"Feminism, in short, doesn't just empower women. It empowers me."

"It allows me to take on roles that have traditionally been associated with women. It gives me more flexibility in my career. As a man, feminism has had a huge positive effect on my life. It seems like the least I can do in return is own it."

Writes Noah Berlatsky under the heading "All the Selfish Reasons to Be a Male Feminist," posted at Slate's XXfactor. He's certainly not telling us all the selfish reasons, since I can think of at least one additional reason: You can get your free-lance writing published at Slate's XXfactor.

Berlatsky talks about having a wife with a full-time job and health insurance benefits and his own role as primary caregiver for their child while he does his writing, and that catches my eye, because it's the family life I had from 1981 to 1987. He says:

There was a time not so long ago where doing any of those things would have made me the object of ridicule, and quite possibly self-loathing as well. Today, though, it's no big deal — and the reason for that is feminism.

Well, there was feminism back then too, but it didn't save men from the inner turmoil of switching traditional gender roles. We thought we were really sophisticated, advanced, hip, and evolved in the early 1980s. Does that come as a surprise to you, Noah? You say, "it's no big deal," but you're writing at XXfactor, where it's in your interest — you have a selfish reason — to say that. But these things work until they don't work, so don't be smug, and good luck. Have you really thought deeply about your masculine self-esteem? Because, to my ear, your thanks feminism sounds shallow.

Read More

"I find it so entertaining a small group of whack jobs wants me expelled from UW-Madison."

"Can I only say what the crazy women approve of?"

Read More

Threats of rape and murder over replacing Charles Darwin on the £10 note with Jane Austen.

The NYT describes "a countercampaign of online harassment.... against several high-profile women." What was the "campaign" corresponding to the countercampaign, who were these "high-profile" women, and how high-profile were the threateners? 

Caroline Criado-Perez, a blogger and co-founder of the Web site The Women’s Room, began her campaign months ago when she realized that soon there might be no women — except Queen Elizabeth II, of course — left on British bank notes. The issue seemed urgent: in April, the Bank of England had announced that the only woman currently featured among five historical figures, the social reformer Elizabeth Fry, would be replaced by Winston Churchill, indisputably male. Surely, Ms. Criado-Perez argued, there were enough women of note in British history to find at least one more?

Nice to hear that bloggers are "high-profile." When do bloggers get pictured on bank notes? And why wasn't the Queen enough? This seems like a pretty lame feminist issue. By comparison, we women of the United States have never gotten a picture of one of our kind on the paper money. They keep putting one of us on a dollar coin...



... and then acting disappointed when no one wants to use it. Get rid of the damned dollar bill! George Washington is on the quarter, the favorite coin. All those already minted dollar coins would circulate like mad if you pushed Washington back to 1 not 2. And don't tell me Lincoln has 2, so Washington should have 2. We're not talking about testicles. We're talking about representation on money. Get rid of the penny and the dollar, push the 2 rivals for best President back to single representation, and it will free Susan B. Anthony and Sacagawea to circulate through the pockets and vending machines of America. Release the women from that vault!

There. I — a female blogger — have started my campaign. Let's see if I can hit the high-profile heights of Caroline Criado-Perez.

So who are the nefarious attackers? They were nobodies:

“I’m going to pistol whip you over and over until you lose consciousness,” one Twitter user warned Ms. Criado-Perez, threatening to “then burn ur flesh.”...

Two men, ages 21 and 25, have been arrested so far in connection with the harassment. Scotland Yard’s electronic-crime unit is investigating the Twitter attacks involving mostly anonymous Internet users, so-called trolls.

It's idiotic to threaten anyone on line, even if you think the target can't possibly believe an attack is in the offing. You'd think the hardcore fans of Charles Darwin would be more evolved.

Read More

Sexual harassment in academia: It depends on what the distinction between "logical implication and conversational implicature" is.

"There was no propositioning," said the philosopher. "Remember that I am a philosopher trying to teach a budding philosopher important logical distinctions."

That sounds like something from a brilliant novel that I would love to read, but unfortunately, it's a real professor, who's had to resign. Colin McGinn, according to the above-linked NYT article, was "a star philosopher at the University of Miami," and he has "agreed to leave his tenured post after allegations of sexual harassment brought by a graduate student."

“People are thinking, ‘Wow, he had to resign, and we know about it,’ ” said Jennifer Saul, the chairwoman of the philosophy department at the University of Sheffield in England and the editor of the blog What Is It Like to Be a Woman in Philosophy?

Wow, he had to resign, and we know about it...  note the implication (implicature?!!) that things like this occur all the time, perhaps even to the point that some tenured professor is subtly ousted, but what's extraordinary is to hear about it. Another amazing thing is that the star prof is also a blogger, and he put serious effort into blog-bullshitting his way out of the jam he found himself in. He put "the cryptic language of analytic philosophy" out there to defend himself. He gave other bloggers text. That's a risk. But maybe that's what star philosophers do, take risks, verbal risks.

The top post at his blog right now:

I treated the student I was mentoring at UM with complete respect, as an equal, and with continuous encouragement and support....

As to the New York Times article, the devil is in the details. Read between the lines. Don’t be taken in by spin and exaggeration. Look closely at the language.

That's professorly — an invitation to examine the language of the NYT. So he's not giving us text now. He's saying look at their text. Look at what they say and what they do not say. So let's do that.

