Monthly Archives: July 2011

Outsourcing Intuition — a quick note on elevatorgate

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The Elevatorgate scandal, which began when Rebecca Watson of SkepChick reported being sexually harassed by in an elevator by a man at an atheist conference, has been the talk of the web for nearly a month.

Celebrated skeptic Richard Dawkins weighed in and accused Watson of maligning a shy but harmless guy. A debate erupted about social awkwardness, harassment, and geek/atheist culture. See Greta Christine, Amanda Marcotte, and David Futrelle, all of whom deal with this issue of shyness and harassment in helpful ways.

Since I come so late to this discussion, I’ll just add this:

One of the myriad ways in which the myth of male weakness manifests itself in our culture is in the belief that women owe it to men to be able to discern the latter’s intent. Male social awkwardness is framed as something that lies so far beyond the capacity of men to address themselves that it becomes women’s responsibility to unerringly distinguish the sweet, shy, clumsy dude from the dude who’s a genuine threat.

The more we believe that women are more naturally intuitive than men (a “truism” peddled by pop psychologists and theologians alike), the more we outsource the job of interpreting and understanding male behavior to women. How often do we hear a man explode with rage at a woman, saying “But that’s not what I meant!” or “You’re blowing this way out of proportion”? Our myths about gender tell us that men are mysteries even to themselves, and that mothers and wives know the men they love “better than they know themselves.” That’s not just insulting to men, it’s letting them off the hook — and placing an impossible burden on to women.

It is not women’s job to understand us better than we understand ourselves. It’s not even their job to discern our intent. (Even if we’re shy and clumsy and socially inept.) It’s their job to do what all human beings have the right to do, which is assess threats and judge character based on what they perceive with their reason and their senses. And it’s our job to take responsibility for our words and our actions.

Social awkwardness can be a real affliction. I do not doubt that it can be hugely difficult for shy guys to meet women. But while they deserve our collective sympathy and perhaps our collective strategizing to offer these shy guys tools for greater success, it doesn’t mean that individual women should be expected to sympathize, understand, or look with greater forbearance upon them. Especially in an elevator at 4:00AM.

Of Kant and Spermgate — and do men prefer less successful women?

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The Good Men Project reprints my “Cuckolding is the Worst Thing that Can Ever Happen to a Man” piece today. And the most thoughtful philosophical response to the moral dilemmas raised by the “spermgate” story comes from Lynn Gazis-Sax at her blog: Of DNA and Honesty. Excerpt:

No, you don’t get to walk away because she has more birth control options than you do, or because women are sometimes as imperfect about using the pill as men are about using condoms, or because she might have legally had the option of abortion. If there’s a baby, and you’re responsible, you don’t get to walk away. You use your last clear ethical chance to avoid being a father, the one that doesn’t hurt an actual helpless human being, and if you miss that chance, you suck up and be responsible.

But it really doesn’t strike me as too much for the man to ask, in return, that he get an accurate report on how likely he is to be the father, and when he might want a paternity test. And, in the interest of having men respect their obligation to be father to their children, it seems fair enough, to me, that their faith in the system not be undercut.

Read the whole thing.

And the Good Men Project has a new columnist, Mark D. White. His Friday column looks at why some men prefer women who are less accomplished, and he pushes back against the charge that it’s all about masculine ego. Rather, he notes that many very successful women feel a socially-imposed need to be with an even more successful man — which then puts intense pressure on everyone involved.

I don’t agree with everything he says (and my experience has been different than his), but it’s a very interesting piece and Mark’s is a welcome voice on board at GMP. Check out How Professional Women Can Objectify Men (and Why Waitresses Don’t).

Love is never about wanting to be first

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One of the perennial subjects in sex and relationship writing is jealousy of a partner’s past. At the Good Men Project this week, we had 10 Ways to Deal With Your Partner’s Sexual Past (Because You Have To). It’s not the most detailed discussion of the subject you’ll see, and I have some quibbles with bits of it, but it’s a healthy and helpful reminder of the utter bootlessness of longing to be the “first.”

I’ve written a bit on this topic before. In early 2009, I wrote to challenge the obsession so many have with a partner’s past. That piece is reprinted below.

Below this January 14 post on experience and numbers, bmmg39 writes:

…my view is that, often, people with little or no experience in a certain thing (it CAN be sex but it could also mean romantic love, or kissing, or slow-dancing, or whatever) often seek others with the same low level or non-level of experience. Someone who’s never soul-kissed someone else might not feel comfortable with someone who’s done that with a hundred people already. That doesn’t mean the first person thinks that there’s something wrong with the second; it means that the first person would like to be remembered fondly as someone else’s first experience in that department with all the wonderful awkwardness and nervousness that is said to come with it.

