Monthly Archives: October 2011

Sexy Halloween Costumes Don’t Cause Rape

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A Happy Halloween (and Reformation Day) to all. My holiday column is up a day earlier than usual: Sexy Halloween Costumes for Girls Don’t Cause Rape. A little excerpt:

…those of us who advocate for girls aren’t primarily concerned that girls are showing too much skin. Rather, the problem lies in the compulsory sexualization that is so much a part of today’s Halloween celebrations for teens. A lot of us are more upset by the absence of options than by the absence of fabric; we know that pressuring girls to act sexy is not the same thing as encouraging them to develop a healthy, vibrant sexuality that they themselves own. I don’t have a problem with “sexy bar wench” costumes; I have a problem when those sorts of costumes are the only ones young women are expected or encouraged to wear.

Boys Get Hard and Boys Get Hurt

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I’ve got a rare Sunday post up at Good Men Project this week: Yes, Rape Victims Get Erections, Too. I look at the myths we have about boys who are sexually abused by older women. Excerpt:

The myth that men are invulnerable to sexual victimization at the hands of women is a powerful one. It sits alongside several other myths. For one, we have a hard time believing that grown women could be attracted to adolescent boys (while we accept as normal the idea that grown men are sexually fixated on teen girls.) Second, we have a hard time acknowledging that guys are every bit as emotionally vulnerable as their sisters, just as easily traumatized by a predatory adult. Young men may indeed be horny (as are more young women than we sometimes admit), but a strong libido doesn’t functional as psychological armor.

But perhaps the most enduring myth brought up by cases like this is the idea that pleasure is incompatible with victimization. Real victims only feel pain, never arousal – or so far too many people still believe. An erection, or better still, ejaculation, functions as proof that a boy wasn’t really harmed. Most predators who molest children and underage teens know this; many sexual abusers go to great lengths to try to arouse their victims. The child’s pleasure functions as a kind of absolution in the mind of the abuser; “I can’t be that bad if I made them feel good!”

But of course, an orgasm isn’t evidence of consent. As decades of research have shown us, a surprising number of male and female victims of sexual abuse do report having experienced some physical pleasure while they were being molested. That memory of arousal can lead to greater feelings of guilt, as it seems proof in a child’s mind that he (or she) was somehow complicit in what happened. “Part of me enjoyed it, so I must have wanted it,” the thinking goes. Some therapists who work with survivors of abuse say that these cases are often the most difficult to treat.

In the Daily Mail, and in Jezebel on Men Being Ogled

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The Daily Mail runs a story built around the “mean girls” Jezebel piece — and ends up suggesting the opposite of my original conclusion.

And at Jezebel, a second story for the week: Can Men Handle Being Ogled? . Excerpt:

Not so long ago, psychologists insisted that most women simply weren’t visually aroused. Women, we were told, might have an aesthetic appreciation for a handsome guy, but they weren’t actively lusting after what they saw. After twenty years of being given permission to gaze on the hot and shirtless (from Marky Mark to Taylor Lautner), women have become more vocal than ever before about what they like to look at — and what they’re thinking about when they look. The old myth that women aren’t visual has been debunked by everyone from Sex and the City to the writers and readers at this very site.

This doesn’t mean that women’s desire is the primary cause of poor male body image. Men’s own misinterpretation of what women want is far more of the problem. (For example, many men don’t realize that their girlfriends might lust after Lautner or Gosling — and still be attracted to their own less-than-perfect male partners. These guys don’t get that desire isn’t a zero-sum game). But whatever the cause, the problem is getting worse. Male vanity, it seems, is here to stay. And the old hope that men’s experience of being objectified might lead them to stop objectifying women has proved spectacularly false.656

Mean Girls, Scarcity, and Slackers

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My column at Jezebel is now called “Genderal Interest”, and today’s piece is “It’s Not Your Fault You’re a Mean Girl.” Excerpt:

The fewer genuinely good men there are, the greater the bargaining power they have in relationship — and the more concessions women (at least those who are eager for marriage) are told they must make. Since so many successful women want to draw from the ever-shrinking pool of genuinely attractive and functional dudes, rivalry (or so we’re reminded) must be inevitable.

