One of the tricks that liberalism uses to create the illusion of equality is the dumbing down of institutions to a lower denominator, while preventing anyone from rising above it. For example, if you look at NASA, it was a boys's club in the 1960's. With just men in an organization, there was a lot more calculated risks. Astronaut John Glenn sat on a converted ballistic missile for his first space ride. This is streamlining at its best and it was very risky, but since there were only men, this was the way to speed the process and gain faster data since men would still volunteer. Picture NASA doing this today with all the busy body rules in place. As women were added, via quotas, since they can't function with the streamlined rules of the boys club, the workplace and mission were increasingly sanitized so the ladies could participate. This added a lot of extra cost, and slowed down the pace of the goals and removed all the risk. Going to the moon, from the first man in space, took a little over a decade; done by 1969. Mars was projected by the mid 1980's at that time, because they would have sent guys up there, with untested rockets, with many guys volunteering. But the change in the NASA workplace altered the environment so women could play safely, with Mars now a century away. You could never do what John Glenn and that mission crew did, in the current workplace rules at NASA. They only used a computer with the power of an iPad. There would be too much whining. The women need more luggage requiring extra work for the men to carry all the extra weight. The men travel light and will take risks and rely on ingenuity in the field. In modern times, equal is often based on molding to the needs of women, while preventing men from acting outside these rules, like they used to. The result is like a magic trick of equality. How about fewer laws and rules so the best can bring out the best?
Oh Hogshit, wellwisher, this is all you deserve as a response, so I will say it again hot steaming Hogshit!
(Something, Something, Burt Ward) I Wish This Was a Joke Oh ... my ... goodness. According to Family Research Council head Tony Perkins, the Isla Vista murders weren't caused so much by misogyny or the prevalence of guns, but rather due to Hollywood and Obamacare. “You know, it was interesting that some have blamed Hollywood for this macho, male encouragement of violence,” Perkins said during his radio show on Tuesday. “But nothing's being said about how we — Hollywood, I should say — has sexualized everything.” “It's almost like Obamacare,” Perkins continued. “You have a right to healthcare; you have a right to sexual gratification, almost.” (Isquith) I had let the Ludwig gaffe— When I was first listening to him, I was like, 'Oh, he's angry with women for rejecting him.' And then I started to have a different idea: Is this somebody who is trying to fight against his homosexual impulses? Was he angry with women because they were taking away men from him? (qtd. in Stern) —pass because, well, the marketplace handled it. I mean, come on, that was so stupid it was easy to take Mark Joseph Stern's headline advice, "Don't Waste Your Umbrage on Fox News' Homophobic Ramblings". But what that correspondence-school psychologist screwed up is that even in a context of ego dystonia—the germ of potential truth that perhaps suggested to her that a little bit of knowledge can't hurt—that's not the dystonic pathology. But what makes Robi Ludwig's idiocy stand out now is, well, Mr. Perkins. A question arises: How is this going to go? From the ramblings of Aleister Crowley: The Qabalists expanded this idea of Nothing, and got a second kind of Nothing which they called "Ain Soph"-"Without Limit". (This idea seems not unlike that of Space.) They then decided that in order to interpret this mere absence of any means of definition, it was necessary to postulate the Ain Soph Aur-"Limitless Light". By this they seem to have meant very much what the late Victorian men of science meant, or thought that they meant, by the Luminiferous Ether. (The Space-Time Continuum?) All this is evidently without form and void; these are abstract conditions, not positive ideas. The next step must be the idea of Position. One must formulate this thesis: If there is anything except Nothing, it must exist within this Boundless Light; within this Space; within this inconceivable Nothingness, which cannot exist as Nothing-ness, but has to be conceived of as a Nothingness composed of the annihilation of two imaginary opposites. Thus appears The Point, which has "neither parts nor magnitude, but only position". But position does not mean anything at all unless there is something else, some other position with which it can be compared. One has to describe it. The only way to do this is to have another Point, and that means that one must invent the number Two, making possible The Line. But this Line does not really mean very much, because there is yet no measure of length. The limit of knowledge at this stage is that there are two things, in order to be able to talk about them at all. But one cannot say that they are near each other, or that they are far apart; one can only say that they