The article, by Jennifer Schuessler, begins and ends with the general idea that women have it "tough"  in philosophy. There's "bias and outright sexual harassment" throughout the field, or so "many" say. And the McGinn story is presented a shining "what some see as a healthy dose of sunlight." Does one individual's story really work to shine light on a problem in the whole field? There's one story that gets attention — because McGinn is famous — and then people who have been wanting to forefront a more generalized set of issues seize the opportunity. "Some" think that's healthy, but it exploits the individual for the sake of a preexisting agenda. I'm reminded of the use of George Zimmerman to forefront racial issues. You could say that Zimmerman's case shone a healthy light on problems of racism, but it makes more sense to say the problems of racism threw an unhealthy shadow on the specific details of Zimmerman's individual case.

Schuessler concedes we're "short on undisputed facts." Schuessler interviewed McGinn and, in the middle of the article, tells us his version of the story:

It was “a warm, consensual, collaborative relationship,” an “intellectual romance” that never became sexual but was full of “bantering”.... The terms of his agreement with the university, he said, prevented him from saying much more. But “banter referring to sexual matters,” he added, isn’t always “sexual banter.”

The student would not talk to the NYT. Her boyfriend described email and text messages he saw, full of "unwanted innuendo and propositions from Mr. McGinn."

Mr. McGinn said...“There was no propositioning”...  Properly understanding another e-mail to the student that included the crude term for masturbation, he added later via e-mail, depended on a distinction between “logical implication and conversational implicature.”

I had to look up "implicature." The (unlinkable OED) says:

The act or an instance of (intentionally) implying a meaning which can be inferred from an utterance in conjunction with its conversational or semantic context, but is neither explicitly expressed nor logically entailed by the statement itself; a meaning that is implied contextually, but is neither entailed logically nor stated explicitly. Esp. in conversational implicature.

Without seeing the email, it's hard to know what that's supposed to mean. I don't see how I can read between the lines. That's totally opaque. If only we knew the context, there would be subtleties of meaning. But not only do we not know the complexities of the context, we don't even have the explicit text. The whole thing is covered up. Where's the healthful sunlight? It's all thrown into shadow by McGinn's resignation. I wish it had gone to trial. But apparently both parties to the communication preferred to wrap the whole matter up into darkness. There are reputations and careers to be preserved, and a deal was reached. McGinn signed an agreement, and now he can't go any further defending himself, and the woman doesn't want to talk at all. Her career needs are cited by intermediaries. A boyfriend — was he jealous? — tells the silent woman's story.

So it falls to those who want to forefront the general issue to keep exploiting the occasion. Hence Schuessler transitions to the final chunk of her piece:

Whatever the facts of the case, many philosophers say that the accusations of misbehavior against Mr. McGinn are the edge of a much bigger problem, one that women have long been unwilling to discuss publicly, lest it harm their careers.

Many say...

Many credit the blog What Is It Like to Be a Woman in Philosophy?, which in 2010 began posting anonymous stories of harassment, with helping to highlight the issue.

Many credit.... Many many.... Forget McGinn, a known individual about whom we know only some of the facts. Let's go on to talk about all the unknown victims/accusers and perpetrators/accuseds. We're told the culture of philosophy may be changing, as "several graduate students" are "considering filing complaints," and there's an idea of trying to make philosophy "more woman-friendly," but "no one can agree on the root cause of that unfriendliness."

Is it straight-up sexual discrimination? The lack of female mentors? The highly technical nature of much contemporary Anglo-American philosophy? The field’s notoriously rough-and-tumble style of argument?...

“Many people have called philosophy the combat sport of academia,” [said Louise Antony, a philosopher at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst]. “But if you can’t have those conversations, you’re at a disadvantage.”

There's some talk of adopting "an informal 'be nice' rule" to help women philosophers, even though that itself sounds patronizing. But that's a completely different issue from sexual harassment. If there's a very aggressive style of argument where you have to be a bully and an asshole to get ahead, then maybe there's reason to say men have structured the environment to serve the interests of men, and if they want women represented in the field, they need to figure out how to make it a place that doesn't repel women. Even to state that problem is to deploy stereotypes, a good subject for a whole other conversation, one that has virtually nothing to do with what we can see about the McGinn case, which is about seeking to have sex with someone who doesn't want it.

I began this post making fun of McGuinn's self-serving hair-splitting, but I end this reading overwhelmed by the lumping together of a big, multi-faceted feminist agenda. Where is the sharp thinking that makes proper distinctions and puts things together that belong together? Philosophers should be better at this sort of thing.

McGinn said — about the NYT article — "Read between the lines... Look closely at the language." If I had to sum up what I see in that semi-darkness, I'd say: A man took an offer that he thought served his interests and he agreed to shut up, and a lot of women are using the occasion to promote an agenda they've had for a long time about what will advance the careers of women.

Read More

Feminist blogger suspects that the AP meant to say "this smoking slut totally had it coming."

You may remember this story from yesterday, which I blogged here, about the NYC ad executive who leaned against her balcony railing in a way that made her date say "You know, you shouldn't do that." She said "I do it all the time," and then the railing collapsed, and she fell 17 stories and died. When should a death make the news and why? I know why I chose to blog that one: It was such a striking reminder of the way death might come at any time, and one's confidence that death won't come because it hasn't come yet — I do it all the time — is a delusion we live by and might die by.

I'm not afraid to lie down at night and sleep — I actively seek the loss of consciousness on those occasions — because I always wake up in the morning. That's happened every time so far anyway. And yet, every day, there are — lying in beds all over the world — dead bodies of human beings who surrendered consciousness to sleep the night before, assuming it would work out the same way it did all those other times.

