A country which makes chocolate chip cookies the size of cow pats can't be all bad.
(On the U.S.)
Friday, December 05, 2003
Sigh.
I was taking a nap on a beautiful mountain top when Green Mamba slithered in. Green Mamba is the bane of my life, a pain-in-the-butt sort of snake. He is an atheist and doesn't believe in me. His current campaign is to attack my top half in every possible way (for those still living in ignorance: I'm a half-woman, half-snake, and the woman is the top half). He had a newspaper between his fangs. He wanted me to read an article a British journalist called Rod Liddle had written: "Women Who Won't".
Sigh. So I read it. Quite a funny lad he is, our Rod. According to him bourgeois women in the U.K. are stopping to work in droves. The evidence? Anecdotal. The reason? Largely laziness.
Actually, this is what he said:
I rang the Equal Opportunities Commission and said to them, 'Look, women still aren't going to work full-time. Maybe it isn't discrimination in the workplace, sexist attitudes in the home and an unequal distribution of domestic labour, ignorance of pension rights, childcare problems or a deep-rooted, culturally determined socialisation which makes women stay at home. Maybe it's just that women are inherently bone-idle right down to the tips of their lovely little fingers. Why don't you do a study on that?'
Ouch! Rod also gives some additional reasons for this presumed flight of women from the labor market. These are Nanny Envy, Mummy Guilt and the Yummy Mummy syndrome. Nanny envy has to do with the fear that nannies become the real love objects of the children they care for. Mummy guilt is the-same-old-same-old belief about how everything not right with a child's life is due to the mother's failings. The Yummy Mummy syndrome is news to me, though. Rod tells us that it is the envy working mothers feel about the beautiful bodies of mothers who supposedly stay at home, but who are really out being massaged by Mediterranean-looking men all day long. Evidently none of these syndromes are capable of infecting men.
A lot of envy and guilt here, though. Could it be that Rod himself is a little envious of all these women he imagines as parasites living off their hard-working spouses or partners? Hmmm. Could it be that he is asking himself why he wasn't able to pull it off? Could it be that he is beginning to question his own smartness?
Not to worry, Rod. Staying at home isn't all that you cracked it up to be. For one thing, household chores consist of vastly more stuff than taking out the garbage/rubbish; the only chore you mentioned. Especially when small children are involved. ( I have a personal plea to insert here: If any woman in the U.K. is actually doing Rod's chores for him, could she please stop for six months? Just completely stop? Thank you. Then ask him to rewrite this article.) For another, staying at home with small children can be mind-dumbingly boring for some personalities.
Staying at home also cuts the woman's old-age pension and her future salary expectations, should she return to the labor market. Staying at home makes her vulnerable to the consequences of divorce. For this reason staying at home reduces her chances to have an egalitarian marriage.
So it's ok, Rod. You're probably not missing out on much by continuing to write articles like this one rather than by spending your days being massaged by some handsome, brooding Mediterranean.
What's really interesting about this article is how it shows that certain types of women are always fair game in the media. Replace the term 'women' in the article's main claim by 'blacks', for example, and what would happen to the publication chances of the resulting fable? It's quite ok to attack women in the media, as long as they are educated women, or married to wealthy men or women with careers. (Rod is not a lone warrior in this field; The Atlantic Monthly's Kathleen Flanagan is doing a marvelous job in similar smearing. Though she wants these women to be housewives, whereas Rod wants them out and working. Go figure.) Although every population group probably has about the same share of slackers and lazybones, not every population group gets exposed to similar scrutiny.
Now, if I was as mean-spirited as Rod, I could have written a counterarticle about the reasons men go out to work: they are all criminals to the tips of their lovely fingertips, and going out into the world allows them to satisfy this instinct much more thoroughly than staying at home, where the only opportunities consist of domestic violence and harassment. It could have been very funny, don't you think? But I'm not mean-spirited, whatever Green Mamba might mutter, and sometimes that severely hampers my creativity. Sigh.
Sigh. So I read it. Quite a funny lad he is, our Rod. According to him bourgeois women in the U.K. are stopping to work in droves. The evidence? Anecdotal. The reason? Largely laziness.
Actually, this is what he said:
I rang the Equal Opportunities Commission and said to them, 'Look, women still aren't going to work full-time. Maybe it isn't discrimination in the workplace, sexist attitudes in the home and an unequal distribution of domestic labour, ignorance of pension rights, childcare problems or a deep-rooted, culturally determined socialisation which makes women stay at home. Maybe it's just that women are inherently bone-idle right down to the tips of their lovely little fingers. Why don't you do a study on that?'
Ouch! Rod also gives some additional reasons for this presumed flight of women from the labor market. These are Nanny Envy, Mummy Guilt and the Yummy Mummy syndrome. Nanny envy has to do with the fear that nannies become the real love objects of the children they care for. Mummy guilt is the-same-old-same-old belief about how everything not right with a child's life is due to the mother's failings. The Yummy Mummy syndrome is news to me, though. Rod tells us that it is the envy working mothers feel about the beautiful bodies of mothers who supposedly stay at home, but who are really out being massaged by Mediterranean-looking men all day long. Evidently none of these syndromes are capable of infecting men.
A lot of envy and guilt here, though. Could it be that Rod himself is a little envious of all these women he imagines as parasites living off their hard-working spouses or partners? Hmmm. Could it be that he is asking himself why he wasn't able to pull it off? Could it be that he is beginning to question his own smartness?
Not to worry, Rod. Staying at home isn't all that you cracked it up to be. For one thing, household chores consist of vastly more stuff than taking out the garbage/rubbish; the only chore you mentioned. Especially when small children are involved. ( I have a personal plea to insert here: If any woman in the U.K. is actually doing Rod's chores for him, could she please stop for six months? Just completely stop? Thank you. Then ask him to rewrite this article.) For another, staying at home with small children can be mind-dumbingly boring for some personalities.
Staying at home also cuts the woman's old-age pension and her future salary expectations, should she return to the labor market. Staying at home makes her vulnerable to the consequences of divorce. For this reason staying at home reduces her chances to have an egalitarian marriage.
So it's ok, Rod. You're probably not missing out on much by continuing to write articles like this one rather than by spending your days being massaged by some handsome, brooding Mediterranean.
What's really interesting about this article is how it shows that certain types of women are always fair game in the media. Replace the term 'women' in the article's main claim by 'blacks', for example, and what would happen to the publication chances of the resulting fable? It's quite ok to attack women in the media, as long as they are educated women, or married to wealthy men or women with careers. (Rod is not a lone warrior in this field; The Atlantic Monthly's Kathleen Flanagan is doing a marvelous job in similar smearing. Though she wants these women to be housewives, whereas Rod wants them out and working. Go figure.) Although every population group probably has about the same share of slackers and lazybones, not every population group gets exposed to similar scrutiny.
Now, if I was as mean-spirited as Rod, I could have written a counterarticle about the reasons men go out to work: they are all criminals to the tips of their lovely fingertips, and going out into the world allows them to satisfy this instinct much more thoroughly than staying at home, where the only opportunities consist of domestic violence and harassment. It could have been very funny, don't you think? But I'm not mean-spirited, whatever Green Mamba might mutter, and sometimes that severely hampers my creativity. Sigh.
Thursday, December 04, 2003
Pre-Christmas Politics
Christmas has come a little early for the pharmaceutical and health insurance industries. The new Medicare bill left them gifts of 17 billion and 12 billion of extra annual profits, respectively, tied with a pretty ribbon and with a card promising no federal reimportation of cheaper drugs from Canada. The government also made an early New Year's promise of never ever using its formidable buying power to actually affect the market prices. Imagine that, using pressure to lower prices in the market! This from the editorial of the Nation magazine on December 15, 2003.
So who's been nasty, who's been nice? I leave it to others to judge, but nasty is what the future might look for many elderly patients who rely on Medicare to finance their health care expenses. The reason is the privatization steps that are built into the new bill.
Why is privatization nasty here? Think about this: in most health insurance the buyer pays the price of the insurance policy, its premium, before getting sick. These premia are the revenues of the insurance company. Its profits are then found by subtracting its costs from these revenues. The costs largely consist of the health care expenses of the buyers when they get sick. So to earn the largest possible profits, what would the company do?
Clearly, it would try to have the premia as large as possible and the costs as small as possible. The premia are difficult to raise, especially if other companies don't follow suit. But cutting costs is much easier. Usually lowering costs is seen as a good thing. Health insurance is trickier, though. While making treatments efficient at lower cost is a great idea, costs can also be lowered in two other ways which are not at all nice, yet are very likely to affect the Medicare patients.
These ways are: 1. cut back on the amount of treatment covered, and 2. try to keep out customers who can be predicted to be expensive to treat. Remember, the revenues are pretty much collected from the customers before they are sick? So profits are maximized if existing customers can be given less care and/or customers are carefully preselected.
It's the second method that's likely to lurk in the Christmas stocking of many future Medicare patients. Private health insurers will enter the Medicare market and offer policies which will be carefully designed to attract the healthiest elderly customers and those with larger incomes. This 'cherry picking' will leave the federal program with all the 'rejects': those too poor and/or sick to attract the private companies. And then the Mr. and Ms. Scrooges will start wondering why such a 'special interest' program is funded at all. But then that's the point of the whole exercize.
I want this Santa to get stuck in the chimney flue.
So who's been nasty, who's been nice? I leave it to others to judge, but nasty is what the future might look for many elderly patients who rely on Medicare to finance their health care expenses. The reason is the privatization steps that are built into the new bill.
Why is privatization nasty here? Think about this: in most health insurance the buyer pays the price of the insurance policy, its premium, before getting sick. These premia are the revenues of the insurance company. Its profits are then found by subtracting its costs from these revenues. The costs largely consist of the health care expenses of the buyers when they get sick. So to earn the largest possible profits, what would the company do?
Clearly, it would try to have the premia as large as possible and the costs as small as possible. The premia are difficult to raise, especially if other companies don't follow suit. But cutting costs is much easier. Usually lowering costs is seen as a good thing. Health insurance is trickier, though. While making treatments efficient at lower cost is a great idea, costs can also be lowered in two other ways which are not at all nice, yet are very likely to affect the Medicare patients.
These ways are: 1. cut back on the amount of treatment covered, and 2. try to keep out customers who can be predicted to be expensive to treat. Remember, the revenues are pretty much collected from the customers before they are sick? So profits are maximized if existing customers can be given less care and/or customers are carefully preselected.
