To put it another way, I often argue that feminism is about helping young women to find both their authentic “yes” and their authentic “no”. By authentic, I mean that it is congruent with their deepest desires. And wherever they may ultimately lie, we know this: these “deepest desires” lie beneath the surface longing to please parents and partners. To put it crudely: many young women will encounter many young men who very much want them to say “yes.” Many of these young women will come from backgrounds where their cultural obligation is to say “no”. So whether she says “yes” or “no”, her own desires may well have already been silenced by the overwhelming pressure to please one faction or another in the audience. She will find it very difficult, it not impossible, to please everyone. [...]

Where good feminist work and progressive sexual education intersect is around this issue of “yes”, “no”, and quieting the “peanut gallery” of the internalized audience. My goal is not to get all of my kids in youth group, or my students at Pasadena City College, to say “yes” or “no” to sex! My goal is to help them arrive at an authentic, heartfelt, unambiguous “yes” — or an equally authentic, heartfelt, and unambiguous “no” — when it comes to the opportunity for sexual connection with another human being or with themselves. Encouraging young people of either sex, but particularly young women, to discover their own desires is not easy; and frankly, it isn’t an easy thing for young people to do, either.

I certainly agree with Hugo. Oddly enough, letting my mind drift, Hugo’s post led me to thoughts of fat and dieting.

When we look in the mirror - when I look in the mirror - where is my judgment (always unkind) coming from? A lot of the private mental work I do is an attempted aesthetic retraining; trying to judge myself in a manner that’s authentic to myself, rather than looking at myself and my body through the anti-fat matrix I’ve been taught by society. Is it even possible to clear all that dross away, and if I could what will be left behind?

In this country, the oppression of white people by insensitive people of color is simply not a pressing problem. The need for racial equality in saying the n-word is not a pressing problem, either. On the other hand, the real effects of racism - both historic and ongoing - against blacks, Hispanics, and American Indians (among others) - are serious and pressing problems.

In this context - a context I, in my wacky left-wing dialect, label “reality” - I’m more worried about discrimination against non-whites by large social institutions and powerful elites. Does that mean I’m a racist who values white people less? Well, let me ask you: if a surgeon decides to deal with Judy’s collapsed lung before dealing with Bob’s scraped knee, does that mean she values Bob less as a human being?

John at Balloon Juice, discussing identity politics, writes:

Maybe this incident will help people (in particular my friends on the left, but not exclusively) recognize why this brand of politics will lead to nothing but rancor and should end now.

Yes, because what good has identity politics done so far? I mean, aside from ending Jim Crow, bringing voting rights to minorities and to women, creating a nationwide network of rape crisis and battered women’s resources, removing laws against sodomy, vastly increasing Deaf rights, changing homosexuality from a sickness to an orientation, making much of society more accessible to the disabled, wage equality laws, giving married women the right to own property, and a thousand other changes that have helped the disabled, the non-white, the queer and the female, when has identity politics ever done anyone any good?

John’s right - putting every social improvement this country has made in the last century aside, identity politics leads to nothing but rancor.

…it’s stupid. Not only are we not in this utopia, we are never, ever going to be in that utopia. Even if we achieved a marvelously gender-blind society, there would still be some people who want to have sex with people who do not want to have sex with them.

So, to summarize: Nick made it clear she was talking about an “ideal world,” not the real world; Jane responds by saying, in essence, “but your ideal world won’t ever be real.”

Well, duh, Jane. That’s why Nick used the phrase “my ideal world,” to distinguish it from the real one.

Meanwhile, Cathy wrote:

But alongside it, another type of double standard has developed as well: one that views unconstrained, selfish, hedonistic female sexuality as “liberated” while condemning similar male behavior as sleazy and exploitative. In this new double standard, the promiscuous or adulterous male is a pig, while the promiscuous or adulterous female is a rebel against the patriarchy.

This kind of feminism is not about equality and not about female empowerment. It’s about female entitlement.

“This kind of feminism” is not one that Cathy has actually shown exists - say, by quoting a single example of such a feminist. Let alone quoting enough examples to provide evidence of some sort of widespread trend within feminism.

The prime example - indeed, the only example - of a feminist in Cathy’s post is Nick. Under that circumstance, most readers would naturally assume that Nick is an example of the double-standard Cathy’s railing against. But that’s not the case, and Cathy doesn’t bother to clarify this point for her readers who don’t click through.