How many will get AP stories written? None, unless they happen to be famous. The railing giving way is dramatic, especially because it happened to someone we can see did not expect it, who had that youthful sense of invulnerability, and the fall came from a great height, the death was instant, and there was an onlooker to make the experience come alive for us vicariously.

Like any blog, a feminist blog must feed on the available news stories or die of starvation, but a feminist blog is committed to chewing things into a bolus of feminism. So here's the Slate's XXfactor blog, and the determination has been made that the falling woman story is bloggable, which has to mean that it's fodder for feminism. Extracting 4 facts from the opening 2 paragraphs of the AP story, L.V. Anderson writes that the "implication" is that "this smoking slut totally had it coming."

A reader is left with the distinct impression that if [Jennifer] Rosoff hadn’t invited her date inside, hadn’t gone outside to smoke a cigarette, and hadn’t defied the advice of the wise and logical man she was with, she would still be alive. According to the AP story’s subtext, the problem wasn’t that Rosoff’s balcony railing was shoddy and unsafe—it was that Rosoff defied gender norms by being unmarried at 35, by being sexually liberal, and by insisting on making her own decisions instead of deferring to men’s logic.

Defied gender norms! Oh, come on.

You may accuse me of overreacting...

Anderson knew readers would call bullshit, but what's she supposed to do? Her assignment is to find feminist fodder and chew it up into a bolus of feminism, something we're supposed to swallow. She switches to I know this sounds like bullshit mode because she knows it sounds like bullshit.

... but the minor details that journalists choose to include or exclude from their reporting are one of many subtle ways that oppressive gender norms are perpetuated. 

Is that straight out of her notes from a Women's Studies class? This platitude is the platform for many a feminist blog. Scan stories for minor details relating to gender, then highlight them, and make grandiose statements about the perpetuation of oppression. When the evidence is flimsy, lubricate the bolus with the notion of the subtlety of the oppression. It might be swallowable.

Do I think the AP reporter assigned to this piece (incidentally, a woman) intended to undermine the reader’s sympathy for Rosoff and suggest she was asking for it? Of course not. But the fact that totally irrelevant details about Rosoff’s love life and cigarette habit made it into the lede and nut graf of an ostensibly unbiased news article—and that no editor stopped to ask, “Hmm, why is this information here?”—just goes to show how deeply ingrained sexist attitudes can be, even among professionals who pride themselves on their objectivity.

Bloggers don't have editors. A blogger has to self-edit. And Anderson is sort of self-editing here by imagining the readers' skepticism. But she counts on us accepting that the details are "totally irrelevant" and therefore only evince sexism. And that just goes to show how deeply ingrained the belief in deeply ingrained sexist attitudes can be. The railing against which Anderson has leaned so heavily — which feminist blogging calls upon her to do all the time — gives way. It's so shoddily constructed that any alternative explanation for the inclusion of the details pulls out the railing and sends Anderson tumbling.

And here the details create a vivid picture of a young woman in the midst of life who isn't thinking at all about death, and death suddenly takes her. She's on a first date, she's having a smoke, she's enjoying her luxurious abode looking out on the big city, she's openly dismissive of the man's fear of death, and she's inviting that man into her style of being truly alive, and that's when she dies. It's a stunning story of life and death. Yes, there's some "victim-blaming" here, but that's not necessarily a feminist problem. That cuts straight to everyone's fear of death: Would I have leaned on the railing? Have I ever leaned on railings at great heights? I don't want to die, so not leaning on railings must go on my How not to die checklist as I go forward in my life which, thus far, has not included my dying, and yet, somewhere, up ahead, there's that railing that's going to give way for me, and I too will plunge, headlong into the eternal unknown. 

I laugh out loud when I see that Anderson chides reporters for not "scanning one’s writing for traces of chauvinism," which, she says, "requires a little time and humility," but is "not exactly hard." Instead of seeing how she might take the time and have the humility to scan her own writing for traces of bullshit about chauvinism, she offers her idea of how AP should have put its opening paragraphs. Even though she admits that her version is much duller — "less salacious" — she's pleased that "it conveys the fact that Rosoff’s death was a tragic accident, not an instance of cosmic justice."

If you don't want the theme of cosmic justice, don't use the word "tragic." As we human beings tell each other stories — in theater or in the news — we experience depth of feeling when the details seem to tie together and have meaning. Why do we read about things like this at all? Anderson meant to say that her version of the story is better because it conveys the fact that Rosoff’s death was a random accident, which makes it a worse story. It's more of a police report, or notes for the tort litigation against the owner of the apartment building.

But Slate's feminist blog isn't about random accidents and building design defects. It is committed to getting us excited about the subtle perpetuation of the oppression of women. Ironically, Anderson herself fully intends to do what it is the feminist blog's mission to do: Take the stories of the day and retell them in terms of cosmic justice.

Read More

"As a feminist, I find it infinitely sad to imagine a vibrant young woman sitting alone at her computer..."

"... and turning herself into a sex object for a man... she does not know — even if she is also turning him into a sex object. Twentieth-century feminism always linked the social progress of women with an expanding sense of self-worth — in the sexual as well as intellectual and professional spheres. A willingness to engage in Internet sex with strangers, however, expresses not sexual empowerment but its opposite — a loneliness and low opinion of oneself that leads to the conclusion that any sexual contact is better than no contact at all."