It's the second method that's likely to lurk in the Christmas stocking of many future Medicare patients. Private health insurers will enter the Medicare market and offer policies which will be carefully designed to attract the healthiest elderly customers and those with larger incomes. This 'cherry picking' will leave the federal program with all the 'rejects': those too poor and/or sick to attract the private companies. And then the Mr. and Ms. Scrooges will start wondering why such a 'special interest' program is funded at all. But then that's the point of the whole exercize.
I want this Santa to get stuck in the chimney flue.
Wednesday, December 03, 2003
I've been reading The Ancient Near East, edited by James B. Pritchard, 1958.
What this book tells us is (1) that swimming is a most useful skill and (2) that children have always whined to their parents.
(1) From the Code of Hammurabi:
If a seignior (a man of the higher classes or a free man) brought a charge of sorcery against another seignior, but has not proved it, the one against whom the charge of sorcery was brought, upon going to the river, shall throw himself into the river, and if the river has then overpowered him, his accuser shall take over his estate...
(2) From the Akkadian letters:
A Boy to His Mother
Speak to Zinu: Thus Iddin-Sin. May Shamash, Marduk and Ilabrat for my sake forever keep you well. Gentlemen's clothes improve year by year. You are the one making my clothes cheaper year by year. By cheapening and scrimping on my clothes you have become rich. While wool was being consumed in our house like bread, you were the one making my clothes cheaper. The son of Adad-imminam, whose father is only an underling to my father, has received two new garments, but you keep getting upset over just one garment for me. Whereas you gave birth to me, his mother acquired him by adoption, but whereas his mother loves him, you do not love me.
----------------------------
I've also been reading One Good Thing, a blog by a woman with two little children and a most unusual job. A job in which the term 'tripod' takes quite a novel meaning. Check it out.
What this book tells us is (1) that swimming is a most useful skill and (2) that children have always whined to their parents.
(1) From the Code of Hammurabi:
If a seignior (a man of the higher classes or a free man) brought a charge of sorcery against another seignior, but has not proved it, the one against whom the charge of sorcery was brought, upon going to the river, shall throw himself into the river, and if the river has then overpowered him, his accuser shall take over his estate...
(2) From the Akkadian letters:
A Boy to His Mother
Speak to Zinu: Thus Iddin-Sin. May Shamash, Marduk and Ilabrat for my sake forever keep you well. Gentlemen's clothes improve year by year. You are the one making my clothes cheaper year by year. By cheapening and scrimping on my clothes you have become rich. While wool was being consumed in our house like bread, you were the one making my clothes cheaper. The son of Adad-imminam, whose father is only an underling to my father, has received two new garments, but you keep getting upset over just one garment for me. Whereas you gave birth to me, his mother acquired him by adoption, but whereas his mother loves him, you do not love me.
----------------------------
I've also been reading One Good Thing, a blog by a woman with two little children and a most unusual job. A job in which the term 'tripod' takes quite a novel meaning. Check it out.
Tuesday, December 02, 2003
The Fundamentalist Problem
The big problem with religious fundamentalists is their wishy-washiness. They simply aren't fundamental enough. The average Christian fundamentalist, for example, may think he* is doing pretty well in obeying his holy book as a word-by-word instructions manual for life today, but is he really succeeding?
At first glance it might seem so. He can proudly point out that his disapproval of homosexuality and nonsubmissive wives are justified by literal biblical interpretations. He can remind us that Paul and Timothy didn't like women who preach so why should he? And if he is very brave, he can even note that the Bible doesn't condemn slavery. All in all, he comes across as a real fundamental kind of guy.
Hogwash, say I. Doesn't the good book tell us to remove the beam from our own eye before we go hunting for specks elsewhere? And this is where the Christian fundamentalist fails dismally. Have you ever met an American fundamentalist who owns just one outfit? Yet this is clearly the most extensive wardrobe the Bible allows a literal believer (Luke 3:11).
And what about the camel and eye of the needle (Mark 10:24)? How come do we hear about so many fundamentalist millionaires? Don't they want to go to heaven? Or are they all secretly breeding miniature camels with their millions?
This won't do. A real fundamentalist must interpret all his holy texts literally. As one fundamentalist lady millionaire said, if we start picking and choosing, who's to know what is right? Granted, some of the texts seem to contradict each other, but that is only a problem for others of lesser faith. A true fundamentalist won't let such trivialities stand in the way of finding the truth.
Neither should he pick-and-choose among the ten commandments, especially if he wishes them to become the law of the land. Once they are prominently posted in all schoolhouses, even the smallest pagan child can tell when a fundamentalist breaks one of them. No more bearing false witness and getting away with it, then.
Suppose, for example, that a fundamentalist accused the U.N. of a secret plot to violently overtake this great country of ours. If he failed to prove his accusations, his words would brand him as a violator of the ninth (or, according to some, the eighth) commandment, a mere sinner no better than anybody else. And how could he then demand that others repent before it is too late?
The wishy-washiness of the Christian fundamentalists worries me deeply. What will be the lot of our poor misguided fundamentalist brethren who eagerly condemn the ways of the world, yet fail to obey the literal truth of the scriptures in their own lives? Could it be that they will be Left Behind?
-------------------------------
*I call the fundamentalist a 'he' rather than a 's/he', because this seems more fundamentalish. Of course, it is taken as understood that 'the fundamentalist 'also embraces women.
At first glance it might seem so. He can proudly point out that his disapproval of homosexuality and nonsubmissive wives are justified by literal biblical interpretations. He can remind us that Paul and Timothy didn't like women who preach so why should he? And if he is very brave, he can even note that the Bible doesn't condemn slavery. All in all, he comes across as a real fundamental kind of guy.
Hogwash, say I. Doesn't the good book tell us to remove the beam from our own eye before we go hunting for specks elsewhere? And this is where the Christian fundamentalist fails dismally. Have you ever met an American fundamentalist who owns just one outfit? Yet this is clearly the most extensive wardrobe the Bible allows a literal believer (Luke 3:11).
And what about the camel and eye of the needle (Mark 10:24)? How come do we hear about so many fundamentalist millionaires? Don't they want to go to heaven? Or are they all secretly breeding miniature camels with their millions?
This won't do. A real fundamentalist must interpret all his holy texts literally. As one fundamentalist lady millionaire said, if we start picking and choosing, who's to know what is right? Granted, some of the texts seem to contradict each other, but that is only a problem for others of lesser faith. A true fundamentalist won't let such trivialities stand in the way of finding the truth.
Neither should he pick-and-choose among the ten commandments, especially if he wishes them to become the law of the land. Once they are prominently posted in all schoolhouses, even the smallest pagan child can tell when a fundamentalist breaks one of them. No more bearing false witness and getting away with it, then.
Suppose, for example, that a fundamentalist accused the U.N. of a secret plot to violently overtake this great country of ours. If he failed to prove his accusations, his words would brand him as a violator of the ninth (or, according to some, the eighth) commandment, a mere sinner no better than anybody else. And how could he then demand that others repent before it is too late?
The wishy-washiness of the Christian fundamentalists worries me deeply. What will be the lot of our poor misguided fundamentalist brethren who eagerly condemn the ways of the world, yet fail to obey the literal truth of the scriptures in their own lives? Could it be that they will be Left Behind?
-------------------------------
*I call the fundamentalist a 'he' rather than a 's/he', because this seems more fundamentalish. Of course, it is taken as understood that 'the fundamentalist 'also embraces women.
Monday, December 01, 2003
You Can't Have It All
This doesn't apply to goddesses, of course. Who does it apply to, though? Everybody else?
Note that the 'you' in this statement is almost always a woman. Does this imply that men can have it all or are they somehow more realistic in their desires? Here it helps to remember that 'you can't have it all' is normally used to advise women who try to combine having children with having a career, so one interpretation of the truism is that women can't have both successful children and a successful career. Men clearly can. Another interpretation is that it is impossible to be a full-time parent and a full-time worker. This could be true if 'full-time' means 24/7, but then nobody can be full-time anything based on this definition.
The 'can't' means that the 'you' in the statement is unable to 'have it all'. Is this because it is literally impossible (as in 24/7 parenting and full-time work) or because the society is trying to make it impossible (as in the difficulty of combining work and family without access to good, reasonably priced daycare and career paths which allow some part-time work and leaves of absence without terminating the path)? To test these explanations, mentally substitute 'shouldn't' for 'can't' and note if the real meaning changes. If it doesn't, the second explanation applies.
And what is the 'all' you can't have? It might range from being in two places at the same time to having both children and a career during one lifetime. So whether 'you can't have it all' is a useful reminder of life's realities or a lie depends on its exact meaning. But note that in some sense you might 'need it all': both food and water, both work and love. Anyone who asks you to choose between these really doesn't deserve 'to have it all.'
---------------------------------
But you, my dear (fictitional?) readers, can have it all! Athena gave me a hand and now you can talk back to at least one minor divinity.
Note that the 'you' in this statement is almost always a woman. Does this imply that men can have it all or are they somehow more realistic in their desires? Here it helps to remember that 'you can't have it all' is normally used to advise women who try to combine having children with having a career, so one interpretation of the truism is that women can't have both successful children and a successful career. Men clearly can. Another interpretation is that it is impossible to be a full-time parent and a full-time worker. This could be true if 'full-time' means 24/7, but then nobody can be full-time anything based on this definition.
The 'can't' means that the 'you' in the statement is unable to 'have it all'. Is this because it is literally impossible (as in 24/7 parenting and full-time work) or because the society is trying to make it impossible (as in the difficulty of combining work and family without access to good, reasonably priced daycare and career paths which allow some part-time work and leaves of absence without terminating the path)? To test these explanations, mentally substitute 'shouldn't' for 'can't' and note if the real meaning changes. If it doesn't, the second explanation applies.
And what is the 'all' you can't have? It might range from being in two places at the same time to having both children and a career during one lifetime. So whether 'you can't have it all' is a useful reminder of life's realities or a lie depends on its exact meaning. But note that in some sense you might 'need it all': both food and water, both work and love. Anyone who asks you to choose between these really doesn't deserve 'to have it all.'
---------------------------------
But you, my dear (fictitional?) readers, can have it all! Athena gave me a hand and now you can talk back to at least one minor divinity.
Sunday, November 30, 2003
Today's quote comes from Rose Macaulay: Mystery at Geneva (1923):
All sorts of articles and letters appear in the papers about women. Profound questions are raised concerning them. Should they smoke? Should they work? Vote? Marry? Exist? Are not their skirts too short, or their sleeves? Have they a sense of humor, of honor, of direction? Are spinsters superfluous? But how seldom similar inquiries are propounded about men.
The more things change...
