30 posts tagged “rant”

I'm even more sick of postelection election analysis than I was of the goddamned campaign. 

A majority of whites voted, as they have for a long time, Republican.  A majority of minorities voted Democrat, which, along with the white votes Obama did win, was enough for 52% of the popular vote.  Why is it that so many people comment on the Republican tilt of white voting with disfavor, like "Oh, those whites, they just can't see past the party line" but not when it's African-Americans or Hispanics (Hispanics as a group are not as solidly blue as African-Americans, of course, in part because there are so many complications to grouping all those nationalities and histories under one sorry label)?  African-Americans continue to vote Democrat despite the fact that there is evidence that they are more socially conservative as a group than whites (Hispanics, for what it's worth, generally are, too).  Democrats seem all excited by Democratic wins in the West, but Governor Brian Schweitzer of Montana and Rep. Barney Frank have virtually nothing in common as far as I can tell.  If Obama gets too liberal, African-Americans may not cut him off, but Hispanics just might.  It's hard to say--possibly the generation that is born in the US and growing up here will turn out more liberal than their parents.  All I'm saying is, why do people comment on white voting patterns like it's horrible to vote more for one party than the other, but not say the same thing about other ethnic groups.  I mean, basically I know the answer, and it's twofold.  One, most of the people saying that are Democrats, so it worries them more when whites, who are for now still a majority, don't vote Democrat.  And two, it just isn't done, is it?

And another thing:  SHUTUP ABOUT SARAH PALIN'S CLOTHES.  For Christ's sake.  Let's talk about how much the Obamas spent on their clothes, hey--or just how much they spent, period.  That worries me far more than the vague and totally unproven notion that we might have been in danger of getting ourselves a Vice-President who likes to shop and look good.  And PLEASE you fucking hypocritical jackasses who have suggested that if she was running as a woman of the people, she should have just kept dressing the way she dressed in Alaska.  Right.  I can see how that would have made you snigger and snark daily, making fun of her clothes.  Instead, since the RNC dressed her up, you snark instead about how much the RNC spent to do it.  I actually read one piece that suggested that she could have made do with just a few pairs of pants, a couple of jackets.  Yeah, because she wasn't being photographed or appearing in public in contexts where appearance counts for a lot on an almost daily basis.  And of course the press would never have commented in snarky tones about how she just keeps wearing the same pants every day.  Sure.

Which brings me to another point:  We don't think you're sexist for questioning Palin's qualifications.  There were legitimate questions there.  We think you're sexist for harping on "how's she going to raise her kids and be president?"  Yeah, I don't hear you asking that about a man named Barack.  We think you're hypocrites for balking LOUDLY every time someone mentioned Hillary's pantsuits and then spending weeks--but WEEKS--talking about the RNC's budget for Palin's wardrobe.  Yes, absolutely it's also hypocritical of the Republicans to call you out on this one, since the Republicans denied it was sexist when it was done to Hillary (and I'm not so sure either case is sexist--politicians' clothes and styles get talked about.  Remember when Al Gore changed to "earth tone" suits in his 2000 campaign and how we had to hear about it for days?  Remember Edwards's haircut?), but for cryin out loud, take the high road for a change.  We also think you're sexist for repeatedly making comments, overtly sexual comments, about Palin.  Perhaps my favorite was when one writer called her an "ideological lap dancer."  Right.  I'm sure you couldn't find a less overtly sexual and dehumanizing way to put it.  Good job.  Now anyone who doesn't agree with you is a pole dancer.  Why not just call her a slut and get it over with?  I also liked all the people who referred to her as a "Stepford Wife" when, in fact, every indication is that she is far from it.  We think you're sexist because it was pretty clear from the first moment that she entered the campaign that you weren't going to be happy with any woman candidate who wasn't from the blue side.  That has been the clear implication of most of what has been written about her from the beginning.

(What I think now that so much dirt is coming out of those quarters is that McCain and Palin were badly advised by their campaign managers.  The country already knew who McCain was and many independents and moderates liked him a lot, so instead his managers decided to get him to appeal to the far right "base" and alienate the voters who already liked him.  Palin is more moderate on some issues than we were led to believe and is quite knowledgeable about others, especially energy policy, not that you would know it from the way she was handled.  Looking back on the Katie Couric interview now, for one thing, I wonder how much of that was that she didn't know what she was supposed to say.  I'm not saying that McCain and Palin don't share the blame for going along with what was clearly a losing scheme.  I just don't buy the crap that I'm supposed to believe about Palin--not at all.  She is neither as far right nor as stupid as we were led to believe.  Some of the blame also goes to media bias and sexism, too, in my mind.  And, no, I didn't vote for McCain.)

Also, can you let it go that Palin hunts?  A lot of us do.  The numbers of women hunters are actually increasing and will continue to increase as it gets harder to afford food for your family and especially to afford meat that one might consider safe.  The moose in Palin's chili had no antibiotics given to it at all, ever.  It had no growth hormones.  It lived free range for its entire life in its natural habitat and was responsible for no pollution.  More than that, it was probably killed within Palin's local foodshed, making her and most hunters, locavores (it's hard to be a locavore in Alaska--it would be totally impossible if you didn't eat meat or fish).  This is a big reason why white people don't vote for you, because of the obvious and extreme anti-hunting prejudice that is usually based on nothing related to fact.  Of course, the reality is that without hunters, Fish & Wildlife Departments would be hurting badly and there would be no money to save the boulder darter or whatever other endangered creature you want to save.  In a lot of the West, Hispanics hunt, too, so I'd be careful on that one if I were a Democrat.

I notice now that Californians are shifting blame for passing Prop 8 from African-Americans--because that is clearly very sensitive territory--to Mormons.  Apparently what the Mormons did wrong is contribute money to the Yes on 8 committee.  I mean, it's clear that Mormons as a group don't support gay marriage, but it's also clear to me that Mormons do not actually constitute a large enough voting bloc in California to be directly responsible for this.  Jeffrey Toobin rightly pointed out that some blacks are getting irritated that gays keep trying to make it seem as if the situations of these two minority groups is really comparable.  I'm white, and it's starting to bug me, too, frankly, because while there are some similarities, I would say that the differences are far greater.  The situations faced by the gay community and by Hispanics also aren't morally equivalent, and if I were Hispanic I'd also be getting a little annoyed at this comparison. 

Back to the Mormons.  So, what they did was donate money to run ads that gay activists then found objectionable because they were ads encouraging voters to vote for Prop 8.  I hate to be a dick here, but that's our democracy (such as it is) in action.  That's kind of how it works.  I can't see that they did anything wrong.  I don't agree with their beliefs, but, as they say, I would defend to the death their right to believe them and to speak them.  If you really want to tell me that the Mormon church somehow brainwashed voters into voting for something they didn't agree with, then you are way more cynical about people than even I am.

Now back to the gays.  I have heard two alarming things from gay-activist quarters (including but not limited to Dan Savage).  One is that you cannot be against gay marriage without also being homophobic.  This is presented as a tautology with no argumentation or evidence that I've ever seen.  But, in fact, as I have argued in the past and will continue to argue, there is substantial evidence that you can be against gay marriage without also being homophobic and/or a bigot or whatever.  For many people who voted for Prop 8, the crux of the matter was not whether or not gays should enjoy equal civil rights but the word "marriage" which, like it or not, is still tied to religion in the minds of very many people.  I read many interviews with people who said that it's just the word "marriage" that made their vote go that way.  The Court doesn't make a formal distinction between civil marriage and religious marriage, but voters do.  Eventually, particularly in California, religion will probably die out and there won't be that objection.  Until then, that would seem to be the major hangup here.

The second alarming thing I've heard is that passing Prop 8 represents a return to persecution and oppression of gays.  Uhhh...I don't know where they're getting this at all.  Domestic partnerships, which as far as I can tell allow for the same legal rights and responsibilities as heterosexual marriage, remain legal in California.  California did not go back in time to reinstate laws that forbid homosexual sex or, certainly, to allow discrimination in the workplace of gays.  Nothing like that.  As a group (and admittedly, this may have more to do with sample sizes than anything else), gays make more money than non-gays.  Nowhere except in the military (um, and maybe Idaho...and Arkansas...but I'm talking about California here) are gays asked or expected to hide their sexuality the way they once were expected to.  So, in California, despite the fact that for all intents and purposes, they enjoy the same legal status, rights, and benefits as anyone else, how the fuck are they persecuted and oppressed?  I understand that simply being a minority can lead to attempts to "normalize" oneself that can be psychologically difficult or even damaging, but I don't see that any act of law can change that.   

