Last week, New York Times theater reviewer Charles McGrath penned a piece on Sienna Miller’s Broadway debut. The piece has been roundly criticized for overstating Miller’s affairs with famous men. The story begins by reviewing Miller’s “long and well-documented romantic history,” which includes “flings” with “Jude Law, Daniel Craig, James Franco and most recently the married oil heir Balthazar Getty, with whom she was photographed topless and in a sailor hat.”

Originally, McGrath had grouped Heath Ledger and Puff Daddy in with the bunch. A correction appended to the story later clarified that the”misstates the nature of the relationships that she had with Heath Ledger and Sean Combs. She was friends with both of them; she did not have romantic flings with either of them.” But the problems with McGrath’s piece go far beyond the inflated slut-shaming.

Take the paragraph that follows up the topless sailor incident:

Ms. Miller is opening on Thursday in the Roundabout Theater production of “After Miss Julie,” Patrick Marber’s adaptation of the Strindberg play “Miss Julie.” The audience at previews has included Sienna lookalikes, blond fashionistas in miniskirts and heavy makeup, and scholars less of Scandinavian theater, perhaps, than of her Vogue cover appearances. That some people have trouble taking Ms. Miller seriously as an actress—or don’t even know she is one—is because she has so frequently been her own worst enemy.

According to McGrath, Miller’s fanbase is a group of shallow “fashionistas” who are so dumb they don’t even know that Miller is an actress. Boy, I bet they were confused when they showed up at a Broadway theater to see Miller in a play, and ended up having to sit through hours of acting.

McGrath is concerned that nobody is taking Miller “seriously as an actress.” Perhaps the problem is that McGrath refuses to take Miller’s fans seriously. Apparently, the people who are willing to shell out the cash to see Miller on Broadway are not “serious” because they read Vogue, wear skirts, and apply make-up. In short, they’re girls. Worse, they’re girls who look like Sienna Miller. The fact that McGrath instantly discredits entire groups of people who happen to resemble his interview subject says a lot about his own bias in writing this profile.

McGrath spends the remainder of the piece attempting to convince his readers that Miller is capable of “charming” and “sensitive” performances, as if he is the only one who can see past Miller’s beauty and relationship history. “Not a great many people have actually seen what she can do,” McGrath writes—as if the women lining up to see Miller on Broadway have somehow failed to complete the simpler task of watching one of her films. And despite McGrath’s presumably unique appreciation of Miller’s talent, he continually refuses to focus strictly on her work throughout the piece. Miller, he writes, is “smaller” and “prettier” in person. She manages to be a good actress despite being “beautiful.”

After all this—the rehashing of her former “flings,” the snarking on her female fans, the constant protestations of Miller’s beauty, and the condescending admission that the girl can actually act in addition to fucking dudes and looking hot, McGrath concludes that Miller is not taken seriously because she has “so frequently been her own worst enemy.” I think it’s time Miller transfer the “worst enemy” title on over to Charles McGrath.

Photo by Caroline Bonarde Uni via Wikipedia Commons

The danger of swine flu in pregnant women has received a great deal of press attention recently. As concerns over the health of pregnant women rise, the abortion debate has slyly emerged as a a central influence in the dialogue.

Yesterday, the New York Times told the story of Aubrey Opdyke, a 27-year-old woman who was pregnant when she contracted swine flu last June. What began as mild symptoms of aches and fatigue turned into a harrowing four month ordeal. Writes reporter John McNeil:

In the four months she was hospitalized, she spent five weeks in a coma, suffered six collapsed lungs and a near-fatal seizure. High-pressure ventilation blew her up like a molten balloon until “she looked like she weighed 400 pounds,” her husband, Bryan, said, and she has stretch marks from her neck to her ankles. Her muscles and lungs are still so weak that she uses a walker.While hospitalized, she missed seeing her 4-year-old daughter, Hope, learn to swim and start pre-school.

And, most important, she lost her baby. Parker Christine Opdyke, almost 27 weeks in the womb, was delivered by emergency Caesarean section on July 18, when her fetal heart rate plummeted during Ms. Opdyke’s third lung collapse. Her airways were too blocked to let a breathing tube in, possibly a side effect of the drugs saving her mother. She lived seven minutes.

In McNeil’s profile of Opdyke, losing the baby was “most important”—more traumatic than even falling into the coma, suffering a seizure, temporarily losing the ability to walk, talk, and see her family, and facing death. The trauma of losing a child in the womb is clearly central to Opdyke’s experience. But it is still Opdyke’s experience—the ordeal is hers, not her baby’s. Compare that treatment to a previous profile of Opdyke, which ran in the Scripps Treasure Coast Newspapers. It’s worth it to examine the entire lede:

The baby was beautiful, with tufts of long eyelashes—just like her mother.

But she didn’t cry.