All sorts of articles and letters appear in the papers about women. Profound questions are raised concerning them. Should they smoke? Should they work? Vote? Marry? Exist? Are not their skirts too short, or their sleeves? Have they a sense of humor, of honor, of direction? Are spinsters superfluous? But how seldom similar inquiries are propounded about men.
The more things change...
Saturday, November 29, 2003
A Book Review
For the insomniacs who like to stay that way I recommend this book: It can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis. It was originally published in 1935 as a response to the increasing fascism in Europe. According to the back cover of my Signet Classic edition, "This book remains a warning about the fragility of democracy, juxtaposing hilarious satire with a blow-by-blow description of a president saving the country from welfare cheaters, sex, crime, and a liberal press by becoming a dictator."
This president, one Berzelius Windrip, has written a Mein Kampf -type book called Zero Hour - Over the Top. Here is president Windrip in his own words:
"I want to stand up on my hind legs and not just admit but frankly holler right out that we've got to change our system a lot, maybe even change the whole Constitution (but change it legally, and not by violence) to bring it up from the horseback-and-corduroy-road epoch to automobile-and-cement-highway period of today. The Executive has got to have a freer hand and to be able to move quick in an emergency, and not be tied down by a lot of dumb shyster-lawyer congressmen taking months to shoot off their mouths in debates."
Interesting, isn't it? Windrip is legally elected but slowly turns the American democracy into a fascist state. People do ultimately rise up, but
"... there the revolt halted, because in the America, which had so warmly praised itself for its "widespread popular free education," there had been so very little education, widespread, popular, free or anything else, that most people did not know what they wanted - indeed knew about so few things to want at all.
There had been plenty of schoolrooms; there had been lacking only literate teachers and eager pupils and school boards who regarded teaching as a profession worthy of as much honor and pay as insurance-selling or embalming or waiting on table. Most Americans had learned in school that God had supplanted the Jews as chosen people by the Americans, and this time done the job much better, so that we were the richest, kindest, and cleverest nation living; that depressions were but passing headaches and that labor unions must not concern themselves with anything except higher wages and shorter hours and, above all, must not set up an ugly class struggle by combining politically; that, though foreigners tried to make a bogus mystery of them, politics were really so simple that any village attorney or any clerk in the office of a metropolitan sheriff was quite adequately trained for them."
"Politics were really so simple that any village attorney was quite adequately trained for them." And probably any bodybuilder or movie star... The book also has the foremother of Concerned Women of America, and an airplane is used as a fatal weapon. Good stuff for those of us who like to teeter on the narrow edge between outright insanity and intentional ignorance.
This president, one Berzelius Windrip, has written a Mein Kampf -type book called Zero Hour - Over the Top. Here is president Windrip in his own words:
"I want to stand up on my hind legs and not just admit but frankly holler right out that we've got to change our system a lot, maybe even change the whole Constitution (but change it legally, and not by violence) to bring it up from the horseback-and-corduroy-road epoch to automobile-and-cement-highway period of today. The Executive has got to have a freer hand and to be able to move quick in an emergency, and not be tied down by a lot of dumb shyster-lawyer congressmen taking months to shoot off their mouths in debates."
Interesting, isn't it? Windrip is legally elected but slowly turns the American democracy into a fascist state. People do ultimately rise up, but
"... there the revolt halted, because in the America, which had so warmly praised itself for its "widespread popular free education," there had been so very little education, widespread, popular, free or anything else, that most people did not know what they wanted - indeed knew about so few things to want at all.
There had been plenty of schoolrooms; there had been lacking only literate teachers and eager pupils and school boards who regarded teaching as a profession worthy of as much honor and pay as insurance-selling or embalming or waiting on table. Most Americans had learned in school that God had supplanted the Jews as chosen people by the Americans, and this time done the job much better, so that we were the richest, kindest, and cleverest nation living; that depressions were but passing headaches and that labor unions must not concern themselves with anything except higher wages and shorter hours and, above all, must not set up an ugly class struggle by combining politically; that, though foreigners tried to make a bogus mystery of them, politics were really so simple that any village attorney or any clerk in the office of a metropolitan sheriff was quite adequately trained for them."
"Politics were really so simple that any village attorney was quite adequately trained for them." And probably any bodybuilder or movie star... The book also has the foremother of Concerned Women of America, and an airplane is used as a fatal weapon. Good stuff for those of us who like to teeter on the narrow edge between outright insanity and intentional ignorance.
Oh, Baby!
Imagine yourself as not yet existing (behind the Rawlsian 'veil of ignorance' if you wish). Imagine that you can choose the sex you are going to be born into, but nothing else about your forthcoming life. Would you choose to be born a girl?
Not very likely. Pure statistical odds would mean that you'd probably be born in one of those countries where the birth of a girl can be a family disaster. It's kind of hard to grow up into a confident and productive human being if your very existence is a misfortune. If you're allowed to grow up, that is.
Life is a crapshoot, anyway, and being born poor is pretty bad. But being born a poor girl baby in a country such as India is a calamity. In India, a traditionally patrilinear society, sons are important both as workers and as the future caretakers of their parents in old age. Daughters, on the other hand, are to be married off to some other family. On top of that, their marriagibility depends on providing a dowry. So the birth of yet another daughter to a poor family is no cause for rejoicing. Not another pair of hands to guarantee a safe old age for the parents, but another dowry to scrape together.
India is of course not the only country that doesn't value daughters as much as sons. China is famous for its strong preference for sons, and most countries show this preference to at least some degree.
Even the western world, it seems. Several recent studies suggest that marriages where all the children are daughters are more likely to end than marriages where all the children are sons and that parents invest more wealth in their male children. The differences these studies find are very small and may not reflect an actual parental preference for sons. But if they do reflect this, and if the reason for preferring sons is in their value as manual laborers and old age insurance policies, these differences shouldn't exist at all in post-industrialized countries with functioning pension systems. If anything, one might have predicted a slight preference for daughters, given that it is largely the daughters who provide informal nursing care to aging parents.
Steven E. Landsburg gives his take on these study findings in a column fetchingly entitled:
Oh, No: It's a Girl! Do Daughters Cause Divorce? Landsburg argues that boys hold shaky marriages together not because the parents deem the effects of a divorce to be worse for sons than for daughters, but because boys actually make marriages better. Better than daughters, that is. Why? Landsburg seems to think that it might have something to do with playing catch, among other things. He concludes by noting that :
Years ago on the schoolyard, we used to chant that girls are good but boys are better. It looks like our parents agreed with us.
Who are the 'we' in this statement? None of the several women I checked with had chanted this particular song in the schoolyard. And how can Mr. Landsburg speak on behalf of both mothers and fathers? As far as I know, these studies allow us to draw no conclusions about how much parents agree in their preferences.
I think that those mothers and/or fathers who prefer sons over daughters do so because the society on the whole exhibits the same preference. The advantages to having sons in India are obvious, but the reasons underlying these advantages are much less so. Why did most countries adopt a patrilinear system of inheritance? Why did most societies decide to marry their daughters away from the homes of their birth and not their sons? Why has it been until recently that only sons can carry on the family name? Why are dowries (payments from the bride's family) more common than bride prices (payments to the bride's family)? These are the essential mysteries.
And what about the current consequences of the strong preference for sons in countries such as India and China? Sex selective abortions and infanticide of girls have distorted the sex ratios to such an extent that the outcome might be a society with a large segment of eternal bachelors. China already may have around thirty million men who will never have a chance to marry, and many regions of India are facing a similar dilemma, with only 800-900 girls being born for every 1,000 boys.
To be honest, I could care less about this consequence. If the best argument against the preference for sons is to point out that someone must produce future wives for these sons, we haven't advanced very far. Besides, this problem can be easily solved through the use of polyandry, serial or not. Polyandry works, I should know.
Sons will be preferred over daughters in societies where men are privileged over women. It's as simple as that. The more equal the social valuation of women and men, the smaller the observed preference for sons.
Postscript: 1. I ran this text through the Gender Genie. The results:
Words: 830
(NOTE: The genie works best on texts of more than 500 words.)
Female Score: 986
Male Score: 2121
The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: male!
I guess they don't have a category for goddesses.
2. If you are interested in learning more about this topic, a poster named Le Chat Noir on the ms. boards has searched the web for you.
Not very likely. Pure statistical odds would mean that you'd probably be born in one of those countries where the birth of a girl can be a family disaster. It's kind of hard to grow up into a confident and productive human being if your very existence is a misfortune. If you're allowed to grow up, that is.
Life is a crapshoot, anyway, and being born poor is pretty bad. But being born a poor girl baby in a country such as India is a calamity. In India, a traditionally patrilinear society, sons are important both as workers and as the future caretakers of their parents in old age. Daughters, on the other hand, are to be married off to some other family. On top of that, their marriagibility depends on providing a dowry. So the birth of yet another daughter to a poor family is no cause for rejoicing. Not another pair of hands to guarantee a safe old age for the parents, but another dowry to scrape together.
India is of course not the only country that doesn't value daughters as much as sons. China is famous for its strong preference for sons, and most countries show this preference to at least some degree.
Even the western world, it seems. Several recent studies suggest that marriages where all the children are daughters are more likely to end than marriages where all the children are sons and that parents invest more wealth in their male children. The differences these studies find are very small and may not reflect an actual parental preference for sons. But if they do reflect this, and if the reason for preferring sons is in their value as manual laborers and old age insurance policies, these differences shouldn't exist at all in post-industrialized countries with functioning pension systems. If anything, one might have predicted a slight preference for daughters, given that it is largely the daughters who provide informal nursing care to aging parents.
Steven E. Landsburg gives his take on these study findings in a column fetchingly entitled:
Oh, No: It's a Girl! Do Daughters Cause Divorce? Landsburg argues that boys hold shaky marriages together not because the parents deem the effects of a divorce to be worse for sons than for daughters, but because boys actually make marriages better. Better than daughters, that is. Why? Landsburg seems to think that it might have something to do with playing catch, among other things. He concludes by noting that :
Years ago on the schoolyard, we used to chant that girls are good but boys are better. It looks like our parents agreed with us.
Who are the 'we' in this statement? None of the several women I checked with had chanted this particular song in the schoolyard. And how can Mr. Landsburg speak on behalf of both mothers and fathers? As far as I know, these studies allow us to draw no conclusions about how much parents agree in their preferences.
I think that those mothers and/or fathers who prefer sons over daughters do so because the society on the whole exhibits the same preference. The advantages to having sons in India are obvious, but the reasons underlying these advantages are much less so. Why did most countries adopt a patrilinear system of inheritance? Why did most societies decide to marry their daughters away from the homes of their birth and not their sons? Why has it been until recently that only sons can carry on the family name? Why are dowries (payments from the bride's family) more common than bride prices (payments to the bride's family)? These are the essential mysteries.
