Why I’ll Never Be a Husband Whisperer

(Slacker husband kitteh from ICHC?)

While looking at pictures of sexy soccer players, I accidentally ran across a Woman’s Day article titled “The Husband Whisperer: 4 Tricks to Communicating with Your Man.” Besides reminding me why I’ve never bought a copy of Woman’s Day, it also convinced me I’ll never make a good husband whisperer. Not that I’m perfect in communicating with my husband – far from it! – but I’m instinctively leery of any approach that assumes a husband (or horse!) needs to be trained. Here, the goal is to train him to do what you want, when you want it, especially when it comes to household tasks. Oh, and he’s supposed to do it enthusiastically (unlike the surly Basement Cat pictured above.)

Credit where it’s due: The first tip, “Always say please and thank you — and touch him when you do” is less obvious than it might appear on its face. And it’s a good one. When you live with someone, it’s oh-so-easy to let basic manners slide. And touch is a great way to de-fang conflict of any sort – not just over housework. Touching can be pretty helpful in the midst of an argument, assuming your partner isn’t too pissed to let you close. (I’m not talking about sexay touch, just a hand on a forearm or shoulder.) My only gripe is that the example given is so stereotypical: taking out the trash.

The second tip, “Lead by example,” is one you’ve surely tried if you’re neater than your partner (or roommate, or children, or …). If it only worked, there’d be no demand for articles like this one. This tip is predicated on the idea that (some) men are household slackers, and women are all sticklers:

Why is it so difficult for a husband to swab the deck? It’s simple: Some men just aren’t that into cleaning. “Women see dirt and feel the mess that men don’t see or feel,” explained psychotherapist Marilyn Kagan, LCSW, who, with psychologist Neil Einbund, Ph.D., leads the Making Marriage Work courses at American Jewish University in Los Angeles.

Hold on! At my house, when it comes to doing a cleaning job right, it’s frankly my husband who shines. Not I! Yes, I spend more hours on housework, but when he does a task, it’s like fairy dust was sprinkled on that area of the house. It sparkles. My goal is usually more modest: keeping the health department at bay. Sure, in a majority of couples, the woman typically has higher standards. But honestly, how many male partners will respond warmly to an in-home impersonation of Martha Stewart?

So I called my husband back into the kitchen. Lifting the saucepan, I pointed to the dried-up pools of soup. I could see by his bemused expression that it never occurred to him to look under the pot. “I know you’re tired, but I want to show you what works for me,” I said, as cheerful as an infomercial. “I just spray a little of this cleaning fluid on the spill, wipe and voilà!” He looked at me as if I had just performed a mindfreak. “What’s that you use again?” he inquired, much to my own amazement.

Not only did he continue to use the product I suggested, he now regularly cleans under pots, like a little boy exploring the dark rooty underworld beneath a rock. It may seem like a small victory, and the results aren’t always perfect, but little things like this are a giant step for my peace of mind.

If I were that fake-cheerful, I think my husband might prefer to crawl under a rock, himself. I wouldn’t blame him.

The third tip – “play the empathy card” – isn’t all wrong. The author suggests explaining that certain jobs are hard to do because we little women are smaller or weaker. I don’t think that’s totally illegit. My husband has a good six inches on me, and he can easily reach the highest shelf without rearranging furniture. He’s always willing to schlep tubs of laundry down to the basement. I’m secure enough in my feminist cred that I can simply be glad for a pragmatic division of labor based on our different strengths and abilities.

But again, why should empathy be confined to stereotypical tasks and qualities? Some days, my husband’s back is making him miserable while mine is just a little creaky. Or maybe he has a late evening meeting. Why shouldn’t I make his life a little easier by taking out the garbage? Empathy works a whole lot better when it swings both ways. Otherwise, it’s just pity.