Her heart stopped minutes after doctors delivered her from the belly of Aubrey Opdyke, who had swine flu and lay in a medically induced coma.

Aubrey never had the chance to see her.

So the baby’s grandmother, Joanne Felker of Stuart, readied tiny Parker Christine for photographs and a video.

She bathed her and held her.

“She looks like she’s just peaceful,” Felker said of the images, shot by the volunteer group Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep.

One of these days, the family will show the images to Aubrey.

They’ll fill in the blanks about the time she has spent in a coma at Wellington Regional Medical Center, battling a case of H1N1 influenza that took Parker’s life on July 18 — more than two months before she was supposed to be born.

This is a story about a fetus. Opdyke, who endured months of comas, collapsed lungs, and seizure in a fight to stay alive, is introduced in a prepositional phrase: “from the belly of.” Joanne Felker is not Opdyke’s mother; she is “the baby’s grandmother.” The loss of Parker Christine is mourned at length, but the fact that Opdyke herself was on the verge of death is never mentioned in the story. Tellingly, Opdyke was not even able to speak at the time this profile was written about her. Given her condition, it’s doubtful she had a hand in authorizing the story at all:

Now that doctors have eased her off coma-inducing medication, Aubrey can blink in response to visitors.

She indicated that she recognized her husband, Bryan Opdyke, and can wiggle her toes.

The sources in the story are Opdyke’s mother, her former co-workers, and her former Girl Scout troop leader. Opdyke’s husband is not quoted in the story. That’s too bad, because he provided an extremely interesting insight to the New York Times:

Mr. Opdyke was warned he might have to choose—her life or that of the baby, who was just at the border of survivability outside the womb.

“I said, ‘Save Aubrey,’ ” he said of the woman he married last year. “I can make another baby, but I can’t replace her.”

Her third lung collapse forced the issue. Parker had to be delivered, but she did not survive.

The Times addresses the issue head-on: Losing Parker was a tragedy for the Opdykes, but it may very well have saved a woman’s life. Andrea Opdyke wasn’t given many choices throughout her horrific ideal. At least, in the New York Times, she’s afforded a voice in her own story.

Photo by flickr user Andres Rueda, Creative Commons 2.0

“Reducing.” “Eliminating.” Saul doesn’t use the word “abortion” until page three, when she notes that “many opponents criticize selective reduction as a form of abortion.” It is abortion. So why don’t we call it that?

Saul’s story aims to accurately describe real pregnancy experiences, and the highly politicized debate surrounding abortion has a funny way of conveniently ignoring these stories. The hopeful parents Saul interviews largely fall outside the mainstream abortion debate: they are men and women who desperately desire children, and must decide whether to abort multiple fetuses or run the risk of losing their chance of ever having a healthy baby. The typical characterizations that pro-lifers associate with the word “abortion”— “baby killers,” “Godless whores,” “irresponsible sluts”—don’t exactly fit when they’re applied to people who go to great lengths to create life.

Saul’s heavy use of euphemism throughout the piece deliberately shields these women’s choices from the misplaced moral superiority of the abortion debate. Calling the procedure “reducing” or “eliminating” instead of “aborting” helps to respect the full experience of women who fight for one healthy child, but end up with seven fetuses that are unlikely to survive. The use of the “reduction” euphemism in the medical community may also help some women make informed medical decisions affecting their lives and the lives of their children. Some patients may be so opposed to abortion—or simply so put-off by the cultural perceptions of the word “abortion”—that they may endanger themselves or the lives of their potential children if they are forced to choose one.

But the medical community’s reluctance to discuss the possibility of “selective reduction” honestly and frankly with women can also harm those women who don’t realize that fertilization techniques may require abortion. One woman in the story, who chose to “reduce” her pregnancy from five fetuses to three, told the Times:

“I think there’s a huge problem in the reproductive technology industry . . . I was told the chances that I would have triplets were less than 1 percent. There was no talk of being faced with a decision like that until the day that we had the ultrasound. Then you have two weeks to decide. And you don’t get counseling from anybody.”

The euphemistic word choice can also hurt women who have abortions under other circumstances. The hesitancy to apply the term “abortion” to women who actually want babies does a disservice to all women who choose to end a pregnancy. Women choose abortion for a variety of reasons. Some women who are not carrying “multiples” choose abortion despite a desperate desire to have a child. Some women choose abortion in order to protect their children from lives that are sure to be short and painful. Some women choose abortion in order to save their own lives from dangerous pregnancies. Some women choose abortion because their bodies are unfit to carry a child. Some women choose abortion in order to protect the best interests of the children they already have. Some women choose abortion in order to protect the best interests of the children they want to have in the future. Some women choose abortion because they don’t want to have children. And some women choose abortion for reasons that are none of your business. When reporters choose to remove a select group of women from the discussion of “abortion,” they imply that all other decisions to abort are somehow less valid.