So writes Susan Jacoby, in the context of the Anthony Weiner story. I suspect that Jacoby was sitting alone at her computer when she wrote that. And I'm sitting alone at my computer writing this now. Is anything infinitely sad about writing at the computer? Is it sadder when you expect someone is waiting to read what you write and you expect them to write back? These days I choose, for each post, whether I want to allow comments or not, and for this one I haven't chosen yet. Is the sadness of what I'm doing right now dependent on whether I allow comments?

Or is this infinite sadness dependent on whether you are writing about sex, which I kind of am, or writing about sex while hoping that your reader finds you sexy?

As a feminist, she finds it infinitely sad, so perhaps you have to be a feminist to feel what's so terribly sad about a woman sitting at a computer, writing sexily to someone she expects will write back sexily. And perhaps the woman at the computer needs to be vibrant and young for it to be extremely sad for her to chose bodily solitude and sex in written form. Those are the words of the self-identified feminist, feeling sad about women writing alone and sexily at computers. Jacoby is 68 years old. Is she like Paul's grandfather in "Hard Day's Night," scoffing at Ringo for reading — "tormenting your eyes with that rubbish" — instead of "gettin' out there and living... Parading the streets!"?

That's not about sexting. It's timeless advice from the old to the young. Perhaps the elders in Jane Austen's life pressured her to quit writing about love relationships and get out there and fall in love.

But Jacoby seems most concerned with context:

Sex with strangers online amounts to a diminution, close to an absolute negation, of the context that gives human interaction genuine content. Erotic play without context becomes just a form of one-on-one pornography....

Deep down, what does a man really think of himself when he must feed his ego with phony gasps of erotic pleasure from strangers in a digital vastness? What does a woman think of herself in the same arid zone of sex without sensuality?

Sex without context is pornography (to Jacoby). It's arid and fake. Even the man's orgasm is fake: "phony gasps." Even the man must lack self-esteem. That's the wrong kind of equality, with the woman straying out into the "arid zone" where meager men satisfy themselves. That's "not the sort of equality envisioned by feminism," she says in the end.  Women should shun this "lowest common denominator" sexuality that "debases the passion and reason of both men and women." Jacoby claims this end for feminism, but it's the oldest task in the world for women: channeling male sexuality, taming them, civilizing them, lifting them up, pumping the phallic lever for the elevation of us all.

(I'll put the comments on to make this more sad.)

Read More

"We’re... baffled by Huma’s choice because women no longer need to be professionally affixed to a man to make inroads in business or politics..."

"... especially when they’ve got a résumé like hers. Two decades ago, Hillary needed Bill, that much we could understand."

What bullshit! Written by Ann Friedman in New York Magazine under the heading ("Stand by Your Man? How Huma Can Do What Hillary Couldn’t"). I don't give a damn about Huma or what happens to her, but this is unmitigated trash about Hillary. Hillary did not need Bill. Not 2 decades ago, when he was running for President, and not 4 decades ago, when she graduated from Yale Law School.

In fact, there was strong pressure on women back in 1992 and 1973, even more than now, to go it alone and not stand behind some man. Hillary knew it was a career risk to go to Arkansas with Bill, and she chose it with eyes open. Friedman is purveying some made-up social history, asserting that we "understand" it, like it's in our cultural memory. But it's completely untrue.


I was around back then, and I remember the messages to women in 1973, the year Hillary graduated from Yale Law School, which was the year I graduated from college (and I read all the feminist books of that era). By 1981, the year I graduated from law school, the message that woman had independent careers and were not destined to be helpmeets to their men was itself so old-fashioned that it wasn't even said anymore. And by 1992, the year of Hillary's sit-by-your-man interview on "60 Minutes," radical feminism — with its active distancing from patriarchy — had been tearing through the culture for years.

Such pathetic nonsense about Hillary and her place in history. And as for Huma, the notion that she could now be some pathbreaker is so stupid I don't know where it came from. Some people — who are they? — got fixated on her — why? Because she's somewhat attractive? Because she's somewhat attractive and Muslim? Because she's somewhat attractive, Muslim, and close to Hillary? I'd like those people to confess what they're so enamored about. I bet they won't, because it's nothing but stupidity.

ADDED: I suspect that Hillary and Bill are responsible for screwing up the cultural memory. So many people subordinated their feminism to Democratic Party interests during the Lewinsky scandal. It erased memory of earlier feminist progress.

Read More

Tina Brown's war on men: "End the Damn Dickmanship!"

She's not just railing against sexting, but against "testosterone," generally, as a driver of bad behavior.

The no-secrets era of social media makes one consider the built-in risk factor of nominating high-testosterone men to positions of power at all.... Perhaps we need some kind of sexual DUI test developed to tell us what is likely to happen when middle-aged libido meets a whiff of power.

And politics is not the only arena to require this test. 

She goes on to talk about some boat and train accidents, caused by cock, in her view. By contrast, there are women:

Think about some of our prominent women in Washington right now. Can you ever even imagine—forgive me, Secretary—Katherine Sebelius uploading a crotch shot of herself on Instagram? Or Janet Yellen ordering up male hookers during downtime at the Federal Reserve? It’s preposterous.

Can we imagine females causing sexual wreckage? A year ago, we were imagining Janet Napolitano "turning the department [of Homeland Security] into a female-run ‘frat house’ where male staffers were banished to the bathrooms and routinely humiliated." I would have forgotten that had Tina Brown's screed not reminded me.

Brown's pushing the old female superiority theory, which is the sexism that was once used to keep women out of politics and business. We're too delicate and too prissy to do what needs to be done. And what if it were a substance like testosterone — a liquid squirting through ducts — that could be extracted and measured and reported to voters and employers? Tina Brown says she wants that information, so we can discriminate. Imagine the world she suggests but doesn't really want us to imagine. Everyone gets a masculinity score, and we judge his/her fitness for power accordingly.