The fourth and final tip is the pièce de resistance, and oh, I bet you saw it coming: “Reward good behavior – the sexier the better.” The expert cited puts this in its most innocuous form, though it’s still problematic:

“Reward your husband for completing a task by doing something you both enjoy, like dinner and a movie,” Alpert suggested. “Women often find men who are good husbands and fathers sexy, so the hint of an even greater reward in the bedroom will almost guarantee success.

Sure, when the work gets done without one person bearing most of the burden, there’s more likely time to have fun together. The problem, though, is couching the bedroom (but not the dinner/movie) specifically as a “reward” for him, not for both partners.

And it gets worse. By the end of the article, sex has become wholly transactional:

I let my husband pick from several chores I wanted to hand over, then I told him about the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow (sex!) that would be waiting for him if he handled that chore for the next few weeks. Intrigued, he chose homework help.

To my amazement, after dinner that Monday, he didn’t have to be reminded about our deal. “Can we do the homework now?” he asked eagerly. “After iCarly is over,” I said, reminding him of another deal we’d struck with our seven-year-old for one hour of TV chill time. When the two of them finally headed off to hit the books, I luxuriated in an extra hour of me-time. And how did my husband respond later? Let’s just say he enjoyed it so much that he decided to extend our deal!

And how did our author respond later? She doesn’t have any obligation to tell us, of course, but the article ends here, with the utterly clear implication that sex was a prize for her hubby. It’s something she gave him, not a shared experience. The author could’ve tempered the transactional framing without getting into TMI. She could’ve just said: “And for me, it was a win-win!” or something blandly wink-wink-nudge-nudge.

Instead, the article ends with pussy as commodity.

I agree that housework is a serious issue. Spats over it harm marriages and other long-term relationships. Its unequal distribution continues to hold back women.

But seeing sex as something women give up in order to entice their mates to supervise homework? How, exactly, is this different from paid sex work? How is it better? How will it foster more mutual pleasure (as opposed to just more frequent sex)?

How is it liberating for women – or men?

Also: Can you imagine the parallel article in a men’s magazine, “How to Be a Wife Whisperer”? I’d call it out for manipulativeness just as much as I did this piece. It’s unlikely ever to exist, because the work of that hypothetical article is pretty well covered in women’s magazines. But if it did exist, you can be pretty sure its ending would be the mirror image of the one in Women’s Day – with the twist that it’s the man convincing the woman to lead him to her “pot of gold” at the end of the rainbow. (Pot of gold!!! How ’bout we just say honeypot and be done with it?)

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Economic History Fit for Teabaggers

Every so often, history serves up an analogy that’s misleading, highly distracting, and only indirectly relevant.

Oops. That’s not what David Leonhardt wrote at the New York Times. Here’s what he actually said:

Every so often, history serves up an analogy that’s uncomfortable, a little distracting and yet still very relevant.

In the summer of 1933, just as they will do on Thursday, heads of government and their finance ministers met in London to talk about a global economic crisis. They accomplished little and went home to battle the crisis in their own ways.

More than any other country, Germany — Nazi Germany — then set out on a serious stimulus program. The government built up the military, expanded the autobahn, put up stadiums for the 1936 Berlin Olympics and built monuments to the Nazi Party across Munich and Berlin.

The economic benefits of this vast works program never flowed to most workers, because fascism doesn’t look kindly on collective bargaining. But Germany did escape the Great Depression faster than other countries. Corporate profits boomed, and unemployment sank (and not because of slave labor, which didn’t become widespread until later). Harold James, an economic historian, says that the young liberal economists studying under John Maynard Keynes in the 1930s began to debate whether Hitler had solved unemployment.

It’s true that government spending works to kick-start an economy. But you don’t have to resort to the Nazis to make this argument! Later in the post, Leonhardt acknowledges that Franklin D. Roosevelt also implemented stimulus programs, though later in the decade and more cautiously, thus with less stunning success.

So why, then, frame Obama’s advocacy of stimulus (as the article goes on to do) with the Nazi example? Did it not occur to Leonhardt that this article plays right into the teabaggers’ framing? Obama = socialist = Nazi!