Saul’s story shows that the decision to abort is often complicated, difficult, and personal. It also shows that politicizing the decision to have an abortion can prove extremely dangerous to both women and children. In Saul’s story, women who choose to “reduce” their fetuses escape the “abortion” label because their choice to abort is explicitly aimed at encouraging life. Their choice completely upends the false dichotomy in the political debate between “abortion” and “life.” That’s all the more reason to call the procedure “abortion.”

This Week In Sexist History, a double billing:

followed by:

Good ‘Ol Day: August 28, 1897

On August 28, 1897, a couple of newsworthy events occurred: A nine-year-old girl discovered the head of a local Arabian woman in the woods, was threatened with death by the woman’s killer, then escaped just in time to avoid the forest fire the murderer lit to obscure his victim’s remains. In other news, dog did something cute. I wonder which story the New York Times deemed worthy of the most column inches?

Nameless decapitated foreign woman: 29 lines.

Now how about that dog?

Dog imbued with the human qualities of inquiry, serenity, gaiety, and amusement by the New York Times: 42 lines.

This Week In Sexist History:

Good Ol’ Day: August 20, 1883

Dateline: Long Branch, NJ

1. Women must be pretty.

2. But they are born ugly, so we must make them pretty.

3. Women who go to the beach make this task very difficult for us.

4. And women who actually swim are nearly beyond help.

5. It is rather amusing, however, just how ugly swimming makes women!

6. Women who swim are so ugly, they don’t even want men to look at their ugly bodies! But we do look at them, and then detail their hideousness in the pages of the New York Times.

7. Well, at least they are still wealthy.

8. Though these ugly, oceanic women allow no one to see how profoundly uncomfortable they are, I know they are profoundly uncomfortable, because I understand women. Even the ugly ones.

9. If a woman is not pretty, then she does not enjoy herself. As is proper.

10. But perhaps the water will help to cure her extreme ugliness anyhow.

11. And remember, even Butterfaces could be hiding a sensual ankle in the surf.

12. [Obligatory rhapsodic account of historical beach leering].

13. [Obligatory rhapsodic account of modern beach leering].

14. Foreign women! They are kind of hot, but so ignorant of the customs of our modern American beach leering!

15. This one hot foreign actress wore the ugliest swimsuit one time.

16. She was a shitty actress, too.

17. Yes, I am using the term “dudes.” In 1883.

18. Girls can’t swim!

19. Well, at least they display their pearly white arms when they’re trying. Oh, did I mention that I am also a racist?

20. One reason for women to swim, of course, is to wear an outfit which mimics an animal’s yoke, in order to infer that she would make a good, obedient wife.

21. Have I not sufficiently compared women to animals? Women women zebras.

22. Now I am leering at children.

23. Aaaaand back to the racism.

24. Old women are disgusting and must be kept indoors.

25. I like watching girls fall down.

26. Middle-aged women are the most heinous, for they insist upon swimming, though their bodies are universally reviled.

27. Have I mentioned swimming is for men?

Commenters on the Times’ Web site offered celebration, concern, and schoolyard commentary:

“Great …they can pay for dinner, vacation, etc,” wrote one commenter, writing under the name “$“.

“Careful lest people think you not only want gains for women, but losses for men. As long as women are ahead, it’s all good!” snarked another.

And the inevitable: “Is it just a coincidence that the first chart looks like a horizontal phallic symbol?”

Sigh. Of COURSE the “mancession” yields clearly phallic statistical data! If there’s any silver lining to men losing, it’s that they’ll have a lot more time on their hands to uncover all the secret penis line drawings hidden in everyday objects. Too bad only I get paid to do shit like that!

This Week in Sexist History:

Good Ol’ Day: July 30, 1908

Dateline: Washington, D.C.

Subject: A District man’s “attentions” to local married women—the phone calls! the hugging!—inspire a band of husbands to retaliate. Their weapons? Tar, feathers, nude sitting-on, and accusations of turn-of-the-century witchcraft. (In 1908, they called it “hypnosis”). Let the olde-tyme male slut-shaming begin:

Calling on a woman? In the evening? Bad slut. Bring out the tar:

So, Bliss comes to visit this chick in Columbia Heights. Says they’re engaged. In love. Headed to New York to seal the deal. NYT reporter, however, is not buying this guy’s love story at all. But couldn’t this all be cleared up by—I don’t know—asking the woman what happened? No? Fine:

Side note: How do you spontaneously tar and feather someone in a Columbia Heights basement? Where do the feathers come from?

Kinky. Though he arrived in the home as a mere adulterer, he left as THE SLUTMONSTER OF CAPITOL HILL:

But surely, the three dudes who captured him, stuck him in a basement, took all his clothes off, sat on him, painted him with tar, and then dusted him with the insides of a couch did so for good reason:

He’s a witch!

