with the way things are in modern life. They like smart phones and video games and modern medicine and convenience food. Yeah sure, lots of things about modern life suck- for men and women- but the only thing the average American male would be finding in the wild is an ignominious- and likely quite amusing- death.

Men at their best will be needed in every time and in every place. Our unique attributes are no longer always called upon for hunting dinner and doing battle (although as the recent killing of Osama bin Laden testifies, we certainly still need men for that). But we still need men to become leaders of families, honorable statesmen, innovators and entrepreneurs, teachers and mentors, and worthy brothers, husbands, and citizens. Men at their best have something unique to offer the world no matter what the changing landscape. Men are absolutely vital to the continued health of society. To throw up our hands and say we’re obsolete is beyond silly. We just need to learn to re-purpose our unique manly traits for our new environment.

Yes, because female Marines could not have shot an unarmed man in the face***. I could do that. (With surprising accuracy!) Although the rappelling down and running around in full gear? Not so much. Anyway, you know what? People at their best will be needed in every time and in every place. People. We need to stop dividing human beings into two distinct parts. Every person has something so unique the word itself must be italicized to offer the world. Nobody says men are obsolete, but this bullshit about how men and women are soverydifferent? Yeah, that's obsolete. That needs to go.

The solution for the modern male malaise lies at the heart of the idea behind the Art of Manliness itself: to move forward by looking back.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAsnerf This whole thing is an ad for the website itself. That is amazing. I bow to you, sir. Clearly there is a reason I am languishing on blogspot while you are sponsored by Gillette. (Probably has something to do with my rampant use of the world vagina. Oh, and I bet the atheism thing doesn't help, either. And you're probably not writing a book in which God is the bad guy and the antichrist is a Lutheran minister.) Anyway, good one.

*Yes, there are more male nurses these days, but it's only like 8% of the nursing workforce, and I had to specify "male nurse"

**That is the Hindus, right?

***Frankly, I'm okay with Osama bin Laden being shot in the fact, I just don't see why a penis was necessary for that particular venture.

Cognitive Behavioral Slutwalk

What am I saying here? See below.

Holly, of the Pervocracy, is one of the people I am determined to meet in real life before I die, if only for this exchange in the comments of her post on the Slutwalk(s).

Tit for Tat said...

Ok, is there any time that you should be aware that what you are wearing might potentially cause you physical harm?

May 6, 2011 6:22 PM

Holly said...

Yes. When you are wearing a live porcupine.

May 6, 2011 6:25 PM

I, quite literally, spewed iced coffee all over my ipod. (They hold up well to that sort of abuse.)

My 63-year-old mother-in-law (hereinafter "MIL") was sitting next to me when this happened, and she asked me what was so funny. I explained it to her, and she said, "You tell him, Holly!"

Now, you may be thinking "Wow, 63 and championing hot pants," but it's more than that. 10 years ago, my MIL was a waitress dying of congestive heart failure. She didn't know that last part until she was in the hospital and they were saying things like, "If you live long enough for the surgeon to get here, we'll be doing a quadruple bypass." Yeah, if you live long enough.

Today, she's a nurse with a scar that runs down her breastbone from an inch below her collarbones to the top of her abdomen. And she doesn't cover it up. She's not wearing my level of breast exposing tops, but you can pretty much always see at least an inch or two of that scar. Why? Because she's proud of it. She survived. She changed her life for the better. She succeeded. And it was all because of what led to that scar.

And people say the same thing to her about her scar that they say to "sluts" about their low cut tops and high cut skirts: Cover that up. What kind of attention are you trying to get? Don't you know what people will think?

My MIL's response is Holly's response: fuck you.

So, where does Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (hereinafter "CBT") have to do with it? The essence of CBT is simple: I can't control what you do or say or feel, but I can control my reaction to it. How does that apply to the Slutwalk and it's message? Simple. You can't control what a woman wears, but you can control your reaction to it. You don't have to catcall or harass or rape a woman. She could be walking down the street naked as the day is long and you can look away.

Look, guys, the world isn't all about you and neither am I. What am I saying with the dress above? Comfort, actually. I wore that yesterday to remove wallpaper and sand and prime the bathroom walls. That dress, and the flowery one just like it, are SO comfortable. I cannot describe to you how comfortable those dresses are. Was I attracted to it by the low neckline and the opportunity to attract men*? No, actually. I bought the flowery one first. I liked the flowers and the price was right. And, it was one of those "Surprise! It's 90!" spring days you get in Pennsylvania and I wore a sweater to work because it was 45 the day before and I needed a new outfit fast. It was so comfortable, I went back and bought the black one, and I am kicking myself for not getting the blue and the pink.

So, I'm comfortable. I can control that. What I can't control is how anyone else views me. Not my problem. It's up to you to control how you react. You can view me any way you want. You want to think "SLUT!!1!eleventy" to yourself? Go ahead. I don't care. You want to spend the rest of the day imagining me bent over your desk? Have at it. Just keep it to yourself.

