j a c k *

Nookie for Dummies...

Anti-feminist author Caitlin Flanagan made an ass of herself on The Colbert Report a few nights ago.  It's a strange show, but I have to wonder what compels conservatives to go along with his gentle hyperbole and plumb the genuine depths of their disingenuousness.  Do they really think they are selling their position because he provides a superficially supportive foil?  The interviews ultimately reveal the shallow thinking and rose-tinted naivete that underlies all of their popular dialectic.

She ripped into the idea of "date night," where some couples ditch the kids once in a while and go to dinner or a movie on their own.  Wives, Flanagan argued, should "put out" for the husbands without needing to be romanced.  Husbands are supposed to provide the income for the family and perhaps a few man skills like, say, opening jars and killing spiders, while wives are supposed to do the labor of keeping the home and raising the children and servicing the husband.  Feminists have upset this traditional (here defined as "virtuous") balance and caused women to demand more, satisfying themselves at the expense of their families.

But for her argument to work you have to believe that prior to feminism very few wives ever used sex, or the withholding of sex, as a tactic to get what they wanted in the relationship.  The notion is absurd on the face of it.  With all due respect to the iconic sitcom that dared to show middle class whites that they really were exactly as great as they thought they were, can we honestly believe that June never told Ward in so many words that if he wanted to cleaver any beaver tonight he had better get the garage cleaned out?  In the traditional (here defined as "WASP cultural norms between the end of WW-II and the sexual revolution of the sixties") courtship ritual, girls were explicitly told to withhold sex to coerce boys to marry them.  It was explained that they were like dairy cows and they shouldn't give away their milk without payment.  In diamonds.  Is it really plausible that all of these useful manipulation skills would be abandoned the day after the honeymoon?

More likely the reality is close to the exact opposite.  Far more marriages from this period began with the girl who puts out getting pregnant than with the boy succumbing to the girl who won't.  Once married, women with limited power in their own marriages have a greater incentive to use sex to balance the scales.  It doesn't require an explicit threat or refusal -- the bedroom is rife with opportunities for passive-aggressive behavior.  On the other hand, women with careers who feel themselves equal partners in their marriages are less likely to treat sex as a means to power or even just a solemn duty.  Instead they will work to avoid letting pettiness creep into their marriage bed and may take steps to insure that their sexual relationship with their husbands stays fresh.  Like date night, for example.  Some traditional (here defined as "old fashioned and stupid") men may fail to recognize their own self-interest in cultivating this behavior, but more enlightened husbands have come to understand that when mama's not happy, nobody's happy.  I'm sure even Ward knew that.

It may be that part of the reason Flanagan is willing to play Colbert's wacky game is that her whole bizarre thesis is a ploy.  It is designed, as many conservative arguments are, to appeal to that most downtrodden and forgotten minority: angry men.  Men get angry when things don't go their way, and conservatives like to find ways to direct that anger.  Not getting enough sex?  (And who ever does?)  Blame the feminists!  Those Democrat-whipping feminists have made your wives all uppity.  No wonder you feel frustrated.  If you want to get laid more, if you want wives who will cheerfully submit to your most depraved fantasies, get down with the conservative program and vote Republican so we can get those man-hating feminists out of policy-making.  All you have to believe is that prudes have more sex.

Fortunately no one would fall for anything so obviously absurd.  Would they?

- jack*

EDIT: Flanagan is the preferred spelling.  I got Flannigan from the Colbert website.

The Terrorist Within...

So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.

FDR, Inaugural Address

Terrorism is still a tactic, and still a possibility. But for me it’s now a bummer, not a fear. It’d suck. We should do whatever we can to make sure it doesn’t happen to us too much. But I’m not willing to give up anything I value to protect myself from it. What would be the point of that?

Adam Felber, How I won the War

Humorist and author Adam Felber lays it out very clearly. Terrorism works because we fear it -- that's what the "terror" part of the name means. It's your terror they are talking about. As long as you are terrified, terrorists are winning.

I have never been particularly afraid of terrorists. Not even on that surreal day in September whose number-name has become a bizarre mnemonic for our children to remember what to dial in case of calamity. Not that day, and certainly not now. I don't say that to sound brave -- I'm not. I fear many things, but I keep my fears bounded by reality-based plausibility. My vigilance should not be wasted on things that are astronomically unlikely to ever hurt me. So I fear drivers with cell phones more than airline passengers with turbans. I fear arsenic in our water and heavy metals in our fish more than plots to poison cities. I fear earthquakes and salmonella more than dirty bombs and anthrax. Above all I fear a government with the power to incarcerate me at will and a penchant for torture far more than any jihadist sleeper cell.

Certainly terrorist acts are terrible things, and I'm not saying that they won't happen. They almost undoubtedly will. But between the terrorist attacks of 4-19 1995, 4-20 1999, and that more recent, more iconic date, the number of people killed or injured in the last decade due to domestic terrorism is less than one tenth the number killed in traffic accidents every year. By any rational standard we should be 100 times more fearful of cars than we are of violent extremists of any stripe. But do we spend billions on a Department of Highway Security? Heed color-coded accident threat levels? Fight a Global War on Drunk Driving? No. 60 years ago traffic fatalities were considered by some an issue of national security, as seen in this 1944 short film, an attitude that we ridicule today. 1.4 deaths per 100 million vehicle miles is tragic and for those who lose their loved ones it's a terrible event, but it is a relatively low level of risk we implicitly accept every time we get behind the wheel.

People and societies tend to focus on large events, the big showy disasters that kill at lot of people at once. Here in California after every big earthquake people obsessively prepare and organize, tacking up bookcases and restocking their emergency supplies. After three or four years of ducking for cover every time a big truck rolls by, people forget and the fear subsides until the earth shifts again and kicks them back into a frenzy. If you see the cycle enough times it starts to get routine, and you begin to put the risk into perspective. This will happen with terrorism too. Despite the demagogues who want us afraid as a distraction so they can loot the commons of everything of value that isn't tied down, this paralytic fear cannot persist forever. We have to get some perspective and get on with our lives.

- jack*