Ah, the old I-fell-under-his-hypnotic-influence-at-an-innocent-dinner-party-and-was-unable-to-control-myself-when-I-got-his-messages-by-mental-telepathy trick. How dare this man take advantage of this poor, weak-brained woman! Only this hypnotist’s slutty witchery could possibly have caused her to stray from the dude who sits on naked people in his basement and then exacts olde-tyme tortures on them. Yep, she sure is lucky she wasn’t whisked away to New York City, never to see her husband again. Whew. Close one.

Telephone calls? Embraces? It’s about time we got this guy off the streets, and into some crazy olde-tyme BDSM basement in Columbia Heights.

This Week In Sexist History:

Good ‘Ol Day: July 22, 1893

Dateline: Long Branch, N.J.

Subject: The summer of 1893 is nearly ruined for this sad sack New Jersey scene reporter—until the sexiest underage bather this side of puberty catches his roving eye!

What’s lifting these male vacationers from the depths of their pathetic existences? If you’ve been studying your Sexist History, you’d know that the answer probably starts with Pretty and ends with Girls:

Oh, it makes no difference what shape you are in the freewheeling social scene of the Jersey surf! Unless, of course, you’re “pretty girl” shaped, in which case your body will likely be obsessively detailed in the pages of the New York Times. Proceed:

Euugh! How old is the young lady in the red swimsuit, anyway? One the one hand, it’s great that this girl is still in her spluttering-around-in-the-water bathing suit phase, and not yet in her crippled-by-body-issues bathing suit phase. On the other hand, I’m willing to bet the girl’s sexy childhood innocence was shattered riiiiiight arrroooound July 23, 1893—the day this Skeevy Turn-Of-The-Century Reporter’s ruminations on her sexy childhood innocence was printed in the pages of the New York Times.

How can Skeevy Turn-of-the-Century Reporter possibly redeem himself from the true skeeviness of ogling bathing children? By turning next to an even sleazier specimen: The Skeevy Turn-Of-The-Century Sketch Artist.

Done and done.

This Week in Sexist History:

Good Ol’ Day: July 12, 1909

Dateline: Berlin, Germany

Subject: German woman’s body caught in a patriarchal double-bind: How to satisfy the “natural ample proportions” required to fulfill the role of Wife, while achieving the “modish slimness” required to fulfill the role of Sex Object. Sound familiar? Modern women, too, must navigate between “sexually desirable” and “baby-making factory”—it just usually doesn’t up as cause for divorce, because nobody needs a reason to get divorced anymore.

Anyway, back to 1909, when this woman’s husband:

Now that we’ve got the woman’s vital stats out of the way, let’s find out why someone’s BMI makes them unfit for marriage:

Guilty! Of a crime of fashion. But seriously, that’s all this woman has committed.

This is a toughie. While I can’t support a woman’s husband divorcing her because he doesn’t like the choices she’s made about her own appearance, I also have a hard time defending the forces of darkness (”fashion”) which require a woman to lose ten pounds a month in order to fit into some clothes. Surely, this is a weight battle for the courts to decide.

Aw, at least she got to wear the dress. The really, really fashionable dress that would cost her her marriage!

Wait . . . he “bargained” for her? Yeah, I’m siding with fashion on this one.

Hopefully the above photo, published on the cover of the New York Times today, has some sort of innocuous explanation whereby Sarah Palin has not kicked off her resignation victory tour with a bizarre twist on the sexy rock star pastime: Signing the chest of a crying child, what the fuck. Okay, she actually appears to be signing the area of the onesie covering the child’s chest. Better?

Who is this Dan Sullivan?

Bring it on:

This Week in Sexist History:

Good Ol’ Day: July 7, 1900

Dateline: Boston, MA

Subject: Turn-of-the-century Cuban exchange students take Harvard by storm. The New York Times reports on Crimsons charmed by the girls’ exotic beauty, helpless pleas of “no understand,” and severely limited “powers of locomotion” (boys don’t count).

Hey, looks like these Cuban girls are having a great time reveling in the relatively progressive social landscape of 1900 Boston. This cannot stand:

Thank goodness for American girls. If they don’t take away the freedoms of their foreign-exchange sisters, who will?

I understand that these Cuban women have come to America to study English. But until they do, they will remain charmingly distraught, adorably helpless, and delectably worthy of mockery.

Take note, admirers—all it takes is a few American steps to render these exotic beauties utterly helpless.

Ha! I knew those Cuban girls weren’t sneaking out of their dorm rooms to “walk alone with men” on innocent “evening strolls.” These sexy señoritas can’t even fucking walk. Also, one is a redhead, The End:

This Week in Sexist History:

Good Ol’ Day: June 23, 1909

Dateline: New York, NY

Subject: Reporter at Yale-Harvard rivalry baseball game fluffs up his flowery play-by-play with a rhapsodic account of the glorious array of girls in attendance. Collect one in every ethnicity!