And what about the current consequences of the strong preference for sons in countries such as India and China? Sex selective abortions and infanticide of girls have distorted the sex ratios to such an extent that the outcome might be a society with a large segment of eternal bachelors. China already may have around thirty million men who will never have a chance to marry, and many regions of India are facing a similar dilemma, with only 800-900 girls being born for every 1,000 boys.
To be honest, I could care less about this consequence. If the best argument against the preference for sons is to point out that someone must produce future wives for these sons, we haven't advanced very far. Besides, this problem can be easily solved through the use of polyandry, serial or not. Polyandry works, I should know.
Sons will be preferred over daughters in societies where men are privileged over women. It's as simple as that. The more equal the social valuation of women and men, the smaller the observed preference for sons.
Postscript: 1. I ran this text through the Gender Genie. The results:
Words: 830
(NOTE: The genie works best on texts of more than 500 words.)
Female Score: 986
Male Score: 2121
The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: male!
I guess they don't have a category for goddesses.
2. If you are interested in learning more about this topic, a poster named Le Chat Noir on the ms. boards has searched the web for you.
Friday, November 28, 2003
Post-Feminism
I keep reading that this is the post-feminist era. Feminism is so passe, so seventies. Fashionable people don't wear it anymore.
But what do they wear instead? What is post-feminism? After some serious thinking and studying (also apparently passe concepts), I have come up with these definitions of post-feminism, all in use:
1. Post-feminism means that the old-time, somewhat grungy feminists won their fights, and that women now enjoy full equality with men and no longer need to go grungy.
2. No. Post-feminism means that the strident sisterhood of the seventies lost. Women are not equal to men, nor do 'real' women wish for equality. A beautiful womanhood is quite sufficient for them, thank you very much.
3. The deconstructionists believe that there is no such concept as 'woman', never mind 'women's rights'. This makes feminism 'problematized'. We live in post-feminist times in the same manner as we might be said to live in post-modern times. I must admit that this manner looks pretty fuzzy to me.
4. Post-feminism means that feminism lost, not because it wasn't needed, but because it was somehow blamed for the double-shift of employed women: first do your paid work, then do the chores at home. Hmmm. Seems like anti-feminist propaganda to me. As far as I know, there isn't any feminist rulebook that bans men from doing their share of chores at home.
5. Feminism is dead as a movement even though it might still be needed, because the trouble to organize is too much considering the slight gains it might reap in the current political climate. This is post-feminism as lethargy and indifference. Or whatever.
No doubt other definitions could be invented. This muddle of meanings explains why I am filled with fury when I read or hear a flippant reference to 'outdated' feminism. I have no idea what it means. Sometimes I suspect that neither do the utterers.
So do we actually live in post-feminist times? Should we? You tell me. Not even a goddess can answer this one.
But what do they wear instead? What is post-feminism? After some serious thinking and studying (also apparently passe concepts), I have come up with these definitions of post-feminism, all in use:
1. Post-feminism means that the old-time, somewhat grungy feminists won their fights, and that women now enjoy full equality with men and no longer need to go grungy.
2. No. Post-feminism means that the strident sisterhood of the seventies lost. Women are not equal to men, nor do 'real' women wish for equality. A beautiful womanhood is quite sufficient for them, thank you very much.
3. The deconstructionists believe that there is no such concept as 'woman', never mind 'women's rights'. This makes feminism 'problematized'. We live in post-feminist times in the same manner as we might be said to live in post-modern times. I must admit that this manner looks pretty fuzzy to me.
4. Post-feminism means that feminism lost, not because it wasn't needed, but because it was somehow blamed for the double-shift of employed women: first do your paid work, then do the chores at home. Hmmm. Seems like anti-feminist propaganda to me. As far as I know, there isn't any feminist rulebook that bans men from doing their share of chores at home.
5. Feminism is dead as a movement even though it might still be needed, because the trouble to organize is too much considering the slight gains it might reap in the current political climate. This is post-feminism as lethargy and indifference. Or whatever.
No doubt other definitions could be invented. This muddle of meanings explains why I am filled with fury when I read or hear a flippant reference to 'outdated' feminism. I have no idea what it means. Sometimes I suspect that neither do the utterers.
So do we actually live in post-feminist times? Should we? You tell me. Not even a goddess can answer this one.
Wednesday, November 26, 2003
Happy Thanksgiving to everybody who celebrates this American holiday. Others can be thankful for the fact that they don't: no need to clean for weeks, pick up ancient relatives from airports, stock the larder with weird foods without which Cousin Charlotte would pine away, cook a dead bird bigger than the oven or pretend that sweet potatoes can masquerade as a dessert. No need to overeat or to watch American football. So be thankful, all and one.
In honor of thanksgiving, then, here's a blog on an American house.
Designing the Absurd
Is life meant to be absurd and design to follow suit? My house is full of examples that suggest this: The door knobs, for example. They are round glass balls. If you wanted to design a door handle that looks as it would work but doesn't, you'd make it a round glass ball. This keeps people housebound if they have wet hands, carry anything bulky or heavy, or suffer from arthritis. The glass also makes the knob impossible to repair when turning it no longer turns the lock.
The sash windows of my house may have been designed by M. Guillotine during his lunch breaks. The upper pane normally doesn't move at all, but when the ropes that support it break, it comes down faster than a guillotine blade. Usually when I am stretching my neck out of the window in order to wash the upper glass from the outside.
These inventions are ancient, but more modern design works hardly better. The shower head in my bathroom is good for quick showers in the morning. It is worthless for anything else, being embedded in the wall. Shower heads should be detachable. Anyone disagreeing with this has never cleaned a bathtub or a large, nervous dog in it. Both jobs need rinsing which needs detachable shower heads. The lack of one forces me to use a large saucepan. As a consequence, I always have dogs with saucepan phobias.
Saucepans are no good for rinsing remote controls, microwave keypads or computer keyboards. Nothing is good for rinsing or cleaning these, although an extended leave of absence from work and a ton of tweezers and toothpicks might make a slight difference. As most people have better things to do with the rest of their lives, such equipment is often sold in colors and textures which look already grimy. That way cleaning doesn't seem necessary until it is far too late.
A case might be made in defense of each of these features I malign. There is no such defense for the American electric sockets, no reason whatsoever for making them look like miniature copies of Edward Munch's 'The Scream'; a painting from hell. This is what stares back from baseboards all over the U.S., normally attached to the wall roughly diagonally. No wonder that mental health problems grow increasingly common. The only place where these sockets should be allowed is in dentists' waiting rooms. But that wouldn't satisfy the laws of absurdity.
In honor of thanksgiving, then, here's a blog on an American house.
Designing the Absurd
Is life meant to be absurd and design to follow suit? My house is full of examples that suggest this: The door knobs, for example. They are round glass balls. If you wanted to design a door handle that looks as it would work but doesn't, you'd make it a round glass ball. This keeps people housebound if they have wet hands, carry anything bulky or heavy, or suffer from arthritis. The glass also makes the knob impossible to repair when turning it no longer turns the lock.
The sash windows of my house may have been designed by M. Guillotine during his lunch breaks. The upper pane normally doesn't move at all, but when the ropes that support it break, it comes down faster than a guillotine blade. Usually when I am stretching my neck out of the window in order to wash the upper glass from the outside.
These inventions are ancient, but more modern design works hardly better. The shower head in my bathroom is good for quick showers in the morning. It is worthless for anything else, being embedded in the wall. Shower heads should be detachable. Anyone disagreeing with this has never cleaned a bathtub or a large, nervous dog in it. Both jobs need rinsing which needs detachable shower heads. The lack of one forces me to use a large saucepan. As a consequence, I always have dogs with saucepan phobias.
Saucepans are no good for rinsing remote controls, microwave keypads or computer keyboards. Nothing is good for rinsing or cleaning these, although an extended leave of absence from work and a ton of tweezers and toothpicks might make a slight difference. As most people have better things to do with the rest of their lives, such equipment is often sold in colors and textures which look already grimy. That way cleaning doesn't seem necessary until it is far too late.
A case might be made in defense of each of these features I malign. There is no such defense for the American electric sockets, no reason whatsoever for making them look like miniature copies of Edward Munch's 'The Scream'; a painting from hell. This is what stares back from baseboards all over the U.S., normally attached to the wall roughly diagonally. No wonder that mental health problems grow increasingly common. The only place where these sockets should be allowed is in dentists' waiting rooms. But that wouldn't satisfy the laws of absurdity.
Tuesday, November 25, 2003
On Naming Things
Fetuses are now called unborn children. I like the logic behind this innovation; from now on I shall call living adults undead corpses. And for breakfast I will no longer order fried eggs but fried unborn chickens.
Monday, November 24, 2003
Pornography Goes Mainstream
Did I ever mention that retired gods and goddesses may sometimes take human form? Aphrodite has chosen to become an eighty-year old widow living in Florida. She adores Mickey Mouse, neon pink golf carts and polyester pant suits. She was really fed up with her long reign as a sex goddess, and wanted a more active life. I stopped by recently. We had a ball.
She took me to this new Viennese tearoom for women. They served exquisite little pastries, and the place was packed with 'dite's cronies. After we were served our cappuccinos, the waitress told us to help ourselves to all the tidbits on the center table. Can you believe this? The cakes and pastries were daintily arranged on the reclining still form of a gorgeous naked man? He was a real cupcake!
I reached out for a canape in his left armpit and watched his pupils dilate. His eyes moved to point at the large painted sign which warned against any bodily interference with the 'model'. So we could only look, not touch. And look we did.
I asked the waitress if the tearoom had had any problems with meninists protesting against their use of a male platter. She laughed and said that all publicity was good publicity. Besides, everybody knew that meninists had no sense of humor. We all agreed that we really respected and admired men, especially this lovely studmuffin!
When we were replete with cakes and the platter covered but with crumbs, 'dite took me back to her condo to watch some daytime soaps. I kept nodding off on the couch until she turned the channel to Oprah's show. The day's topic was "Getting in Touch with Your Inner Erection". It seemed to consist of some man flogging his book on 'bagel dancing'. The gyrations and contortions around a bagel suspended from a string in the ceiling were supposed to make men fit and better in the marital bed. I started feeling slight bouts of indigestion. I'm not a prude, as any of you may check on the Google, but this was just getting to be too much.