are distant. In order to discriminate between them at all, there must be a third thing. We must have another point. One must invent The Surface; one must invent The Triangle. In doing this, incidentally, appears the whole of Plane Geometry. One can now say, "A is nearer to B than A is to C". But, so far, there is no substance in any of these ideas. In fact there are no ideas at all) except the idea of distance and perhaps the idea of between-ness, and of Angular Measurement; so that plane Geometry, which now exists in theory, is after all completely inchoate and incoherent.. There has been no approach at all to the conception of a really existing thing. No more has been done than to niake definitions, all in a purely ideal and imaginary world. Now then comes The Abyss. One cannot go any further into the ideal. The next step must be the Actual―at least, an approach to the Actual. We have two points, more technically a line segment than a line; Therion does not specifically require that the points contain the line, but, rather, that the points define the line. The metaphor—it is, after all, metaphysics imbued with all manner of symbolism—suggests that the idea of an ego defense thesis remains inchoate. Wait a minute, what ego defense thesis? Well, we can take that one of two ways. That one exists is not yet demonstrable; it is not properly arguable. But we have a baseline definition. Two samples do not make a trend, especially in a marketplace so rich in idiocy as our political punditry. But what happens next? Arthur Chu, reflecting on the connection between rape culture and what happened in Isla Vista: The overall problem is one of a culture where instead of seeing women as, you know, people, protagonists of their own stories just like we are of ours, men are taught that women are things to “earn,” to “win.” That if we try hard enough and persist long enough, we'll get the girl in the end. Like life is a video game and women, like money and status, are just part of the reward we get for doing well. And there is a distillation of a supportable counterthesis. Or, rather, thesis ... to which the ego defense thesis is a response, conscious or otherwise. The end of this culture of male privilege will cause some women distress; generally speaking, those will be the ones who have found a comfortable niche within the structure. My daughter's maternal grandmother is a properly constricted, child-like, submissive wife in a particularly striking distillation of this privileged outlook. It's not the run of the mill abusive culture, but, rather, that she has been groomed throughout her entire lifetime to be subordinate. She is a devout Christian whose reading comprehension is such that she struggles through children's bibles; she never learned how to write a check; I'm pretty certain she doesn't know how to deposit one. To the other, how can we expect her to indict her own life experiences? Neurotically it is predictable that anyone, regardless of puerility or no, would struggle to indict their own lifetime as such. But therein lies the question; will this inchoate ego defense that will ripple the entire spectrum of sympathies toward masculine privilege in our society find a third point, to triangulate a relative position? Will it achieve solidity in the fourth, and motion in the fifth? And here we can abandon the metaphysics again, because the underlying question begins to resolve: Is this really how it's going to go? Is there really going to be a prominent defense of masculine privilege in the punditry? Hopefully, no. Still, though, the proper answer would appear to be, Stay tuned. ____________________ Notes: Isquith, Elias. "Tony Perkins tries to tie Elliot Rodger to Obamacare". Salon. May 29, 2014. Salon.com. May 31, 2014. http://www.salon.com/2014/05/29/tony_perkins_tries_to_tie_elliot_rodger_to_obamacare/ Stern, Mark Joseph. "Don't Waste Your Umbrage on Fox News' Homophobic Ramblings". Slate. May 27, 2014. Slate.com. May 31, 2014. http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/...lysis_of_elliot_rodgers_is_too_absurd_to.html Sieczkowski, Cavan. "Coldwell Banker Cuts Ties With Correspondent After 'Homosexual Impulses' Remark About Shooter". The Huffington Post. May 27, 2014. HuffingtonPost.com. May 31, 2014. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/27/coldwell-banker-homosexual-impulses_n_5398404.html Crowley, Aleister. The Book of Thoth. 1944. York Beach: Weiser, 1992. Chu, Arthur. "Your Princess Is in Another Castle: Misogyny, Entitlement, and Nerds". The Daily Beast. May 27, 2014. TheDailyBeast.com. May 31, 2014. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articl...er-castle-misogyny-entitlement-and-nerds.html