First, let us immerse ourself in the peculiar style of turn-of-the-century Ivy League baseball reporting:

The “real old Jamake,” guy? Whatever—this man has clearly got column inches to fill. And then:

Who has a baseball game to report on when there are girls to scrupulously detail?

At this point, you might be thinking that this guy should get back to the game at hand instead of ranking the glorious blossoms of the rose garden that is female college baseball enthusiasts. No? Okay. What were they wearing?

That explains it: He fancies himself a novelist. Say what you will about this reporter’s choice to obscure the whole ballgame with testimony on gowns “such as made Paris a memory” and excuses for his own lechery—it beats his baseball reporting:

Yeah, where are the girls again?

This time around: cat fights!

New York Times columnist Mickey Meece (seriously) is here to explain why the recession has resulted in a frightening “workplace bullying” epidemic that threatens to destroy all working women. Why are working girls bitchier than ever to each other? Let me count the ways:

Because “workplace researchers say”:

During this downturn, as stress levels rise, workplace researchers say, bullies are likely to sharpen their elbows and ratchet up their attacks.

Because even though most bullies are male, the female bullies are bitchier (or, cat fights are more interesting than regular old boy office politics):

It’s probably no surprise that most of these bullies are men, as a survey by the Workplace Bullying Institute, an advocacy group, makes clear. But a good 40 percent of bullies are women. And at least the male bullies take an egalitarian approach, mowing down men and women pretty much in equal measure. The women appear to prefer their own kind, choosing other women as targets more than 70 percent of the time.

Because even when you have a career, you still have to be the mother:

Women don’t like to talk about it because it is “so antithetical to the way that we are supposed to behave to other women,” Ms. Klaus said. “We are supposed to be the nurturers and the supporters.”

Because pretending there are “magical keys” to correct female behavior in the workplace makes it easier to market “executive leadership coaches” to women:

“Women are trying to figure out the magical keys to the kingdom,” said Laura Steck, president of the Growth and Leadership Center in Sunnyvale, Calif., and an executive leadership coach.

Women feel they have to be aggressive to be promoted, she said, and then they keep it up. Then, suddenly, they see the need to be collegial and collaborative instead of competitive.

Because men have nothing to do with this:

“As we get into the corporate world,” Ms. Cirocco added, “we’re taught or we’re led to believe that we don’t get ahead because of men. But, we really don’t get ahead because of ourselves. Instead of building each other up and showcasing each other, we’re constantly tearing each other down.”

Bea Arthur, television feminist icon, died on Saturday at the age of 86. When Bruce Weber’s New York Times obit was emailed to subscribers, the headline read, “Bea Arthur, TV Battle-Ax, Dies at 86.”

Someone at the NYT must have thought better of sending Arthur off with a “cautionary/derogatory label for a formidable & forbidding woman.” Now, the obit’s title reads “Bea Arthur, Star of Two TV Comedies, Dies at 86.”

I’m glad Bea is still intimidating them all, even in her death.

No. NO Not again. Not another “Mr Mom” reference!

Maybe this shit could fly in 1983. I wouldn’t know, because at that point, my own Mr. Mom and my regular female Mom hadn’t gotten together to shared-parent me yet. But at this point, New York Times—-stop. JUST STOP.

You’ve informed us that despite the “Mr. Mom” idea you have helped to propagate, “Dads” still outnumber Mr. Moms (”Mr. Mom Aside, Dads at Work Are Still the Norm“).

You’ve asked the eternal question: “But Can Mr. Mom Tie a Ponytail?”

You’ve even called the guy who wrote in to debunk the idea that only women can be proper parents a “Mr. Mom” (”Mr. Mom Fights Back“)! I can’t believe you did that, you fucking jerks!

Thankfully, we already have a suitable replacement word for “Mr. Mom.” It’s called “Dad.”

* Great, women claim even more power over Children. The New York Times reports on scientists who have discovered “a surprising new mechanism by which women train their fetuses’ budding immune systems: the mother’s cells slip across the placenta, enter the fetus’s body and teach it to treat these cells as its own.”

* Strapped for cash? Birth 14 babies through science [via The Frisky].

* When you open up your Reproductive Health Reality Check essay on body image with this:

I was saddened to read Hannah Whittaker’s article on The F Word about her eating disorder a while back. I did, however, want to share the experiences of someone from the other side of the fence. I have what, for many women, is an extremely enviable figure. If I open a copy of FHM, the models don’t look like unattainable visions of tiny-waisted pneumatic perfection. They look like me . . .

I may not read the remainder of your Reproductive Health Reality Check essay on body image.

* Tiger Beatdown does not defend the Guardian’s defense of “political lesbianism.”