Men are people, too, after all. What was going on? Had 'dite interfered with earth's essential vibrational frequency? She adamantly denied having anything to do with these sexxee developments among men. Supposedly men had just collectively decided that titillating women was sex-positive and healthy. As proof 'dite mentioned a newspaper article about men's athletic wear stores in Paris. To drum up more business, these stores had hired coaches to teach men how to remove their jockstraps in an alluring fashion. One young man was quoted as saying that he had never before really understood how important it was to remove the football socks before rather than afterwards. The store had hung up framed sayings supposedly by Simone de Beauvoir: "The high time of the day on the sports fields is not when a man suits up but when he takes it all off for his woman."
I did mention to Aphrodite that according to the article there had been protests by some men's groups outside the store. She waved this detail away with her tennis-braceleted arm and pointed out an ad in a magazine I was leafing through as further proof of the same trend in sexual liberation. The ad was selling sweatshop-free underwear for men, but the pictures were extremely revealing crotch shots from below.
"Sort of pornographic, don't you think?" I asked. She nodded. "Porn has gone mainstream now. Care for a round of golf?"
-----------
I have slightly played with the truth in recounting this story. If you insist on the more politically correct but boring facts, here they are: Sushi served on a naked female, pole-dancing on Oprah, Parisian strip-tease lessons for women who buy underwear and American Apparel's ad for women's panties.
An interesting postscript:1. Folks in Seattle decided to alter the world to match my story better. That's the power of goddesses for you. See naked men as doughnut platters. 2. Daniel sent me this. It is a Swedish revision story of pornography going mainstream. In actual pictures. "Ombytta roller" means swopped sex roles. Just keep clicking on "mer sex"! I bet Aphrodite is behind this one, too.
She took me to this new Viennese tearoom for women. They served exquisite little pastries, and the place was packed with 'dite's cronies. After we were served our cappuccinos, the waitress told us to help ourselves to all the tidbits on the center table. Can you believe this? The cakes and pastries were daintily arranged on the reclining still form of a gorgeous naked man? He was a real cupcake!
I reached out for a canape in his left armpit and watched his pupils dilate. His eyes moved to point at the large painted sign which warned against any bodily interference with the 'model'. So we could only look, not touch. And look we did.
I asked the waitress if the tearoom had had any problems with meninists protesting against their use of a male platter. She laughed and said that all publicity was good publicity. Besides, everybody knew that meninists had no sense of humor. We all agreed that we really respected and admired men, especially this lovely studmuffin!
When we were replete with cakes and the platter covered but with crumbs, 'dite took me back to her condo to watch some daytime soaps. I kept nodding off on the couch until she turned the channel to Oprah's show. The day's topic was "Getting in Touch with Your Inner Erection". It seemed to consist of some man flogging his book on 'bagel dancing'. The gyrations and contortions around a bagel suspended from a string in the ceiling were supposed to make men fit and better in the marital bed. I started feeling slight bouts of indigestion. I'm not a prude, as any of you may check on the Google, but this was just getting to be too much.
Men are people, too, after all. What was going on? Had 'dite interfered with earth's essential vibrational frequency? She adamantly denied having anything to do with these sexxee developments among men. Supposedly men had just collectively decided that titillating women was sex-positive and healthy. As proof 'dite mentioned a newspaper article about men's athletic wear stores in Paris. To drum up more business, these stores had hired coaches to teach men how to remove their jockstraps in an alluring fashion. One young man was quoted as saying that he had never before really understood how important it was to remove the football socks before rather than afterwards. The store had hung up framed sayings supposedly by Simone de Beauvoir: "The high time of the day on the sports fields is not when a man suits up but when he takes it all off for his woman."
I did mention to Aphrodite that according to the article there had been protests by some men's groups outside the store. She waved this detail away with her tennis-braceleted arm and pointed out an ad in a magazine I was leafing through as further proof of the same trend in sexual liberation. The ad was selling sweatshop-free underwear for men, but the pictures were extremely revealing crotch shots from below.
"Sort of pornographic, don't you think?" I asked. She nodded. "Porn has gone mainstream now. Care for a round of golf?"
-----------
I have slightly played with the truth in recounting this story. If you insist on the more politically correct but boring facts, here they are: Sushi served on a naked female, pole-dancing on Oprah, Parisian strip-tease lessons for women who buy underwear and American Apparel's ad for women's panties.
An interesting postscript:1. Folks in Seattle decided to alter the world to match my story better. That's the power of goddesses for you. See naked men as doughnut platters. 2. Daniel sent me this. It is a Swedish revision story of pornography going mainstream. In actual pictures. "Ombytta roller" means swopped sex roles. Just keep clicking on "mer sex"! I bet Aphrodite is behind this one, too.
Wednesday, November 19, 2003
Women and Terrorism
The BBC's World Program asked listeners to send in their definitions of a 'terrorist'. The answers were what one expected, ranging from the definition of a terrorist as someone who targets civilians to someone who is called George W. Bush. But one definition really stood out:"One man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist."
These are men who define terrorism. Terrorism is something that might bring them freedom or terror. But for women? Granted, there are women terrorists, and women do experience the effects of terrorist activity as much as men do. But are there freedom fighters for women? Do terrorists ever work for women's causes?
I can't think of a single cause like that. The early British suffragettes came the closest, but even they stopped their violence at property or their own bodies. If freedom fighters ever fought for women, it was most likely in the sense that they fought for the right of previously oppressed men to have free access to their 'own' women or to bar other men from such access. Some women must have benefited from such movements, but this was not the intended effect.
Iraq is an interesting example. Under Saddam Hussein, Iraqi women first gained additional freedoms and rights. More women attended the university and there were women in his government. Later, some of these gains for women were sacrificed when Saddam courted the religious muslims and launched an islamization program. Yet women in Iraq are still more literate than in any other Arab country.
The liberation of Iraq may change this. The new freedom fighters there want an Islamic society. Some want obligatory veiling, and there are arguments about whether education is a good thing for women under Islam. The lawlessness makes going out into a major adventure for women, and there are news about kidnapping and rape. So who there is fighting for the women? Who really cares about the fact that women are the majority of the Iraqi population, with something like ten percent representation in the Provisional Council?
The answer is that very few people care about women. The status of women in Iraq is low, and determined by both traditional culture and certain ways of reading the Islamic law and the Koran. Who are outsiders to decide that things should be different for them? Yet outsiders decided that other things in Iraq were unacceptable, however much they, too, were based on tradition and religious precedent. Women just don't matter, very much.
Women don't matter awfully much in the greater terrorist wars, either. Their importance is as symbols: symbols of western decadence as the semi-naked women cavorting on our tv screens in the west, symbols of eastern backwardness as the totally shrouded shapes cowering in the corners of their hidden rooms in the east. Or as reversed symbols: the independent, self-confident western woman vs. the modest, pure eastern woman. Yet it's all about symbols.
In the wars of terrorism most real women are in the middle, in the mined no-man's land where they are possible victims for both sides. The war goes on over their heads and sometimes through their bodies. They are the ultimate definition of collateral damage.
Most women don't think this way, you might say. That's probably true. It's hard to get much constructive thinking going when the media bombard you with one false message after another, when daily life is enough to pull you down, when to realize that you ARE collateral damage would demolish your whole world view. So yes, most women don't think this way.
That's the unfair thing about being a goddess. We goddesses see through the smoke and fog and scraps of flying bombs right through to the truth. Sometimes.
These are men who define terrorism. Terrorism is something that might bring them freedom or terror. But for women? Granted, there are women terrorists, and women do experience the effects of terrorist activity as much as men do. But are there freedom fighters for women? Do terrorists ever work for women's causes?
I can't think of a single cause like that. The early British suffragettes came the closest, but even they stopped their violence at property or their own bodies. If freedom fighters ever fought for women, it was most likely in the sense that they fought for the right of previously oppressed men to have free access to their 'own' women or to bar other men from such access. Some women must have benefited from such movements, but this was not the intended effect.
Iraq is an interesting example. Under Saddam Hussein, Iraqi women first gained additional freedoms and rights. More women attended the university and there were women in his government. Later, some of these gains for women were sacrificed when Saddam courted the religious muslims and launched an islamization program. Yet women in Iraq are still more literate than in any other Arab country.
The liberation of Iraq may change this. The new freedom fighters there want an Islamic society. Some want obligatory veiling, and there are arguments about whether education is a good thing for women under Islam. The lawlessness makes going out into a major adventure for women, and there are news about kidnapping and rape. So who there is fighting for the women? Who really cares about the fact that women are the majority of the Iraqi population, with something like ten percent representation in the Provisional Council?
The answer is that very few people care about women. The status of women in Iraq is low, and determined by both traditional culture and certain ways of reading the Islamic law and the Koran. Who are outsiders to decide that things should be different for them? Yet outsiders decided that other things in Iraq were unacceptable, however much they, too, were based on tradition and religious precedent. Women just don't matter, very much.
Women don't matter awfully much in the greater terrorist wars, either. Their importance is as symbols: symbols of western decadence as the semi-naked women cavorting on our tv screens in the west, symbols of eastern backwardness as the totally shrouded shapes cowering in the corners of their hidden rooms in the east. Or as reversed symbols: the independent, self-confident western woman vs. the modest, pure eastern woman. Yet it's all about symbols.
In the wars of terrorism most real women are in the middle, in the mined no-man's land where they are possible victims for both sides. The war goes on over their heads and sometimes through their bodies. They are the ultimate definition of collateral damage.
Most women don't think this way, you might say. That's probably true. It's hard to get much constructive thinking going when the media bombard you with one false message after another, when daily life is enough to pull you down, when to realize that you ARE collateral damage would demolish your whole world view. So yes, most women don't think this way.
That's the unfair thing about being a goddess. We goddesses see through the smoke and fog and scraps of flying bombs right through to the truth. Sometimes.
Monday, November 17, 2003
Abstinence
Abstinence is the policy of the current U.S. government, when it comes to social ills such as Aids and teenage pregnancy. I think that it's a wonderful idea; it should be a lifelong vow for all its proponents. Maybe that way the U.S. would some day get a sensible government.
Don't get me wrong. I think that abstinence is a valid choice in sexuality, and it has many benefits. But it is a very difficult choice, and to imply that it isn't is cruel. Now, I wasn't much for abstinence as you may have noticed. My children (and what a bunch they are!) were fathered by all sorts of creatures. It was fun, on the whole.
And that's the problem with abstinence; you need to abstain from sex to achieve it, and sex is fun. Eating is also fun, and look at the size of the people in this country. "Just say no". Yessss, but... The spirit may be willing, yet the flesh is, as ever, weak.
History is a good teacher about the possibilities of abstinence in sex among the general population. Abstinence doesn't win very many contests here, I am afraid. People are created to be sexual creatures, and fighting that is fighting a basic instinct. At least the government should admit that this is true.