Me, I would have voted against Prop 8, but it gets under my skin when the essence of the complaint here--as far as legality goes and what was voted on--is that gays are prevented, formally, from using the word "marriage" to describe their relationship (informally, of course, everyone is free to use it).  If I'm reading the domestic partnership law correctly, then there are not any significant rights or benefits being withheld.  Just a word.  Yeah, I would have voted against it, but this is a far, far cry from being oppressed or persecuted or somehow akin to groups of people who weren't even allowed to use the same water fountains as white people do until 45 years ago.  It's a bit different.

And finally.  I just read something Obama said that really bothers me.  Apparently he said it a while ago, but I missed it.  He said, "As a general principle, I believe that the Constitution confers an individual right to bear arms.  But just because you have an individual right does not mean that the state or local government can't constrain the exercise of that right."  This might seem OK to you when applied to the Second Amendment.  But think about the implications of this in terms of other amendments.  State and local governments used to constrain the exercise of the right to vote, for example, by instituting literacy tests and poll taxes and so forth.  That clearly wasn't OK.  Or how about the right of free speech?  How might state and local governments constrain the exercise of that in such a way that would be acceptable to Mr. Obama?  Or perhaps the right to due process?  I just cannot imagine that such a broad statement would be acceptable if we were talking about any Constitutional right other than the Second.  On the other hand, it's well known how Democrats in general feel about the Second Amendment, so I guess it's no surprise. 

Alright, I'm sure I've said way more than I ought to have and pissed everyone off.  My work is done here.  I obviously need to cut myself off from the news for a while.

I see that you're sitting there having a nice chat together, the three of you, while your collected 10 or 12 children play here on the equipment.  I'm glad you're enjoying yourselves.  Sure is nice to have some time to relax with each other and totally ignore your children, right?

But I have to tell you, the way your kids are playing is unsafe.  The screaming and general bad manners of your children, even including their seeming incomprehension of the notion of "waiting one's turn," would perhaps be acceptable to the rest of us who have children playing here if only your children were not endangering all the other children.  As you can see--or, as you might see if you so much as glanced in the direction of the area where your children are playing--several of the children playing here are quite small, much smaller than your children, and your children persist in climbing over the smaller children, climbing up the slide despite the fact that people at the top of the slide cannot see anyone who is climbing up that curvy part, sitting on top of the slide exit and dangling their feet right in the face of anyone who comes down.  A couple of your own children have already been injured by others of your children and begun crying, or did you not hear that?  The only reason my son remains uninjured is because I have told him to avoid your children like the plague that they are.

But it isn't your children's fault, really.  It's your fault.  Turn your eyes away from your milkshakes and pay attention to what your kids are doing.  They need some basic understanding that when they break some of the safety rules they are putting other kids in harm's way.  Your kids are certainly old enough to be able to understand what it means to hurt someone else, but you are currently failing in your duties as a parent because you are not taking any action, or notice even, of what is clearly unsafe behavior.  Your children are shockingly ill-behaved, but it is you who appall me.

/things I wish I'd said to those ladies at the playground. 

Apparently in response to that post where I asked what the fuck small-town values are, a good friend of mine emailed me this little article.  I think it makes some good points in a much more clear and even tone than I can usually manage when this topic comes up.  I hadn't ever given a lot of thought to the assumption that there is widespread agreement amongst rural Americans about political and moral issues, and he's right:  There isn't.  If you haven't ever been involved in small-town politics, I wouldn't recommend it.  It's a blood sport, like politics in a big city I would imagine, but on a more personal level because the attacks on your morals and integrity are coming from people you went to school with.  Though most of the polticians who will ever win here are registered as Republicans, there are marked differences among them, and the race for county commission this year has had some ugly moments (the best, by far, was when we received a letter accusing one of the current commissioners of doing "shocking" things at the cemetery; this automatically made me think that the commissioner had either been caught grave-robbing or in an act of necrophilia, or possibly in some kind of witch dance, but the actuality was far less shocking and caused most of us to just sort of shrug).  

But the thing about this particular Republican pander (that small towns are the "real" and "good" America) is that not very many people seem to be buying it anymore.  Eventually, most panders outlive their usefulness, except the "I'll cut taxes" gambit, which Obama is using quite a lot recently (and is probably untrue--he intends to cut taxes, but surely we all know better.  Cutting taxes is part of what got us in this current mess, remember?  Cutting taxes on "everyone who makes less than $250,000 a year" is just not going to fly, but, hey, politicians gotta pander, right?).  Small-town people aren't so stupid that no one out here can recognize this for what it is. 

Unfortunately, Jon Stewart cannot recognize that small-town people can recognize this for what it is.  He was at it again, in a show tonight that was entirely devoted (again!) to Sarah Palin (right, because Obama doesn't ever stretch the truth or pander or get facts wrong or any of that--those are entirely Republican failings).  And, again, when he infers from Palin's speech that New York and Washington, D.C., are "fake America," AGAIN he invokes 9/11.  Like we've forgotten or something.  Like country radio would let us forget even if we wanted to.  That damned Alan Jackson song--makes ya weepy every time, doesn't it?  On 9/11, just like on July 4, nearly every house in my town flies a flag.  Perhaps that isn't the kind of display that New Yorkers would find comforting or even relevant; I don't know.   What I do know is that I have not lived in a small town in the West or in the South that considers big cities to be the "fake America" or where 9/11 is brushed off casually as something that happened to someone else, not America.  Stewart, you ought to be savvy enough to know that by continually playing Palin's increasingly unpopular speeches, you're just pandering yourself--to a much different audience, obviously, but it's a pander nonetheless.  Personally, I find the invoking of 9/11 so often and for such baldly divisive purpose to be off-putting.

But Stewart wasn't done!  No, he decided to go on and imply, as others have done (certainly those bastards at The Stranger, and the Slate guys with their "big-city values are better than small-town values!" crap) that small towns are the main centers of racism and xenophobia in our country.  Oh, that's rich.  This is just too much.  I am sick to death of hearing big-city Democrats describe how there is, apparently, no racism or xenophobia in cities.  How they live in cities precisely because they love all the diversity of color and creed.

Now, usually in the past, except when I'm really inflamed (like after I first read that Urban Archipelago shit), I try to take a conciliatory cant on this subject.  But, for the sake of argument, let's talk about this the way in a nonconciliatory way, just for a minute.  Play along at home.

In cities, there is more racism and xenophobia than there is in small towns for two reasons.  The first of these is that there is just greater numbers of people of different races and ethnic backgrounds.  This leads to greater competition amongst these groups, and competition among racial groups usually breeds more racism, not less.  By "competition," I mean competition for jobs and places at the good schools and so forth.  In small towns (which, by the way, this discussion is currently and falsely presuming are racially homogenous), there tends to be a mere trickle of new people of any color or creed, so when they do come they tend to be more easily and readily absorbed by the community.  This bring us to the second point. 

As far as I can tell, our major urban centers are still fairly well segregated by race.  I think this is mostly voluntary on the part of all groups, and I think it's also mostly subconscious at this point, but nonetheless, it's a fact.  If an Asian rap group--AWA:  AZNS with Attitude--were to ever come out of SoCal now, it would be "Straight Outta Irvine" which sounds markedly less threatening, doesn't it?  Especially since they'd mainly be talking about how their parents only let them choose between engineering and medicine.  (Ahem...sorry.)  In a small town, where segregation is difficult to say the least (and can only happen when the minority ethnic group is sizable enough to do their own thing--it happens in this town, to a very large extent, in that the Mexicans and the whites don't really mix a lot, except at school.  I was just at a high-school function a couple of days ago and was relieved and happy to find that the kids don't seem to segregate nearly as much as their parents do.  Ah, the melting pot.  Um, anyway, back to the point...), you get to know people individually and it's harder to see the individual as a "Mexican" or "black"--as a category.  I've seen it happen in several small towns (my mom always dutifully represents the oppressed minority category of "vegetarian" which isn't easy when you're surrounded by hunters and ranchers.  Still, she is well liked.).  In cities, where there is so much segregation and less chance to get to know your neighbors individually, the potential for racial flare-ups increases.  I mean, it's not like we have big race riots out here in the flyover zone.

To be yet more polarizing, I would go so far as to say that most big-city Democrats want only the diversity that enables them to congratulate themselves for having token multiracial friends or that one gay friend who is an interior decorator or whatever and with the provision that all of these people are essentially from similar backgrounds (middle class, educated) and holding very similar political and moral viewpoints.  If we wanted to be more unfair, we could assert, and not without some justification, that city people mostly want diversity because they just want to eat the food.  I admit it--life without a good curry is a hard life, indeed.  Besides, as William Julius Wilson and others have made a habit of pointing out, many of these big-city nonracists are actually quite racist in terms of hiring practices.