Jessie and the Single Ladies How to Win Votes and Impress the Electorate Okay, so, let's just go with the quote of the day: "Hillary Clinton needs the single ladies vote. I call them 'The Beyoncé Voters' — the single ladies. Obama won single ladies by 76% last time, and made up about a quarter of the electorate. They depend on government because they're not depending on their husbands. They need contraception, health care, and they love to talk about equal pay." ―Jessie Walters, FOX News The only question that occurs to me at this point is to wonder how FOX News thinks that sort of analytic acumen helps anyone. By the Fair and Balanced myth, what do we call this sort of reporting? By the FOX News as GOP Media Arm myth, one might wonder what positive voter effect we might expect of such arguments. ____________________ Notes: Shaw, Dorsey. "Fox News Host's Insane Definition Of 'Beyoncé Voters'". BuzzFeed. July 1, 2014. BuzzFeed.com. July 2, 2014. http://www.buzzfeed.com/dorsey/fox-news-hosts-insane-definition-of-beyonce-voters
Couldn't See That One Comin' (or Comin' Ag'in') You know ... Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! ... some things just aren't helpful. And the thing is that, you know, sure this could be some provocateur trying to discredit Republicans, but it's nothing different than, you know, the National Review outlook. Well, okay, it is a bit different. That is to say, Lowry never said no liberals could be "so sparkling" as to be "almost mesmerizing", or send "little starbursts through the screen and ricocheting around the living rooms of America, or make American men "[sit] up a little straighter on the couch and [say], 'Hey, I think she just winked at me'". I mean, the bit about Palin invoking battered wives isn't exactly unsettling. Perhaps a little crass, but compared to the right-wing rape talk of 2012, it ain't like I'm gonna complain. Meanwhile, there actually is a political issue that sad sack of groans is attached to, but it's a whole other subject having nothing to do with the reinforcement of conservative misogyny. ____________________ Notes: Dubiani, Nick. "Comment: Sarah is everything the average liberal isn't". msnbc. July 8, 2014. msnbc.com. July 8, 2014. http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/palin-demands-impeachment-exacerbating-gop-dilemma
We could get to Mars in ten years if we spent what we did on the Apollo program, which was Kennedy's vision. But with the conservative anti-science agenda we have now, I agree - it will not happen in your lifetime. Right. What is keeping us from going to Mars is all the women who take up all the space in the overhead racks. In reality women are (on average) smaller and take less space and less resources. Most of the men cut from the Mercury project were cut because they weren't as small as women. Had we had fewer anti-woman societal rules back then, we might have beaten the Russians into orbit.
What am I missing? Lipsticking, Sure, But Still ... Really? This is what happens when we put lipstick on piggy male chauvinism: In recent years, House Republican leaders have occasionally put Rep. Rep. Renee Ellmers (R-N.C.) out in front to talk about the GOP and women, often with awkward results. Last year, for example, the conservative North Carolinian argued that health insurers should be able to charge women more than men for comparable coverage. Several months later, Ellmers said the Affordable Care Act is evidence of a "war on women" for reasons that were largely incoherent. Late last week, however, a number of conservative women lawmakers, mostly members of the Republican Study Committee, got together to discuss GOP "messaging" when it comes to outreach to women voters. According to the Washington Examiner's Ashe Schow, Ellmers was one of the featured guests, though the congresswoman's remarks were hard to believe. "Men do tend to talk about things on a much higher level," Ellmers said. "Many of my male colleagues, when they go to the House floor, you know, they've got some pie chart or graph behind them and they're talking about trillions of dollars and how, you know, the debt is awful and, you know, we all agree with that." [...] As for connecting to women specifically, Ellmers drove it home with a line that, had there been liberals in the audience, would have made the news. "We need our male colleagues to understand that if you can bring it down to a woman's level and what everything that she is balancing in her life – that's the way to go," Ellmers said. (Benen) There is, however, an update: Update: The congresswoman's office issued a statement today, responding to the quote that appeared in the Washington Examiner's article: "This is absolutely ridiculous and the quote in question was taken completely out of context. I am a woman, and find it both offensive and sexist to take my words and redefine them to imply that women need to be addressed at a lower level. "The point of Friday's panel was to have an open conversation regarding how we communicate our values and principles to women across this country. Unfortunately, certain leftist writers have decided to take this important opportunity and engage in 'gotcha' journalism. There were so many positive ideas and solutions proposed during this discussion that sought to empower women. But instead of focusing on these positive steps, some writers are cherry-picking words and using predetermined agendas to attack Republicans and increase their readership. "It is a shame that such an important moment for addressing solutions and empowering women was used to attack the open exchange of ideas. In answering a question regarding how Republicans can improve their