Delusions of Mediocrity

Words and Deeds

A commenter at Pandagon says:

My own parents . . . would no more use the phrase "African American" than they would eat dirt. Their polite word is "Negro," and their more typical one is the one I refuse to write. Still, my father won several awards from the black students' association at the college where he taught and my mother got a citation from the NAACP in our county for her work supporting black-owned businesses as a loan officer.

I'm sure you know many people who are the opposite, who are very, perhaps even exaggeratedly, careful about the terms they use when talking about other races—but have appalling attitudes. So, is it more important to talk the talk or walk the walk, and without saying the n-word isn't so bad or anyone should get a pass on it, is it as important to police its use in people like, well, like Karen's mother? I certainly accept the idea that the terminology is an element that goes into coloring one's attitudes, but I don't think it determines them. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with the presumption that someone who uses the n-word is a racist, but what does one do if the rest of the evidence says otherwise?

The Right Way To Have Sex

Lately there's been a bit of a back-and-forth over which sex acts it's reasonable for a feminist to perform. Personally, I . .&npsp;.

Whoa. Hold up. Back up a bit there. Feminists are monitoring each other's sex lives? Not on an individual level, of course, but there's a line being drawn between acts that are acceptable¹ and which are not.

Sometimes it's explicit. The women who wrote the essays in Against Sadomasochism and their allies, for example, who respond to people who note that it's consensual by saying, basically, "no it isn't." There's no way to respond to that -- no foundation for discussion -- and that's not what I want to address.

I'm referring to claims that women who enjoy particular sex acts are wrong. It's not always that blatant; on the other hand, the penalty for being wrong isn't always as severe as having one's feminist buttons cut off. Sometimes it's as seemingly benign as saying, as my (possibly now erstwhile) buddy Amanda Marcotte did, "If you love getting your ass whupped in the bedroom, go with Jesus." Even this, however, carries a definite whiff of condemnation. I'm all for encouraging people to question their own opinions and beliefs and tastes in an effort to determine where they came from -- and, yes, whether they're legitimate or not -- but I acknowledge that the fact that they came to different conclusions than I did doesn't mean they didn't examine themselves.

In other words, I find nothing objectionable about a woman (or a man, for that matter) saying "I can't think of a way I can do activity X without bringing in and being co-opted by a sexist society." Bryan at Faits de la Fiction is perfectly correct in saying that "[i]f a woman feels the need to perform (sexually) in a certain way because of external pressures and coersion, then it becomes a larger problem." But to dismiss as unfathomable something one simply doesn't enjoy, why, that would be like a lesbian straight dude talking about how foul fellatio is. More seriously, I could even argue that it differs more in degree than in kind from Against Sadomasochism: to say that a woman who says she enjoys an act doesn't really enjoy it is basically to say she's lying², and that prevents discussion from happening here too.

In fact, I'd go so far as to say we are denying women agency and voices when we say "I feel that activity supports patriarchy, so you must not have thought it through." You thought you liked giving head, pondered it, and realized what you liked was the validation you got for fulfilling your patriarchal role? Fine. Stop doing it (and I mean that sincerely). The unexamined sex life is not worth living, after all. But don't go telling other women who've determined they genuinely enjoy doing oral sex to men (or whatever) that they're wrong.

¹I don't take issue with the acts deemed acceptable

²That should not be taken to indicate I think Ms. Marcotte intends to call submissive women liars. This woman intends to call submissive women liars. I trust you can see the distinction.

Kill Fags, Fight AIDS

I saw that graffito on an ad in a subway station in Chelsea yesterday. Today I learn that it is also the stated position of the music industry's AIDS education program.

Homophobic reggae group T.O.K., who sing about burning homosexuals, is scheduled to perform at a July 18 concert by LIFEbeat. The concert is being put on to raise awareness of AIDS.

Beenie Man, who converted to Rastafarianism at the behest of his producers, has performed lyrics in which he advocates "execut[ing] all the gays." He's featured in the press release:

Beenie Man stated, "HIV/AIDS is a serious threat to the black and West Indian communities, and hip-hop and reggae is the voice that speaks to and for our community. I'm proud to lend my voice to fighting the spread of AIDS through the LIFEbeat concert."