Ironically, Tina would probably score very high. How much testosterone fueled the headline "End the Damn Dickmanship!?

Read More

"Seriously? The mere image of eight women and one man puts you in mind of '... a high-class escort service and an ad for Charlie’s Angels LLP'?"

"Then how about this caption: 'Staci Zaretsky — get a sex-change operation already. You're embarrassing the rest of us!'"

Wow! What a sexist screwup at Above the Law.

I noticed that today, as Zaretsky had to deem somebody the winner of what was an embarrassing-from-the-start caption contest. Here's the photo that was supposed to inspire hilarity:



This reminds me of the blind judging I did back in 2008, when Above the Law had a contest to determine who would replace David Lat as the chief writer at the blog. I criticized one contestant for racism, and the contestant — Elie Mystal, who won — turned out to be black. He thought I'd be embarrassed to have said that, because ha ha he's black:

I’m male. I’m liberal. I’m Catholic (of the “a la carte” variety). I believe in evolution and global warming. I’m happily married. I’m African-American (Althouse. “Racism alert.” What does that even mean? Go jump in a Great Lake)....

Note the similar defense made by Staci Zaretsky, in her apology here:

Old stereotypes persist within the legal profession, and as Above the Law’s sole female editor, even I am guilty of propagating them, for which I sincerely apologize (some of the resulting entries in our recent caption contest were despicable)....

Read More

"I have no way of knowing whether Huma, for whom I have great respect, is responding out of new motherhood, the Stockholm syndrome or a mystery."

Said Gloria Steinem, quoted in a NYT piece called "Many New York Women Are Baffled at Loyalty Shown by Weiner’s Wife."

Why puzzle? Go with the simplest solution: They had an understanding. Must I explain the world to Gloria Steinem? I doubt it. I believe she is bullshitting, because what is the basis for having "great respect" for Huma Abedin? None!

And it's perfectly silly to say "Stockholm syndrome."

Stockholm syndrome, or capture–bonding, is a psychological phenomenon in which hostages express empathy and sympathy and have positive feelings toward their captors, sometimes to the point of defending them. These feelings are generally considered irrational in light of the danger or risk endured by the victims, who essentially mistake a lack of abuse from their captors for an act of kindness. 

A wife is not a hostage! She's someone who chose a life mate and voluntarily made vows to stand by him.  Transferring that concept onto marriage is ridiculous (unless there's some actual imprisonment going on).

Read More

"Why Men Need Women" — the headline to an article about "Why Women Are Good At Getting Men To Give Away Their Stuff."

Instapundit finds a choice example of "the Althouse rule." Here's the underlying article, "Why Men Need Women," which reports a study that finds that "The mere presence of female family members — even infants — can be enough to nudge men in the generous direction."

Instapundit notes that this is the kind of finding that could rankle feminists, who should resist the idea that society's purpose for women is to tame men and structure their otherwise destructive energy for the good of the group.

Fortunately, though, this political incorrectness is offset, as the piece by Adam Grant adheres slavishly to the Althouse Rule on writing about gender, which is that you can report anything so long as you do so in a way that portrays women as superior.

Here's my post from 2005 stating the rule and demonstrating its application in the context of a study about the response to cartoons, which was reported under the headline, "Women May Enjoy Humor More, if It's Funny." "That's not funny" is a punchline for jokes about humorless women, but somehow the reporter of the study transformed the old deficiency into an asset.

Read More

"I can food."

Did that look like something a LOLcat would say? If so, I guess you haven't arrived at "The New Domesticity."

I knit. I can food. I garden. I cook, and when I’m not actively cooking, I’m thinking about what I’m going to cook next... I didn’t grow up doing these things.... So you can see why Emily Matchar’s new book, “Homeward Bound,” sounded as if it could be a mirror into my soul.

This is the pithiest part of the review (at WaPo, by Becky Krystal):

Some of the new domestics think feminism isn’t just about being in the workplace; it’s also being able to choose to not be in it. 

Feminists have been saying that all along, but kind of only because they have to, and there always seems to be this qualification that if you choose the home life option, you've got to do it the right way, which is not because of tradition and not in subordination to a husband. By contrast, if you choose the moneymaker option, the conventional and/or servile aspects of what you're doing are more likely to go unnoticed (or so it may seem to the go-along-to-get-along subordinates to feminism in its most banal form).

Back to Krystal:

Or, Matchar says, it’s about reclaiming for the hipster set what used to be symbols of drudgery, such as the apron. 

Circa 1970, hippies did this. I remember seeing the women's movement of that time as a dreary and very square challenge to the hippie philosophy, which aimed at transcending commerce. But the women's movement soundly trounced hippies. Can hipsters succeed where hippies failed?

Others rebuff [feminism] entirely, blaming feminism for eating away at family life and demeaning the home arts and those who stay home to practice them....

It's appealing to stay home, but women do feel guilty and in need of justifications when they do it. (And how about men? It's even more challenging, even as one might imagine feminists smiling upon the male homemaker.)

Matchar’s dissection of new domesticity raises other, larger issues of race, class and gender. White women who stay home are praised more often than their black counterparts, who risk being called “welfare queens.”

Doesn't that more depend on whether you're collecting welfare? Who can expect praise for that? And I see no trend in America to praise white women but not black women who are doing the same thing. (The racial problem I see in the Disparate Praise category is patronizing black people with praise when they do things that are otherwise viewed as ordinary.)

