My Mental Killfile

(Probably part 1 of many.)

Abortionist
Contracept as a verb
Mary Daly as representative of all feminism
Equity feminism as distinguished from gender feminism
Fiat currency
Marilyn French as representative of all feminism
Fourth wave feminism as an existing movement
Fox News as a news source
Ifeminism as a movement
"I know I'll get flamed for saying this, but..."
Islamofascism
Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton as racial bogeymen
Wendy McElroy as a "good feminist"
Men's News Daily as a news source
Robin Morgan as representative of all feminism
NOW as a stand-in for all feminism
Personal responsibility as something that other people need practice more
Erin Pizzey as a "good feminist"
Political correctness used unironically
Reverse racism or reverse sexism as something as severe as the non-reverse form
Glenn Sacks as a news source
Valerie Solanas as representative of all feminism
Christina Hoff Sommers as a "good feminist"
Success objects as the equivalent of "sex objects"
World Net Daily as a news source
Cathy Young as a "good feminist"

You Mean A Woman Can Open It?: The Woman's Place In The Classic Age Of Advertising

There are some interesting excerpts from a new book about outrageous advertisements from the past, and the gender stereotypes they furthered. (It lends some perspective to the common MRA complaint that the sitcom stereotype of the childish, slovenly family man is "just as bad" as the media's treatment of women.)

Unfortunately, they're being featured in the Daily Mail. Their take is basically that these are titillatingly "outrageous" (in the sense of "out there" rather than "provoking outrage") rather than actually offensive. The implication is that we as a culture have lost something in that we can't make sexist jokes any more without the butt of the joke having the audacity to complain about it; it's "political correctness" gone too far.

I'd rather live in a century without that kind of crap, thank you very much.

The Rational Actor's Libertarian Fête

This poem from litbrit is utterly brilliant.

Sex and the College Girl

Via Feministe: there's an incredibly interesting reprint of a 1957 Atlantic Monthly article on sex and relationships in college, the general reaction being "this is the sort of thing social conservatives want to go back to?" (And this is a story from the upper class white folks.)

One of the things that really struck me was that, despite being from the 1950s, it's a very different 1950s than we typically see (Silent Generation, indeed). Our cultural narrative of the latter half of the 20th century is almost uniformly from the perspective of the Baby Boomers - it's Forrest Gump as documentary. So the 1950s are a decade of childlike innocence, and sex is pretty much absent because the people telling the story haven't discovered it yet. Which, in a way, could explain the fascination with the 1950s so many social conservatives have - it's a return to a childhood state where we were blissfully unaware of other people's problems.

I was also struck by the uncanny but unsurprising resemblance to Tom Wolfe's I Am Charlotte Simmons; though there are superficial changes (integrating the universities, cellphones and computers, Wolfe's attempts at modern slang, etc.), the characters' attitudes are much closer to the ones described in this article than those of the college students I know. (Not surprising - Wolfe's own college days predated Ms. Johnson's by only a few years.)

Mac and Cheese

Made mac and cheese this weekend, a variation on the recipe I usually make. It's incredibly easy, because I cheat by using Velveeta and pre-made spice mixes. Here's the recipe for both versions:

Jack and pepper sauce (what I made this time):

1/4 cup butter
2 cups milk
2 tbsp flour
8 oz. Velveeta
1/2 cup Monterey Jack cheese, shredded
1 red bell pepper, diced
1 tsp salt
1 tsp black pepper
1 tsp creole seasoning

Buffalo Wing cheese sauce (my usual recipe):

1/4 cup butter
2 cups milk
2 tbsp flour
12 oz. Velveeta
1/4 cup bleu cheese, crumbled
2 tbsp hot sauce
1 tsp salt

For either sauce, just add all the ingredients and heat over low heat until the butter and cheese is melted, then pour over 1 lb. cooked pasta in a 9"x13" baking dish. Bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes.

Next time: a variation with Italian cheeses, sundried tomato and garlic.

Issue Framing 101

How to frame an issue in eight easy steps:

1. Compose an "ethical dilemma" hypothetical that narrows down an issue into a single "yes or no" question.

2. Demand that your opponents answer the question with a simple yes or no.

3. Accuse anyone who doesn't give a yes or no answer of evading the question.

4. Accuse anyone who does give a yes or no answer, and then goes on to point out how stupid the question is, of evading the question.