Sean Paul and General Strike, who have stood up for tolerance, are not scheduled to perform.

Born On Whatever Day It Was

It seems the War on Christmas has apparently found a new target: Independence Day.

You see, people keep calling it "Fourth of July," and that won't do. After all, Wikipedia lists 50 separate events, not counting births or deaths, that occurred on July 4th. And that's just the English-language edition¹. People who merely celebrate July Fourth could be observing anything: Lou Gehrig's retirement, the canonization of St. Ulrich of Augsburg, the Battle of Hattin, etc. Some partisans might be ignoring the rest of the United States and noting only that Providence, R.I., was formed on July 4, 1636.

In fact, some people setting off fireworks in your very town might well have been celebrating a step backwards for freedom, the 1712 quashing of a slave uprising in New York.

Not that "Independence Day" doesn't have its own problems. There are 192 countries in the world, most of which have declared independence from someone at some point. Indeed, three countries -- Cape Verde, Algeria, and Venezuela -- celebrate their independence on July 5th.

Maybe the best name would be "Most Wonderful Country In The World Day." No controversy there.

¹As of 9:27 A.M. Eastern. One of the listed events is the U.S. bicentennial.

Resolved: People should stop freely assembling

It seems Congress has passed a resolution condemning the press, in response to Swift.

What's next, a resolution condemning voters for voting?

I Have Changed my Mind

Heretofore, when writing about the Nice Guy phenomenon, I have stuck to one line: a Nice Guy is someone who thinks he has the answer to What Women Want, and doesn't understand why women ditch or ignore him for men he calls "assholes," meaning men who realize that women are individuals and want three billion different things.

The formulation of this I used at Feministe, decent behavior is a necessary but not sufficient condition for getting laid, persuaded me, however, that while there is a kernel of truth to the way I put it, there's an element missing from that too.

What it comes down to is that women are not machines. There's no input that guarantees the result of sex. Women have the same sexual autonomy as men do, and nothing -- not putting a woman on a pedestal, not getting her favorite wine/flowers/porno, not standing outside her window with a boom box -- imposes any sort of obligation on any woman to sleep with you, or date you, or anything else. A Nice Guy isn't simply someone who doesn't really know how to treat women¹, but anyone who thinks it is necessary or desirable to obtain sex (a loaded phrase right there) by being manipulaive, often deceitful.

Thus to a certain extent my version, too, strips women of their personhood. Finding out what a particular woman likes is no more an automatic in than going down some generic checklist of Things Women Like regardless of its applicability to a particular person.

So, the new version: A Nice Guy is someone who thinks he can obligate women to sleep with him by behaving decently, however he conceptualizes that, and behaves decently for that purpose rather that because he's genuinely decent. This Nice Guy may still have an expansive definition of asshole, but he also doesn't really know how these men actually behave. Most are still probably as decent as the Nice Guy, and more interesting.

¹Like men.

Marriage

I was at a bookstore the other day, browsing the "Relationship" section as I do (because I like trainwrecks), and I was suddenly struck by the number of books showing women how to get married.

I don't understand this.

First of all, the bulk of women do get married. Newsweek has backed off from the claim that terrorism is less of a threat than spinsterhood. In any case, spinsterhood isn't all that big a threat anyway. I'm quite in favor of marriage for those who want it, but I can certainly see the disadvantages. A woman (or man) can be perfectly happy without marrying, even if she's in a jurisdiction where she'd be allowed to marry at least some of the people she's wanted to fuck.

But what most puzzles me is the notion of marriage as a goal. The books seem to tell the reader how to do everything necessary to get married, overtly or subtly, openly or deceitfully -- except find someone she likes and is compatible with. It's as though women set out to Get Married, with the identity of the groom basically irrelevant. Which I suppose some do, but I can't imagine that's an intelligent woman's path to long-term happiness.

Not that that's necessarily a problem.