messaging, I took the opportunity to note that everyone comes from different backgrounds and experiences - and our messaging should do the same. "If there is a problem, who is perpetuating it? Was it a room full of women laughing, bonding and sharing solutions - or a liberal woman reporter attacking the event and taking it to a dark place that does not exist?" There are some aspects to consider. First, this sort of thing happens so often that it's almost like there is a Department of Pressbaiting somewhere in the RNC structure. That is, a politician says something, people respond with seemingly appropriate horror, and the politician then becomes the victim because everyone else is taking it out of context. Which ties to point two. Secondly, we might note that if we focus on the phrase "bring it down to a woman's level", one can attempt to sympathetically suggest that what Rep. Ellmers really meant was "boil it down". The problem with that is handing her an escape hatch she apparently hasn't thought of. Then again, I suppose she has done better than her colleague, Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC5) insofar as at least Rep. Ellmers stuck with women in her attack, instead of turning the subjet to how noble are the men. Third, the reason that answer doesn't work is that the statement doesn't exist in a vacuum. "Men do tend to talk about things on a much higher level", she explained. And, you know, pie charts and graphs, trillions of dollars and how, you know, the debt is awful. The superficiality is nearly a stereotype, and here I'm thinking cheerleader. To wit, what if the pie chart is, scientifically speaking, excrement? Fourth, when we look at the statistics, what we find is that these attempts to turn the issue back on liberals as misogynists is that the accusation only sticks if we presume the vast wealth of data from collected survey results over the course of years is exactly wrong. Thus, to answer Rep. Ellmers, yes, madam, you are the problem. The mansplanation for the Distinguished Lady from the Second Congressional District of the Great State of North Carolina: While our nation has an unbroken history of misogyny—there has never been a time about which we could say of this issue anything better than, "Well, at least we're not worse, like those people over there"—the thing about the idea of a War on Women is the acute ferocity with which these issues have been boiling over in recent years. Democratic supporters and sympathizers have a joke we got from Rachel Maddow. It has to do with your party's 2010 jobs platform, followed by the unprecedented explosion in legislation curtailing women's reproductive health rights and access. It's very simple: The Republican platform? Jobs, jobs, jobs ... jabortion. The rape sleight in HR3 of the 113th Congress didn't help. Nor did Mitt Romney's inability to merely comprehend the issues of the Blunt Act certainly didn't help. And, of course, need we recall every grueling detail of the insane gaffes and outright cruelties spoken by some of your male colleagues about sexual violence? The idea of a War on Women arises specifically because of the unabashed, ignorant hatred so many of your colleagues have shown, and so many of theirs are willing to defend. This is one where I need not be a woman in order to see the logic. Madam, please. Whatever your sincere convictions, please stop this gutter ballet and pandering. That is to say, even if you believe the underlying philosophical structure, it does no one any good, and feeds only the most toxic of ironies, to trot out a woman like a show horse, not to present a woman's argument, but rather to recite a misogynistic party line. Insulting women sounds no better from lipstick than a balding suit and tie; indeed, there are many who would assert it even more offensive insofar as they presume, perhaps mistakenly, that the fact of your two X chromosomes included some symapthy toward your sisters. With proper apologies to my sisters; look, it's not so much that somebody had to say it, but, more appropriately expressed, that I really needed to get this off my chest, for better or worse, for my own sake. ____________________ Notes: Benen, Steve. "Ellmers urges men to bring policy 'down to a woman’s level'". msnbc. July 15, 2014. msnbc.com. July 15, 2014. http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/ellmers-urges-men-bring-policy-down-womans-level
Just noticed this piece of thinly-veiled misogyny. So, what you're saying is that women are too dumb to compete with men on a level playing field, so quotas are necessary in an organisation like NASA. And, without giving any actual examples or sources, you claim that women add cost to the space programme. And, of course, you don't address the other, far more plausible, reasons that NASA has become more risk-averse when it comes to human spaceflight. Do the names Challenger and Columbia ring any bells? And then there's the issue of government funding of the human space programme, which hasn't decreased at all since the 1960s - or has it? No, clearly it's all the women's fault, because men are superior. Why don't you take your stoneage opinions about women somewhere else?