Because “political lesbianism” reinforces the stereotype that women are not sexual; because it encourages straight women to appropriate lesbian experience; because it reinforces the stereotype that lesbians are all “going through a phase” that they can be fucked out of by men; because it encourages straight women to deny themselves a necessary, liberating, and life-affirming form of pleasure; because it inevitably leads to one-sided and sexually catastrophic lesbian relationships . . .

etc.

Photo by bugeaters.

Two male views of women’s sexuality:

(a) It is predictable, unchanging, easily conquerable once you’ve cracked their code. Favored by: “Pick-up artists” whose livelihood depends on purporting to know the code. See: Roissy in D.C., Roosh V.

(b) It is mysterious, unknowable, a foreign “Other” never to be understood. Favored by: Scientists, journalists whose theses depend upon sustaining the mystery. See: The New York Times’ Magazine’s “What Do Women Want?“

—

Daniel Bergner’s “What Do Women Want?” opens with the results of a study conducted by Queen’s University psychologist Meredith Chivers, which presented gay and straight males and females with different types of pornography and tested their physiological reactions to the scenes against their self-reported levels of arousal. Chivers’ results are summarized as follows:

- Straight men responded physically and reported arousal only when shown heterosexual pornography, naked women, and two women having sex.
- Gay men responded physically and reported arousal only when shown male homosexual pornography and naked men.
- Straight women responded physically to all of the pornography—including that which depicted bonobos having sex—except a naked man walking on the beach, but only reported significant arousal to the pornography involving males.
- Gay women responded physically to all of the pornography—including that which depicted bonobos having sex—except a naked man walking on the beach, but only reported significant arousal to the pornography involving females.

These results are intriguing, groundbreaking, and in Bergner’s hands, problematic. Chivers repeatedly refers to female sexuality as “a giant forest.” Bergner, for his part, concludes his eight-page piece similarly, by characterizing female sexuality as a wild, uncharted terrain that men—and more importantly, women themselves—will never understand. He writes:

How many could be done by all the sexologists in the world who focus on female desire, whether they were wiring women with plethysmographs or mapping the activity of their brains in fM.R.I. scanners or fitting them with goggles or giving them questionnaires or following their erotic lives for years? What more could sexologists ever provide than intriguing hints and fragmented insights and contradictory conclusions? Could any conclusion encompass the erotic drives of even one woman? Didn’t the sexual power of intimacy, so stressed by Diamond, commingle with Meana’s forces of narcissism? Didn’t a longing for erotic tenderness coexist with a yearning for alley ravishing? Weren’t these but two examples of the myriad conflicting elements that create women’s lust? Had Freud’s question gone unanswered for nearly a century not because science had taken so long to address it but because it is unanswerable?

Bergner’s summation can be taken two ways:

a) Women are individuals! Of course you can’t figure out what they want, they all want something different depending on their genetic make-up and cultural upbringing and sexual history. Don’t even try to generalize what “female desire” is—it’s insulting to the unique experience of all women, and more importantly, it will not help you get laid.

b) “Female desire”—which will never be understood—should not be confused with male sexuality, which is simple, clear, and unfussy. Men know what they want. They have no mental problems in understanding their own desires. They are either gay or straight. Women are still from Venus, but men are from Earth.

—

Allowing that both have some truth to them, let’s entertain option (b) for a moment. Chivers does fascinating work, and Bergner has his hands full unloading it for us. He does a pretty good job, we learn a lot about each other, etc. But by segregating the problem of female sexuality from the male experience, Bergner suggests that only women beg understanding, and that the book on men and sex is open and shut. Part of the problem is the scientific nature of the inquiry If outliers exist in Chivers’ study, they are not discussed. The idea that a man could possibly identify as bisexual doesn’t warrant a mention. Also unmentioned: Any psychological disconnect men might have with their own sex lives. Women alone are implicated in the “unanswerable” thesis. Only “female desire” cannot be understood. Importantly, the disconnect between the physiological and mental arousal reported in Chivers’ study suggests that only women don’t understand their own sexual experiences. The male mental faculty escapes unscathed.

The overarching implication of Bergner’s piece can be articulated in two ways:

(a) Women experience sex in ways that can never be explained by the male-centered scientific or journalistic processes employed to understand them.

(b) What is wrong with women?

—

Photo by trialsanderrors

* The new Hillary Clinton, New York Senator-to-be Kirsten Gillibrand, already has jealous Congressional wolves circling her freshly appointed carcass in the hopes of gaining the seat that is not yet officially hers, in 2010 [via Newsday].

* The New gay tells President Obama what to do. TNG was also nice enough to profile the Sexist in last week’s featured blog spot. Thanks!

* Slate reviews Daniel Bergner’s The Other Side of Desire:

He selects four areas: foot fetishism, sadomasochism, pedophilia, and an obsession for amputees. In each case, he finds and follows a devotee. In the process, Bergner does what science cannot: He illuminates peculiar longings. His method is at first descriptive and finally poetic. The message of the book is in the interplay among personal narratives that prove alternately bizarre and mundane.