Cathy’s argument seems to boil down to this: Nick says one thing; some feminists Cathy doesn’t name have said something different; therefore feminism has developed a double standard.

I shouldn’t have to explain why Cathy’s argument doesn’t hold water. Feminism is large and varied, and - as any regular “Alas” reader knows - feminists often disagree. (If you ever want to start an endless argument in a room full of feminists, just say “I think prostitution ought be legalized” or “must never be legalized” - either one will do the trick). Nick is under no obligation to agree with Cathy’s unnamed feminists; and the fact that not all feminists agree on everything doesn’t establish some large strain of feminist hypocrisy.

Are there some feminists out there - out of millions - who actually hold such a double standard? I’m sure there are a few. But in general, the feminists I know are pretty consistent - the ones who favor women fucking around a lot (consensually) are also the ones who don’t see anything wrong with men fucking around a lot (consensually). (For example, you’ll never find Amanda of Pandagon criticizing men merely for wanting to have frequent, consensual, casual sex.)

Cathy also says:

In fact, let’s take this a step further. Suppose things didn’t end quite so well for our male Nick. Suppose he actually does get drugged and robbed by the two female strangers he picked up in a bar for sex. Do you think Nick is going to encounter a lot of sympathy for his plight, from men or from women? I seriously doubt it. In fact, I suspect that the response is going to be mainly along the lines of, “he had it coming.” (A male friend to whom I outlined this scenario said, “The word ‘dumbass’ comes to mind.”)

Really? If Cathy says her friends have that reaction, I’ll take her word for it.

But I’m glad I don’t have her friends. I can’t imagine any of my friends saying “you had it coming” to a robbery victim in the situation Cathy describes, let alone to a rape victim (male or female). Someone who said that sincerely (rather than in an ironic, dark-humored way) would be considered appalling among my friends.

Cathy’s argument supports my theory that many conservatives are far more anti-male than the typical feminist is. It’s not feminists, after all, arguing that men are incapable of controlling themselves and need to be civilized through marriage to women; that sort of argument is reserved for conservatives like Maggie Gallagher. It’s not feminists who say that men, once in the sex act, are incapable of stopping, like dogs; but it’s a pretty common belief among conservatives (just read the comments following Jane’s post and you’ll find a couple of examples).

Not all conservatives are like that; I’ve never noticed such anti-male nonsense coming from Cathy or Jane, for example. And for all I know, the friend Cathy quoted was a flaming liberal. But anti-male attitudes such as what Cathy’s friend said, certainly seem more accepted among conservatives than among any of the feminists I hang with.

…The solution - national health insurance, available to everyone - is obvious. But to see the obvious we’ll have to overcome pride - the unwarranted belief that America has nothing to learn from other countries - and prejudice - the equally unwarranted belief, driven by ideology, that private insurance is more efficient than public insurance. [...]

Taiwan, which moved 10 years ago from a U.S.-style system to a Canadian-style single-payer system, offers an object lesson in the economic advantages of universal coverage. In 1995 less than 60 percent of Taiwan’s residents had health insurance; by 2001 the number was 97 percent. Yet… this huge expansion in coverage came virtually free: it led to little if any increase in overall health care spending beyond normal growth due to rising population and incomes. [...]

One way to implement national health care would simply be to expand Medicare to everyone.

Of course, doing that would require additional funds, probably in the form of an increase in the payroll tax. And that would elicit howls from the right. But the apparent rise in tax rates would be an illusion: it would simply substitute an explicit tax for the implicit tax that companies and workers pay in the form of insurance premiums. Given international experience, I have no doubt that overall spending on health care would actually fall, and that job creation would actually rise, after the supposed tax increase.

It’s a simple solution, building on a program that we already know works. It would make the vast majority of Americans better off. And it’s considered a complete non-starter politically. Now why is that?

Worldwide, I think the biggest single justice issue is the treatment of women in the third world, who are the poorest and most oppressed of the poorest and most oppressed. But within the United States, the lack of affordable medical care for poor and working-class people may be the most pressing - and also most clearly solvable - injustice we face.

(More Krugman here).

Amp-

Did you watch Primetime, on ABC last night? If not, here’s a link. I’ll give your a brief overview of the piece. I’d sure like to see this discussed online.