Next, there was an implication that people in small towns only care about the Second Amendment and people in big cities only care about the First Amendment.  Interesting.  Every single American I know supports the First Amendment, including and especially the right to free speech and the right to peaceably assemble.  But you're really referring to the religion thing, right?  Most small-town people and most Republicans do agree that the State should not establish an official religion; we just disagree about the interpretation of what that means.  Is hanging the Ten Commandments in a courtroom crossing the line?  Would that be acceptable if it was hung there with quotations about law and ethics from nonreligious sources?  Assuming we agree that the Ten Commandments crosses the line, why must we then agree that putting a manger scene at Christmastime in a publicly-owned space crosses the line?  In what way does that establish a State religion?  If the public manger scenes come dangerously close to establishing an oppressive state religion, then doesn't the fact that Christmas is a national holiday (not to mention Easter) come oh so much closer?  I haven't heard anyone seriously suggest that we should stop having time off on Easter and Christmas, so why, if it is acceptable to take time off for a Christian holiday, is it unacceptable to publicly acknowledge that it is a Christian holiday?  I'm not a Christian, and it doesn't offend me at all. You could certainly argue that since the vast majority of Americans are Christian of some sort or another, Mary on the courtyard lawn merely acknowledges that fact, but I've said before that I think much of the superficial reference to Christianity in public spaces is more an acknowledgement of our cultural history than an attempt to somehow force everyone in this country to become Christian or hold "Christian values" whatever those are.  Why, especially, does this have to be made an issue of in towns where there are no non-Christians?  Why is a "moment of silence" in schools in the morning alleged to violate the First Amendment, since it is nondenominational?

Actually, though, I think the bigger question is:  Why is there an assumption that the far religious right, the few who might support hanging the Ten Commandments in the courtroom, are all from small towns?  The evidence doesn't support that.  The main centers of organization are suburban or even urban (to call places like Colorado Springs "small towns" is especially ludicrous since Democrats routinely cite the "80% of Americans are urban" statistic, which I've already noted is misleading at best), and I hate to point this out, but Salt Lake City is a pretty big city.  It's not New York, certainly, but it can hardly be called small town.

So, if small towners are supposedly against the freedom of religion (and this by no means established, unless you're just a pompous asshole who likes to assume stuff like this), why is it acceptable to the "fake Americans" to be opposed to the Second Amendment?  Why is the Second Amendment held to be of lesser value than the First?  Democrats in general, and certainly big city ones, certainly seem to think it is less worthy of preservation.  It is argued that if the Framers knew what the current situation would be, with all the automatic weapons and gang killings and all, that they wouldn't have included it or would have at least modified, but it's hard to say, isn't it?  What seems to me pretty clear is that they disliked tyrannical governments and wanted to preserve to the people a measure of independence and self-sufficiency and freedom from government interference in their lives that guns did (for them) help preserve.  And, frankly, they still help preserve that self-sufficiency today--at least, they do in small towns, where hunting for your own food is still considered a worthwhile pursuit.  Let's also be honest about the fact that even if we removed every gun of every kind from American cities today, crime in American cities would still be a huge problem.  Even if we assume that all the murders committed with guns would not take place in the absence of guns, we would still have one of the highest murder rates in the world.  Guns make some crimes easier, in some ways, but they don't cause crime.  The socioeconomic factors that Democrats are wont to cite as the causes of crime wouldn't resolve themselves in the face of a total gun ban.  Blaming guns for America's crime problem is as simplistic and facile--and false--as blaming a lack of Christian instruction in public schools.

Again, to a certain extent, I'm overstating things and playing devil's advocate.  I do see the reasons why city people want gun control, but I also think they need to recognize the intent of the Second Amendment (and you can say that religious fundamentalists need to recognize the intent of the separation of church and state clause) and, especially, they need to stop trying to impose these controls on small towns where gun crime is not an issue and guns have legitimate purposes.  I also understand why we don't want the Ten Commandments hanging in our courtrooms, particularly since things like "honor thy father and mother" are so hopelessly outdated.  It is only in our family that kids get stoned for sassing their parents. 

So, can we just give up on this city versus country thing?  The Republican attempts to use it are failing, and Stewart and all the rest should be able to both recognize that and stop the reciprocal "city people are better" nonsense.  Or, if we must continue it, then can we at least be more honest about it--can Stewart admit that, actually, he doesn't give a damn about the Second Amendment and, actually, cities do have more race-based problems than small towns do (I cannot tell that there is any shortage of antipathy toward "illegals" in major urban centers, either)?  Then small-town people will admit that, actually, they don't care that the 0.5% of the American population that practices Islam is offended by Christmas because none of those people live in our town, that's for sure.   

On an only semi-related note:  Did anyone see the election issue of the New York Review of Books?  I read most of the election-related essays and was astonished to find that the two most commonly cited reasons why I must vote for Obama are the makeup of the Supreme Court and what electing him will do for us in the court of international opinion.  The Supreme Court argument is a good reason to vote for a Democrat, I suppose, though it says nothing about Obama himself.  I've already given an indication of what role I think international opinion should have in our election; I think that most of the international opinions are self-serving and ask more of America in terms of maintaining world leadership and so forth than many Americans would care to be responsible for.  In fact, since I'm being argumentative tonight (which is so unusual for me, I know), I'd go so far as to say that some Europeans want us to elect a black president so that they can be seen to support a black leader (of a major industrialized nation) without actually having to elect one themselves.  Unfair?  Possibly, but I continue to be startled occasionally at statements from Europe that are apparently acceptable there but would be considered deeply offensive and racist here.  Democrats, of course, are already prepared in case Obama loses to blame it entirely on racism, because there is no other reason why any person would not support his policies. 

And, sorry, but I'm also sniggering that Europe is already trying to backpedal on their vaunted commitments to lower greenhouse gas emissions.  I guess when the going gets tough, the tough want more coal.  I especially sniggered, completely vindictively, at how the IHT article about it suggested that, if America elects Obama while the EU is backpedaling on this issue, the Americans will once again be poised to take a role of international leadership on this issue where Europe has been flaunting its moral superiority for years.  Ha.  Take that, Euro-sissies!  We're going to kick your ass with wind power.

And, finally, thanks to Congress for bailing out AIG so they could go to England and shoot partridge.  I feel so much better now knowing that you have taken care of the problem for us.  Bastards all around.  Hey, if they shot the partridge from the pear tree, does that mean we don't get Christmas this year?

It was really fun to watch Bill Maher on the Daily Show tonight.  Boy.  So, after the shill for Obama, he makes the claim (and I'm simplifying it just a bit, not much) that anyone who does not agree with the goal of turning America into a European country is a "stupid redneck."  Ah, such an intellectual.  Such a liberal, open-minded, progressive view of things.  Yes, of course, if someone doesn't agree with you, the problem is their intelligence!  How could I not have seen it!

And, really, how could you not see that there could be other reasons for not wanting to turn America into a European country.  I think the main one is the very stupid redneck reason that we're not a European nation.  I realize you didn't mean literally--or, well, maybe you did.  Who knows?  But, see, despite the fact that we have some shared cultural history and certainly the whole Judeo-Christian tradition going on, America has diverged from Europe.  Our histories are not the same, our cultures are no longer the same, and while I realize that you find the American culture inferior to the European one, some of us do not.  America has problems aplenty; nobody is denying that.  But the Europe-worship from liberals seems a bit stupid to me.  I don't want to bash Europe here; that isn't the point.  The point is that Europe is Europe, and it's OK for us to not be Europe.  Or Canada.  Or anyone else.  How has it come to be standard liberal doctrine that America has no worthwhile culture of its own but should just mold itself into the shape of a different country altogether?  How has it come to be accepted that European culture is inherently good and worth emulating (well, admittedly this isn't entirely new; America has intermittently felt this inferiority complex, especially in the art world)?  I look for the evidence of this, and people toss around words like "sophisticated" but what is the underlying basis for this?  I can't see that there is a valid one. 

Slate actually had a decent essay (shocking, I know) about the split in American culture related to American Protestantism between those who believe the path to heaven is through personal responsbility and those who believe it is through reforming the public sphere.  I somehow doubt that it's going to change most people's minds that those who believe differently are "stupid" but I think it's worth recognizing that both sides have some validity.  It also points up just how deeply religion influences our society; I think when the effect runs this deep, to the very core of our ethics, we're not talking about something we can just give up and walk away from.  Europe went through different religious splits and fights and came out the other side differently.  We can't just become Europe, not when this history is so basic to American culture.