* The New York Times Magazine piece suggests that a “generation of postfeminist sexologists” are beginning to unlock the mysterious sexual desires of women. But who will unlock the mystery of what a “postfeminist sexologist” is?

Photo by trialsanderrors.

You’re Likable Enough, Gay People

The title is a nod to Obama’s primary season declaration that “You’re likable enough, Hillary.” But next to Rich’s smug head shot, it looks more like this.

NC: Could you, for the sake of storytelling, could you tell us a little bit about that moment, like, where you were, what you said to him about your decision, how that played out?

CK: Have you guys ever thought about writing for, like, a woman’s magazine or something? (Laughter)

DH: What do you have against women’s magazines?

CK: Nothing at all, but I thought you were the crack political team here.

Kennedy’s been criticized for coming off as defensive and sexist here. I think she just wants to be sure she’s being taken seriously by the two men who have been firing the same question at her again and again. Like most smart women, I do have something against women’s magazines. And it might help to note that Confessore and Halbfinger did predicate that question with a characterization of Caroline and Ted Kennedy as ill-fated rom-com partners:

NC: I guess another way of thinking about it is that Jennifer Aniston movie, where she tells her boyfriend, ‘I want you to want to do the dishes,’ you know? And I wonder if Senator Kennedy wanted you to want to do it.

DH: “The Break-Up.”

CK: (Laughter) I hope you’re going to put this in the article, not just the answer. OK?

So, you know, maybe she has a point.

* The city of South El Monte, California, has imposed a nightly curfew of 11 p.m. for its mayor, Blanca M. Figueroa, the New York Times reports. Figueroa had a habit of burning the midnight oil in her office, often staying late to help citizens with “home foreclosure problems, layoffs and even buying groceries.” How sexist is this shit? Let me count the ways:

(1) She can’t protect herself. “One council member, Hector Delgado, said the curfew was needed for ’safety and liability reasons.’ ‘What if something happens to her?’ said Mr. Delgado, who is also mayor pro tem, noting that on hot summer nights Ms. Figueroa left her door open to a hallway that led to a parking area.”

(2) She speaks her mind. “Councilman Louie Aguiñaga said tension over the mayor’s office hours had spilled over into the Council meetings and disrupted city business. ”She wants good things for the city,’ he said. ‘It’s just the way she talks out at meetings and disagrees with everything. I think the other council members finally got fed up.’”

(3) Decision result of creepy voyeurism. “Most nights, she said, she assumed that eight fishy eyes were her only audience. But security cameras captured her nightly work habits, Mr. Delgado said, and the images of her prompted him to propose the curfew, which the Council has not decided how to enforce.”

(4) Infantilization of women, anyone? “Mr. Delgado recommended confiscating the mayor’s keys.”

Photo by Bohman.

* Via New York Times: What it feels like for a girl. Or boy, depending on where you’re starting from.

* Tiger Beatdown tries to quit smoking, discovers strange withdrawal symptoms: Temper tantrums. A state of near paralysis. Feelings of being an infant.

* Man About Town D.C. writes about the efforts of local gay activists to “connect with Black groups and leaders” in preparation for a D.C. gay marriage initiative, and makes a good point on the Prop 8 blame game:

the Black vote fixation was myopic. Apparently, some people didn’t realize that upward of 80% of Republicans, conservatives, white evangelicals, and weekly churchgoers also voted yes on Prop. 8. The initiative would have passed, albeit barely, even if not a single African-American had shown up at the polls. Besides, Mormons pumped $20 million into the “Yes on 8” campaign, so it’s safer to say they really tipped the scales.

* Via Talking Points Memo: The Senate’s trying to negotiate past a Constitutional clause that some say prevents Clinton from taking the Secretary of State post—by offering to cut the Secretary’s salary.

Photo by Caveman 92223.

The New York Times last week reported on a new “beautification engine,” a “computer program that uses a mathematical formula to alter the original form into a theoretically more attractive version.” The program runs on the idea that a common standard of beauty can be predicted across cultures, based on international surveys and the ratios of flower pedals or something. The NYT ran the above woman, Martina Eckstut, through the program to see how it would tweak her less-than-perfect features: The computer raised Eckstut’s forehead, shrunk her nose, rounded her face, and came out with a new, prettier Martina.

That’s the idea, anyway. But is the more symmetrical, standardized photo actually more attractive than the original? Local dude blogger Roissy in D.C. seems to think so. “If you are honest in your assessment and not trying to score dorm room debate points on your not-so-humble narrator, then I predict 95% of my readers, male and female, will agree that the girl on the right is more attractive.”

Count me in the five percent. Both women, I think, are undeniably beautiful. At the risk of racking up whatever “dorm room debate points” are, I’d say the human pretty face also connotes character, experience, and individuality, while the computer pretty face connotes promotional materials for the CW. Sure, computer android Eckstut’s a pretty girl, but she’s a bit of a bore.

