Tardiness & Indebtedness

Argh, I am late with many posts I owe you, faithful readers. Those are the Botanic Garden updates from March, April and now May (triple argh!) and also some resolution updates. They will happen, honestly. Honestly.

I am so ashamed.

David Brooks Doesn't Know What He's Talking About

Surprising, I know. On PBS's News Hour last Friday, Mark Shields and David Brooks were asked to assess the impact of Obama's first few days in power - was this or that particular change symbolic, or real? All very interesting. One thing they mentioned was the lifting of the global gag rule. Mark Shields wasn't sure of the effects. David Brooks said the following:

Well, I agree. It would be very curious to know what actual effect it has. I remember going to AIDS groups in Mozambique and Namibia, and we have these big social issue battles over these issues. On the ground, it made no difference at all. So it'd be curious to know what the practical effect is.

Well, it's not really that surprising that those AIDS groups didn't think it would make much difference. I mean, pregnancy and AIDS both come from sex, but the global gag rule directly bans U.S. funds going to any overseas group that even mentions abortion as an option for pregnant women. So, although it does impact all reproductive health providers, and indeed HIV/AIDS is a part, clearly of reproductive health, David Brooks is either misstating, misunderstanding, or just an idiot. You choose which. I'm writing to him to just gently let him know of his mistake. Gently. Honestly.

Shop Talk

I was toying with the concept of blogging the Bar course I'm on. Not just its miseries, but its interesting points, things I'm learning about the Law that I just didn't know (it really is remarkable that after three years and nearly $120,000 in tuition just how much practical and useful stuff about which I do not have an inkling).

But, I decided, that's a tad self-indulgent, particularly as it'd be one post after another regarding my utter hatred of the situation and how hard it is for me to be somewhere by 8.30 every morning. Ugh.

Instead, it's another post about how NY Mag is pushing my buttons, and not in a good way. This week's edition had a major feature about the fallout from Spitzergate, and the large numbers of men that cheat on their wives. I need to re-read it, but the main argument was that current morality on monogamous marriages hasn't caught up with our evolving concepts of sexual morality - experimentation, acceptability of gay relationships, single motherhood, lack of marriage all together. It seemed to be some bloke basically saying he was too scared to tell his wife he wanted to sleep with other people, and he just couldn't help himself, so we should give him a green light. It's unrealistic to expect people to be faithful for life and it doesn't really hurt anyone, just like being gay or sleeping with people before marriage.

Unsurrisingly, there were a couple of things that I really took issue with that undercut what he's saying entirely.

First, the argument that infidelity causes no harm is simply not true physically, even if it's not true or arguable or we should change how we view it morally or emotionally. Syphilis rates increased 60% between 2001 and 2006 in the USA; as did chlamydia, and only gonorrhea dropped. HIV is the biggest killer of women of ages 15-44 in NYC. Given chlamydia's effects on fertility, this is clearly not a case of no effect or harm, necessarily, unless all the unfaithful people are using condoms, which somehow, I doubt... so he should have at least acknowledged that.

Second, he talks about all these poor husbands who aren't getting any sex from their wives, who have simply lost interest. Not once did he posit that perhaps the women are bored of their relationships, too. Not once did he suggest that maybe women's lack of sex drive could be connected to their husbands' failure to satisfy them or to keep them interested. Chances are, given statistics on infidelity, women are having affairs too. They too want someone to make them feel sexy, attractive, and to have sex that's exciting and new. But that didn't fit into this story about how Spitzer's decision to have sex with prostitutes could be explained by men trapped in sexless marriages.
Third and finally, as pointed out by the RH Reality Check podcast, having sex with prostitutes is NOT the same as having an affair. Yet this story conflated the two. Paying a person to have sex with you is not the same as establishing a relationship with someone else in order to have an affair, regardless of how fleeting that is. The only thing they have in common is that Dr. Laura will blame women for both.

One of these things is not like the others

A copy of my email to New York Magazine:

To the Editor:

I recently received the first issue of a new subscription to NY Mag (April 28, 2008). I was excited, given I use the website all the time. I opened the article on Gossip Girl with a little trepidation - another piece about how it really captures something truly zeitgeisty of the NYC / privileged teenaged lives, etc., etc. Instead, my concerns were focused on the diagram of the interwoven lives of the characters on Gossip Girl.

I get it, that you had to colour code the different types of relationships, but I am interested to know how long and hard you thought about the decision to categorise "attempted date rape" as the same type of thing (colour = purple) as "hooking up" or "losing one's virginity." You separated sex from dating-type relationships - hence blue for boyfriend/girlfriend, which is an interesting concept, too, that sex of the one night stand type is removed from the sex in a relationship. Date rape may be closer to the general sex continuum than stranger rape,* as it may result from what started as a romantic encounter, but it troubles me that it's so easily put alongside consensual sex, given repeated studies about the closer relationship between power and rape than sexual desire and rape.