Green, Violet, White

My old buddy Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon posted something interesting before the comments devolved into people (not excluding us Delmedders) trying to reason a crazy person out of being crazy. She noted that an awful lot of anti-feminist women take issue with the 19th Amendment. (It's part of a series on hypocricy, the hardest charge to defend against.)

Ignoring for a moment that this is from the New York Sun, as opposed to a newspaper with a circulation larger than its staff, it's an old and tired trope: suffrgaists, the claim goes, would be appalled by modern feminism. Why, if you could bring Susan B. Anthony (the only 19th-century feminist most people have heard of) to the present day, she would be horrified. Women aren't supposed to have freedom, they're only supposed to vote!

This requires willful ignorance of, well, basically everything. The 19th century was a different time. Medical procedures were different. Marriage was different. The status of women was different. Feminists of the 1800s were in favor of greater self-direction for women. What they opposed -- insofar as there was consensus on that -- were things that took away from self-direction for women.

The example the Sun writer, and hence Ms. Marcotte, uses is abortion. It was a dangerous operation performed to make men's property more available for use. Now it's safer than childbirth and women use it to have children if and when they want (or at least can in many states). Similarly, women working was secondary to married women being allowed to own property, something we take for granted.

Measuring modern feminists by 19th-century standards is about as reasonable as measuring modern telegraphy by 19th-century standards. The world changes. Anti-feminists don't.

Meat's meat & man's gotta eat

The latest ad campaign creating a stir in the blogworld is brought to you by TGI Friday's, shilling a recent addition to their menu called the 'Meat Fanatic's Grill Platter.' The platter contains a ridiculous amount of food, including an 8 oz. steak, baby back ribs, sausage, and barbecued pulled pork, with two potato skins underneath to soak up the juices. Friday's wants to appeal to the key male 18-40 demographic, who've been staying away from the popular restaurant chain in recent years due to its insistence on serving stuff like fettucine Alfredo and fruity pink drinks. It's pretty clear who the Meat Fanatic's Grill Platter is for: men, manly men, men who don't always use a fork to eat, men who will consume every shred of flesh from a bone and then use it to pick their teeth afterwards. Beef and pork served three different ways in the same meal ain't for wimps, and if you can't figure that out for yourself, check out the ad: four men gathered at a table, steaming plates of dead animal flesh in front of them. "Beef!" one of them growls, holding up his fresh kill. "Ribs!" another one chimes in, followed by the third with "Pork!" The fourth man cheerfully stabs a spear of broccoli and announces "Vegetable medley!" Silence falls over the table, and his tablemates stare at him with expressions that suggest he's just announced he's fucking one of their wives. Finally, it dawns him what the problem is, and he exchanges the broccoli for a huge, dripping sausage (subtlety!), instantly reclaiming his manhood. "Sausage!" he yells as his friends cheer, and we can relax knowing that there won't be a parking lot beatdown when the meal is over.

Burger King is running a similar campaign, set to a parody of Helen Reddy's 'I am Woman,' in which men free themselves from the constraints of eating "chick food" in favor of a Texas double Whopper with bacon, which is basically the same as a regular double whopper with bacon, the addition of barbecue sauce rendering it "Texas." Other than quiche¹, in homage to Bruce Feirstein's not particularly funny Real Men Don't Eat Quiche (1982), it's not really mentioned what qualifies as "chick food," other than that it's apparently anything that doesn't contain meat covered in oily, salty condiments. Nevertheless, men of all ages march through the streets, singing "I am man! I eat meat!" and tearing into their Whoppers with a gusto that suggests there's something in the barbecue sauce that will make their penises grow an extra inch.

My intent is not to discuss the politics of these ad campaigns, the ridiculous notion that eating "healthy" (i.e. not eating anything that's the same size as your head) is perceived as feminine, and a tool for women to control their partners. They're irresponsible ads, not just because they create yet another needless rift between men and women (because us broads are all about snatching the simple pleasures away from guys), but because they plainly state that the best way to reaffirm one's masculinity is to eat massive quantities of meat, and not just any meat, but meat that is high in fat and drenched in various kinds of sauces. I don't care what kind of metabolism you have, nobody should be eating steak, sausage, ribs, and barbecued pork in one sitting. I wouldn't recommend eating that much meat in an entire week, let alone at one meal. It's not going to make your cock any bigger, or grow hair on your chest, or make you a better football player. It's just going to make you fat and destroy your heart. You don't care about that? Fine, only your friends and family are going to give a shit. But don't try to pass it off as some sort of stand for oppressed men everywhere.