5. Accuse anyone who does give a yes or no answer, and then goes on to explain how their reasoning would change if the hypothetical changed, of evading the question.

6. Demand that your opponents who answered the question in the way expected to answer a "follow up question."

7. Accuse anyone who gives a simple answer opposite from the one your leading question or follow up leads to of being an extremist.

8. If someone asks where the questions are leading, deny that there's any ulterior motive.

We are not your fetish: race and relationships

A post over at Jezebel stirred up a lot of comments at Feministing and Pandagon on the subject of racial fetishization (specifically, fetishizing Asian women) in relationships.

I've been on both sides of this. My first girlfriend was Chinese-American, and we got a lot of flack from everyone - her folks, who we had to keep the relationship hidden from because I wasn't Chinese; other Asian-Americans who assumed I was a fetishist, and I was very defensive. On the other hand, lots of white folks also assumed I was a fetishist, and when they thought they'd found a kindred spirit they said all sorts of horribly racist things.

I do think there's a difference between a fetish and a preference. I think people wearing glasses are attractive; even if I jokingly refer to it as a "glasses fetish" it's more of a preference. I'm aware here that I'm using the term "fetish" in a particular way, and it is commonly used in other ways as well, most notably as denoting exclusivity rather than inclusivity; that is, any trait that you absolutely require in order to be attracted to someone is a fetish.

With respect to race, it gets complicated (as it always does) because there are direct physical preferences, and there are trends, and there are stereotypes. Saying "I think fair skin and dark hair is attractive" is a preference. Saying "I like Asian women because they have fair skin and dark hair" is a trend. Saying "I like Asian women because they're demure and ladylike" is a stereotype.

All of these kinds of posts bring out the defensive types. The typical argument they make is "I'm not racist for having a physical type!" But as tps12 pointed out on the feministing thread:

These of course are considered attractive traits in our society in either sex, so without even having to check whether they actually are more common among Asians, the larger claim is pretty well falsified by the fact that you see way more white guy/Asian girl couples than white girl/Asian guy.

Of course, that whole gender disparity opens a whole other can of worms that I'm both unwilling and unqualified to comment upon. Though I will say that Daniel Dae Kim and Sendhil Ramamurthy (and, at least among my friends, Grant Imahara and Masi Oka) seem to be doing rather well at changing some of those perceptions.

What happens next is typically that the defensive folks acknowledge racial fetishization, but claim that their personal exclusivity is different, more noble somehow. Usually it's "I like the culture" (when it's not a rant about how feminism has "ruined Western women"). The idea is apparently that it's okay not to treat someone as a person if you think highly of the abstraction you reduce them to, or if that abstraction's not physical or sexual.

Personally, I find fair skin and dark hair attractive, the reverse (i.e., hair that's lighter than the person's skin) not so much. It's by no means the overriding factor in my dating decisions, but it's definitely a preference. I can trace some of it back to growing up in Southern California and having bad experiences with folks with blonde hair and suntanned skin, and later moving to New England and fitting in with geeks, but I'd be in denial if I didn't acknowledge that at least part of the preference is based in cultural concepts of whiteness and beauty.

So what do we do about this? Our best. Seriously, I think that trying (or more likely pretending) to adopt a Colbertian "I don't see color" doesn't work, but that doesn't mean we don't have some responsibility to try to do right by people. Personally, if the only things attracting you to your potential partner are traits shared by large groups, I feel you could probably do better (at the very least, someone who has all those traits plus individual ones that appeal to you), but if you're insistent on remaining within your "type" at the very least I'd say you have a responsibility to make sure your potential partner is on the same page, and is okay with your motivations.

Not only that, but examining exclusive preferences can improve your own life. A hell of a lot of the things we decide are mandatory in a partner aren't things that make us happy, but instead are things we insist on for stupid reasons like "I want someone my peers will acknowledge as attractive." Eliminate those, and you only increase your chances of finding someone with the traits that are really important. (Whether the important traits are "a gentle spirit" or "a nice ass" is an exercise left to the reader.)

What, no mention of Amanda Marcotte?

Conservative columnist Dennis Prager has a rant up about how awful liberals are for eroding public discourse through the use of swear words.