Blaming Women for ... Everything? Is there an ill facing these United States of America that isn't a woman's fault? In truth, it's hard to tell insofar as Dr. Ben Carson, a neurosurgeon rising to political prominence in conservative circles because of his skin color, has decided that racism in America, well, should be blamed on women: “Certainly in a lot of our inner cities, in particular the black inner cities, where 73 percent of the young people are born out of wedlock, the majority of them have no father figure in their life. Usually the father figure is where you learn how to respond to authority. So now you become a teenager, you're out there, you really have no idea how to respond to authority, you eventually run into the police or you run into somebody else in the neighborhood who also doesn't know how to respond but is badder than you are, and you get killed or you end up in the penal system," Carson said. “If the so-called leaders were really interested in the community, they would be trying to deal with that problem, because that's happening every single day," he added. When host Lauren Kitchen Stewards broke in to tie his remarks to young people's “sense of entitlement," Carson traced it all back to the women's liberation movement. “I think a lot of it really got started in the '60s with the 'me generation.' 'What's in it for me?' I hate to say it, but a lot of it had to do with the women's lib movement. You know, 'I've been taking care of my family, I've been doing that, what about me?' You know, it really should be about us," he said. (Blue ↱) Last year, Isaac Chotinen ↱ of The New Republic had his own run-in with ownership culture in the form of a couple of Pew studies followed by a Ross Douthat column: How to phrase this gently? The impulses behind social conservatism often stem from a desire to control the sex lives of women. (It is surely not a coincidence that nearly every conservative religious tradition places a disturbing amount of emphasis on women's sexuality.) And we know that the thought of one's precious daughter having sex is enough to cause nonsense from even liberal men like President Obama. (His joke about using drones against possible suitors was a true low.) So it's no surprise that having a girl around, one who MUST be protected, would spark conservative thinking. Given that this analysis doesn't exactly make conservatives look great, I would have expected Douthat to argue against it. Instead he essentially argues that too many men today (especially those in Brooklyn) are immature and sex-hungry, and that women have shorter windows in which to have children. He mentions the Adelle Waldman novel The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. and focuses on the main character, whose chief desire appears to be sex. Douthat holds the character up as just the type of man that worries parents, and thus leads to social conservatism. Douthat describes this parental worrying as being about a daughter's future rather than her sex life, but the emphasis is on the sex-hungry men. In short, we are back to sex, and the need to protect women from it. This certainly makes sense as an explanation of men fretting over their daughters' dates and moving rightward, but it isn't exactly worth bragging about. To the one, there is no need to phrase it gently. This kind of ownership culture is unsettling. To the other, Carson offers a new application to the proposition that a woman's humanity spells the end of society. Dr. Carson needs to learn there is more to societal prosperity than twin-X chromosomes, just as the Republican Party needs to learn there is more to human relations in general than just skin color. ____________________ Notes: Blue, Miranda. "Ben Carson: Women's Lib Movement Created 'Me Generation' That Helped Lead To Ferguson". Right Wing Watch. 1 December 2014. RightWingWatch.org. 2 December 2014. http://www.rightwingwatch.org/conte...nt-created-me-generation-helped-lead-ferguson Chotiner, Isaac. "The Creepy Reason That Having a Daughter Makes Men More Conservative". The New Republic. 16 December 2014. NewRepublic.com. 2 December 2014. http://www.newrepublic.com/article/...-more-conservative-voters-ross-douthat-column
Wow! I've read some pretty crazy things over the years, but this one really takes the cake. It doesn't just take the cake, it puts a candle on it. It's a funny kind of candle though. Blow it all you will, and it still reignites, time and time and time again. Almost every woman I've ever met wants sex, (un?)fortunately not all with me though. Protect women from sex? Protect a chef from food? Protect a jockey from horses? Women rule, and all the loony machismo is defensive posturing. (especially the protective crap)