Endless concessions are a recipe for disappointment; perfectionism a guarantor of exhaustion. Both are consequences of the scarcity model. But perhaps the most painful repercussion is the alienation that comes from competition. For young women in particular — including a great many of my students who have nothing to do with the modeling business — the pressure to compete with other women seems to be worsening. Blame the economy; blame the growing dude deficit on college campuses; blame women for their own success — the side-effect is always that for too many, the real scarcity is of close, uncompetitive female friendship of the sort that can rejoice unequivocally in another’s triumph.

“I Don’t Want Your Guilt (or Your Shame), I Want Your Responsibility”

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The Good Men Project runs a small series on “male guilt” today. My column is here: Guilt Is Good, but Responsibility Is Better. Excerpt:

“It’s not your guilt I want, it’s your responsibility!” I often quote that line from Arthur Miller’s Incident at Vichy to my students who complain of feeling male guilt. I try to always say it with a smile to soften what would otherwise come across as unsympathetic hectoring. I’m not so old I’ve forgotten what it’s like to be a young man overwhelmed by a troubled conscience, unsure of the degree of my own collaboration in the Great Crime. Shame is useless, I remind them; but in the end, guilt is only a little less so. Analysis paralysis doesn’t change the world. What changes the world is accepting responsibility.

Responsibility means giving up the excuse of biology or culture to explain behavior that hurts, demeans, or exploits others. Taking responsibility means forgoing the temptation to explain away our bad behavior with appeals to evolutionary psychology, testosterone, or our Y chromosome. It means recovering the capacity for self-reflection, empathy, and articulate self-expression that we suppressed as boys in order to fit in with the other guys. It means talking about the things we were warned not to talk about.

If we’re not willing to do that work because we think it’s too difficult—or not worth doing—then we’re shirking the charge to grow up and become fully human. And if we evade that responsibility, then guilt is exactly what we should feel.

Read the whole thing.

The King of Starting Over

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A different version of this piece appeared in November 2006.

Several years ago, my friend Lauren came up with a terrific idea: Project Help Us Help Ourselves, a collaborative blogosphere effort to provide a clearing house for information about how to cope with money, scarce resources, and bureaucracy. It elicited some great responses, but is now (alas) no longer available online.

I read Lauren’s proposal, and felt, well, stuck. Though I could certainly use more money, I’ve been blessed with a certain degree of comfort and security. I haven’t had to cope without health insurance, I haven’t fought an expensive custody battle, I haven’t had to worry about the same sort of things my peers have had to worry about. I thought about just linking to Lauren’s post and urging more experienced readers to send in detailed, clear tips on how to negotiate this complex and difficult world. And then I started to rack my brain for what practical things I “know.”

As someone who has spent his entire life in academia (every fall since 1969, when I started nursery school at the “Humpty-Dumpty House” in Santa Barbara, not quite three, I have been either a student or a teacher in some sort of educational institution), I’ve never held a full-time job other than college instructor. I know how to prepare a good lecture. I know how to evaluate written work quickly. I know how to pretend to pay attention in department meetings.

What else do I know that’s useful? I know how to train for and run marathons. I know how to start a weight-lifting program. I could probably teach an introductory Pilates mat class, or a spinning class. I know how to pick the right pair of running shoes. I can dress myself without clashing. Important skills for survival? Uh, no.

What can I do that’s truly useful? I can’t change my own oil. I hate doing any kind of carpentry or assembling. The old WASP joke:

How many WASPs does it take to change a lightbulb?

Two. One to mix martinis and the other to call the electrician.

Yeah, that’s close to home. I can do the light bulb, actually, but I’ve been calling repair people and handy people for virtually everything most of my life. My body may be lean and toned, but the few muscles I have, sadly, rarely get put to practical use.

So now a post designed to link to another post about economic survival has turned into a musing on my own profound incompetence — an incompetence rooted in privilege. (And should I even mention I didn’t know how to pump my own gas until I was… oh, forget it). This paean to learned helplessness isn’t going to win me any friends.