The antithesis to these campaigns is the latest from Lean Cuisine, purveyor of bland, postage stamp-sized frozen dinners marketed towards single gals. It features four ethnically diverse women laying out in spa, discussing, as we invariably do, what they had for dinner the previous night. One woman claims to have eaten nothing but crackers, while another says she's eaten "a deep-fried onion ring loaf," whatever that is. Finally, the fourth purrs in post-orgasmic bliss that she had salmon and wild rice. The other three sit up and stare at her, both in disbelief and dismay, to which she stammers "It...it was a Lean Cuisine." You almost expect her to blurt out "And I didn't enjoy it one bit! Every bite was agony!" No one is going to claim that fish and rice is unhealthy, it seems to be the mere idea that the woman admitted to eating a full meal that's supposed to be shocking, the shock minimized a bit by the fact that it was Lean Cuisine dinner, which means the serving of fish was roughly the size of a credit card. One gets the impression that if she admitted to eating a pizza instead, the other three women would have immediately gotten up and filed out of the room, shunning her forever.

You know, folks, you just can't win in this world. In order to be a real man, you must all but lick the grease off the grill at your local Wendy's, and yet there are shows like TLC's histrionic Honey, We're Killing the Kids! that suggest that allowing your child to eat more than one fast food burger a year will result in he or she growing up to become doughy-faced trailer trash. The media recounts in almost pornographic detail the deterioration of Nicole Richie and Mary-Kate Olsen's bodies due to anorexia, yet women in television programs and films are rarely shown eating anything but salad. The act of eating is portrayed as the highlight of one's day for a man, and a necessary evil for women. Just as no one should be eating the equivalent of an entire pig, no one who is not actively trying to lose weight should be relying on tiny, tasteless frozen dinners for sustenance. Enjoying food in reasonable quantities should be an equal pleasure for women, rather than seen as a lack of self-control.

It's disheartening to realize that even into the 21st century, the role that food plays wildly diverges in the lives of men and women. Men are expected to all but roam the countryside grunting and tearing trees out of the ground looking for something to eat, with any sort of thought to whether the quantity or the quality of what they're eating is healthful considered a grave breach in manliness. Meanwhile, for women eating is a spectator sport, we observe and judge other women by how much they eat, and expect the same in return. The cliche of the first date meal consisting of a dressing-free salad and water still, regrettably, holds true. While a group of men dining together in a restaurant may order enough food to collapse the table, often you'll see as many as four or five women sharing a single plate of fries, and undoubtedly the victor who leaves after having eaten the least amount. Of course, she's exercising control, while her friends are busy hoovering every bite, smeared with ketchup. Meanwhile, the serious eating, stuffing down an entire pint of Ben & Jerry's Chubby Hubby or a log of chocolate chip cookie dough, is done at home, in private, and with no small amount of shame.

¹ Considering the key ingredients in quiche are eggs and cheese, occasionally with bacon or ham mixed in, it would seem to qualify as a "manly" dish. Perhaps it's the fact that it's served in pie form that throw people off.

Schadenfreude, making me glad I'm not you

Jason Feifer of the Morning News explains the concept of schadenfreude, and why we have it in spades for upper class teen plagiarist Kaavya Viswanathan.

"The one thing we haven’t done...is fully bring the word into our daily language. If that’s out of a lack of familiarity, Kaavya Viswanathan may have done wonders to fix it. This word shouldn’t be considered on loan from Germany, it should be used commonly and widely, fully integrated into the way we express ourselves. We’d be more honest that way. Its very existence forces us to confront something dark and unflattering—because really, how can you argue with language, a tool built specifically to express what’s inside us?"