Bah.   

I am also finding it ridiculous that many of the same people who cursed Congress for not listening to its constituents by going ahead with the invasion of Iraq despite broad (though by no means unanimous) opposition are now cursing Congress for "worrying about their chances at reelection" instead of passing the bailout bill.  Excuse me if I'm wrong, but isn't the fact that they are "worrying about their chances at reelection" indicative that they are doing what they believe their constituents want?  Because their concern would be that passing the bailout bill would anger their voters, presumably because their voters do not want to see this thing passed.  I realize this does not excuse the fact that they normally do not listen to the constituents, but you can't be very serious about demanding that Congress listen to the demands of the public when you agree with those demands and then ignore the demands of the public when you do not agree with the public's wishes.  Of course, many of the same people doing this right now also think that anyone who does not agree with them are stupid rednecks.  So, I guess Congress is only supposed to listen to the demands of its smart constituents.  I'm sure they will be able to tell who you are by the fact that you, what?, don't have a car up on blocks in your front yard or something. 

Meh.  Finger-pointing sure is fun and productive, right? 

I do think more people should come around to my perspective that a little hard times would be good for many people in this country.  I can't articulate this coherently yet, but I think very many people in this country have really no idea how basically good they have it.  It isn't just that we live in a country where things like indoor plumbing and safe drinking water is constantly available from your tap.  It isn't just that we have come so far towards eliminating diseases that were responsible for most infant mortality that people now think it's OK to not vaccinate their kids--vaccinations that people in many countries would be grateful for because they can remember what damage diseases like pertussis and polio do, a lot of people in this country just grouse about them.  It isn't, either, that we have huge tracts of land preserved for public use or that things like central heating are basically available to everyone (not the case in Japan--you have not really learned to live with cold until you go through a winter in a Japanese house, coughing up your black lung crap from the kerosene heater constantly at your side, a heater that fails to really make the room warm anyway).  There is also the assumption of easy credit and material consumption.  We don't just want a fancy toaster--no!  We have a right! to a fancy toaster!  This is the unpopular view, I know, but I just think that maybe if we had to go through life for a while with credit not being so easy and cheap and we had to learn to live without the biggest satellite TV package or, for that matter, the biggest TV, maybe it would be good for us.  Maybe people would learn to live with less and appreciate the things they already have.  Maybe if the TV breaks and they can't afford to replace it, maybe they'll spend that time doing something that is ultimately more satisfying and productive.  All things are possible when this kind of shit goes down.  Maybe if people took some time to appreciate the things that Wall Street can't ruin, maybe people would be happier.  It isn't unheard of, you know, people being happy with less.  It can happen, even in America, a country that used to glorify thrift and making do.  It seems all you hear anymore is people bitching.  I'm a cheeseball, I know, for ending every day with a private acknowledgement that I'm, for lack of a better and nonreligious term, blessed.  My life is rich, without much money.  Recognizing that means I feel even less need to spend money to make my life feel full.  We conserve, we reuse and repurpose, we make things do, and still we are happy and we feel blessed.  I think the people of our fair nation, if they let themselves, might find that it feels pretty good.  Not in a smug way, just in a good, Lake Wobegone kind of way. 

I need to get a few things off my chest, without going into whole big long spiels about any of them.

1.  I'm sick of hearing people under the guise of environmentalism claim that no one "needs" to have children or "needs" to have more than one or two children.  There are a lot of things wrong with this, but the most glaring is that we do and own a lot of shit that we don't "need."  Ninety percent of people who own and use a cell phone have no actual need for it, yet they expend great deals of energy charging them and replacing them when new, cooler models come out.  We don't "need" golf courses, yet we expend great amounts of water and energy maintaining them, including in the Sonoran desert.  We don't "need" clothes dryers, or at least most of us do not.  We don't "need" makeup or beauty salons or 10 pairs of shoes.  We have all those things, none of them contribute measurably to the health and well-being of society, yet we have them and more.  So, fuck off about whether or not we "need" children, eh.

2.  Bourdain, you fucker.  I used to like you, but your hypocritical anti-hunting stance is getting to be too much.  On the one hand, you eat meat, which means you have no principled anti-killing belief.  You also regularly chide vegetarians, vegans, raw foodies, and other people for being ungracious and elitist as regards other cultures and their culinary heritages.  I believe you gave it to Woody Harrelson pretty good for refusing a meal in Thailand, right?  So, you support the killing of animals for food and respect for cultural heritage as it appears at the dinner table.  Great.  But then you think hunting is immoral?  Um.  It's OK to depend on the death of animals for sustenance, as long as the blood is literally on someone else's hands, is that it?  Is hunting acceptable to you when it's done by the Bushmen of the Kalahari but not when it's done by an American, because you have some notion that the Bushmen need to hunt but Americans don't, since we can get nice, sanitized and irradiated, shrink-wrapped shit at the grocery store 24/7?  Is that your thinking?  You don't think that maybe for some Americans, the inhumanely raised, antibiotic laced freakshow meat that we could get at the supermarket is unacceptable?  You don't think maybe hunting is part of the cultural heritage of some Americans (distantly, it is the cultural heritage of nearly every people on earth; more distantly, it is everyone's cultural heritage, but for some of us, the ties to that culture still exist, yes, even in fucking America) and therefore is as worthy of respect as Thai food?  What the fuck are you thinking?  I can understand when vegans and vegetarians are anti-hunting because, although I disagree with them, they have a consistent and principled stand against the use of animals for food.  But not this, Bourdain.  No, this I cannot abide.

3.  Dude, no.  For one thing, this whole "Europeans are so much more evolved than Americans are..." shit is getting old.  YOU think Europeans are "more evolved" because whatever it is that they do is what you want to do, but that does not provide anything substantial.  So, Europeans are more tolerant of adultery?  Why is that morally superior to not tolerating adultery?  I think if you really took a hard look at some of what you're talking about, you would find that actually a lot of women in cultures that "tolerate" cheating are not that happy about it; they just tolerate it, no more.  I think you would also find that more Americans tolerate it than you currently think. 

Also, just because you have a poorly controlled desire to sleep around on your wife, that does not itself invalidate the principles of monogamous marriage.  That men, overall, have a more polyamorous libido than women has become a sort of stock reason why men should be forgiven their inability or unwillingness to remain faithful.  However, most men do, in fact, remain faithful, as do most women.  Most marriages do not end in divorce, and most married people would prefer to maintain their marriage even at the cost of unfettered sex.  In other words, while there may well be problems with monogamy and marriage, in this case, the problem is YOU, not the system.

4.  I have also become very tired of people talking about marriage, either hetero or homo, as being primarily about "love."  Love is nice, of course.  Who doesn't like love?  But the government doesn't give you tax breaks because you're in love.  The reason we sanction marriage--not just America, but human societies in general, across time and space, although certainly the forms marriage takes are not uniform across cultures and history--has nothing to do with being in love.  The way we think about the love aspect of marriage is new-ish and culturally bound.  The reasons human societies have usually sanctioned some type of marriage (and not others) is because of the good those relationships are thought to bring to society.  Marriage exists because more than one person sharing a single household conserves resources.  It exists because a stable two- or multiple-parent home is safer, more economically secure and viable, and more emotionally secure for the raising of children.  It exists because of the very human emotion of jealousy.  It is notable in the piece mentioned in #3, when his wife finally says, "OK, we'll have an open marriage.  And I will be spending the night elsewhere on Wednesday," he's all "nooooo!."  (The general distaste for adultery and polyamory also probably stems from the fact that, let's face it, even men who think they are only after casual sex sometimes end up getting emotionally attached to the sex partner, and those emotions can destabilize the marriage and home.)  Listen, it's fine, it's great, it's wonderful that you love your spouse, but if you don't couple with a sense of duty and commitment, it's not worth much.  We sanction marriage as a matter of public policy because of the duty and commitment part.  This is why I think liberals' standard arguments about gay marriage are stupid and less than compelling.  Conservatives are not won over by the appeal to love.  On the other hand, there is no compelling evidence that TEH GAYZ are unsuitable as parents or more likely to dissolve their marriages than heterosexuals (the evidence currently suggests that gay marriages are more likely to last than straight ones, but my suspicion is that this is because of the small sample pool; I am going to guess that once gay marriage is legal in all 54 states and gays start marrying at similar rates as heterosexuals and start making the fool mistakes heteros make by marrying at 19 or whatever, the divorce rates will be similar).  Since homosexual marriage can provide a stable and secure home for children, can conserve resources by joining two people under one roof, and so forth, I see no compelling reason to limit it.  I just want to make it clear to homos and heteros alike:  No one cares about the love part.  That's between you and the spouse, and not really a matter for the government to intervene in.

