Seriously F*cked Up Book

Have a New Husband by Friday
So I haven't read this, and I don't really plan to, but the implications of the cute heart by the word "New" and then in red scroll underneath there were the words "by Friday." Yeah. That just freaked me out.

So being all freaked out, I clicked the ad because I had to know, "Really?" The descrpition goes on to explain that by simply changing yourself you can turn your husband into Mr. Perfect (I guess at that point you could change your name to Mrs. Perfect). The best part? It's "easy to swallow."

Oh and it's of course written by a man. Because who better to give women advice on what we ought to do?


The best part of all comes next when the publisher describes the book, this was actually supposed to help sell it. Ahh how easy men are to control...

Monday: Secrets Revealed: Cracking the Male Code• Yes, you're different species, but you can work together in harmony.
Tuesday: Creatures from Another Planet...or Creatures of Habit? To understand men, you have to track 'em to their den.
Wednesday: Think about What You Want to Say, Then Divide It by Ten How to talk so your guy will really listen...and listen so your guy will really talk.
Thursday: Think of Him as a Seal Waiting for a Three-Pound Fish Why making love to your man is a key to who he is and how satisfied he'll be, and what's in it for you.
Friday: It Takes a Real Woman to Make a Man Feel like a Real Man How to open your man's heart, revolutionize your love life, and turn him into the knight you've always dreamed of.

(Emphasis Added)

From the assumption that men have a secret "code" that women must decipher (because men shouldn't have to understand women it would be too difficult for their man-brains, that or his version of communication is much better since he's.. you know.. a man) to the idea that the house you live in is his not your's too, this book is insults everyone on so many levels. "To understand men you have to track 'em to their den."

The absolute worst is when you are told to think of your husband as seal and sex as a big fish he devours-- the "key to who he is and how satisfied he'll be." WRONG! Sex is not something you give men to turn them into knights. And men and boys actually have an identity outside of sex, despite what we're told. (These days some of them don't even roam around raping and pillaging all day-- some of them, like, have jobs and thoughts and emotions that relate to something other than their last burger!) Sex is something you might actually enjoy if you weren't imagining your husband as a big seal. The advice that tells women to talk a tenth of the time and shutup and listen to their husbands' words (oh Gloria! If only these people actually read that essay, Men and Women Talking) and the idea that you need to be a Real Woman(TM) in order for him to not be a piece of shit is repulsive-- this book looks like an incredibly insulting exercise in bringin' back the patriarchy (the big dumb, sex-crazed, easily manipulated patriarchy).


And I saw it being advertised on the Psychology Today site. WTF?? And after a google search, my first hit was at ChristianBook.Com. I'm not a Christian, but I wasn't aware that there was anything Christian about telling women that they can manipulate their fucking stupid husbands by shuting up and spreading their legs. And other Christians seem to think the same, no matter how anti-feminist they are.

If You Haven't Seen This Already...

(I'm not sure how anyone who would find this blog would have missed this video that has been viewed at least a million times, but that's not important.)

Reader's Digest Amazes Me

This amazing article popped out at me from the cover of a Reader's Digest in the airport. I was amazed reading it at how sexism, in a field with a 40% pay gap between men and women effects and hurts women. The article talks about how most medicine is tested on white males, yet differences in gender (and race) play a large role in how people need to be treated medically. The fact is that men and women are generally treated the same by doctors, yet we metabolize and react to medicine differently based on our gender. But don't trust me.. read the article!!

Do men get it?

I've often wondered this and right now, I'm not sure they do.
Maybe some do. I don't know.
I'm just sick and tired of hearing about the plight of the MRA, I mean the fact is that feminists have worked so long and so hard to try and peel back people's conceptions of what being a man, woman, bi, trans, gay, whatever person is because people are PEOPLE. Feminists are, to me, humanists and anyone strong enough to carry the title of FEMINIST is so much more. Unfortunately, MRAs don't get it. And neither do most men I know. I mean honestly, they get so hung up on feminists having the femi prefix. Like having to carry a name that sounds and IS female makes it biased against everything else. Hello?

Honestly?

So I've been having honesty issues with the S/O and I did a Google search to see if anyone else had similar problems and guess what? No. They don't.