I'll nitpick, but only because it helps make a point; other than that, I get what you're after. It's not the jockey who needs protection. That is to say, it would be easier to simply stop breeding and training horses for racing. In truth, I have never heard of a wild horse wandering into town and asking for bit, bridle, and undersized, brightly-dressed rider. It would be difficult, admittedly, to protect a chef from food, but it can be done by elevating fry cooks to the title of "chef" and closing all the fast food joints. By and large, though, I admit that when I envy a chef it is something about technique or product or setting. Maybe I want that knife, or even that kitchen. And, it's true, I might wish I had access to the meat at The Met ↱, or something, but I have never been outraged at the sight of a chef preparing food on the grounds of, "How dare you chop that parsnip! That parsnip is mine!" And quite frankly, I might describe a steak ordered rare as "overdone", but I sincerely doubt you'll hear me call it "slatternly", "slutty", or of "ill repute". And let us be honest, it isn't really about protecting women from sex. Rather, it's about protecting ourselves from our own self-obsession. At this point, yes, the inappropriate joke will make the point: What is the difference between a slut and a bitch? And if you can punch the donut on that one, we're ring around the rosebud to the loony machismo. I have said before that ownership and rape cultures are closely related, even intertwined. There is also a recent discussion in which a neighbor and I considered potential evolutionary influences over the rape phenomenon, including the idea of competition—it is not enough to simply have, but must be won. There are psychopathologies as well as potential neurological adaptations that would describe competition and loss therein as a tributary to revulsion, which would then be projected and sublimated in ego defense until we arrive at the idea of protecting women from sex. So let us simply put the creep on the crap, as such: "Protecting women from sex" is an excuse to establish a man's participation in a woman's sex life. And when we tie that back into the duties of parenthood, I don't know, I'm pretty sure I could find a way to make it sound even more creepy, but seriously ... er ... um ... right. It's just effin' creepy ↱. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! To cover his daughter: A father reaffirms his dominant role in his daughter's sex life. No, really. The one of the dude dancing with his twelve year-old is even weirder. At least for this one we can make (ahem!) "Massive Attack" jokes. But will he take the force of the (cough!) "blow"? Because, you see, if he doesn't dominate his daughter's sex life, a white cop is going to shoot an unarmed black man to death. Or, at least, that's what the good doctor tells us.
the inmates are indeed running the asylum with credentials no less ............ curiouser and curiouser ............. I have seen many instances of paternal insanity around the time that a daughter is approaching or becoming sexually active. Always a hoot.
As a woman, I can say that liberalism and feminism are the best things since sliced bread. These degenerate mindsets have infected many women, but fortunately I didn't swallow them garbage hook, line and sinker. As such, I am competing against women who are at a crippling disadvantage. For example, look at the women who are against 'fat privilege' and the portrayal of women in the media. While they are crying about body issues, I am in the gym working my ass off (literally), toning up and getting fit. As a result I'm fit and healthy. Endorphins rush through my body, and I'm quite attractive in comparison to the land whales I see everywhere, despite being a pretty plain Jane myself. While feminists are crying about being 'held back', and taking 'Women's Studies' and other useless liberal arts degrees that lead them to a life of unemployment, I studied and worked hard to advance my career prospects. While I'm working and earning money, feminists are protesting over nonsense and getting nowhere in life. Liberalism is a poison that slowly destroys women. Unfortunately they will only become aware of this when their life is virtually over, and even then I suspect they will still refuse to condemn the people who lied to them and sold them out. Thanks feminists!
I find it interesting that you comment on your own looks before your actual accomplishments. What do your looks actually have to do with anything? It's kind of sad that you believe it matters so much and that you measure yourself against other women in that way (which is a body issue) and that you appear to be that vain. And I also find it particularly interesting that you seem to view your conservatism as being the reason for your supposed attractiveness or your supposed intelligence. Do you think that is what made you work hard? I am as left as they come and a feminist, and I worked two jobs all through high school, scored perfect grades, bought my first house when I was 18 and starting university, my second house at the age of 20 and so on and so forth. I graduated top of my class and kept working. So I find your offensive stereotyping to be somewhat bizarre. Why do you feel the need to stereotype so much? Does it make you feel better about yourself or make you feel more important when you do so? Because this isn't the first time that you have done it. It seems to be a running theme with you. So I am curious tali89, why do you feel the need to do it to such an extreme?