5.  Yes, 54 states.  I am ready for Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa and the Virgin Islands to become states.  I don't understand the current arrangement.  It vexes me.  So, make them states.

6.  The humidity in our house was 2% today.  That's not a typo.  I am shriveling up like a raising as I write this.  What the fucking fuck, weather?  Weather:  You are on notice.

7.  John--I would gladly trade one of my unnecessary organs to have had the pleasure of speaking with you today.  Would you prefer a spleen or an appendix?  As I understand you no longer have an appendix of your own, perhaps the appendix?  Goddamn.  I am so sorry I missed your call.

That is all.  Thanks for listening.  Good night.

I need to vent for a moment.

See, my son is 2.  Well, 2-and-a-half.  Lately he has taken to wearing hair ornaments, necklaces, and the occasional bit of lip gloss.  I think this is a perfectly normal phase, and he actually looks pretty good with a little barrette in his hair.

And I don't want anyone else asking me if this doesn't worry me that maybe my son is going to be homosexual.

First and foremost, I sincerely doubt that there is any connection between wearing hair ornaments in your toddler years and homosexuality.  I find the fact that some people do believe there is a connection utterly confounding.  I know a whole covey of grown men who wear strange hair ornaments, necklaces, earrings--and even a few who paint their nails sometimes--and most of them are a) healthy and b) heterosexual (and also kind of hot). 

Second, if he's gay, he's gay.  I cannot see that banning him from wearing necklaces and lip gloss is going to change that.

Third, if he is homosexual, I DON'T FUCKING CARE. 

That's not quite true.  I guess I do care.  I care that he would trust us, his parents and grandparents, enough to tell us even if he's not ready to come out to the rest of the world.  I care in that I would hope he not be the subject of discrimination and harassment because of whom he wants to sleep with, and I would care about helping him get through it all in whatever ways I could. 

But, otherwise, I don't care.  He's my son.  I care that he is happy.  I care that he is healthy.  I care that he feels loved.  I care that he challenges himself and cares about the world around him.  I care that he remain curious and imaginative.

I also care that, whatever his sexual orientation, he learns the value of a well-placed condom.

I don't care if he's a homosexual.  I don't care if he wears lip gloss.  If I banned him from doing those things and lectured him about how men don't do those things and he's going to be a sissyboy if he keeps painting his lips, I'm pretty sure he would stop trusting me, and I would much rather that he trusts me (and his father and grandparents, none of whom would be upset if he's gay) than that he fits your idea of what men are supposed to do.  Fuck you and your gender roles. 

Also, he's 2. 

So, yeah, I know I've hit this topic before.  But over on Jezebel, there has been a raging and entirely tiresome discussion about the so-called "Asian fetish" (in this case, apparently, the usage is being solely restricted to white guys who fetishize Asian women).  The comments are tiring me because unquestioned, implicit assumptions are being thrown around like candy at a parade, and also, importantly, there is a general failure to make a distinction between white guys who actually fetishize Asian women and those who just happen to have one (or even more) Asian girlfriends or just happen to live and teach in an Asian nation.  Not all guys who ever date a Japanese chick is doing it because he thinks she will totally be just like the girls in the tentacle rape comics. 

Anyway, so anytime a topic that remotely touches on racism comes up, there is a segment of the Jezzie commenter squad who goes apeshit about institutionalized racism and white privilege.  I don't think they have fully recovered from their grad school lit seminars.  One of them was kind enough recently to give an answer (finally!) as to what this "white privilege" is supposed to be. 

She says that "as white people in the US, we benefit from white privilege whether we personally discriminate or not."  And I'm thinking, "Hmm, I'm white, or mostly white, and so...when?  When do these benefits come to me?"

She says that the media display more images of white people and more types of white people than people of any other race.  My first response to that is, ummmm, maybe because whites are the majority?  And by quite a long shot, apparently, if you look at the racial makeup of the US as a whole.  My second response is so fucking what?  I have never felt that any of the white people portrayed on TV or in movies have anything at all to do with me personally, except possibly the cast of Roseanne.  Those were getting close to my kind of people.  Now, this is a class issue we're talking about and also a geographic one--the white people portrayed in the media tend to be coastal types (even those who allegedly live inland still seem to be written by coastal types) and overwhelmingly affluent.  So, who cares that their skin is similar to mine--I have nothing in common and no aspiration to have anything in common with those characters.

She says that our political leaders are also overwhelmingly white, and at the national level they certainly are and have always been.  It is a bit silly to point out that they always have been since women and non-white people have only had the vote for the latter portion of the nation's history, so, duh, they didn't hold office when they couldn't vote.  But whatever.  The more salient point is that, again, due to the class issues and geographic issues, our politicians have nothing in common with me or anyone I know either.  Not true, I suppose.  Bill Clinton received oral sex in his office, and I know other men (not all of whom are white) who have done so as well.  And Jimmy Carter was a farmer, and my people are agricultural as well, so I guess there's that.  But what exactly does the color of Ronald Reagan's skin have to do with anything?  I have always been one of the poor people he fucked over so badly, so I really can't see how his pallor privileged me.  I'd like to pull some voodoo economics on his grave, man.

She says teachers assume that we'll be "perform well and go to college."  Yeah, well, maybe some places, but not where I came from.  My first high school was approximately half-chicano and half-not-chicano.  It was a really small town in the middle of the forest in the ass-end of New Mexico.  I'm not sure anyone assumed we'd perform well or go to college.  When I went to the bigger high school my senior year, a pretty high-achieving high school as far as I could tell, it was assumed that anyone who wasn't in that loser group who always ate lunch on their pickup truck tailgates would go to college, regardless of color or creed.  Because not going to college = heating your lunch up on your idling truck engine for the rest of your life in the thinking of the penny loafer wearing, Benetton-ad yips at my second high school.

Anyway, it is probably true in some high schools, but maybe it's also because whites are more likely to go to college.  For one thing, they are more likely to have the family support for doing so.  For another thing, they are more likely to have a tradition in their families and/or great pressure from their families to do so.  Or, wait, let's back up, because we're not talking about all minorities anymore, although we were in the media and politics points, right?  Here, we're only talking about blacks and possibly Hispanics, but mainly blacks.  I mean, seriously, I have never heard anyone, anywhere suggest that Asians are being channeled out of the college-prep track.  If anything, that bias is quite opposite.  See an Asian around?  Automatically assume that he/she will both want to become and be capable of becoming a doctor, engineer, computer programmer, etc.  Everyone knows that Asians are both smarter than whites and have a better work ethic.  Also, I hear they like tentacle rape.

"White is thought of as the default race."  We whites have the great luxury of being the default.  We are not "other."  My first reaction to this is, again, so fucking what?  What great benefit is this?  But then, upon reflection, I think it's actually wrong.  These days we are the great other.  Look on a census form and you've got every possible racial and ethnic identification down there:  "Hawaiian or Pacific Islander," "Asian," "Hispanic," etc.  And then you've got "white."  We're the default, I guess, in that if you're not anything else, then you're white.  But that makes us the other.  You can be one of those specific things or you can be "None of the above" essentially.  And what is that if not alterity?  The default category is "other."  Further, in every grad lit seminar in the land, we are the ones whose voices do not deserve distinction.  It is true, absolutely, that English programs still feature more white writers than "other" writers, but it is also true that every fucking lit major in the country can tell you in pseudo-Derridean jargon how white people are a great lumpen mass, speaking with one hegemonic voice, while every writer of color (and especially ones from former colonies) has an individual, distinct voice that deserves respect, no matter how shitty their writing.  Sorry, I know.  Colored people and women are never shitty writers, I know.  I took enough lit classes to hang my head in shame at my opinion that The Awakening is a stupid novel and that woman in it is really and truly not oppressed.

Also, it seems like a mild contradiction to say that we gain benefit and privilege by skin-color association with people in power and also that we gain benefit and privilege from not even thinking about our skin color and seeing ourselves as a unified race.  If it's going to make a difference to me that all these lily-white fuckwads are running big corporations then I need to identify with them in some way, but the combination of class differences, my contrarian belief that "white" does not constitute a homogenous race, and my belief that the political and corporate worlds are immoral and counter to everything that I aspire to be and do.  Also, I grew up real fucking poor, so economic class means more to me than skin color, in case you hadn't noticed.