Leonhardt doesn’t get his history quite right, either. While it’s absolutely true that the Nazis banned trade unions, organizing workers instead in the much more employer-friendly German Worker’s Front, that doesn’t negate the real benefits workers enjoyed as the economy bounced back. In 1932, six million Germans were out of work. The resurgent economy – together with the pressure and incentives drawing women out of the workforce – put many working-class men back on the job. Unemployment dropped, and Germans of all classes were able to purchase consumer goods.

Also, the folks subjected to slave labor? They weren’t, by and large, the same people who’d been unemployed in the early thirties. While some were German Jews, the majority of those enslaved were not German citizens.

I’m not arguing that history never holds lessons for the present. It would behoove us, though, to understand what actually happened in the past before we start mining it for analogies.

Perhaps the most important thing one can learn from studying history is that context is crucially important. Apparently the teabaggers equating Obama with Hitler aren’t sharp enough to grasp that. But Leonhardt writes for the Times. What’s his excuse?

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“Rape” as Slang?

I’m fond of saying I learn something new from my students each quarter. It’s happened again, though I half wish I were still ignorant.

For the second day of class, I asked my intro to WGS students to check out Jeff Fecke’s post on that appalling “political cartoon” depicting Obama as having raped Lady Liberty. (Go check out Jeff’s post and then come back; I will not have that “cartoon” befouling this blog.) I’ve taken to starting the term with a blog post or two along with a few canonical articles on gender and oppression. My hope is always that a few very current examples will upend the assumption that we’re all post-feminist and colorblind now. I was afraid this post could upset students badly because it was so vile. It did rile them up – but for all the wrong reasons.

For one thing, several students thought that calling the cartoon racist was “pulling the race card.” Lady Liberty was green, after all, not a white woman. And we do have a Black president, after all, so what color should they cartoonist paint him? One bright young woman brought up the myth of the black rapist. Yep, I said; what do you know about its history? After a few minutes of circling around Jim Crow laws and the Civil Rights movements, my students gave up. Lynchings, I said. Lynchings! They had no bloody idea that the history of lynching is largely history of black men being murdered on the pretext of allegedly raping white women. I guess this hasn’t trickled into the high-school curriculum. Maybe it’s not taught in Texas and thus not in the books? Or maybe teachers just don’t go there because sex and race are taboo enough on their own, god forbid they’d have to mix them? Or am I just encountering the same unflappable colorblindness that I saw last fall, too?

But while I was prepared for some resistance on the cartoon’s racism, I was sure someone would take umbrage at the rape metaphor. I asked if it didn’t trivialize actual victims of sexual assault. Forty faces looked at me blankly. Then one of the talkative men, who’s struck me as no dummy, said: “Well, it’s kinda like ‘fag.’ People use it all the time and don’t mean anything by it. It’s just slang.”

One of the women said, “Yeah. Like: ‘Wow, their soccer team totally raped us.’”

I picked my jaw up from the floor just long enough to ask if this was common. Forty heads nodded.

I wondered if this inflationary use of “rape” stems from the right wing’s frequent use of rape metaphors to protest Democratic policies and ideas. I tend to think not; Rushbo and his colleagues want their audience to be deeply outraged, which presumes that “rape” still holds some power to shock.

But my students are only rarely ideologues. Few of them listen to Rush or Glenn Beck; those guys are just too old. The young folks aren’t using rape as the ultimate metaphor for violation. They’re using it like my mom might say, “Oh, heck!”

So have any of you heard “rape” used as casual slang? “Fag” is problematic enough; as C.J. Pascoe shows in Dude, You’re a Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in High School, it’s used to harshly police both boys and girls’ expression of their gender and sexuality.

But “rape”? As slang? I mean, I remember it from The Who’s Tommy (We’re not gonna take it!) but that’s about it.

An hour after class, one of the young women showed up at my office hours. “I just heard someone say ‘That test raped me.’ I wouldn’t have even noticed it before.”