Yours, a potential unsubscribee.

* [note that I use "may," because I'm not sure how I feel about this at all. Talking to a friend who watches the show regularly, she said that he was kissing forcefully and had to be fought off - so it was not as close to rape as the magazine makes out. But my point remains, I feel, and I'm not in any way justifying or excusing date rape. I think it's just as damaging and dreadful]

Misinterpretation

I always find it strangely odd when I don't agree with a mainstream view or interpretation of movies. I remember being shocked when a film critic I normally like (I can't remember who, or I'd link to him - I just remember it's a him) talked about the power of the Shawshank Redemption being in Andy's innocence and the brutality wreaked upon him by injustice. No, I thought, that's not the point at all - or, at least, not what I took from it. I took it to be that no one deserves brutality like he suffered, regardless of innocence or guilt; I thought the movie left it ambiguous as to whether his story was true or not. In fact, the elevating, elegance of the movie was that in the end, it didn't matter whether he killed his wife or not; that's what made it powerful and different from other prison movies.

Today I was pointed to an article in the NY Times about Thelma and Louise, which got me thinking about this all over again. In my mind, there was nothing "triumphant" about that movie. They died; and they died because their lives were so filled with violence and misery and subjugation that it was better to be dead than go back. It wasn't the police they were escaping, but the misogyny and abuse. Even when Thelma finally gets her kicks with a man, he steals from her and treats her like crap. It was certainly "dystopian," as Judith Warner points out.

However, I'm not convinced by Warner's point that things are so much better for women today than in 1990; her comment about the appointment of Justice Thomas and Roe v. Wade's perilous position seems particularly . . . well, ignorant - did she miss Gonzales v. Carhart, its utter misogyny and Thomas' position in the ascendant there? Today we found out that Illinois is perfectly happy to let isolated women do without reproductive health services. Even if rape figures are down, as she claims - and she assumes fewer women are being raped rather than fewer women reporting rape - we have a case where a rape victim was not allowed to use the word "rape" in the case against her attacker. How is this progress, exactly?

Here's what my extremely eloquent and passionate friend Xopo had to say on the matter - note that there was no collusion here, but we both saw and raged about it separately!

Chewing the Cud-Chewers

Today there is an article in the NY Times about how women now eat meat in front of men when they go on dates. Go NY Times for serious journalism!

In fact, there is something deeply offensive about this article and the people quoted within it.

For example:

“I’ve been shocked at the number of women actually ordering steak,” said Michael Stillman, vice president of concept development for the Smith & Wollensky
Restaurant Group.

You're right, Mr. Stillman, shocking is certainly the word for women ordering a fairly regular foodstuff. They may even show their ankles while eating it, too. Or order - and whisper this - an alcoholic beverage to go with it... they may even know something about the wine list, too.

Or these beauties:

But others, especially those who are thin, say ordering a salad displays an unappealing mousiness.
“It seems wimpy, insipid, childish,” said Michelle Heller, 34, a copy editor at TV Guide. “I don’t want to be considered vapid and uninteresting.”

“Being a vegetarian puts you at a disadvantage,” Ms. Crosley said. “You’re in the most basic category of finicky. Even women who order chicken, it isn’t enough.” She said she has thought of ordering shots of Jägermeister, famous for its frat boy associations, to prove that she is “a guy’s girl.”

“Everyone wants to be the girl who drinks the beer and eats the steak and looks like Kate Hudson,” Ms. Crosley, 28, said.

Seriously, you'd do Jäger because fratboys drink it? AAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH.

What is genuinely offensive about this article is the title and its relation to what's contained in it. Be Yourselves, Girls, Order the Rib-Eye. Really? Thanks for the permission, NY Times, Allen Salkin (the author of the piece) and, of course, men in general. This is a bloody awful example of many things I hate about the media and how women portray themselves, or allow themselves to be portrayed.

You see, what it boils down to is that women can now eat meat because it says a certain thing about them to men they date - that they're fun, unfussy, that they are undemanding, basically that we'll cause no trouble and won't cause men to alter their lifestyles or accommodate different eating habits, which of course symbolises that men won't have to change their lives in general if we live with them. It'll be (stereotype alert!) wings and NFL Sunday and happy hours and hooters galore!

And by eating meat on a first date, then the men they date may love them forever and ever and present them with a big shiny engagement ring to show how much they love them (and were willing and able to pay to show the world that).

As a recent convert to meat-eating again - I'm heading back to where I was reborn, at Dinosaur BBQ, tonight, and I CANNOT WAIT - I am so distressed to be tainted by these bloody ridiculous stories and the concept that, yet again, women only do things BECAUSE THEY NEED TO BE LOVED BY MEN. Not that perhaps a great big, juicy, bloody steak, or a plate full of soft, succulent ribs that slip off the bone taste really, seriously, good.

Gah.

UPDATE: I wasn't the only one peeved at this article.