Impoverished women with less disposable income and time can’t cook every meal from scratch or stay home with their children....

I'll resist saying things I've said before about the economics of the single-earner family, but obviously if you have a single-parent household, you'll need some kind of income stream to opt to say at home.

Also jarring is the notion, articulated by some of Matchar’s subjects, that it’s only “natural” for women to be in the home, that they are biologically suited for nurturing. That belief is unsettlingly close to the perverse use of “nature” that justifies discrimination, and not just against women.

I love the way the "nature" theme comes and goes in the discourse of discrimination. Nature makes a great argument — e.g., homosexuality is inborn — until it doesn't. But Krystal doesn't really try to figure out what's happening with the nature "notion." She merely calls it "jarring" and "unsettling."

Hell, yeah, nature is jarring. It will jar you one way or the other in the end.

Read More

Instapundit says that what he thinks about what he calls my "advice" is "immaterial" but that it's "probably pretty good advice"...

... on what he calls "a prudential level."

So — for all that softening — there's still one strong word: "advice." I stand accused of giving "advice," but I don't see that I gave advice in that statement of mine that he quotes at the link. He introduced my quote with the opinion that I'm speaking "kind of social-connishly." "Kind of" is more softening — but the reader is told to see me as giving socially conservative advice.

Now, I don't think I'm giving any advice other than to say: You are free, you need to think about how you use your freedom, and don't just think about your own perspective as you make arguments that law and society ought to be arranged to facilitate your choices. I'd say I'm being quite libertarian. And as for social connishness, I support abortion rights, same-sex marriage, and — it's right there in my quote — I'm not out to punish those who decline to channel their sexuality into committed relationships with child-rearing. I'm just defending legal and political decisions that center on protecting the interests of children rather than the ability of males to avoid the consequences of procreation, consequences that occur even though the male power over reproduction ends — because he controls only his body and not the woman's — at an earlier point in time than the woman's. This leaves some men aggrieved that a woman didn't abort a baby he didn't want, and I'm just not too sympathetic about this male plight. So maybe I am giving "advice" in the form of saying: Don't expect sympathy.

But Glenn must think I'm advising everyone to form stable, committed, child-rearing couples, because he goes on to say, that my advice is "of course, advice one dare not give to women in today’s society without facing a huge backlash." Of course? Dare not? Oh, come on. How daring do you need to be to tell women they'll be better off in stable relationships? I'll say it now, and I think this advice is given all the time. Huge backlash? I take it he's referring to the "war on women" politics that permeated the 2012 elections, because he goes on to say:

When Rush Limbaugh suggested that Sandra Fluke should at least pay for her own birth control, he was savaged. 

Rush was savaged because he made a joke that was easily portrayed as ugly (and stupid). He set up the false premise that if insurance covers a woman's birth control expenses, she's being paid to have sex and therefore she's a prostitute. And, on a roll, he went ahead and said that if we — the people paying into the insurance pool — were paying for a prostitute, we ought to get the sex, so she should at least give us video of herself having sex.

Now, I listen to Rush, and I get his humor, which is sometimes over-the-top — being absurd to illustrate the absurd, he likes to say. But that was really too nasty, especially since it named and targeted a specific woman, who wasn't — especially at that point — much of a public figure. Sandra Fluke was a women's health-care advocate — still a student — who had testified about how difficult it is for young women to pay for their birth control expenses. Whatever you think about Obamacare and covering the ordinary health-care expenses that young people have, you've got to concede that Limbaugh was not savaged because he "suggested that Sandra Fluke should at least pay for her own birth control."

So Glenn begins with a distorted picture of my "advice" and a bizarrely exaggerated claim of how difficult it is to give women advice. He goes on:

But to suggest that a man should pay child support for 18 years because a woman lied about birth control is fine. You can’t say “she should keep her legs closed,” but you can say, “he should keep it in his pants.” That’s fine.

I certainly will say that fathers owe their children support, and I don't want he said/she said legal battles over women who supposedly lied about birth control.  I agree that it's socially acceptable to say that, and I even suspect Glenn would agree with me about most instances of men who failed to take responsibility for their own birth control and have sex with women who might be deceitful.

But I don't agree that you can't advise women to withhold sex. I'd give that advice, although I would not say it in the crude and old-fashioned "keep your legs closed" form. (I would talk about valuing your own body and your own long-term interests.) And as for telling the man to "keep it in his pants," the main "it" that has concerned me in these recent discussions is sperm. Not the penis. Not even the seminal fluid, since I offered the option of freezing sperm and having a vasectomy. But I think it's ineffective to just tell people — males and females — not to have sex. Women will have distinctive feminist answers to any anti-sex pressure. You'll be accused of wanting a return to the archaic subordination of women. Men can only say you're puritanical or anti-freedom. So what? The pro-free-sex arguments are out there for both males and females.

Over the past several decades, women have asserted a right to make all the judgments in matters of gender and sexuality. 

All the judgments? You mean all the judgments about their own bodies. Men can't control women's bodies anymore. Women have won that argument in America (except to the extent there are some limits on abortion). But I don't think too many women are asserting a right to control men's bodies, unless you think the sperm that has escaped from the man's possession and merged with an egg inside the woman's body should be reclaimable by him somehow. It's the woman — under American law — who gets to determine the significance of that growing entity, whether it's a human being deserving the chance to live, because pregnancy happens inside her body, dependent on her bodily organs. The man doesn't have the right to force her to have an abortion. I doubt if Glenn would favor a man's right of that sort.