Children are too young for sex, in my divine opinion. They don't need it to complicate growing up, which is hard enough as it is. It's a good idea to encourage children and teenagers not to engage in sex too early. But to tell the vast populations of AIDs sufferers in Africa that abstinence is the best policy? To spend one third of the U.S. new funding on AIDS there on abstinence education? Or to try to make American schools stay silent about contraception? Whom do these policies benefit?
In some African countries it is believed that making love to a virgin can cure AIDS. In many African countries women have very little or no choice about whether to engage in sex or not. How can they be abstinent even if they wish to? In some Sub-Saharan countries the number of condoms in circulation is enough for one condom per man per year. Are all the men there going to have sex only once a year? I doubt it. I'm old and I have seen it all, but I have never seen abstinence work on any widespread scale.
And what about the teenagers who don't receive contraceptive information at school? What if they decide to have sex anyway? What if they have parents who believe in 'abstinence only' policies, too? What will happen to these children?
An interesting twist in the abstinence discussion is the return of the bridal gift thinking: the idea that a woman gives her virginity to her husband when she marries. She has saved it for him until then. It's not clear what he has saved for her, if anything.
In any case, the bride is supposed to say, on the wedding night:"Look, hon! See what I've got here! It's all unused and unopened, and all for you!" How nice. Especially as it stops any sexual comparisons of the groom with prior boyfriends and reinforces the idea that a woman's virginity is her most valuable attribute, yet not really hers. If I had a virginity to save, I'd save it for me, not any future beau I might glue my divine eye on.
If the 'abstinence only' policy wasn't so tragic in its likely consequences, it would be a rather fun spectacle to watch. We goddesses do get bored over the millennia, and at least these repeated human follies give us something to write about.
A postscript: It seems that the Bush administration applies the principle of abstinence to auditing the books of faith-based organizations receiving funds from the government, but lapses in this quite inexplicably when it comes to organization which advocate contraceptive education in addition to sexual abstinence.
Don't get me wrong. I think that abstinence is a valid choice in sexuality, and it has many benefits. But it is a very difficult choice, and to imply that it isn't is cruel. Now, I wasn't much for abstinence as you may have noticed. My children (and what a bunch they are!) were fathered by all sorts of creatures. It was fun, on the whole.
And that's the problem with abstinence; you need to abstain from sex to achieve it, and sex is fun. Eating is also fun, and look at the size of the people in this country. "Just say no". Yessss, but... The spirit may be willing, yet the flesh is, as ever, weak.
History is a good teacher about the possibilities of abstinence in sex among the general population. Abstinence doesn't win very many contests here, I am afraid. People are created to be sexual creatures, and fighting that is fighting a basic instinct. At least the government should admit that this is true.
Children are too young for sex, in my divine opinion. They don't need it to complicate growing up, which is hard enough as it is. It's a good idea to encourage children and teenagers not to engage in sex too early. But to tell the vast populations of AIDs sufferers in Africa that abstinence is the best policy? To spend one third of the U.S. new funding on AIDS there on abstinence education? Or to try to make American schools stay silent about contraception? Whom do these policies benefit?
In some African countries it is believed that making love to a virgin can cure AIDS. In many African countries women have very little or no choice about whether to engage in sex or not. How can they be abstinent even if they wish to? In some Sub-Saharan countries the number of condoms in circulation is enough for one condom per man per year. Are all the men there going to have sex only once a year? I doubt it. I'm old and I have seen it all, but I have never seen abstinence work on any widespread scale.
And what about the teenagers who don't receive contraceptive information at school? What if they decide to have sex anyway? What if they have parents who believe in 'abstinence only' policies, too? What will happen to these children?
An interesting twist in the abstinence discussion is the return of the bridal gift thinking: the idea that a woman gives her virginity to her husband when she marries. She has saved it for him until then. It's not clear what he has saved for her, if anything.
In any case, the bride is supposed to say, on the wedding night:"Look, hon! See what I've got here! It's all unused and unopened, and all for you!" How nice. Especially as it stops any sexual comparisons of the groom with prior boyfriends and reinforces the idea that a woman's virginity is her most valuable attribute, yet not really hers. If I had a virginity to save, I'd save it for me, not any future beau I might glue my divine eye on.
If the 'abstinence only' policy wasn't so tragic in its likely consequences, it would be a rather fun spectacle to watch. We goddesses do get bored over the millennia, and at least these repeated human follies give us something to write about.
A postscript: It seems that the Bush administration applies the principle of abstinence to auditing the books of faith-based organizations receiving funds from the government, but lapses in this quite inexplicably when it comes to organization which advocate contraceptive education in addition to sexual abstinence.
On Social Critics
I think that I have finally found my dream career. For many years I grieved over the fact that since I was a goddess, they didn't also let me be the oracle of Delphi. (Oracles of Delphi were ancient Greek prophetesses who are famous for their nonergonomic work environment. This consisted of a cave to receive petitioners in, a tripod to sit on and noxious vapors to inhale.) The most imbecile utterances of an oracle used to be listened to with great reverence, but she still wasn't held responsible for the negative consequences of carrying them out in practice. She was always seen as right. This was the role I was born for, not the job of some lowly snake goddess.
Well, something almost as good as the oracle's job has been created in the last few years: the occupation of a cultural critic. Anybody can become one, or so it seems to me. A background in some of the social sciences might be desirable but doesn't seem to be a formal requirement. Knowledge of statistics is certainly not required. Neither are cultural critics held to the boring, limiting rules of "proper" research protocols. No need to worry about the difference between correlation and causation. No need to qualify any conclusions not based on empirical evidence. No need to avoid sweeping generalizations, naive simplifications and biased interpretations. What bliss!
This job was made for me. I can profess to the world all my pet peeves, and as long as there is smoke and vapors of pseudoscience the world will listen. I can take the word "culture" and make it a monolithic concept loaded with any adjectives I currently hate, and condemn vast groups of people with just a few well-framed sentences. I can choose any historical period I like, cut out the parts of it I dislike (say, petty wars) and remake the rest into a Rudyard Kipling "JustSo" story. And people will actually pay attention to me!
Why wasn't this job invented earlier, instead of the boring jobs of researchers? They could have avoided years of tedious study, analysis and mental discipline. More importantly, their academic writing would have immensely benefited from the freedom to dispense with the antiquated rules that all evidence should be considered and that alternative theories must not suppressed. And think of the stylistic improvements that would have been possible by being able to get rid of all those annoying little qualifiers: "some people", "sometimes", "one of the many reasons"...
Still, better late than never, both for me and the researchers. Cultural criticism, here I come! My tripod is on order, the noxious vapors are arriving by UPS next Monday and the cave facsimile in my study is nearly complete. All that is now missing are the adulators.
Well, something almost as good as the oracle's job has been created in the last few years: the occupation of a cultural critic. Anybody can become one, or so it seems to me. A background in some of the social sciences might be desirable but doesn't seem to be a formal requirement. Knowledge of statistics is certainly not required. Neither are cultural critics held to the boring, limiting rules of "proper" research protocols. No need to worry about the difference between correlation and causation. No need to qualify any conclusions not based on empirical evidence. No need to avoid sweeping generalizations, naive simplifications and biased interpretations. What bliss!
This job was made for me. I can profess to the world all my pet peeves, and as long as there is smoke and vapors of pseudoscience the world will listen. I can take the word "culture" and make it a monolithic concept loaded with any adjectives I currently hate, and condemn vast groups of people with just a few well-framed sentences. I can choose any historical period I like, cut out the parts of it I dislike (say, petty wars) and remake the rest into a Rudyard Kipling "JustSo" story. And people will actually pay attention to me!
Why wasn't this job invented earlier, instead of the boring jobs of researchers? They could have avoided years of tedious study, analysis and mental discipline. More importantly, their academic writing would have immensely benefited from the freedom to dispense with the antiquated rules that all evidence should be considered and that alternative theories must not suppressed. And think of the stylistic improvements that would have been possible by being able to get rid of all those annoying little qualifiers: "some people", "sometimes", "one of the many reasons"...
Still, better late than never, both for me and the researchers. Cultural criticism, here I come! My tripod is on order, the noxious vapors are arriving by UPS next Monday and the cave facsimile in my study is nearly complete. All that is now missing are the adulators.
Friday, November 14, 2003
On Glass Slippers and Ceilings
Cinderella's foot fitted the glass slipper and so she married the prince and lived happily ever on. At least in fairy tale terms. But imagine how uncomfortable glass shoes would be, how easily they would crack and splinter around your unprotected feet.
In some ways that's what women in business management wear every day. Their slippers are made of all sorts of contradictory materials: assertive, but not too much so or you'll be called bitchy, nurturing, but not too much so or your capabilities are suspect, just-like-the-guys but not too much so or you'll be called a ballbreaker. That these slippers crack and splinter is to be expected. That they cut the wearer's feet is not surprising.
So what does this have to do with glass ceilings? Glass ceilings are nice, they let us gaze at the sunrays or the moon and the stars, and pretend that there's nothing between us and these vast upper reaches. But of course there is. The glass is there.
Or is it? The corporate glass ceiling is supposed to keep women out of higher management; all they can do is to gaze at the stars. But now some say that there is no glass ceiling that would prevent women from flying straight up and getting a comet named after themselves. Instead, the reason for few women in leading positions is said to be.... Guess. If you are even one tenth as old as I am, you have heard this before.
Well, the blame belongs to the women, of course. They don't want the brass ring hard enough to grab it. They don't want the long hours. They want to be with their children, and to write poetry or ride a horse. They want to go to Africa to cure hunger. Women are just different.
Hmmm. Different from what? Men, of course, you thick-headed goddess.
Aah! That's why they don't fit into the public sector; the public sector was built to fit men's desires. Well, this is really interesting: why doesn't the public sector reflect the desires of both men and women? Why doesn't the fact that children must be taken care of by somebody, that families must at least meet once and a while, that human beings might need to write poetry or ride horses or cure hunger; why don't any of these things affect the way the jobs and the labor market are structured?
Why is a good manager one who has no life outside the job? Who thinks that managers are equally bright and energetic in their sixteenth consecutive work hour as in their first eight? Do you want important economic decisions made by people who don't remember what their children look like, or who haven't smelled at a flower or played a game for fun for decades?
Never mind if they are men or women, I'd shudder if humans took the division of labor to such extreme degrees.
What I see through my divine sight, are glass mountains on which people slip and slide in their glass slippers. Only those who also have glass hearts thrive. Too sad.