Here's the thing: I very rarely wear those to work. (I wear a blazer over it in the building.) When I do wear it downtown, I get catcalls aplenty. I also get catcalls when I'm wearing six layers of clothing midwinter. When I wear that dress in my home neighborhood, I don't get any catcalls. Men do occasionally tell me I look nice, but that's not creepy.

Now why is that? It obviously has nothing to do with me. It's the same body in the same dress. What is different is location. Downtown is the scene of many violent attacks, from stabbings to sexual assaults. My neighborhood? Nope. Shortly after I moved in, I forgot my keys and had to break into my house through a window. The cops were there 2 minutes after I got inside. My neighbors called them. Last summer, my husband and I heard a woman screaming. We ran outside and followed a horde of our neighbors to the source of the screams. There had to have been over 100 people at the scene. It was a teenage girl with an obvious slap mark on her cheek and her boyfriend. We do not allow that sort of thing to happen in our neighborhood. So I don't get catcalls, I get compliments.

And that's the secret, kids: it's not the woman and it's not her clothes. It's the rapists, the harrassers, the catcallers. They're the ones who need to change their behavior, and that will not happen as long as we excuse their behavior by slutshaming women. You decide what world you want to live in. You decide what world you want your daughters to live in. Downtown or my neighborhood?

*I'm a heterosexual woman. What else would I want to attract? Giraffes?

I Am All About the Witchcraft, Doncha Know

Anti feminists look like me. Seriously, I am wearing that outfit as I type this, though not with the apron, because aprons are inside clothing, like bathrobes. Do try to have some class next time, dear. (edited: i managed to fix random underline with commenters' help. thanks guys!)

"The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism, and become lesbians."

- Pat Robertson

I didn't get that from Pat Robertson's website, I got that from the blog of a young woman planning to submit to her future husband, and convert to Orthodox Judaism why believing in Jesus as the Messiah. That's a whole 'nother post for a whole 'nother blogger, but the fact that this young woman is taking Pat Robertson's word on what feminism is motivates me to do what I do.

This young women reads the above quote and thinks, "Oh, well, I don't want to be a feminist if it means killing my children, selling out to the commies and eating bush. Just not into that, sorry." The fact that the above quote is completely insane and intersects with reality only in the sense that those are indeed words is irrelevant. Millions of women believe that feminism is something it is not.

Socialism/Destroying Capitalism: I am a feminist and a socialist, but notice that I have to specify that. I have to use "and" because feminism and socialism are two different things. Some feminists are socialist, but most are not and socialism is not a central tenant of feminism. So, where does Pat get that from? Feminists are generally very concerned with the treatment of poor women, so feminists will often argue in favor of welfare, food stamps and WIC. Yes, according to Pat, feeding and sheltering poor women and their children is evil.

Think about that for a bit, antifeminist.

Practicing Witchcraft: First of all, I suspect that is simply Pat's way of saying "wicked,evil person". I assure you I am not an evil person, and I'm offended you think I am. That's rude at best. You don't even know me. Secondly, two groups of people in the US believe in witchcraft as an actual, real thing that affects events: fundamentalist Christians and certain pagan groups. (Not all pagans believe in witchcraft, mind you.) Now, all the pagans I know are serious feminists, but most feminists I know are not pagans. So, the vast majority of feminists regard accusations of witchcraft as being, well, lolwut? It's laughable. Obviously, since I find the concept of witchcraft to be rather silly, I am not practicing it.

Antifamily/Husband Leaving: Most feminists I know are married and have or want children. We're not some different species, dear. We live in the same general culture you do, and the general culture promotes getting married and having babies. (Seriously, the celebrity bump watch is getting really creepy.) As for divorce, I hate to tell you this, but atheists have the lowest divorce rate and fundamentalist Christians and Jews have the highest divorce rate.

Killing of Children: At first I found that kind of shocking, and then I remembered Pat considers a newly fertilized egg to be the same thing as a toddler, so abortion. Look, people who are prochoice do not consider a fetus to be the same thing as a child. We just don't. If you can wrap your mind around that, you can understand why we don't consider a fetus to be of more importance than the woman it's inside. I'm sorry you consider yourself as less important than a fertilized egg, but I'm not a child murderer.

Becoming Lesbians: Lina, Lina, Lina, one does not "become" a lesbian. One can certainly become a feminist, or become poor, or become ill or become a Jesus worshipping . . . Jew? Really, you are confusing. One cannot become a lesbian. One is either a woman who is sexually attracted to other women or one is not. I am a feminist and I am not sexually attracted to other women. I like me the penis. A lot. Of the feminists I know and talk to on a regular basis, 75% have no attraction to other women. And of the 25% who do have at least some attraction to other women, about half are married to men and are faithful to their husbands. So, either we're spectacularly bad at becoming lesbians, or that has nothing to do with being a feminist. You decide.

So, to recap, Pat Robertson has no idea what feminism is and I dress like an antifeminist.