But in addition to knowing how to give a lecture, and knowing how to finish a hard marathon, I know something else far more useful: I know how to start over. Three times I’ve been divorced. Three times, I’ve moved out of a home I shared with a spouse and into a tiny, cramped apartment. Three times, I’ve bought (or rented) furniture. Three times, I’ve raced to Crate and Barrel or Target to buy another set of dishes, another set of pots and pans, another set of sheets. (In general, my exes all kept the housewares.) Three times, I’ve loaded all of my possessions into a car or a truck and driven away to begin again.

Three times, I’ve left a marriage with major credit card debt. Three times, I paid it back down. Obviously, the debts got exponentially bigger each time.

The amount of stuff that I left with after my third divorce in 2002 was considerably more than after my first one a decade earlier. By the third divorce, I could actually pay movers to come and take my things away, something that had not been possible the first two times. Three times, I’ve said goodbye to beloved pets (I had dogs with all of my ex-wives, and they always kept ‘em), and tearfully driven away to start a new life. Trust me, it got harder each time.

I learned that a microwave, a coffee maker, and a fridge are really all you need. (I’ve bought three post-divorce microwaves and two nice Kenmore refrigerators). On my own post-divorce, months would pass and I would never touch a stove. Lean Cuisines can be bought in bulk at Costco — word to the wise. After my second divorce, I lived on Rosarita refried beans, Uncle Ben’s rice, Pace Picante sauce, Knudsen sour cream, and corn tortillas. (What one friend called “the vile concoction.”) I figure each divorce was good for some significant weight loss.

But the real lesson, of course, was that I could survive. If there’s any virtue at all in telling this story, it’s that I have learned that you can begin again — and again — and again. My cousin calls me the “king of starting over”, and after so many years of new beginnings, upheaval, heartache, and separations, I know with every fiber of my being that it is possible to love again, trust again, begin again. It is possible to both learn from previous mistakes and learn to take healthy risks one more time. It is possible to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars; lose out on a vision of a happy future; kiss the Labrador goodbye for the last time as she licks away your tears; spend those first few awful nights in a dingy little over-priced studio; and, after all of that agony, be willing to try again.

Lord willing, I will never, ever, ever get divorced from she who is my wife today. I know so much more about how to be a good and present husband than I did in my first three marriages, and I have married a woman with whom I am spiritually and emotionally and physically profoundly compatible. That’s an unmerited blessing on one level, of course, but it’s also something I earned as a consequence of being willing to learn from my mistakes, being willing to start over, being willing to trust again. Too many folks I know get burned (or burn themselves) a time or three and they give up. Call it stupidity or call it faith or a mixture of the two, but I have a relentless optimism born less of my nature than of my experience. I know that broken hearts heal and that new dishes can be bought over and over again. I know that dollar for dollar, it’s hard to beat Sears brand appliances. I know that having a coffee maker, even a cheap one, is vital for the first morning after you move into your new bachelor quarters. And I know that no matter what, the hurt and pain of any given moment will pass more quickly than I dare hope, and that love and joy and promise can come again and again and again.

This I know.

More on Fat Talk at Healthy Is the New Skinny

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It’s Fat Talk Free Week again and I’ve got a couple of posts on the subject of body image and words up at Healthy is the New Skinny today. An excerpt:

You know what’s a big component of self-acceptance? Changing the way we talk about food.

How often do you hear a girl say: “Oh my God, I was so bad at lunch today!” Does she mean she robbed a little old lady on the street? Hardly. You hear that kind of talk, and you know whoever is saying those words ate something delicious (and fattening.) Similarly, if you hear a young woman (or, just maybe, a young man) say “You know, I’ve been good all week”, you know she isn’t referring to having done her homework. It means that she stuck to the diet she set for herself.

But here’s the thing: we need to lose the moral language of food. It’s okay to use the words “good” or “bad” to refer to how food tastes. But it’s not helpful to judge ourselves so harshly every time we indulge in something that is delicious but loaded with sugar or fat. And we’re not really better people every time we hold ourselves back from eating what we long to eat. You’ve heard it said “you are what you eat”, but some of us take that much too far. What we eat affects our bodies, our minds, our health – but eating fattening things doesn’t make someone “bad”, and following a strict diet doesn’t make anyone “good.”