I find this a particularly interesting characteristic in the debate. One of the drawbacks of literature, for instance, is that while writers tend to want to create something outside their experience, appearance and the superficial concerns we might see in advertising and stylized roco scenes between two women having a glass of wine while chatting about what's wrong with men become what men write when they try to depict female characters. The late Jack Cady once explained to me that he tried to write himself into a hole on the first page, and if he could climb back out by the end of the story he knew he was doing okay. And I remember the look on his face when he discussed trying to climb out of the hole for the short story "By Reason of Darkness". I can imagine him laughing his way through The Off-Season, a bizarre novel that stands without compare in the marketplace, as if Rushdie decided to have an orgy with Faulkner and Twain and this little homonunculus was the unplanned offspring. But Inagehi is pretty much the definition of Jack writing himself into a hole when he introduces on the first page intimate thoughts of a female protagonist as told by a female narrator. There's even an ironic twist: Skip the extraneous sexual content, and he pulls it off. And the choice was easy. With a cast of characters ranging from an indigenous American woman to the last Moravian to the trumped-up propriety of Winston-Salem in the 1950s, a sex scene would seem somewhat awkward. And instead of telling us what a knockout body Harriet has, he tries to present her appearance as a matter of internal self-criticism; it isn't especially detailed in the sexy way, but we do know she loathes her thin body, small breasts, and lack of anything that would make her feel more normal—a notion here referring to general comparative body issues. In the end, he had better things to write about than a gratuitous screw. And while it isn't quite appropriate to say, "And Carol would never have let that book out of the house if he'd wasted pages on a sex scene", neither is that quite fair. That is, while I don't know her personally and can't really describe what their marriage is like, it is an imprimatur of some sort when your wife is one of the foremost American scholars on women in history, myth, and literature. I would actually be much more interested in the marriage if Carol Orlock had married a more masculine archetype. What Jack never explicitly taught me is that writing a sex scene is very nearly always digging a hole that one cannot climb out of. Steven Brust writes around sex, too. And Ray Bradbury treated the subject brilliantly in Graveyard for Lunatics, with his male protagonist (The Crazy) unable to comprehend or cope with 1950s morality and the idea of a silver screen sex symbol (Constance) behaving in such a liberated manner around him. Indeed, the legendary wife in absentia (Peg) has only one directly spoken line that I remember over the course of three books, and it's a comedy trope where she gets back from a teachers' conference in Mexico City (?!) as our heroes celebrate their victory over the bad guy and, naturally, wonders who the hell this strange, drunken, half-naked woman is and why is she nibbling on my husband's ear? Other than that, the amount of time Constance spends in various states of undress pass by nearly as quietly as mention of sand on the beach or the water in the ocean. That is, it makes sense to the narrative in the context of Tinseltown, but needs not be pored over for every sweating detail. It's a very bizarre route to establishing Constance's basic humanity, but pretty much anyone who knows anything about Hollywood can understand the proposition that even in the fifties, if you spent that much time under directors on a casting couch, societal niceties about how a woman should dress and present herself would start to seem useless at best. And this is part of what I tell aspiring writers, but only after counting the number of times they use the word "I" on the first page. (No, really, seventeen times in two paragraphs? And one needs someone else to point out the problem? In truth, that is one of the things that can make me set aside a manuscript as if I was some sort of professional with the credentials to decide so quickly whether or not something is worth reading.) In this context, one of the most instructive things one can do is read written pornography. Why? Well, in this case I don't mean the bizarre gratuitous sex scenes in horror novels or well-packaged "erotica", but the flood of user-generated pornography that is the internet version of the "Penthouse Forum". Even in the seventies, editors included a "letter" from a "woman" in each issue, and between the men and "women" writing in, it turns out that pretty much every woman is just a cock-hungry slut just looking for a man to service. It's badly written, of course, and within each subgenre the structural forms are amazingly consistent; at some point one could start believing these thousands, even millions, of short stories are actually generated by one computer program somewhere in the former East Germany. And every female narrator has breasts of genuinely unhealthy proportion, and in truth the word I would use to describe the writing is "childish". All of this comes down to an observation: While it might simply be a coincidence of social circles, it's true that I do not know a single woman who speaks as women like Trooper and Tali write. And I always wonder about this market dynamic, because women like Wendy McElroy and Janet Bloomfield obviously exist. But female anti-feminists really do read like men pretending to be women. It's the weirdest thing. But, seriously, not even the strippers and prostitutes I've known over the years—people who have interests financial and psychological in rejecting the Steinems of society—talk like that. And in the end I will put it crudely: When it comes to sex it matters less how a person looks than how they perform. The idea of a "hot" person means nothing compared to the question of "hot" sexual relations. And you've heard versions of that before, the cheerleader who looks like you'd tear her in two if you got on her, or the icy beauty that looks like she would shatter at the trauma of your heat, and so on. In a qualitative context, sure, I've been with "hot" women before, and I will specifically assert to draw no conclusions from the fact that it was women "off the hot spectrum" who cut loose and had fun in bed. Whatever the circumstances leading to the coincidence, the "hot" women were also the epitome of a WASP joke. (What do WASPs say after sex? 'Thank you, it will never happen again.') So even in questions of sex, sexuality, and the role of women, such superficial appeals to one's own physical attractiveness have always seemed puzzling to me. Then again, perhaps it's all symptomatic. Maybe these women are onto something in a marketplace context; after all, they're trying to appeal to men. There is also the irony that our neighbor can advance her career prospects and earn money at all thanks to the long fights put up by feminists. Without feminism her career opportunities, at least in the United States, would be either schoolteacher or Girl Friday. Or, I suppose, casting couch cushion.