And, in fact, we do “facilitate” destructive choices, when they’re by women. We subsidize unwed mothers, we give women a pass on sexual behavior that would be considered predatory if it were done by males, we give them all sorts of “choice” that men don’t have and then absolve them, culturally and legally, from judgment over the way they exercise those choices. No similar dispensation is given to men.

Not even if the male has the primary child-care-giving role? I don't think the line is between male and female here. I think it's about children. I think our welfare policies are neutral about passing judgment on sexual behavior. If men want a "similar dispensation," let them take an equivalent role with respect to children. Do they even want that? It looks like they just want out of child support. They are treated differently because they are doing something different. I know many will want to repeat the complaint about the male's loss of decisionmaking power at an earlier point in the reproductive process, but this is a blatant biological difference, and it's why the man needs to watch where he lets his sperm go. That's his big opportunity to control his destiny.

Glenn returns to his idea that I'm prescribing a behavioral norm for everyone:

A society that ran according to Ann Althouse’s views on marriage and commitment might, in fact, be a better one than the one we live in now, but it is most definitely not the one we live in now. 

I'm not an ideologue about how everyone ought to live. I like individualism, autonomy, freedom, and personal responsibility. I'm not yearning for an old-fashioned society where everyone channels their sexuality into marriage and child-rearing. So what I'm saying doesn't require the society to change into something else. I'm talking about the world as we find it and recommend that people face it as it is and figure out how to live. This is an individual's choice. You can be a good person in a completely evil world, which is obviously not a description of America today. Our society has some problems, but that doesn't change the call to the individual to be a good person and to find a way to live a moral and worthy life. (You can decide to be a completely selfish and unproductive person, but there are consequences, and it's not necessarily easy.)

Referencing the imperfections of modern life, Glenn goes on to say:

Observing that, and noting the unfairnesses involved, is not “victimology” — though given how successful women have been in obtaining power via victimology, no one should be surprise [sic] if men start to give it a try.

So, Glenn is both resisting the breadth of the "victimology" label and toying with the notion that it might be a good strategy for men to use that label. That is, he's contemplating the rhetoric and seems ambivalent. Let's think about this more: Should men move in this direction in the political discourse, portraying themselves as victims? The absurd version of this is claiming to be victims of the way women have gotten so much out of claiming to be victims. Maybe Glenn wants to say since women have gained so much out of claiming to be victims, men should rebalance things by showing that they too are victims. There are costs to that strategy. I prefer to call everyone — male and female — to greater clarity in thinking about how he or she can live a good life.

Next, Glenn disagrees with a belief that I don't think anyone has:

But I do not believe that women deserve a monopoly in determining what views on gender and sexuality and parenting are acceptable. Why would they?

A monopoly on what views are acceptable? Many people state a view and act like it's the only acceptable view. That's typical of political argument. That doesn't stop their opponents from doing the same. But I don't hear anyone saying that men aren't even allowed to participate in the discussion.

And yet Glenn says:

What’s funny is that so many women seem genuinely perplexed that men would even dispute that monopoly. 

I'm only perplexed at the claim that there is a monopoly!

Ann is a thoughtful and open-minded and smart woman, but at some level I feel like she doesn’t really get it. 

What, exactly, is the "it"? Is it the original subject: that men who left their sperm somewhere out of their control are expected to support their own children? I certainly get that men would rather hold onto their money and that they feel ripped off. I just understand why the legal and political decisions put a relatively light weight on that particular preference.

But then, that’s what women have been saying to men on gender issues for decades: “You just don’t get it!” Maybe the not-getting goes both ways. 

Okay, then, I've given Glenn some material to get. We'll see how that goes.

The problem is, if society is to accomplish the goals that Ann sets out above...

Again, I did not set goals. I only called individuals to clear, moral thinking about their own lives.

... it needs to be a reasonably attractive proposition for both men and women. 

With my clarification of what I am doing, this clause makes no sense. I know Glenn is, at this point in his post, building in the thesis of his wife Helen Smith's book "Men on Strike." In order to offer up the idea that marriage needs to be a deal that both men and women will accept, he's using me for premise that marriage is the goal. I don't like that.

He then says:

How are we doing with that? At the risk of stepping on my wife’s turf, I’d say not so well.

At that point he links to this video summary of Helen's book. The book is "Men on Strike: Why Men Are Boycotting Marriage, Fatherhood, and the American Dream - and Why It Matters" — which I have read — and the video is called "Six Reasons Why Men Are Avoiding Marriage":



Does this video show that men are not doing well? Glenn's "I’d say not so well" actually doesn't refer to whether men are doing well, but whether marriage is "a reasonably attractive proposition for both men and women."

In the video, Helen gives 6 reasons why a man today might analyze his personal interests and decide against marriage. So men are doing what suits them. Helen is not saying they're misjudging their situation. She's saying they are behaving rationally in their own self-interest. The implication seems to be that women are losing out on the opportunity to have marriage partners. That would mean women ought to make concessions and, in their self-interest, offer men a better deal.

Are men "on strike"? The labor union analogy implies that these men who are choosing, rationally, not to marry are somehow organized, acting together, and making demands and that women are somehow the management, the boss. But these men are individuals, and — if we're talking about marriage — they only want one woman.

I'm not the social engineer type. I've always only been talking about individual decisionmaking. Decide for yourself what you want. I do see the problem that if the sex drive is easily satisfied outside of marriage, it becomes difficult for any given woman to ask for much in a marriage, but I don't see this as a reason to lower her standards.

Read More

"A somewhat dismissive response."