Instead, I found a lot of fat (or supposedly fat) girls saying their boyfriends told them to lose weight and they were glad he was "honest." Fuck. That.

"Honestly, you're a jag-toothed ogre-like woman."
"Wow, thanks for being so open and honest with me!"

Of course we had the guys replying that "skinny rail-thin model types" are ugly (ahem, that would be types like me) and that they prefer "healthy" women. Fuck. That.

We have to admit America has weight issues. So let's say you look at yourself and feel like you're too fat. If you want to exercise, if it makes you feel good, I can't knock that. My suite mate has lost a lot of weight this year and she's worked hard to do that. I really admire her dedication and how it's positively impacted her-- and no, she doesn't have a boyfriend. More power to her.
But if you're losing weight because you feel so bad about the way you are, if you feel guilty after every meal, if you hate your body. That's not good.

In other words do it because you love yourself, not because you hate yourself.

Now onto the guys who use that stupid "healthy" euphemism. If I were 60 lbs heavier and it were all fat that would not be healthy. The point is that if you go around saying that being fat is better than being skinny then it still puts the emphasis on men determining my and my fellow ladies' worth based off our weight (or looks) and how healthy is that? It says that the only thing we're good for, the only worth-while pursuit we can have is to look pretty. Wrong message to send to a girl who just got told that in order to look pretty for her boyfriend she needs to hit the treadmill.

For a long time I tried to gain weight so my "rail thin" ass wouldn't be so bony and my friends would stop calling me anorexic. Guess how healthy that was.

As for the boyfriends who "honestly" tell their girlfriends what lardos they are, um. Seriously? Do we even need to address why you don't say that the one thing that makes you unhappy is that your girlfriend's fat? I mean REALLY!?

If you're into skinny girls, fine. Everyone has a right to be attracted to whoever they're attracted to. But you willingly dated this chick so don't try to pretend like you aren't attracted to your hot, 170 lb 5"2 girlfriend, this is what she looks like, just like I can't mold my white boyfriend into some kind of Antonio Banderas, your girlfriend shouldn't have to find out what you're attracted to and change to fit that. You should pursue what interests you without trampling someone else's self image in the process. It's just cruel to bring down a girl's self esteem like that. You already told her you're attracted to her by being in a relationship with her. Oh and when she starts acting insecure or paranoid you can thank all that honesty.

Quick Hit: Why He Didn't Call You Back

Jezebel's got the first chapter of Why He Didn't Call you back and while I can't read it all now, I'm pretty disgusted with the first few pages. We'll see if I ever make it through the book.
The part where I know this isn't my brand of dating advice?

Here's a little multiple choice quiz: what's the goal of a first date?
A) To allow a man to discover the real you, or
B) To get him to want a second date with you?

(The author goes on to sagaciously point out that B is the correct answer.)

How about neither? How about "To decide if YOU are interested in a second date?" Why does everything have to be about him, anyway? The reason he didn't want a second date isn't because you exposed your "true self" which was, obviously, awful and despicable to him so he left you forever and now you're meaningless. He didn't call back because you acted like a lunatic who puts everyone's needs before your own.

More on this later.

Man Finds Out His Girlfriend has had 19 Previous Sex Partners, Whoops and High Fives Her

Seriously. Who cares? I get it though, if I were to meet a guy at my age who has had 19 sexual partners my first thought would be, "How?" After that it would occur to me that he has probably gone through sexual partners quickly.

I understand that a person's dating history is important. Like, if my current boyfriend's girlfriends all dumped him because he started telling them what clothes they could and couldn't wear it would concern me. So if a guy tells me he's been getting down with a new girl every couple months for the last few years, I might not take him seriously if he tries to come onto me, I might expect things to last about as long as his last 19 sexual encounters. Is this wrong? I think not, but only to the extent that we recognize the pattern rather than judge it and naturally, Mr. Every 2 Months might actually want to try a long-term relationship and I don't think he should be excluded from that possibility based solely on the fact that he spent a few years sleeping around.

