Older And Wiser?

And another twelve months bites the dust...

So. Will 2008 be remembered as the year in which the United States started to reform an economic system that created vast paper "wealth," but was fundamentally broken under the leadership of a young President who pushed his nation to rediscover the spirit of pioneering and intelligent risk taking so that it could regain some portion of its lost standing in the world?

Or will it drift into history as a year in which the nation's entrenched economic interests held the public hostage and the American public showed itself yet again to be willing to be deceived by self-serving politico who mouthed all the right words, and then went back to business as usual?

Of course, it's a false choice - there are many, many more than just two outcomes. But in the end, will we look back on this year as an important point in the "rehabilitation" of the United States of America? Or simply as just another year in what's really starting to look like a downhill slide?

And Women Get Married WHY...?

Speaking of men being stupid... IOZ turns us on to THIS little gem. Thanks, IOZ!

So... let me get this straight... Women should give into their husbands' requests for sex, regardless of how they feel about it at the time because:

1. Men are incapable of understanding that someone who doesn't put out when asked loves them.
2. Women are capable of understanding that someone who's willing to ask them to do something they'd really rather not loves them.
3. Having to, I don't know, ask for what they want and need and communicate how they feel about things to ensure understanding is "emasculating."
4. Being in a monogamous relationship is already torture for men and their primitive and animalistic sex drives - asking them to not get sex whenever they want it is just too much.

(And I thought that was mainly women who had a low opinion of men...)

Note that this is from a conservative writer who styles himself a Christian. I guess that in his version of the Bible, all the parts where it says: "No nookie with people you aren't married to," were slipped in by those dastardly demonic women. You'd think that if it was so difficult to uphold that part, they would have repealed it by now, given how generally selective they were in determining what went in, and what stayed out.

The ending is priceless...

Everything written here applies under two conditions: 1. The woman is married to a good man. 2. She wants him to be a happy husband. If either condition is not present, nothing written here matters. But if you are a woman who loves your husband, what is written here can be the most important thing you will read concerning your marriage. Because chances are the man you love won't tell you.

News flash! Any woman who is married to a man who would rather stay silent or lie to her rather than "confess to the amount of hurt and eventual anger [he] experience[s] when repeatedly denied sex" until it gets to the point that "he may try to fill this need with another woman," or engage in "emotional and other forms of withdrawal," isn't married to a "good man." She's married to a childish loser. (Which means, of course, that she's off the hook.)

This is the first part of Prager's little power trip. In Part II: "I will explain in detail why mood should play little or no role in a woman's determining whether she has sex with her husband."

I suspect that Part III will be a detailed explanation of why the Los Angeles County coroner should rule Sylvia Pardo's death a suicide.

Nature Versus Stupidity

Of all of the things that one figures that we'd be done with, the Battle of the Sexes used to rate high on my list. Less so these days, especially after having read online stories about the sex trade fueled by human trafficking here in the United States, and yet another in what seems like a never-ending series of murder-suicides triggered by yet-another jackass who decided that if HE couldn't have his ex-wife, no one could.

I read an article in the Economist (dead-tree edition) that gave a Darwinian take on (among other things) why men are sexually unfaithful and violent. Nothing new - there was an edition of the Joy of Sex that I had for a human sexuality class (Sociology 269, natch [I'm still impressed they got away with that]) some twenty years ago that referred to "men's rape instincts." But no-one, it seems, likes that explanation for things. Either men feel that it reduces them to unthinking and monstrous automatons, or women feel that it lets men off the hook for the evil that they do. But is the other explanation, that men are simply unwilling to live with the rules that they themselves (mostly) created to govern society, any better? I don't know who benefits from the idea that many men are willingly mean-spirited and rapacious.

The fact is, that biologically buttressed or not, people are responsible for their actions - after all we aren't animals. This is the whole gist behind Caesar Milan's "Dog Whisperer" shtick. The dogs simply respond to a given stimulus - it's the people who have to do things differently to drive changes in their animals' behavior, and it is the people who are finally accountable. So why do we accept responsibility for dogs, but not for ourselves?