The segment was about an incident that occurred at a McDonalds in KY. A caller phoned the shift manager, telling her that he was a police officer who needed her help in conducting an investigation of a teen employee, then on-duty, believed to have stolen a purse from a customer. The caller then made a series of instructions over about a three hour period, that led to the girl being strip searched, spanked, and humiliated. Finally, the supervisor is asked to bring her fiancé in to watch the girl, while the supervisor returns to work at the counter. The “police officer” then instructs the fiancé to have a girl perform a sex act on him, which he complies with. The girl is crying throughout this ordeal. At no point does anyone question the authenticity of the call, except for one teen worker who leaves in disgust, saying it’s all BS. The security camera in the office, captured the entire assault.

It’s the most troubling thing I seen, and frankly it kept me awake last night. The individual who made the call had been made hundreds of such calls to fast food restaurants all over the country. In 70 cases, the person answering the phone, complied with his requests, resulting in strip searches of employees and customers, and in some instances, cavity searches.

This case should spark a needed debate on our willingness to blindly respect “authority” figures, and our accountability when we participate in immoral acts.

Thanks-
Emmetropia

It’s a pretty stunning story. The person who made the call, David Stewart, is a prison guard who had fantasies about being a cop; he’s now under arrest, charged with “solicitation of sodomy and impersonating a police officer.” The fiancé “has pleaded not guilty to charges of sodomy and sexual assault.” And the victim is suing McDonalds and the manager for false imprisonment.

Looking at the BLS’s 2003 Consumer Survey, the people who save in this country are overwhelmingly wealthy. The bottom income quintile pulls home $8,201 a year before taxes, and spends $18,492. Meanwhile, the top quintile hauls home $127,146 a year before taxes, and spends $81,731. The poor are borrowing to the hilt and the rich are happy to oblige them. At the end of 2004, the amount of after tax income that went towards debt service was roughly 16 percent, and those numbers are much higher for low-income families. Bankruptcies are skyrocketing. So why are these families borrowing so much? Robert Pollin of EPI put out a study in 1990 arguing that the bottom 40 percent of Americans were borrowing to compensate for stagnant or falling wages. More recently, Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Tyagi’s Two-Income Trap compiled similar evidence…the 6,000 percent increase in credit card debt between 1968 and 2000 didn’t come about because people were buying frivolities; they’re simply trying to tread water, pay for health care, that sort of thing.

Now obviously if you’re in the creditor class, this state of affairs looks pretty damn good. Not only do you earn interest on your surplus funds, but mass borrowing among low-income Americans reduces pressure for higher wages, by letting them buy stuff they couldn’t otherwise afford, and it certainly makes America look like a middle-class consumer society, thus staving off the angry hordes from rioting.[...]

The downside, of course, is that among the lower classes, very few people have much wealth to speak of. The richest 10 percent of Americans own 79.8 percent of all financial assets. The bottom 40 percent, collectively, own as much in liabilities as in assets. (Average wealth among the bottom 10 percent has been consistently declining since the 1960s.) Among minorities, especially African-Americans and non-white Hispanics, the disparities are even worse. In 2001, the average black household had a net worth equal to about 14 percent of the average white household.

Here’s what I always wonder about fundimentalist Christians: Why aren’t they interested in putting an end to predatory lending practices? The Bible is very clear about the matter, and yet - at least here in Oregon - the party of right-wing Christian politicians firmly oppose proposals to reign in predatory lending practices.

I’m frankly terrified by how little wealth low-income Americans have, especially when you consider how little most people have put aside for retirement. A TV report I saw this morning claimed that the typical American has less than $20,000 put aside for retirement (in an 401K or the like), and even among Americans over 55 the average is less than $100,000 (and presumably much, much lower among low-wage workers). Social Security is going to survive - but Social Security is meant to be a suppliment, not an entire retirement. And for everyone but some firefighters and cops, “pension” is becoming an obsolete concept, like churning butter or sewing your own clothes.

Elder poverty is going to be huge in 30 years time.

Thank goodness! Because if there’s one thing that “Lost” has too many of, it’s female protagonists.

What intrigues me is that the once-enourmous difference between the sexes, in terms of which sex is more often the victim of violent crime, has gone down to a fairly narrow difference.

(And the difference would be even narrower if rape and intimate partner violence - two mostly-female-victim areas the BJS stats badly undercount - were fully accounted for.)

It’s good news that violent crime is down. Except, perhaps, for men’s rights advocates - for whom one of the principle proofs of male victimhood is that men are used to be vastly more likely to be victims of violent crime.