Finally, two things:  First, she asserts that we are not judged as a race when one of us does something illegal or immoral.  While it is generally true now that white people are not assumed to be always committing crimes just because most of us are, this was not always true of some types of whites (Italians were often thought to be outrageous criminals back in the day, and some people still feel that way about Russians).  And of course, it seems silly to point this out but, in fact, there are many people who blame all whites for, as they say, the sins of our fathers.  It doesn't matter that you've never held slaves, never colonized a dark land--you're still white, so it's guilt by association.  I don't know.  I don't think that's the approved thinking, but whatever.

And then she says whites have the definite advantage in the justice system, and to that I can only say: WORD.

OK, OK, people. I'm working for pay again--soon, I will be working for pay full time and still taking care of my son full time!  I don't know how I'm going to do this and still sleep, either, but...it has to be done.  So, my Voxing may be sporadic--I'll do my best, but if I fail to comment on your posts, rest assured, I still love you (if I ever loved you, and you all know who you are, I hope).

Anyway, I have some male friends who like to label themselves "feminists."  That's fine with me--the more people we have on board with the notion that women are, like, people, the merrier.  But sometimes it startles me how incapable they are of understanding what it's like to be a woman. 

Oh, it's not the periods, the pregnancy, the childbirth.  I mean, those are all important parts of womanhood for most women, but that's not really the part I'm talking about.  Let me tell you a somewhat embarassing story to illustrate.

Back in my senior year of high school, my English teacher had the chairs arranged so that there were two halves of the room with an aisle in between, and the students on each half faced each other, rather than facing the teacher.  It happened that my best friend Linda and I (a drama fag and a debate nerd, respectively--not cool, popular types at all, but also not outcasts or ugly girls) sat directly opposite this hottie named Bret.  Have I told you guys about this before?  Anyway, Bret was handsome and popular but still kind of smart and nice--an all-around good guy, really.  He also had a predilection for wearing those damn Hypercolor T-shirts (for those of you too young to remember, they were T-shirts that changed colors when the wearer was hot or exposed to heat, so you could make cool handprints on your friends' shirts and stuff).

In that class, among other senior-English sorts of literature, we read The Handmaid's Tale.  It's a fantastic book, and this teacher really asked us good questions about it and got everyone to thinking about gender roles and all that crap.  Now, Linda and I had joked about Bret and his Hypercolor shirts for a while, but the line was crossed when our teacher asked the class, "Well, how would you feel about it if men were the sex slaves?"  The boys could hardly even take it seriously, really.  Linda, god love her, piped up with, "I wouldn't mind at all, as long as I could have Bret."

The teacher laughed hysterically.  I think she had noticed the Hypercolor, too.  The whole class laughed, except for Bret, who was, unfortunately, wearing a Hypercolor shirt right at that time, a shirt that turned hot pink to match his flustered, hot pink face.  Linda and I winked at him, in unison.

After that, the sexual harassment of Bret never stopped.  The teacher never stopped us.  We made loud comments about his clothes.  We wondered aloud about his virginity or lack thereof.  We openly debated the likelihood of his being good in bed.  We winked.  We made slightly lewd gestures.  We touched him inappropriately.  He did eventually get the idea and stop wearing those damn T-shirts, but it didn't really help. 

The poor guy.  You could see it got to him.  He had no idea what he had done to provoke this, and honestly, he hadn't done anything except sit directly across from us.  His friends teased him.  Everyone, including the teacher, laughed at him and the teasing. 

At the end of the school year, we actually did sort of apologize, and Bret was man enough to accept our apology.  We also pointed out that girls kind of get this shit all the time.

I dunno.  Maybe all girls don't get personally harassed, although I suspect it happens to most of us.  It doesn't really have to.  The jokes, the open discussion of our bodies, the gestures, the inappropriate touching--none of these things are welcome, but they're just part of the deal.  Every single day, from the time they are born, girls are seeing women posed in sexually suggestive positions, naked, vulnerable, used to sell anything and everything.  Breasts are everywhere--so everywhere as to suggest that they are public property when, in fact, they are not.  American Apparel puts up billboards showing faceless chicks wearing nothing but tights, bent over, with their crotches thrust in every passerby's face.  Show your thong, show some ass cleavage, wear your clothes shorter, tighter, blah blah blah.

It doesn't end there.  It gets more invasive--you need to remove every hair on your body (except your head, of course).  You don't look your best without makeup.  Everyone can be perfected with plastic surgery or Botox or collagen injections or...hell, now plastic surgeons are offering package deals so you can perfect yourself all at once.  I especially love the ladies who are getting toes removed so they can fit in Manolo Blahnik shoes.  Because, yeah, that's reasonable.

So, no, fellas--even my most intelligent and beloved male friends--you have no idea.  You have no idea at all what it's like to have your body be so public.  Try to imagine walking down the street and seeing ad after ad showing you how you could look better, be better, have less unwanted hair, be more pleasing in general to the female eye.  I realize these days you guys do get the erectile dysfunction ads (which show no penises at all, which is such a shame!  nothing I love more than a flaccid penis!) and of course the spam folders FULL of penis enlargement ads (but, hey, we get those, too, and sadly there are no before and after pics in those emails either).  Try to imagine if every freaking movie you saw felt obligated to offer up young hunky guys, naked, sometimes for no reason whatsoever except to sell tickets.  Try to imagine if you were Bret.

Every guy I try to paint this picture for says, "Oh, no big deal," but that's only because they can't really imagine.  You think it'd be so great to have your dick turned into a billboard?  Let's try it.  I'll gladly come to wherever you live and sexually harass you for a while like I did to poor old Bret and see if it doesn't start to grate on your nerves, especially after I start demanding you get your groin waxed.

Two more small anecdotes:  When Pulp Fiction came out, men had very strong negative reactions to the all-male rape scene...you know, with "The Gimp."  The Gimp was some kind of disturbing, but the actual rape scene was pretty mild considering the frequency, intensity, and (sometimes) documentary-style veracity of rape scenes in movies where the victim is a woman.  I mean, hell, we have to sit through that horror show pretty often, thanks.  You guys get one guy-rape scene and freak the hell out.  Shutup already.  Also, a few weeks ago, I was reading some blog (maybe One D at a Time) that had a forum of female sex bloggers rating and commenting on penises--sent in (er, pictures of penises sent in...not the penises themselves, which would be really creepy) by male readers, apparently.  I happened to be chatting with a male friend at the time, and I linked him to it because the writing was truly hilarious.  He couldn't even read it.  I suppose it was the pictures, like it would make him gay or something to look at pictures of other guys' dicks and consider their size, shape, heft, erecticity, and so forth.   Erecticity?  Erectitude?  I think we need both of those words to convey specific information about tumescence, because wtf?  We should, as a nation, talk a lot more about penises and their erectitude.

Also, there are fellas who like to tell me that because I shave my underarms (and legs, etc) and have come to prefer them shaved, that must indicate that I'm doing this without society's influence, entirely of my own imagination and free will.  This is the biggest load of horseshit I've ever heard.  If I lived in a place where no one cared if women have hair on their legs, I seriously doubt it would have occurred to me spontaneously to take a razor to them.  Indeed, back in sixth grade, when I scarcely had hair anywhere except my head--and what I had was baby soft and white-blond--all the other girls started shaving their underarms and legs.  Boys and girls alike then felt compelled to laugh at the nerds like me who hadn't started yet--we were so gross, dirty, etc.  *sigh*  So, I started rather against my better judgment.  Yeah, all that awesome free will.  Now, of course it feels better (and looks better, to my thoroughly indoctrinated eye) to keep them shaved--the hair gets coarser and the skin gets rougher once you've started, and you have to keep it up or risk having goat legs.  I know--I've tried it. 

I'm not a prude--far from it.  I like to rock the sexy lingerie.  I like a mini-kilt with fishnet stockings--stockings held up with a garter belt, mind you.  I'm not against women looking sexy or men enjoying it when we do (oh, my life would be so much less enjoyable were my husband immune to lacy underpants).  What I'm against, and what men don't seem to ever understand, is that it doesn't end.  Once we've made the female body public--a sales device, a topic of public discourse, an obligatory movie scene, the eternal hilarious joke because when aren't titties funny?--it's difficult to make your body private again and keep control over access to it, difficult to get away from the idea that you have to work at it to make yourself appealing to men.

Sorry, guys, I know you are all about girl power and all that, but I don't really think you get it.  I don't blame you--women are just as much to blame for this situation as men, or nearly so, but you also have no real way to understand it.  Feel free to argue with me.

There has been a running theme to my intense irritation and weariness with people lately.  It has come up obliquely in some of my posts (or rants, whatever) about feminism.  It again reared its head covertly in my disgust with that post about racism that I discussed earlier.  Now, it once again comes sneaking round the corner, only this time the proximal issue is religion and atheism. 