The bold emphasis is mine. What bmmg writes sounds innocent and sweet enough. But the problem is clear: when one of our chief longings is “to be remembered fondly”, to be “someone else’s first”, we’re placing our own desires ahead of our partner’s. We’re using sex as a way of leaving a mark on another person’s body or heart, hoping — as humans tend to hope — that we won’t be forgotten. There’s no question that most of us would like to leave an impression on other people; perhaps it’s the historian in me, but there are few worse fears I have, to be honest, than that I will be completely forgotten! But bmmg makes the mistake of assuming that “first” equals “most memorable.” Ask around. Legions of people, particularly women, would rather forget their first experience of heterosexual intercourse. There’s not infrequently a world of difference between, say, the first partner with whom you had intercourse and the first partner with whom you truly felt close and safe.

When my wife and I were planning our wedding, she was hardly unaware that this was to be my fourth marriage — and her first. (Indeed, I have been the first husband to four different women.) A friend of ours did ask her, on one occasion, if it bothered her that she was doing something for the first time that I had done several times before. My fiancee, sensible as ever, said, “No, because this is the first time he’s doing it with me.” She was focused, bless her, on the marriage we were building together. She didn’t deny the reality of what had come before, but she rightly saw no reason to believe that prior experience on my part would diminish the unique intensity of what we were creating as a team. She knew better than to see me as a three-time loser and a has-been. So when we talked about rings and dresses and bands and caterers, she was aware — on some level — that I had had all those conversations before. But she was also clear that passion is not automatically killed by repetition; she knew enough to know that past behavior isn’t always the best indicator of future action. Above all, she believed that most of the time, the axiom of “post hoc ergo propter hoc” holds true: my ability to be a great husband in my fourth marriage was in no small degree a consequence of all the mistakes I had made in the previous three. Some folks hit a home run on their first at bat. Others… need to be sent down to the minors a time or three. Continue reading →

Beauty and Health Happen on a Wider Spectrum than We Think: Thoughts on Codie Young

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My Thursday column at Healthy is the New Skinny looks at the Codie Young controversy, and the latest blow-up over size-zero models: Codie’s Not the Problem. Excerpt:

The modeling world this week was abuzz this week with the story of Codie Young, the Australian teen model who was pulled from the British “Topshop” advertising campaign after complaints that she was too skinny. Newspapers and magazines and pundits debated: was Codie anorexic? Some commenters complained that she was a grossly unhealthy size zero, while Topshop insisted that she was a healthy size eight. (All of this got extra confusing because of the difference between European and American sizes.)…

…The issue isn’t skinny models, or size zero models, or whether Codie Young is healthy or not. The issue is that we don’t see enough body size diversity in advertising, on the runways, and on television. There really are some healthy size zero models (Codie may be one). There are also healthy and beautiful models sizes 12, 14, or 18 models out there – -but we see them so much more rarely.

Our frustration shouldn’t be directed at Codie. It should be directed at an industry that says that girls with bodies like hers are the girls who deserve the most work, the most covers, the acclamation as the most beautiful of all. Beauty and fitness can be found across a wide spectrum of size. And we need to see models representing every point on that continuum.

Read the whole thing.

Thursday Short Poem: Cope’s “Nursery Rhyme”

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Heloise’s favorite nursery rhyme is Baa Baa Black Sheep, and she sang it frequently with my mother over the Independence Day holiday. Wendy Cope, who is famous not least for her ability to mimic the work of other poets, offers the Wordsworth version of that famous children’s ditty. If you know Wordsworth, this is very funny. If you don’t know Wordsworth, not so much.

A Nursery Rhyme

as it might have been written by William Wordsworth

The skylark and the jay sang loud and long.
The sun was calm and bright, the air was sweet,
When all at once I heard above the throng
Of jocund birds a single plaintive bleat.

And, turning, saw, as one sees in a dream,
It was a Sheep had broke the moorland peace
With his sad cry, a creature who did seem
The blackest thing that ever wore a fleece.

I walked towards him on the stony track
And, pausing, for a while between two crags,
I asked him, ‘Have you wool upon your back?’
Thus he bespake, ‘Enough to fill three bags.’

Most courteously, in measured tones, he told
Who would receive each bag and where they dwelt;
And oft, now years have passed and I am old,
I recollect with joy that inky pelt.