One way in which men and women are similar is that both groups tend to close ranks in defense of each other, mainly to avoid group de-legitimization. But one way to create a more harmonious society is to be more willing to castigate individuals who act in ways that we've determined are unacceptable. Men don't consciously order up women who've been unwillingly trafficked as mail-order brides (I still don't get that) in a vacuum. They do so within the context of a small group of peers who might actively support that action, but also within a much larger group that knows, but simply pretends that nothing amiss is going on. By the same token, no-one, despite how outgoing, friendly and devoted to his church he is, suddenly decides to murder his ex-wife, her parents, and bunch of uninvolved partygoers out of the clear blue sky one day.* He does it, because, despite whatever positive traits he might have, he also shares with others the opinion that a woman who comes into his life is somehow his property, and any stirrings of independence on her part threatens his self-image and status, and exists within a greater society that encourages, if not actively promotes, that broken way of thinking.

This isn't to say that if the rest of us adopted the properly disapproving attitude, that such things would go away. Sometimes, you simply have to realize that the answer to "Whatever happened to Crazy?" is that it moved in next door to you, or that you started dating it. But most people who pull this kind of garbage aren't crazy. They think that what they're doing is right. And all too often, we let them think that, and then look around telling ourselves we have no idea where they got the idea from.

* Personally, I'm still waiting for the interview with a neighbor who says, "Yeah, we knew that guy was a psycho. We had a betting pool at work as to when he'd finally snap. Asshole cost me 50 bucks."

Was That REALLY Necessary?

I'm watching the news, and the story of the burst water main in Massachusetts played on our local newscast. The keystone of the story was a recording of some poor woman freaking out while she pleaded with 911 to come rescue her. She was screaming and crying as the water began to push her car. Her panic was understandable, to be sure. But I don't understand why it was needed to tell the story. The video of a street turned into a raging torrent while people struggled to control their cars made it pretty clear that they were in a difficult, and likely very frightening situation. A desperate 911 call seemed like overkill.

(And I don't know why they needed to transcribe part of the call in the AP article, either, for that matter.)

You Were Expecting...?

Advocacy groups of the homosexual community are up in arms over Pope Benedict XVI's statement that humanity needed to be saved from homosexual or transsexual behavior, saying that this was as important as protecting the environment.

Um... what were they expecting? While it can hardly be said that the Roman Catholic Church is the only institution with a stake in traditional gender-role stereotyping, I expect the Moon to smack me in the back of the head before the Church says that men and women can take on each other's roles, and that this would meet with their approval. I understand the feeling that the Pope is, in effect, sanctioning the re-closeting of homosexuals and transsexuals, if not the outright criminalization of the behavior, but again, what do you expect? It's a small demographic, and easy to target while the rest of the population looks on. I was unable to find the full text of the pontiff's comments, but I'm willing to bet that he didn't go near the topics of say, divorce or pre-marital sex, which would have driven a wedge between the Church and a much larger segment of the populace. (And is something that the media coverage, in the constant quest for yet another controversy, would be unlikely to ignore.)

And therein lies the rub. For both sides. If enough people are doing (or not doing) something, the Church winds up having to go along, to a certain degree. If "proper" relationships between men and women are imperative to saving the world, one would think that doing away with divorce would get us much closer to that point than forcing the relatively small segment of the population that is either homosexual or transsexual into celibacy or accepting their outward gender. On the other hand, because these communities are always going to be a minority, and not a very large one at that, they're always going to be convenient targets. Expecting the Church to be more accepting of them anytime in the near future is unrealistic.

The Church's advice to a gay or lesbian couple, or a young child who's positive that they were born into the wrong body is always going to be the same: "God is Right, you are Wrong. Pray harder." Those groups should get used to hearing it, in much the same way that the Vatican has needed to become used to being ignored.