The silent beast that so fatigues me is this:  YOU (whoever you are) ARE NOT SUPERIOR TO ANYONE BASED ON THE COLOR OF YOUR SKIN, YOUR GENITALIA, THE COUNTRY YOU LIVE IN/WERE BORN IN, YOUR FAITH OR LACK THEREOF, YOUR SEXUAL ORIENTATION, OR THE LEVEL OF EDUCATION AND/OR WEALTH YOU HAVE OR HAVE NOT ATTAINED.  FULL MOTHERFUCKING STOP. 

Sorry to shout, but this really rankles.

I know a lot of you probably assume, and it's a fair assumption based on my constant ranting, that I think I am superior to a lot of other people.  But I don't.  I am better educated than most people.  I am far better read than the average person.  I am more intelligent than most people--indeed, if the various standardized tests and grades and all that are an indication, I am more intelligent than 99% of Americans.  I have other strengths, and I know them and use them. 

However, I will be the first to admit that I am lacking in other areas.  I am not forgiving.  I am not gentle or kind, and I lack empathy.  I am moody and temperamental.  I can be utterly asinine.  I know this.

The point is, of course, that this means that no matter how smart and well read I know myself to be, I also know that other people have strengths and goodness-es that I lack.  I admire people who are genuinely kind and forgiving.  I admire people with the spatial intelligence that I sorely lack.  I admire people who exhibit more control over their temper.  My husband is one such person, and I admire him greatly.  We are different, but we both see each other as equal.  EQUAL.

On the racism post I ranted about earlier, I was bothered deeply by the fact that she posited that the experience--both historical and contemporaneous--of "POCs" is more important than that of "whites" whom she indiscriminately lumps together.  This struck me as a simple reversal of the old paradigm, i.e., previously "whites" thought their stories mattered and those of POCs didn't, and that was a form of asserting their superiority.  It dehumanizes the other.  That a black woman would sanction such an assertion in reverse, i.e., sanction an attitude that one group deserves dehumanization, wearied me greatly. 

With feminism, it has long bothered me that there is a strain of vocal feminism that takes as its goal (mostly covertly--most of them would not say this outright, but then neither would the racist discussed above) the repositioning of women as superior with respect to men.  Interestingly, Doris Lessing just commented on this and was dissed by Broadsheet as being in line with the views of the rancid reactionary, Ann Coulter.  Doris Lessing as Ann Coulter...just...no. 

Anyway, there is evidence that this repositioning is happening in certain areas.  For one thing, men are being demonized as likely rapists and pederasts.  Police officers advise children to, if lost, find a woman to help them--not a man.  Nevermind that it is actually a tiny fraction of men who abuse children in any way.  Nevermind that child abuse (though not sexual abuse) happens as often at the hands of a woman as a man and that most children who are killed through abuse or neglect are killed by a woman.  No--kids, find a woman!  And fathers are reporting being subjected to questioning from the police for merely taking their daughters out for lunch.  Young boys are being punished for sexual harassment for touching girls in nearly any way--pinching and hugging are apparently sexual now among the kindergarten set, but only if the pincher or hugger is male.  Men who complain about this obviously want to return to a day when they had the legal right to beat and rape women.

Another strain of feminism asserts that working women (mothers or otherwise) are superior to women whose only work is taking care of their households and children.  But you've all heard me gripe about this enough, I think.

And then just yesterday, this came to my attention.  So, some "freethinkers" in Wisconsin gave a talk called "Religion Kills" and put up a billboard that had an anti-religious message.  That leads this Christian (oh, so Christian!) blogger to broadcast her ressentiment thusly: 

This freedom from religion group pompously struts around, asserting that christians all believe blindly and unscientifically, which is laughable, especially if you've ever debated or listened to a christian / athiest debate. They make a point to prey on human pride that drives us to reject conformity, they are full of charming sarcasm and wit and they are like the cool kid at the party - they exude confidence and intelligence, but inside they are just scared little boys (and girls) who desperately do not want anyone to find out that they can't look themselves in the eyes in the mirror.

This is the voice of a person who thinks she is superior to them because of her faith. (If you plow through the comments thread, you will later find her asserting that you cannot have any morality outside of the Judeo-Christian tradition, among other things).  True, there are atheists who feel superior to her because of her faith in Christ, but as with the racists and the feminists, NO GOOD comes of reversing the hierarchy. 

It's so classic, really.  Let's take a little refresher course in ressentiment. 

Ressentiment is a sense of resentment and hostility directed at that which one identifies as the cause of one's frustration, an assignation of blame for one's frustration. The sense of weakness or inferiority and perhaps jealousy in the face of the "cause" generates a rejecting/justifying value system, or morality, which attacks or denies the perceived source of one's frustration. The ego creates an enemy, to insulate itself from culpability.

I'd say asserting that atheists are by definition immoral (or possibly amoral--she isn't clear) and incapable of looking themselves in the mirror is a very classic case of ressentiment, and it masks a fear and also an inability to admit what the real fear is.  A person who knows herself to be strong has no need of ressentiment or this kind of deep hatred against a group.  It has always amazed me when Christians assert the profound strength and truth of their faith in one breath and then show great delectation in how nonbelievers will be punished in the Last Judgment in the next.  That is a revenge fantasy, and in some of the early American Christian sermons (Cotton Mather and that ilk), the excitement at imagining this revenge is palpable.  If your faith is strong and you honestly believe Christ is your savior, you ought have no special desire or need to hate others or delight in their damnation.

Anyway, the connecting thread here is a consuming need and desire not for equality but for a mere reversal of the traditional paradigm.  Being a person of color becomes superior to (in moral terms) being white.  Being female becomes superior to being male.  Being Christian becomes superior to being "freethinking."  (Actually this last one is exceptional because that already is the dominant paradigm in North American society...so...whence the ressentiment?) To me, that's just a different side of the same oppressive coin. 

In contrast to these positions that I find reprehensible, I am for equality.  Legally, there should be absolute equality, although this is often easier to postulate than to achieve (what does it mean for men and women to have equal reproductive rights, for example?).  In personal terms, I try to see each individual as an individual rather than thinking, "Oh, he's a (member of X group)."  I try to live by the ethical positions elaborated by Heidegger, Buber, Borgmann, and Charles Taylor with a healthy dose of Camus, Aristotle, and Nietzsche thrown in (incidentally, many of them didn't specifically write works of ethics--but I believe that ethical principles are derivable from the ontological frameworks, i.e., knowing our relationships with one another and the world implies an ethics.  Of course, I also believe ethics are implied by such diverse sources as the poetry of Rilke and contemplation of the night sky, so....I could be a little crazey).

But, you say, but!  You, GinBaby, are a known misanthropist!  Yes, this is true.  I dislike nearly all people and think that we probably are, in fact, a virus with shoes.  Mostly I dislike people because I find most of their little weaknesses and insecurities and petty competitiveness to be tiresome.  I don't mean weaknesses of the sort that, say, Gabriel Garcia Marquez characters have, which are charming, or the general sort in which we are not all equally good at all things.  By "weaknesses" here, I mean the incapacity or unwillingness to know oneself completely, to stand strong in the face of opposition, to question received wisdom and authority, to be free for rather than merely free from, to face uncomfortable truths.  These things--jealousy, ressentiment, envy, petty bickering, ego stroking--I just do not have the energy for--or rather I don't have the will to give energy to these things. 

We would be a better society--both nationally and globally--if we all were strong enough to give up our little prejudices and hatreds and insecurities because then we might stop feeling such a pressing need to treat other people like shit.

I apologize for the length of this post. But your brevity does not make you superior.  Wink. 

I've been pondering this for a while, wondering if I should bother responding to it.  So far I haven't been very satisfied with any of the responses I've seen, so I decided to go ahead--not that it matters a bit, I know, but just for my own satisfaction.

Some woman in Belgium, a mother of two!, wrote a book about why you shouldn't have kids.  Apparently it's raising some ruckus over in France, a nation that maintains a high birthrate.  I don't see why it has to raise quite so much fury, except that the French are somewhat excitable, but I also, obviously, don't agree with her that kids aren't worth having.  I thought I would take some of her "arguments" and just respond directly to them, instead of giving you my warm, fuzzy reasons why I'm glad I'm a mother.  The article I'm quoting from is here.