“Cuckolding is the worst thing that can happen to a man”

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If the comments below my last two posts (based on my “13 year-old son?” piece from Monday) seem hostile, you should see the ones that were deleted in the moderation queue. The Men’s Rights Activists (MRAs) have stirred themselves into quite the tizzy, with posts like this one representing some of the more moderate response.

Leaving aside the admittedly complex specifics of the Hugo/Jill/Ted/Alastair situation, what strikes me is the way in which so many of the MRAs have framed this as a cuckolding issue. The term “cuckold” is a very old term for a man who unknowingly raises another guy’s biological children, thanks to an unfaithful wife. (See the wiki.) It’s not an accurate term to use in my scenario, but the fact that this is such a profound fear for some men is worth exploring.

One classic theory of patriarchy assumes that men’s desire to control women is rooted in the fear of being cuckolded. A woman is never in doubt as to who the mother of her child is, but for reasons of basic physiology, men can never have that same reassurance. The need to control women’s sexuality (insisting on pre-marital virginity and post-marital fidelity; female genital mutilation; the insistence on modest dress) may well all be rooted in responses to this ancient, fundamental masculine anxiety. It’s a cruel calculus: the more I can control the women in my life (and the less sexual expression I permit them), the greater the likelihood that my offspring will in fact be “mine.”

I don’t think I’d realized how alive and well this fear is. See this comment from Amir, whose words I noted yesterday:

I have a beautiful son and if he was not mine my world would end. And
yes, I would no longer love him if he didn’t have my genes. My genes
makes him my son before all the environmental influences.

Another MRA commenter at GMP compared cuckolding to rape, only worse. Daniel writes:

This is horrifying.

Cuckolding is the worst thing that can happen to a man. If my son would have the genes of another man my life would end. This is much worse than a rape and is accepted unpunished by the justice system. Rape can last for several minutes but this is years and years of deceit and lies. I despise all the men and women supporting understanding this.

If you read through the lengthy and often vile comment sections at GMP and Jezebel (or at the “Voice for Men” site), you’ll see that Amir and Daniel are, alas, far from unusual in their insistence that love depends upon shared DNA.

As a father, I have nothing but contempt for any man whose love is contingent as Amir’s and Daniel’s so clearly is. If I were to find out that Heloise was not my biological daughter, I’d be stunned (and shocked at my wife’s deception.) It might change my relationship with Eira — but it sure as hell wouldn’t change my relationship with Heloise. Coming from an extended family where half-siblings and adoptees and step-children abound, I know how absurd it is to link devotion and biology. What makes Heloise “mine” has damn all to do with my DNA — and everything to do with the energy and devotion and commitment I have put into my relationship with her since she was in her mama’s womb.

There is nothing wrong with expecting a partner who has promised to be faithful to keep that promise. (A reminder, Ted and Jill were not in an exclusive relationship when she last slept with me.) It’s perfectly reasonable to be devastated by betrayal. But there’s a world of difference between the hurt of infidelity and the fear of being cuckolded. Eira made me a promise when we were married that she wouldn’t sleep with other men. If she broke that promise, it would alter my relationship with her significantly. But Heloise made no such representations. The circumstances of her conception (and the sperm used to conceive her) have nothing — nothing — to do with my devotion to this remarkable little girl, whose sweetness would be no less delightful if she didn’t have my DNA.

It’s telling that the atavistic fear of cuckolding still runs so strong in the men’s rights activists. And given that so many of them are associated with the “father’s rights” movement, it’s telling as well that their definition of “father” is so fragile, so contingent, so limited, and so utterly narcissistic.

Do I have a 13 year-old son? Responding to some questions

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I can’t recall a post or an article I’ve written that’s caused more consternation — and such wildly divergent reactions– than my column yesterday at the Good Men Project: I May Have a Son, But I’ll Never Know for Sure. Both at GMP and at Jezebel, where the piece was reprinted, there’s been an outpouring of criticism (and a fair amount of praise) for the decisions a woman I’m calling “Jill” and I made 14 years ago.

A sample of the emails I’ve gotten:

You are a horrible human being and should face the consequences of
your actions. You and Jill conned another human being into a fake
life, giving his love to a child which is not his. Who are you to
determine what fatherhood is for Ted and what is it relation to
genetics.

I have a beautiful son and if he was not mine my world would end. And
yes, I would no longer love him if he didn’t have my genes. My genes
makes him my son before all the environmental influences. This is my
love it is my choice who to give it to. — “Amir.”