Quite a bit. I can't help the fact that I was born a 'plain Jane', and not Megan Fox. However, I do put in the effort to remain fit, healthy, and in good shape. I also make an effort to take care of my appearance. This is a testament to strong self-esteem, self-discipline and work ethic. Taking care of one's appearance also makes one more successful in their career and love life. I find it interesting that you are disturbed by the fact that I take pride in my appearance. Why do you have this big chip on your shoulder in regards to women in actually make an effort to keep themselves in shape? Assuming your supposed life story is truth, and not manufactured like much of the supposition you have put forward in other posts, I'd simply state that you are an outlier.
Once again, why do you think your looks matter? Or that anyone here cares? I mean, are you here trolling for a husband or you're a race horse and you think we need to know how you exercise or something? It's not your looks that matter, Tali89. It is your brain, your thoughts, your opinions, your intelligence. Your looks mean diddly squat for your achievement. Do you understand that? Okay? And? What exactly does this have to do with anything? Err okay. Good for you! Good job! Would you like a cookie or a carrot stick as a reward? No one really cares how you look tali89. So I don't quite understand why you feel the need to keep telling us about your looks. The Kardashians (or however you spell their name), also put a lot of work into how they look. Should we value them as we value you? Does that mean they have a great work ethic? Was the daughter who did the sex tape to launch herself into the media spotlight exhibiting a great work ethic in that regard? Okay.. Once again, what does this matter to this thread or this forum? How you look, your love life, is your business. No one really cares. You misunderstand. I am disturbed any time I see someone so focused on their looks and that they seem to view their looks as being so important that they need to keep telling people about it as though it is a great accomplishment and the manner in which you seem to measure yourself and your looks against other women. This is an internet forum. For all we know, you're 400 pounds and stuck in your mother's basement. And do you know what? No one here would care. You could also be a super model and no one would care. What we do care about is how you present your argument and the content of your argument. Not your looks. My dear girl, whatever it is you do to get fit is your business. I applaud the fact that you take such good care of yourself. Everyone should do the best they can to take good care of themselves and to feel good about themselves. But that has nothing to do with this thread or the topic of this discussion. We have a sub-forum titled "Health & Fitness". If you wish to discuss your exercise regime, how the endorphins rush through your body and how attractive and healthy and fit you are, then please, take it there. Why so? Work ethic has nothing to do with political affiliation. It has everything to do with how you were brought up. That has nothing to do with who you vote for. My parents were and are "left". But they also came from poverty, racism and what can only be described as apartheid, they worked 3-4 jobs, their main jobs and numerous cleaning jobs in the evening and into the night to make sure they could buy a house when they migrated to this country. They saved every cent they could. They ensured I grew up to understand the value of an education and its importance and the importance of respecting money and having a good work ethic. My first job was at the age of 11, going to clean offices with my father after school for which he would deposit some money into a savings account for me. I had to go with him because we couldn't afford baby sitters. That has nothing to do with politics or who you vote for. That has everything to do with how your parents brought you up, the values they instilled in you and the moral code they brought you up with. Mine brought me up with care, compassion, understanding, an expectation of never giving up and to work for everything that I have. I guess that's the difference between you and I. I don't think you were taught that. Perhaps you were taught that how you looked mattered more.