This all makes me wonder, is the number relevant? Should we be asking our sexual partners to not only keep count, but report it? If Mr. 19 wants to to have a serious relationship with Ms. 3, can't she figure that out with out him explicitly saying so?

We all know double standards are shit. Any man or woman who thinks it's inappropriate for his girlfriend to have too many (what does that even mean?) previous partners is buying into the idea that women- or people- are worth more or less depending on how readily they'll unzip their pants and that's bullshit. Jessica Valenti in Full Frontal Feminism says we should reclaim our numbers and let our partners know the score. I'm not sure I agree, though.
I prefer not to know. I prefer not to talk about it in terms of numbers, I just want to know if they were safe and if he's recently been tested. I don't like guys to ask for my number, either. It's not about being embarrassed that there are too many or too few, I don't think that's possible. I just don't know what it does for them, for our relationship, and for me. Maybe I'm just giving ground to the patriarchy, but what's done is done and to me, it's not really anyone's business. All my boyfriend needs to know is if I did it safely-- not how many times.

Is this un-feminist of me?

Male Feminists

http://www.thestarpress.com/article/20090329/NEWS01/903290328

Woohoo! Shout out to all the male feminists who are helping protect women and creating a more equitable society for them.

It is so important that we hear from male feminist voices. Their input is so important because they are such a big part of the change our society needs to realize. The issues that affect women are inextricably connected to men and it's just so important that men become more vocal about feminism because there is an expectation that males are not feminists. Even worse, there is an expectation that they resent feminists.

Prostitute in Distress

Quick Disclaimer: I'm talking specifically about sexually frustrated, self-proclaimed nice guys who are angry at women.

Is the damsel in distress actually just a glorified prostitute? This morning I was contemplating Heartless Bitch's piece on nice guys and the nice guy relationship with sex. It seems a lot of these nice guys are sexually frustrated. The most absurd element of the frustrated nice guy situation for me is that it doesn't seem very "nice" to help a girl out and expect some kind of romance in return.

"However can I repay you for saving my life?" "Well, I can think of a few things we could-" "Oh I'm not interested in you like that. Here's some cookies, let's just be friends."

Well doesn't that just bite? If you're a nice guy, probably. While these boys not unlike many girls have bought into the fairy tale concept of love they got confused about why women fall in love. It is suddenly shocking when in real life they find their troubled little lady, swoop in to comfort or teach her and she runs the other way. But, it isn't the ni

ce guys that should be insulted it's us, the ladies, who ought to cry out with indignation. We're accused of wanting bad relationships, even jerks because we're not buying into this concept of a relationship. This concept that says that kind acts deserve to be repaid with sex or marriage. It's freaky when you think about it and so wrong. It's wrong because sex shouldn't be about paying up. It shouldn't be about giving Mr. Chivalrous Savior Guy what you owe him.

It's no wonder that so many women are sexually unresponsive and unsatisfied. How much pleasure can we take in doing what at some point became our duty. The prince wakes Sleeping Beauty up and when he wants her to "thank" him, she's supposed to be excited about it? Yikes.

Furthermore, the problem with Knights in Shining Armor is that they project needs onto the object(s) of their affections. Because they're looking for someone to save, they often go around rescuing cute girls that don't need rescuing. They would like to believe the tender, fragile (hot) souls they are pursuing are not independent people who can want them or not, but women who need them. Thus enter the frustrating rejections. It is not the nice guys who ought to be frustrated though, because what woman wants to be a fixer-upper or a project to be worked on? Otherwise, they find themselves in a relationship acting like a doormat, when it ends they feel cheated because they devoted time and energy to someone only to see her run the other way. The entire time, he is trying to fix, to save, and to help that which doesn't need fixing or saving. While he thinks himself noble for putting his lady up high on a pedestal, she's still reeling from falling off it.

Of course, it's insulting to be the object of a nice guys' affections because they so often want you to be his "good girl" counterpart. Ever notice how those nice guys like to think you're a shy, timid thing? As if it isn't bad enough to be a person in need of a man, now you're a his counterpart. The only one who needs saving is the poor schmuck who goes around trying to find timid little girls to play the part of his girlfriend. He already has an idea of what girlfriends do, he's not trying to find an autonomous person, he's just casting you in a role.
What woman hasn't dealt with this? It sucks to be infantalized by a peer and plenty of my male peers have done it to me, all of them were the nicest guys. I would need a notebook and one would gallop in with one in hand the next day, I would be interested in a book or CD and a nice guy would show up and lay it at my feet-- a humble token of his affection.