Prager goes on to quote a few "leading cultural and political figures" (Jane Goodall, Bill Maher, and Cornel West - yeah, that's who I'd pick too as my triumvirate of leading leftist thinkers) who don't curse in their interviews but still evidence "absence of serious thought", apparently because they made statements that he doesn't agree with. Serious thought, one concludes, happens by accepting without question what conservatives tell you. Go fig. (Or don't.)

What this says to me (and I'm certainly not the first person to point this out) is that conservatives value appearances over content. (Hence all the church-going family men in the closet?) Ann Coulter, David Horowitz, Michelle Malkin (among others) say horribly sexist and racist things on a regular basis, but as long as they don't say "fuck" it's okay? Of course, when Cheney says it it's okay because it was a whispered. And Coulter saying "faggot" doesn't count, apparently - perhaps it was because she pulled the rhetorical trick of "I'm not saying this," though I suspect it had more to do with targeting John Edwards with the slur.

I'll take my foul-mouthed people who stand up for what's right over squeaky-clean bullies every time.

And now, to ruin your day...

Via Shakesville comes the singularly awful story of a teenage girl who committed suicide after being verbally abused by an online friend, and her parents' reaction to finding out said "friend" was the fictitious creation of some adult neighbors.

I posted this to reddit as part of my ongoing crusade to make the typical privileged Internet crowd think about things outside their immediate interests, and it's been interesting to read the reactions there. Most of them are identical to the reactions everywhere else - this is horrible, the perpetrators of the hoax are awful people, why would someone be so mean - but there's a contingent (tangential to the 4chan/SomethingAwful/Encyclopedia Dramatica crowd, I'm assuming) that's basically casting about for someone else, anyone else, to blame. The parents (by which, of course, they mean the mother) is to blame for letting her daughter onto MySpace (even with supervision), and for leaving her alone for a whole twenty minutes. The victim is to blame for being too thin-skinned to handle discovering that the boy who said he liked her was lying about everything. But the neighbors themselves? Not their fault. Because if it were, then they might have to look at their own actions and the harm they cause. Someone suggested that the "anon" crowd is different because they go after the "guilty" - they don't. They go after the easy targets. Sure, one of the ways to become an easy target is to be so reprehensible that nobody will defend you, but it's not the only way or even the most common.

This sort of thing is bullying, and there is no excuse for it. If your "fun" involves being cruel and hurtful to other people, find a new fun.

Study: Joe's joe arrives 20 seconds faster than Lottie's latte

An undergrad study which showed that women wait longer for their drinks at coffee shops has been picked up by the blogs. Slate, Consumerist, and Jezebel all have articles on it.

One of the most interesting things about this study to me is looking at all the bullshit excuses people come up with to justify the difference:

• "20 seconds isn't a big deal." Actually, it's about 20% longer.

• "It's because heterosexual male baristas want to look at the women for longer." Oh, well, that's all right then.

• "Women order more fancy drinks." Never mind that the study controlled for that.

• "They don't do it on purpose." Oh, well, that's all right then.

• "Women are more likely to complain, so the barista takes the time to get it right - this is really discrimination against men for getting an inferior product!" Um, yeah, sure. You want to conduct that study, feel free. (I'm still trying to reconcile this with the idea that the pay gap is due to women *not* complaining enough about their salaries.)

• "Well, *I've* never noticed it." Unless you get coffee both in and out of drag on a regular basis, I doubt you would. That's why we do studies.

• "The methodology isn't good enough. I don't know what it is, but it's not good enough." Unless there's something glaring, which I don't see, that's not really a valid criticism until you conduct a better study.

Now, I'm plenty critical of a lot of scientific studies out there (particularly the evo-psych "just so stories"). I will ask "did they control for everything?" the way a lot of the detractors did. However, I recognize that that's speculation, and not a reason to totally ignore the finding. More often, what I dispute are not findings, but conclusions (evo psych is notoriously bad on this front). But this study didn't appear to actually *make* that logical leap - it just pointed out the difference. (To be fair, some of the dismissals were about drawing conclusions rather than disputing the findings - I just don't buy those conclusions or find that they justify the disparity.)

EDIT: Zuzu at Feministe has more here, making the same point about observation versus conclusion, only more elegantly.

EDIT #2: There's further discussion at Feministing, though most of that seems to be stuck in the "the study must be wrong, we just have to figure out why" stage.