Instapundit says, somewhat dismissively. 

I suspect he wouldn't want to hear my truly dismissive response, but if you search the comments at my somewhat dismissive response... and over here... you can extrapolate what it would be. I'll cherry-pick some clues as to what I would say if I chose to go hard-core on this subject.

Quoting a commenter who said — about my proposal that health insurance pay for vasectomies and men freeze their sperm in order to provide males with reproductive autonomy — "Point of order, the woman has a right to seek an abortion. There's nothing about anyone having to provide it to her or having Other People pay for it," I said:

That's true, and that is something that makes the proposal in my post not neatly about equality.

But there really can never be equality about pregnancy and childbirth. It is the woman's special burden, and the policies have to be arranged to make sense around that basic inequity. I'm not trying to punish men by imposing a corresponding inequity, I'm just not impressed by the whinings of males who were profligate with their sperm. They are not the backbone of society.

The backbone of society is the married, committed couple who channel their sexuality into making and growing the next generation. Those who do other things are free to make choices, but we as a society have no reason to facilitate their choices, especially their destructive choices.

I know people like their free sex, but the expectation that the rest of us will save them from consequences is pathetic. I heartlessly laugh in their face. 

Quoting a commenter who said, "Your logic is correct for our pathetic society, but that doesn't rob from how pathetic it is," I said:

Yeah, but that's my point. My real prescription isn't [the vasectomy/frozen sperm proposal]. This is a fall-back now that we've become pathetic.

Really, men need to keep track of their genetic material. One way or another.

Don't be a splooge stooge.

Quoting a commenter who said "Women are just as responsible themselves..." I said:

I never said they weren't.

Both are fully responsible.

And, on the earlier post, quoting a commenter who said "Let's try applying your logic the other way. Women are free to freeze their eggs and then have their tubes tied. That way they have perfect choice not to get pregnant. So that does away with the case for abortion, right?" I said:

The fact is, once a woman is pregnant, she has a right to use abortion to get out of the physical process that has begun, but it is too late for the man to exercise a right, because his rights relate to his body, not hers.

The man must take responsibility for himself, not seek to control the woman.

I know you men would like to have your fun and freedom and not be troubled by risks, but your body is yours and her body is hers.

Reacting to all the many, many comments from men who have taken Instapundit's invitation to victimology seriously, I said (punctuation corrected):

There are some really sad beta posturings in this thread.

Where is the self-respect?

Where is the awe over procreation?

Lame little men, whining about their meager money.

No one cares about you, because no one should!

Where is your aspiration? Where is your altruism?

Why do you leave the house?

You have your porn and your masturbation.

The alternative is true manhood, but is that something you are capable of? Apparently not!

I laugh in your scrunched up crying little face.

Another commenter said "You are also forgetting that even if a condom is used and the woman fishes the condom out of the trash and uses a turkey baster to impregnate herself, the man is still held responsible. If a woman takes a used condom from a man having sex *with a different woman* and impregnates herself, the man is held responsible. If a man and woman only engage in oral sex and the woman saves the sperm for later use with a turkey baster, the man is held responsible. None of that means that the man has any actual *rights* in regards to the child." Which made me say:

I am absolutely not forgetting about that.

Men need to value and guard their genetic material.

The lameness of men who throw this stuff around is mindboggling. Don't be [a] splooge stooge.

Now, I think women shouldn't want to invest their reproductive effort in such idiots, but that's the other side of the story.

And (emphasis added):

The men who are saying: I want something because women have something.

You guys...

If you don't have the wherewithal to realize what you are... you are no longer men, and women should be rejecting you. I can't account for all these women, but at least, if they become pregnant, they take on an immense burden. They feel that.

You guys... I wonder if you feel anything at all.

You are unworthy. The reason something ought to save you from becoming fathers is that you are unworthy, but unfortunately, it seems that some women do still choose to have sex with you and even to bear your children.

And that -- THAT! -- is what you complain is your misfortune.

Amazing blindness. Your misfortune is so much worse than that.

And somebody said: "Then there are cases like the one (likely more than one...), where a woman who performed (only) oral sex with a man, using a condom, retrieved the condom and inseminated herself, and successfully sued for child support. IMO if a man does something that physiologically cannot produce conception without the woman's deliberate and willfully deceptive action, he is not responsible in any way for the conception." And I said:

I don't know why a woman would invest her reproductive effort in carrying forward the genes of such a man, but I have no sympathy with him at all.

Your phrase "physiologically cannot produce conception" is obviously wrong, since it did.

I fear for the future of humankind, with such stupidity in our inheritance.

The man is an idiot, and the woman is an idiot. Maybe the child can rise above it.

But sympathy for this man who has no love and no self-respect? Why don't you save your compassion for someone who deserves it?

This men's rights stuff was old-hat in the 1980s. Recycling it now is the lamest thing I've seen in a long, long time.

If you really cared about men, you'd try to do something to elevate them, as I am trying right now. Instead you are inviting them into a downward spiral. This is worse than The Life of Julia.

The whining and crying about what victims men are these days continued way into the night. In the morning I saw a comment that began with the burnt-out old internet expression "sigh": "Sigh. And yet a wife can make the choice to abort her kid without even telling her husband. Shoudnt they be consulting their husband?" I had to take another shot:

Yes, and that's exactly the reason Planned Parenthood v. Casey gave for striking down a statutory requirement that a woman consult her husband.

Think about it.

And stop your sighing.

Picture me singing that last line like this:



UPDATE: Glenn responds to this here, and I respond to that here.

Read More