The glass ceilings are still there, of course. That so many deny their existence is because they are not there all the time. When some people look at the stars, they can feel the breeze and sense the raindrops, too. They know that the road is open. When others look up, they see the stars but they also see gates and locks, treehouses with "No girls allowed" signs, preachers telling what good motherhood is, coworkers looking at you askance when you are pregnant and tell that you are coming back, husbands 'helping out' but not knowing if the fridge has milk or what the pediatrician's name is. These people don't imagine things.
It's not as bad as it used to be. Families are more democratic, employers are more open-eyed and many men do their fair share at home. But turning the looking-glass back to face nothing but the women, each alone and separately, is a very cruel thing to do. Women are neither evil step-mothers nor Cinderellas, and the story doesn't reward the one who fits the glass slippers.
In some ways that's what women in business management wear every day. Their slippers are made of all sorts of contradictory materials: assertive, but not too much so or you'll be called bitchy, nurturing, but not too much so or your capabilities are suspect, just-like-the-guys but not too much so or you'll be called a ballbreaker. That these slippers crack and splinter is to be expected. That they cut the wearer's feet is not surprising.
So what does this have to do with glass ceilings? Glass ceilings are nice, they let us gaze at the sunrays or the moon and the stars, and pretend that there's nothing between us and these vast upper reaches. But of course there is. The glass is there.
Or is it? The corporate glass ceiling is supposed to keep women out of higher management; all they can do is to gaze at the stars. But now some say that there is no glass ceiling that would prevent women from flying straight up and getting a comet named after themselves. Instead, the reason for few women in leading positions is said to be.... Guess. If you are even one tenth as old as I am, you have heard this before.
Well, the blame belongs to the women, of course. They don't want the brass ring hard enough to grab it. They don't want the long hours. They want to be with their children, and to write poetry or ride a horse. They want to go to Africa to cure hunger. Women are just different.
Hmmm. Different from what? Men, of course, you thick-headed goddess.
Aah! That's why they don't fit into the public sector; the public sector was built to fit men's desires. Well, this is really interesting: why doesn't the public sector reflect the desires of both men and women? Why doesn't the fact that children must be taken care of by somebody, that families must at least meet once and a while, that human beings might need to write poetry or ride horses or cure hunger; why don't any of these things affect the way the jobs and the labor market are structured?
Why is a good manager one who has no life outside the job? Who thinks that managers are equally bright and energetic in their sixteenth consecutive work hour as in their first eight? Do you want important economic decisions made by people who don't remember what their children look like, or who haven't smelled at a flower or played a game for fun for decades?
Never mind if they are men or women, I'd shudder if humans took the division of labor to such extreme degrees.
What I see through my divine sight, are glass mountains on which people slip and slide in their glass slippers. Only those who also have glass hearts thrive. Too sad.
The glass ceilings are still there, of course. That so many deny their existence is because they are not there all the time. When some people look at the stars, they can feel the breeze and sense the raindrops, too. They know that the road is open. When others look up, they see the stars but they also see gates and locks, treehouses with "No girls allowed" signs, preachers telling what good motherhood is, coworkers looking at you askance when you are pregnant and tell that you are coming back, husbands 'helping out' but not knowing if the fridge has milk or what the pediatrician's name is. These people don't imagine things.
It's not as bad as it used to be. Families are more democratic, employers are more open-eyed and many men do their fair share at home. But turning the looking-glass back to face nothing but the women, each alone and separately, is a very cruel thing to do. Women are neither evil step-mothers nor Cinderellas, and the story doesn't reward the one who fits the glass slippers.
Monday, November 10, 2003
The Independent Women's Forum
The Independent Women's Forum (IWF) is one of the girls' auxiliaries to the extreme right wing. They are a feisty lot of gals who spend their days feminist-bashing. In fact, if I didn't know better, I'd suspect they suffer from some sort of a collective obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD): "Who oppresses males?" Answer: "The Feminists." "Who controls the universities and colleges?" Answer: "The Feminists." "Who causes the big bad government to meddle with the oh-so-innocent markets?" Answer: "The Feminists." "Who falsifies research?" Answer: "The Feminists." "Who attacks Jane Austen?" Answer:"The Feminists." And so on, ad infinitum.
You'd think that at least a couple of this world's problems would be attributable to some other people. But no. Whatever the problem, the IWF gals always blame the feminists for it.
This smacks of OCD, because one of the hallmarks of OCD is that its sufferer worries endlessly about something quite unrealistic. And I believe that the feminists, whom America loves about as much as it does Karl Marx, do qualify as an unrealistic threat to the things the IWF holds dear. Especially the kind of bogeywomen that the IWF has created by putting together all the most extreme statements any feminist of any sort has ever made (and, believe me, some of them are pretty extreme), and by attributing them all to one monolithic group: The Feminists. Which actually doesn't exist.
But of course there is no such thing as a collective OCD, either. And the women of the IWF are smart chicks, with quite a few law degrees tucked into their Chanel handbags and the astonishing ability to promptly interpret any research results, however far these might be from the woman's own field of specialization. I must admit I am green with envy.
So what are these smart ladies after? Is it too rash to suggest that they are beavering away at the task their brothers in politics have set them, viz. the demolition of any and all female opposition to some of the current GOP ideology? Probably, for that would make them dependent women. Still, this wild conjecture is given some credibility by the neat way in which the IWF and the rest of the right wing have divvied up the political battlefield; you know, men against men, women against women. After all, a gentleman never hits a lady.
Is this theory just another feminist myth? We'll see. If the IWF website and writings suddenly start including a sprinkling of attacks against nonfeminist women and, dare one hope, even against a Republican man or two, I'll buy the idea that these gals truly are independent. I'll even join the IWF, especially if they let me be the expert in some exciting field I never got around to studying.
You'd think that at least a couple of this world's problems would be attributable to some other people. But no. Whatever the problem, the IWF gals always blame the feminists for it.
This smacks of OCD, because one of the hallmarks of OCD is that its sufferer worries endlessly about something quite unrealistic. And I believe that the feminists, whom America loves about as much as it does Karl Marx, do qualify as an unrealistic threat to the things the IWF holds dear. Especially the kind of bogeywomen that the IWF has created by putting together all the most extreme statements any feminist of any sort has ever made (and, believe me, some of them are pretty extreme), and by attributing them all to one monolithic group: The Feminists. Which actually doesn't exist.
But of course there is no such thing as a collective OCD, either. And the women of the IWF are smart chicks, with quite a few law degrees tucked into their Chanel handbags and the astonishing ability to promptly interpret any research results, however far these might be from the woman's own field of specialization. I must admit I am green with envy.
So what are these smart ladies after? Is it too rash to suggest that they are beavering away at the task their brothers in politics have set them, viz. the demolition of any and all female opposition to some of the current GOP ideology? Probably, for that would make them dependent women. Still, this wild conjecture is given some credibility by the neat way in which the IWF and the rest of the right wing have divvied up the political battlefield; you know, men against men, women against women. After all, a gentleman never hits a lady.
Is this theory just another feminist myth? We'll see. If the IWF website and writings suddenly start including a sprinkling of attacks against nonfeminist women and, dare one hope, even against a Republican man or two, I'll buy the idea that these gals truly are independent. I'll even join the IWF, especially if they let me be the expert in some exciting field I never got around to studying.
Female Nudes Should Be Prettier
Today the BBC interviewed a man who comes from a group demanding that female nudes in art should be more idealized. The female nude in the 20th century art turned too ugly, too angular, too cubistic. The interviewer, also a man, asked an art expert, also a man, for comments on this question. There was much talk about whether beauty was a relevant criterion in art.
Nobody talked about how funny it is to have three men pontificate on this, or the fact that it is funny to demand more idealized female nudes to counterbalance the ugly ones. What about realistic female nudes? Or are these the ugly ones that should be made prettier?
What is the function of the female nude in art? What is the function of the male nude in art? Should male nudes be made more handsome? Would this boost attendance at art museums? And what is involved in making nudes better looking? Fewer body hairs? Firmer breasts? Bigger penises? More muscle definition?
There is probably no association for the prettification of the male nude in art. Male nudes are not symbols in the same way as female nudes are. Women don't appear to have the same feelings of ownership that would let them demand better-looking naked men to ogle at. Talk about the male gaze.
But men are more visual, I've heard said. Sexually that is. That's why pornography is aimed almost totally at the male market. Women just don't care about looks, some say.
Hmmm. I say:"You wish." It would release some men from the same yoke that they are so desperately trying to fit on female shoulders:"Be pretty, be good-looking, turn me on."
The Guerrilla girls once made a poster depicting an Ingres' reclining female nude in a gorilla mask. The text said:"Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. museum? Less than 5% of the artists in the Modern Art sections are women, but 85% of the nudes are female."
The BBC interview struck me as showing the Guerrilla girls the way forward: Make the female artists prettier. Even better, have them paint in the nude.
Just to make sure, I'm being sarcastic here. Thank goddess that I'm not human. My nudity is always divine.
Nobody talked about how funny it is to have three men pontificate on this, or the fact that it is funny to demand more idealized female nudes to counterbalance the ugly ones. What about realistic female nudes? Or are these the ugly ones that should be made prettier?
What is the function of the female nude in art? What is the function of the male nude in art? Should male nudes be made more handsome? Would this boost attendance at art museums? And what is involved in making nudes better looking? Fewer body hairs? Firmer breasts? Bigger penises? More muscle definition?
There is probably no association for the prettification of the male nude in art. Male nudes are not symbols in the same way as female nudes are. Women don't appear to have the same feelings of ownership that would let them demand better-looking naked men to ogle at. Talk about the male gaze.
But men are more visual, I've heard said. Sexually that is. That's why pornography is aimed almost totally at the male market. Women just don't care about looks, some say.
Hmmm. I say:"You wish." It would release some men from the same yoke that they are so desperately trying to fit on female shoulders:"Be pretty, be good-looking, turn me on."
The Guerrilla girls once made a poster depicting an Ingres' reclining female nude in a gorilla mask. The text said:"Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. museum? Less than 5% of the artists in the Modern Art sections are women, but 85% of the nudes are female."
The BBC interview struck me as showing the Guerrilla girls the way forward: Make the female artists prettier. Even better, have them paint in the nude.
Just to make sure, I'm being sarcastic here. Thank goddess that I'm not human. My nudity is always divine.
Sunday, November 09, 2003
Mummy Wars
For those of you who have been asleep for the last hundred years in an enchanted castle surrounded by thorny rosebushes, this is the vicious argument ongoing between mothers who work outside the home and mothers who are full-time caretakers of their children, or sometimes between women with children and women without children. It also has a subcategory of fights about women on welfare and women who work.