I've found these guys everywhere. They sit and stare me down in class every day post-rejection and I'm never sure if he thinks I'm feeling guilty or lucky to be in his spotlight. They'll infringe on my privacy and offer to do things like pay for me when I don't actually know who they are. Yet, they always want a prostitute to their good will. They don't pay because it's nice, they pay to impress and if I have boyfriend they assume he's somehow worse because I chose him. Yeah, nice guys are just too good for the rest of us, they don't get rejected because they go around asking women to repay their supposed kindness in sexual favors, they get rejected because they're just too damn good. It has nothing to do with a girl simply not choosing him as her sexual partner, it's because she wants to be treated like shit. He doesn't "finish last" because she's looking for a good guy who isn't a martyr for her affections, it's because he's not rich or handsome enough. It's because every girl is a prostitute and somehow he paid and was so nice he let her walk away without putting out. He will make any number of excuses and explain the reason for his pain any manner of ways just so long as he avoids responsibility for it. Of course, that's easy when every girl is a prostitute waiting to pay up on her debt to men.

Just not that into..

He's Just not That Into You the movie. The movie was a little too complicated because they had to cover an entire book full of dating issues and decided to make some oddly connected people all deal with various problems of the dating world. The best line of the movie was,

"If a guy is treating you like he doesn't give a shit, it's because he genuinely doesn't give a shit."

A revelation!! Thank you. It's harsh, but women (and men) of every age need to realize that when people don't treat you with respect it's because gasp they don't respect you. Wow.
Everyone in the film is white, middle to upper-class people living in the strangely common HUGE apartments in New York. The only people of color in the whole film were working for the white people.. as Hispanic construction workers or an Asian who works for the white lady at a newspaper. Then there's the roving troop of gay men who appear and give dating advice to straight people (because that's what they do, right?) and act really, stereotypically gay.
(Quick aside, why so many gay men and so few gay women in pop culture? The gay guy is becoming a regular in chick media and there's Brokeback Mountain, but why are lesbians invisible to pop culture?)

Let's for a moment put aside the significant problems of stereotypes and the all-too-wealthy white people that the movie's about. Let's talk about the advice. There are little clips where it shows people talking about the advice "If he's not having sex with you..." "If he's not calling you..." "If he's married..."
Some of it is very, very good. The book was a huge wake up call for me when i came out. I needed to hear some of that stuff. The parts that relate directly to my first quote are perfect. Let's look at that again,

"If a guy is treating you like he doesn't give a shit, it's because he genuinely doesn't give a shit."

The things I liked included how the movie touched upon some of the negative and confusing aspects of technology in its role in modern dating and the way girls are taught from the age of five that if a boy is mean to you it's just because he likes you and how screwed up that is when it carries over into our adult lives.
Here's the things I disagree with: not getting married isn't a valid option for couples. The movie suggests that a guy who doesn't "believe" in marriage as the end-all of relationships is commitment-phobic or just not interested in marrying the woman he's with, it also suggests that every woman wants marriage. Wrong! You should wait around for the guy to make things happen-- ask you out, find you, call you. While I'm not for the idea of hurling yourself (at times, physically) at every guy that wants to grab drinks with you, I think women shouldn't expect or be expected to play a passive role in their own dating life. The message of "if he wants it to happen, he'll work for it" is right, but I think it should go both ways. It also sets up this weird power dynamic where the man achieves favor by "proving" his love to the woman and the woman holds power by making him prove his love. Instead of her showing him she cares and him doing the same or even flipping it around and the woman taking him out for a change, it suggests that the girl should withhold and the guy should pursue. Yikes.