When presented with her new look, Eckstut, 25, politely complimented the computer-generated image before declining the extreme makeover. “I would like to keep my original face,” she wrote.

The NYT also ran some celebrity faces through the pretty machine, ostensibly to provide guidelines for future plastic surgery. Brigitte Bardot looks like she was hit with the boring stick. Michael Cera’s darling face, when “prettified,” may produce tween girl nightmares. Only the inimitable James Franco survives unscathed: “The before and after shots of the actor James Franco were almost indistinguishable,” notes NYT, “suggesting his classically handsome face is already pretty perfect.”

* Jezebel considers telling off Columbus Day.

* How did big tobacco make smoking acceptable for women? It got cozy with women’s lib, writes Jennifer 8. Lee for the New York Times:

Recognizing that women were still riding high on the suffrage movement, [American Tobacco Company P.R. dude] Mr. Bernays used the equality angle as the basis for his new campaign. He convinced a number of genteel women, including his own secretary, to march in the 1929 Easter Day parade down Fifth Avenue and light up cigarettes in a defiant show of their liberation.

* Internet nerds plan nerd union with Twitter engagement. Nerds. [via Boing Boing].

* How long must you date IRL before txt breakups become uncouth? From This Recording, In Which You Autocomplete Me, by a Georgia Hardstark.

* The raddest 106-year-old Roman nun is voting for the first time since Eisenhower. Which whippersnapper does she support?

* A couple of breeders who cannot, themselves, breed tell homosexuals why same-sex marriage is unnatural: “Patricia and Wesley Galloway could not have children of their own. Yet for them, the essence of marriage is rooted in procreation,” write Ray Rivera and Christine Stewart for the New York Times.

NYT covers this angle—opposing gay marriage for biology, not religion—as if it’s a new trend, when homosexuals (women, non-gender conforming individuals, minorities of any kind) everywhere know this “nature” bullshit has always been used to perpetuate institutionalized discrimination even among the non-religious. It’s just a hop and a skip from “it’s just not how God made us” to “it’s just not how nature intended.” Laments Ms. Galloway, “Everyone who disagrees is automatically labeled a right-wing bigot.” Adds Mr. Galloway, “How can you be a bigot when you’re looking out for society as a whole?” Thanks, Mr. & Ms., for showing us two bigots who defy the odds to manage that just fine.

Oh, and let’s add some misogyny in there for good measure: “Mr. Galloway, whose father died when he was 3, said being raised solely by women—his mother and his aunts—hindered his development and altered his sense of self-worth.” Hi, mom!

* Donna Fish is tired of people telling her she can’t be a little bit pregnant when she’s had an embryo implanted invitro and she’s waiting to see if it turns into a real live baby, because apparently people tell her she can’t say she’s a little bit pregnant or she wouldn’t have written this blog post about the new trend of being a little bit pregnant. How about being a little bit baby crazy?:

For six years, my husband and I lost seven babies. Two of them in the sixth month, five in the first trimester. We tried everything. Doctors could offer us no further options, so we turned to adoption. One evening I threw caution to the wind and became pregnant. For reasons no doctor to this day can understand, my first daughter was born nine months later. My subsequent two pregnancies were also uneventful and lo and behold, we have our three daughters.

Attn. Mr. & Ms. Galloway: Some people are so into nature they only turn to adoption after losing their seventh baby, and the miracle of nature rewards them with three healthy pregnancies. Who really deserves to be married now?

* Slate is all over the sex & gender beat this week! First, Jack Shafer debunks the New York Times Sunday Styles “dudes love cats” trend piece:

How to write a bogus trend story: Start with something you wish were on the rise. State that rise as a fact. Allow that there are no facts, surveys, or test results to support such a fact. Use and reuse the word seems. Collect anecdotes and sprinkle liberally. Drift from your original point as far as you can to collect other data points. Add liberally. Finish with an upbeat quotation like “My cat takes priority over the new relationship. Realistically, unless there’s something absolutely amazing about [the woman I'm dating], he wins.”

* Then, Explainer explains how to tell whether your 13-year-old kid actually wants a circumcision—or whether you could be pressuring him to have one. Is it so wrong to ask kid owners to err on the side of “foreskin intact”?

* And the XX Factor’s Melinda Henneberger probably doesn’t want your flowers. Henneberger lays out the rules for flora-purchasing significant others:

- A dozen for no reason: You shouldn’t have!
- A bouquet on an actual occasion: No, really, you shouldn’t have.

Speaking from my estimable position as “local blogger who sleeps on a mattress on the floor of a group house flanked by two squatter-occupied abandoned properties and counts among her possessions a bunch of old newspapers stacked in milk-crates recovered from darkened alleyways”—I, too, may never understand women.

Photo by Robyn Gallagher