On the other hand:

This may be my favorite thing you’ve ever written. I had respect for you before, of course, but it’s been doubled. You and Jill made the right decision. I hope you never have a moment of doubt about it, and I hope that Jill doesn’t either. Love to you and your family, and love to that family in the Midwest which is stronger because of what you didn’t do. — “Naomi.”

And of course, lots of comments fall in between these two extremes. (In general, the most virulent and hateful comments and emails have come from men, but plenty of women have taken issue with what I did — and, especially, what Jill chose to do.)

A few clarifications below the fold, based on questions that have come up in emails and comments on the two versions of the column. Continue reading →

The Son Who May — or May Not — Be Mine

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My Good Men Project column runs one day early this week, and it’s turned out to be a controversial one: I May Have a Son, But I’ll Never Know for Sure. It’s a true story I tell, one I’ve not written about before. I had wanted to write a piece on the Casey Anthony trial, focusing on the anonymity of the father of little Caylee, but I thought better of stoking that fire.

Excerpt:

In a medium-sized city in the Midwest, there’s a boy who will turn 13 next month. He lives with his parents, who were wed three months before he was born. He is tall, with dirty blonde hair and blue eyes. His name is Alastair*, and he may –- or may not -– be my son…

Fourteen autumns ago, I was casually dating a woman I’ll call Jill*. We had unprotected intercourse a handful of times in late October and early November. And just before Thanksgiving, Jill discovered she was pregnant.

She didn’t tell me until after New Year’s Day. While Jill and I had been in a “friends with benefits” arrangement, she’d also been growing more serious about another man, Ted.* She’d first slept with him for the first time two nights before she had last slept with me. It was that week that Jill got pregnant, and as she would later tell me, there was no way to know for sure which one of us was the father.

But there was no question which one of us was a better bet as a romantic partner. Jill had broken things off with me as soon as she and Ted had decided on an exclusive relationship (just before she found out she was pregnant.) Ted was several years older than I was, professionally and emotionally stable, and clearly falling in love with Jill. I was drinking, partying, with some time to go before I’d hit my rock bottom. Jill wanted to be a mom. Ted wanted to be a dad. I wasn’t sure what I wanted. In her mind, these facts settled it: the baby was Ted’s. Or it needed to be Ted’s…

At the Good Men Project and at Jezebel, where the piece was reposted this afternoon my choices — and the choices of a woman I slept with many years ago — are under intense debate. (The only thing I’m regretting at the moment is the pompous phrase “fourteen autumns ago”.) Not surprisingly, the GMP and Jezebel commenting communities don’t always agree.

Read the whole thing here or here.

Catching up with Bethany Patchin

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Saturday’s “Beliefs” section in the New York Times features a story on Bethany Patchin, a wonderful friend of mine from Nashville.

As the Times story relates, Bethany began her writing career as a fierce but winsome teenage advocate for conservative Christian sexual values. Her first piece (at Boundless, the youth website for Focus on the Family), was a proud promise that she intended to save her virgin lips for her wedding day. One young man was so impressed with that article he started writing to her — and in time, became both the fortunate recipient of her first kiss and, not at all coincidentally, her husband.

Bethany and Sam Torode had four children and a book: Open Embrace: A Protestant Couple Rethinks Contraception. Young, attractive, articulate and counter-cultural, the Torodes found themselves darlings of the religious right, which is how I first heard about them. Their book came out when I was in the brief throes of a flirtation with evangelicalism, and my rave review of Open Embrace represents a set of views that I’ve long since repudiated. (The internet preserves our intellectual embarrassments forever. It’s much worse than a topless picture in a bathroom mirror.)

After I checked out Open Embrace, I started reading her earlier work, and was so impressed (but not entirely convinced) by Bethany’s writing that I started assigning some of her Boundless pieces in my women’s studies class. Her work was grist for some tremendous discussions and debates.

Bethany and I started corresponding in late 2002. Though she’s fourteen years my junior, she was one of inspirations to start blogging, and the first person to whom I sent a draft of an article for a pre-pitch review. We stayed in touch for the next several years, even as we each started taking separate paths away from evangelical positions on faith and sexuality. We wrote more frequently as her marriage to Sam came to an end. Where she had once given me advice about books and articles, I was able to return the kindness about divorce and related topics.

I count Bethany as one of my favorite people in the whole world whom I’ve never met in real life. The same web that archives our indiscretions for posterity gives us the opportunity to make and sustain true friendship across vast distances. That’s a happy thing.

She’s got a powerful story to tell. (Agents and editors, take note.) And do check out the Times piece.