Mummy wars are not real wars. They look staged to me; as if they are there to entertain someone else. Who is the audience?
This is what I wrote on one of my bad-hair days: ( Even goddesses have them, and then our power turns not-so-nice. Well, ok. Goddesses don't have bad-hair days, but then I need to find a language to communicate with mere mortals, and hair seems to be one of those things everybody is allowed to be angry about, even women.) So rather, here is my view from above on a cloudy day when the rain whipped down with a vengeance:
U.S. women are sharply divided by motherhood and its meaning. The ferocious battles being waged over this have been called the Mummy Wars. But what we are observing is not so much a real war as a series of carefully orchestrated matches in a sports arena. In fact, Mummy Wars are best seen as a set of fights between Roman gladiators in the Colosseum:
The first match of each night is always between the teams Mothers and Others. The Mothers are armed with accusations of selfishness against those Others who could've joined Mothers but didn't, and condescending pity towards those Others who tried to join Mothers but couldn't. For a long time the Others had very puny weapons and predictably lost most matches, but recently they have wrought a sword out of accusations that Mothers get preferential treatment in the workplace. This should make future battles much more interesting to watch.
The second match of the night is a filler where Mothers Who Pull Their Weight butcher Mothers Who Are Welfare Queens. As the latter team has no weapons, the match is enjoyed by only the most sadistic of spectators.
The third match is the main event of the night, and always promises lots of blood and gore. The teams are the Stay-At-Home Mothers and the Employed Mothers. The Stay-At-Home Mothers fight mostly with accusations of selfish greed and child neglect. Although these weapons are few, the ferocity with which they are used makes the team a formidable opponent. The Employed Mothers have an interesting strategy: They appear to fight almost solely defensively by using individual freedom of choice as a shield. This is because the rules of this Colosseum forbid open attacks against Stay-At-Home Mothers. But covert maneuvres are always possible, and the Employed team uses them brilliantly by whispering that their opponents should really be called the Ladies Who Lunch or Mealticketed For Life.
The outcome of this match is never certain, but one thing is: if you get turned on by a protracted struggle resulting in lots of severed limbs and bleeding guts, this is the battle for you to watch.
The real Roman gladiators fought each other to please their spectators. This is something all of us fighting the Mummy Wars would do well to remember.
Nasty, isn't it? A suitable episode in the Mummy Wars. Of course it has a point, all sarcasm does, and the point is that the Mummy Wars do give men free entertainment. Yet there are no Daddy Wars.
Now, I'm not one of those goddesses who did things with immaculate conception. For there to be babies, mothers are needed, but so are fathers. And their place is not in the stands, munching on popcorn and rooting for one of the favorites or not. And it's not their place to be the sole creators of the rules for this arena. Yet that's what is happening today.
Take a different view of the Mummy Wars. One I took on a lovely, bright day while being adulated by my snakes.
The human cultures have a biased view of women. Mostly, men are seen as individuals, but women are seen only partially as individuals and largely as members of an amorphous mass 'womanhood'. Think of actors: male actors are not asked the sorts of questions that women actors are, about how they cope with combining family and career, about how they stay beautiful. Men are asked individual questions about their acting choices and lives. Women are asked largely 'woman' questions (how do you compare to other women?). And so on.
So all humans, to some extent, see women as a mass and men as individuals. If these humans happen to be women themselves, they will partly view themselves as individuals, but also keep asking themselves how they compare to others in the mass 'women'. All other women then affect their self-esteem; others' choices affect how right our choices look. If a woman stays at home with the children and another one works outside the home but also has children, their choices are not seen as independent of each other. One woman affects the other, her self-esteem and the society's judgment of her 'goodness'. And this effect goes both ways. A working mother will be blamed because she is not at home, a stay-at-home mother feels that her choices are made unimportant by the existence of women who appear to be able to both work for money and care for children. Thus, both feel exposed and criticized by the existence of the other's different life. Sisterhood? Not likely. But it doesn't have to be so.
There are two secret devices that cause the Mummy Wars. One I have already referred to: women's tendency to be treated as an undifferentiated mass of femaleness, both by men and by women themselves, when in fact we are all individuals with different temperaments, talents, limitations and life situations. The second one is the presumption that if two women make opposite choices, one of these choices must be wrong. This I call false duality. It is false, because we don't apply it to people's choices in general. Matt may choose to enter into engineering, Jessica into medicine. Yet nobody would argue that EITHER Matt OR Jessica must be right.
But when we talk about the 'female' kinds of choices, suddenly one choice must be right and the other wrong. This is because we see all women as essentially the same woman in this sphere, and therefore it appears obvious that one of the choices is better than the other. This is wrong, an example of false dualism, and it is false because all women are not the same woman.
These two devices also explain why women often have the tendency to be more judgmental towards other women than men. What other women do affects the self-esteem of the judging woman. What men do has no such effect in general cases, because the same false dualism is not applied to men.
So we women (I'll count myself here as one, to look less judgmental here...) are cruel to our sisters, we keep them in line, because if we don't do so, our own self-image might shatter. This is all so sad and all so unnecessary. If we could only climb over the obstacles of regarding womanhood as one amorphous lump and of making snappy falsely dualistic judgments we could actually approach some idea of realistic sisterhood, lower our weapons in the Mummy Wars, pack up our armor and go into life.
Let the audience watch the empty arena, or get a life, too.
Mummy wars are not real wars. They look staged to me; as if they are there to entertain someone else. Who is the audience?
This is what I wrote on one of my bad-hair days: ( Even goddesses have them, and then our power turns not-so-nice. Well, ok. Goddesses don't have bad-hair days, but then I need to find a language to communicate with mere mortals, and hair seems to be one of those things everybody is allowed to be angry about, even women.) So rather, here is my view from above on a cloudy day when the rain whipped down with a vengeance:
U.S. women are sharply divided by motherhood and its meaning. The ferocious battles being waged over this have been called the Mummy Wars. But what we are observing is not so much a real war as a series of carefully orchestrated matches in a sports arena. In fact, Mummy Wars are best seen as a set of fights between Roman gladiators in the Colosseum:
The first match of each night is always between the teams Mothers and Others. The Mothers are armed with accusations of selfishness against those Others who could've joined Mothers but didn't, and condescending pity towards those Others who tried to join Mothers but couldn't. For a long time the Others had very puny weapons and predictably lost most matches, but recently they have wrought a sword out of accusations that Mothers get preferential treatment in the workplace. This should make future battles much more interesting to watch.
The second match of the night is a filler where Mothers Who Pull Their Weight butcher Mothers Who Are Welfare Queens. As the latter team has no weapons, the match is enjoyed by only the most sadistic of spectators.
The third match is the main event of the night, and always promises lots of blood and gore. The teams are the Stay-At-Home Mothers and the Employed Mothers. The Stay-At-Home Mothers fight mostly with accusations of selfish greed and child neglect. Although these weapons are few, the ferocity with which they are used makes the team a formidable opponent. The Employed Mothers have an interesting strategy: They appear to fight almost solely defensively by using individual freedom of choice as a shield. This is because the rules of this Colosseum forbid open attacks against Stay-At-Home Mothers. But covert maneuvres are always possible, and the Employed team uses them brilliantly by whispering that their opponents should really be called the Ladies Who Lunch or Mealticketed For Life.
The outcome of this match is never certain, but one thing is: if you get turned on by a protracted struggle resulting in lots of severed limbs and bleeding guts, this is the battle for you to watch.
The real Roman gladiators fought each other to please their spectators. This is something all of us fighting the Mummy Wars would do well to remember.
Nasty, isn't it? A suitable episode in the Mummy Wars. Of course it has a point, all sarcasm does, and the point is that the Mummy Wars do give men free entertainment. Yet there are no Daddy Wars.
Now, I'm not one of those goddesses who did things with immaculate conception. For there to be babies, mothers are needed, but so are fathers. And their place is not in the stands, munching on popcorn and rooting for one of the favorites or not. And it's not their place to be the sole creators of the rules for this arena. Yet that's what is happening today.
Take a different view of the Mummy Wars. One I took on a lovely, bright day while being adulated by my snakes.
The human cultures have a biased view of women. Mostly, men are seen as individuals, but women are seen only partially as individuals and largely as members of an amorphous mass 'womanhood'. Think of actors: male actors are not asked the sorts of questions that women actors are, about how they cope with combining family and career, about how they stay beautiful. Men are asked individual questions about their acting choices and lives. Women are asked largely 'woman' questions (how do you compare to other women?). And so on.
So all humans, to some extent, see women as a mass and men as individuals. If these humans happen to be women themselves, they will partly view themselves as individuals, but also keep asking themselves how they compare to others in the mass 'women'. All other women then affect their self-esteem; others' choices affect how right our choices look. If a woman stays at home with the children and another one works outside the home but also has children, their choices are not seen as independent of each other. One woman affects the other, her self-esteem and the society's judgment of her 'goodness'. And this effect goes both ways. A working mother will be blamed because she is not at home, a stay-at-home mother feels that her choices are made unimportant by the existence of women who appear to be able to both work for money and care for children. Thus, both feel exposed and criticized by the existence of the other's different life. Sisterhood? Not likely. But it doesn't have to be so.
There are two secret devices that cause the Mummy Wars. One I have already referred to: women's tendency to be treated as an undifferentiated mass of femaleness, both by men and by women themselves, when in fact we are all individuals with different temperaments, talents, limitations and life situations. The second one is the presumption that if two women make opposite choices, one of these choices must be wrong. This I call false duality. It is false, because we don't apply it to people's choices in general. Matt may choose to enter into engineering, Jessica into medicine. Yet nobody would argue that EITHER Matt OR Jessica must be right.
But when we talk about the 'female' kinds of choices, suddenly one choice must be right and the other wrong. This is because we see all women as essentially the same woman in this sphere, and therefore it appears obvious that one of the choices is better than the other. This is wrong, an example of false dualism, and it is false because all women are not the same woman.
These two devices also explain why women often have the tendency to be more judgmental towards other women than men. What other women do affects the self-esteem of the judging woman. What men do has no such effect in general cases, because the same false dualism is not applied to men.
So we women (I'll count myself here as one, to look less judgmental here...) are cruel to our sisters, we keep them in line, because if we don't do so, our own self-image might shatter. This is all so sad and all so unnecessary. If we could only climb over the obstacles of regarding womanhood as one amorphous lump and of making snappy falsely dualistic judgments we could actually approach some idea of realistic sisterhood, lower our weapons in the Mummy Wars, pack up our armor and go into life.
Let the audience watch the empty arena, or get a life, too.
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