Oh and the random clips where people talk about each chapter? Each person was a crazy girl who was making some kind of mistake. The ONE male was a guy talking about how if after a month or two there is no sex it means the person isn't interested. Which is somewhat true (if you don't have sex in the first couple months, you might not have it. Ever. Or unless you get married.) BUT the guy was a LOT less crazy than the women of the film. Oh and all the women in the film are nuts. This film shows so little understanding of real women I'm surprised it was taken from the same guy who wrote that book that woke me up years ago.

I'd award this movie one out of five stars and that one comes from this quote. Let's look at it again.

"If a guy is treating you like he doesn't give a shit, it's because he genuinely doesn't give a shit."

Just a Door

So it turns out that when a woman goes around opening doors for men she gets a lot of blank stares and stuck at the door. Guys won't go through the doors I am nobly opening for them.
Now, a lot of the guys I open doors for are international students from Hong Kong and Japan, so maybe there's a cultural thing going. Even the American guys seem to be uncomfortable, a guy in D&G glasses just stopped and stared blankly for a moment before he figured out what I was doing and murmured "Oh, sorry." and went through. Strangers don't tend to fight it, but the guys I know will just stand there and argue with me about it until I prod them through.

When I read up on chivalry more than a month ago, I saw a lot of people of the opinion that it was rude for women to reject men's acts of "respect" when it comes to chivalry. The door came up a lot. More than once I read girls who were mad at the kind of women who glare or yell at guys for opening their doors. While I have never witnessed this kind of woman, I began to wonder why men insist on respecting women in a way that a good number of us find insulting. Well, it turns out that the noble and respectful men of the world don't like having doors opened for them. While the guys I know who didn't pay much attention to who opened what in the past didn't seem to notice or care, the most chivalrous men were indignant and argumentative. Gentlemen, calm down it's just a door, right?

So the point is, it should go both ways, if a guy doesn't want me to question him when he goes to the trouble to open a door for me then he can just walk through the damn thing when I do the same to him.

So I murdered chivalry

Awhile back I had a philosophy class that didn't have enough seats on the first day. Twenty minutes into the class a boy with buzzed hair and a striped polo raised his hand. "Oh no, I didn't have a question about the syllabus," he said to the teacher and turned to the girl sitting on the floor, "I was just wondering if you wanted my seat."
She awkwardly shook her head and our teacher exclaimed, "Chivalry is not dead!"

These kinds of things make me want to conduct an experiment-- start opening doors for boys, giving them my seat on the bus, and throwing my coat on puddles for them. I could document the reactions. (Starting Monday, maybe I will start subtly integrating reverse-chivalry into my routine.)

Should I have felt relief that the guy in my philosophy class was looking out for the girl or should I be annoyed that he interrupted class because he didn't know if a girl could sit with all the other boys on the floor? She wasn't wearing crutches or anything, she was just a pretty blond. Should she have felt flattered? Should society commend or condemn this behavior?

There are ways to be respectful that aren't so deeply rooted in Christian traditions and make more sense. There are ways to be respectful that don't assume gender roles. We should replace chivalry with something that goes both ways, men and women should be held to an equal standard. I can open doors, I can sit where boys sit, I can stand on a bus. Unless I'm expected to do the same for another girl or for a guy (like help with a heavy load), then why should men do it for me? If a girl makes more money than her boyfriend should she expect him to pay for every dinner? I just don't feel that the only alternative to chivalry is disrespect or that the two are mutually exclusive.

Unfortunately, there are many who disagree. They are misty-eyed about the days of knights and I've even heard people refer to it as a time when people married for love, not money. Fortunately, these kinds of claims can and do earn the response I'm looking for. I feel like this nostalgia ignores and confuses historical facts, women benefited from chivalry because it was meant to help the weak. I don't intend to be weak so I don't know why I should desire to be treated as such. So instead of trying to act like people in the Dark Ages, why don't we try to act like people in the 21st century?

Now my question is how are men and women supposed to treat each other in a post-feminist society? The answer is simple reciprocity. Just treat me as an equal and don't assume strict gender roles, I'll manage carrying my own books, standing on busses, opening doors, voting, and going to work whether or not a guy can respect that. I'm not mad when others try to do those things for me, but I like, no, LOVE when they think through all of this and stop assuming they know what's good for me, that I might be more thankful when a guy respects my independence and lets me take him out from time to time.