"Let's start at the beginning with my first reason for being anti-children: labour is torture."  Well, let's not kid ourselves--labor isn't fun.  It's uncomfortable and painful and somewhat humiliating, what with all the random people peeking and poking at your vagina whenever they want to.  For some women, especially those who do deliver vaginally and have tearing or other problems, it can be super painful, I'm aware.  For me, the labor pains were not the worst pain I have ever experienced (cluster headaches beat labor pains by a fucking mile, man), but I didn't deliver vaginally, so I don't know what that feels like.  I do know that many otherwise reasonable women (including the author) go on to do it more than once, so apparently it isn't quite so tortuous as to outweigh the desire for multiple children.  Judging by the fact that, say, survivors of actual torture in POW camps and so forth frequently never forget their pain and would never voluntarily subject themselves to it again, I think saying "labor is torture" is literally false and a bit overwrought.

"Get over these early hurdles and you hit the big one: how to keep your child amused and happy.  This will fast become one of your most hated jobs. The moment you give birth you can forget leisurely lie-ins, last-minute trips or a spontaneous roll in the hay with your partner. Instead, your weekends revolve around being woken at the crack of dawn to traipse around the zoo or watch minimum wage actors cavort in cartoon costumes at Disneyland; sitting through stupid kids' films and eating in "child friendly" restaurants. In my opinion this alone is reason enough not to have a child."  Taking it from the top:  In our house, we think that it's our job to show our son how to amuse himself.  I drag his toys out and let him play by himself while I read a book, for example.  Not all the time, of course--I do play with him, but I also think it's important that he realizes that mommy needs time to herself and that he is fully capable of entertaining himself.  And, perhaps surprisingly, he's getting good at doing so.  Mostly he builds Lego robots and hammers things.  As for the lie-ins, my husband and I take turns letting the other sleep in, which isn't as nice as sleeping in with your hot husband, but it's not unbearable, either.  My husband and I, defying the conventional wisdom, also continue to have spontaneous sex.  Occasionally it gets awkwardly interrupted, sure, but this is also not unbearable; in fact, we sometimes get a laugh out of it.  Especially when we're interrupted by my son yelling something like, "Papa, drive safe!" while we are having our spontaneous sex.  That's funny, man.  Anyway, as for the rest of that nonsense, those sound to me like choices you make about how to entertain your child.  We spend much more time hiking in the forest or playing in the garden than we do traipsing him around anywhere, but those are the things that we want to be doing, and he enjoys them as well.  In other words, lady, those are your problem, not a problem with having kids per se.

"I stayed for years in a job that bored me - as an economist - just so I could get out early to pick my children up. I worked all day, and then came home to shopping, cooking, cleaning and hours of homework, and all so my kids could treat me like a maid. It was so boring."  Essentially I think these amount to your problems again, lady.  Why did you let your kids treat you like a maid?  Does your male partner treat you that way, so that your children think it is acceptable?  And, more importantly, when you were a working childless person, did you not have to shop, cook, and clean?  Did you only learn to resent doing those things once you were doing them for someone else?  Sure, there is more cleaning to be done (and more cooking) once you have little demon spawn running around, but you still had to do it.  It's life.  It is the work that has to be done to get our dirty human selves through life.  I'm getting the idea, from this and from what you said about how difficult it is to entertain your children, that you yourself are a very boring person.  In my experience, only boring people get bored this much and have such excruciating difficulty playing with their children.  Admittedly, though, there is a bitter truth in that first sentence--women do often have a hard time finding a job that lets them have the family time they need and also a fulfilling career.  It's not a death sentence, though; it's more a call to be creative.  Women are finding all kinds of ways to handle it, from starting their own businesses to job sharing.  It's not easy, and we do need to structure it so that men can and do take the same time off for family matters, but it's not really a reason to avoid having children.  It's more a reason to work for societal change.  But, again, perhaps since you are a boring person, you cannot imagine either a more creative work situation or creative social solutions.  Get yourself an imagination, lady.

"I found the hardest thing to give up when I had my children was my personal freedom.  There is no time left to be you any more."  This is, of course, a common enough complaint from parents.  I would think that it gets better as your children grow up, but even now I'm the mother of a toddler, and I still have time for myself.  Not as much as I used to, and I can't blow all my money on handbags, beer, and trips to Taiwan, sure.  And that fails to convince me.  I was never under the impression that my complete irresponsibility (er, freedom) could or would last forever.  I still come down here and shiver in my basement and write and chat with friends and maintain a life.  I also, as noted above, let my son see that at times, mama has her own thing to do, and at those times he needs to scarper and let me do them, and he's pretty good about it now.  So, I'm still me.  Only I'm me who has a savings account, fewer cute handbags, and a toddler nipping at my be-sneakered heels.  But I hate this persistent myth that becoming a mom makes you no longer a person or no longer a woman--oh, now you're just someone's mom.  Becoming a mom does change you, sometimes in unpredictable ways, but it doesn't negate you (or, at least, it doesn't have to--I guess some moms do seem to lose themselves, but that's not a necessary condition of child-rearing). 

"Once you have children, there is no space for spontaneity any more. We tried to go to an art exhibition last weekend which we'd been looking forward to for ages, but we had to take the kids along and they hate art.  They whined so much that we gave up and left without seeing anything."  Huh.  Your kids sure sound like nasty little buggers.  Wonder where they get that from?  Perhaps your example of whining when you have to do something "boring" has rubbed off on them.  Perhaps you should have got a babysitter or something and gone without them.  Perhaps you should have just laid down the law, as was done in my family, told them to deal with it, and dragged them through the exhibit with you.  I don't know.  I can imagine a lot of solutions here, none of which involve not having kids at all.

"What hope is there of a fulfilling sex life when a woman is forced to turn into a fat, deformed animal decked out in sack-like dresses?"  Dude.  Maybe that happened to you, although you don't look fat.  Deformed?  Good heavens.  I sense some serious self-loathing here.  Sack-like dresses?  Not in my closet.  And, actually, our sex life is good. Better than good, but we don't need to go into a lot of details here.  I suppose it's just because I'm so preternaturally gorgeous, but still.  Again, this doesn't make a good argument against child-bearing; it only makes the case that you are ugly, have no libido or fashion sense, and a partner who is probably homosexual.

Then she starts talking about how kids are savages--I'm not going to quote this part, because it's long--and how these days you can't do anything to control them because smacking them around is socially frowned upon, and so you can do nothing to discourage their savagery.  Well, sure--everyone knows kids are savages.  There's a reason why the words 'feral,' 'uncouth,' and 'barbarian' are all in my son's vocabulary.  The idea is that you teach them how to not be savages.  The idea here is that they learn, both from your word and, ideally, your deed.  You actually can teach them this without smacking them around at all; my parents never smacked me, not even just to get my attention, and I am no longer a barbarian.  There are a lot of things besides not being able to hit your children lest someone call Child Protective Services that can cause your children to be spoiled, whiny brats.  Being a spoiled, whiny brat yourself is problem number one.  Being inconsistent with discipline, giving into all of their demands or alternately giving in and denying without any sense of reason or order to your decisions, or smacking them around without explaining why what they're doing is bad can all lead to these discipline problems--and obviously every kid has their own temperament, too.  I was a moody teenager, though not overly prone to bad behavior, and I know it caused my parents no end of frustration.  Somehow, they survived.

And the last bit is about how expensive they are.  They can be.  I find that a lot of the expenses that parents like her are bitching about, though, are not expenses that are inherent in raising a child.  Rather, they are expenses that the parents incur because of their lifestyle choices.  We don't haul our kid around to expensive activities; we don't live in a high-rent area.  We use cloth diapers and hang them out to dry.  We don't drive a fancy new SUV.  Some of this is of necessity.  When we decided that we believe children should be raised primarily by their parents and thus one of us would not work until the kids get into school, we made a decision to be poor.  Being poor means we have cut back on our expenses.  Yet, still, we manage to raise the child.  He is clothed and fed; he has toys.  He is, indeed, completely ignorant of our poverty.  This "kids are expensive" argument always seems silly to me because the poor of the world, and even the poor in developed nations, reproduce at higher rates than the rich.  If the poor can afford a kid, lady, then so could the rich.

Listen, I don't want to make it seem that I think every single person on earth needs to go out and start churning out babies.  Every person and every couple has to decide that for themselves.  It's a big commitment, and there are many unpleasant aspects to it.  You can't really have kids and do right by them and still live the life of a 20-year-old party girl.  And you will end up spending some of your money and time on things you do not especially like.  So, I can completely understand why some people decide not to have children, and I think that's great.

On the other hand, none of her arguments are really very persuasive.  These points she lists seem to apply mainly to her and her situation.  It's too late to convince me to forgo having children, of course, but her arguments don't even persuade me to forgo having a second child.  Apparently I'm getting something out of it if I want to put myself through all this again.