What have you noticed? Is this a generational thing? Do I just live in a bubble? I’d be grateful for any clarifications and insights.

Update 4/13/10: Yesterday I spoke about all this with my neighbor, who’s a historian of 19th-century America. He said that he actually works with high-school teachers regularly and when he discusses lynching with them, they are very nervous about creating a local scandal if they were to include it in their curriculum. The intersection of racism, sex, and violence is just too explosive for many parents and school boards. I thought this helps clarify my students’ experiences (and confirms that they are not clued out – in fact, they’re a pretty sharp lot. And as Shinobi notes in comments, hearing about how rape allegations were employed in lynching later in life can lead to an potent “aha” moment.

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Sex and the Student: When Naughty Blogs Turn Nasty and Mean

There’s a newish blog at my university that’s gotten attention in the local press – all negative – and even got a mention from Courtney Martin at Feministing, though for all the wrong reasons. Courtney didn’t link to it, no doubt due to its nasty content, but I’m local, so I will, because I’m not likely to give it the national exposure it so dearly hasn’t earned. It’s called what’d yOU expect? and it’s run by a couple of local students. (One of the bloggers, “Pooch,” is clearly identifiable through the blog’s Facebook fan page as a female senior; I won’t print her name, but just want to note that this is not the work of douchey dudes. Whether women can be douche-tastic is a subject for another day. Or maybe for comments.)

The premise of the site is to expose the side of the university that’s at odds with the carefully groomed “Bobcat” identity that our leadership is promoting. Of course, anyone who walks uptown on a weekend night (which might come as early as Wednesday) will see that this school remains more about partying than about intercollegiate athletics, even if it was fun to see the team upset Georgetown in the first round of March Madness. What really needs to be exposed here are the many thoughtful, intelligent students who take their studies seriously (whatever their attitude toward drinking). We don’t need more discussion of Beer Pong, unless perhaps through an anthropological lens.

So I actually don’t mind the site’s mission of disrupting Ohio University’s spin machine. The attempt to craft an identity out of a trip to the Little Caesar’s Pizza Bowl was always doomed, anyway.

What I do mind is the rampant misogyny of the site. Take this post about the perils of hooking up:

This is a true story that has not ever before been told in its entirety. I was a freshman here at OU and wanted to take advantage of what every freshman boy wants to take advantage of their first semester of college… party sluts. I have this theory that freshmen girls are ready to fuck anything that walks their first semester of college because they are new to the environment and have the idea that it is okay to sleep around because everyone does it(not actually the case but it worked out well for me my first year). New to the college environment myself, I raised hell my first couple of weeks on campus. Getting shitfaced every night, fucking all kinds of girls, basically doing everything you are supposed to do during your college years. I was loving life for a good amount of time until one particular night when I met this grizzly bear of a girl.

I’m sure that all of this dude’s former partners would love to know he saw them as “party sluts.” I personally am delighted – just charmed! – to hear that “fucking all kinds of girls” appears to be a graduation requirement. Women’s and gender studies – I’m doin it rong! We should be facilitating hookups, so these dudes can graduate on time!

Oh, and yeah, we’ve never, ever heard a story like this one before. ‘Specially not one that’s true!

Our hero continues:

My good friend got shutout at the last minute by this tease of a girl he was with. (What a bitch right?) So just as I am ready to head home with my depressed and sexually frustrated friend, the fore mentioned grizzly bear grabbed me and pulled me into the dorm. Alright, I know if I had any kind of decency I would have left immediately and walked home with my friend, but fuck it right? I was drunk and gonna get laid, how can anyone be expected to turn that down? So I went in. I went into this “grizzly bear’s” quad and fucked her in front of all three of her either sleeping or pretending to be sleeping roommates. For reasons you can imagine the rest of the night is forgettable. It probably ended with me passed out, sweaty, and naked. Same for the grizzly bear. I woke up, still naked, being smothered by the bear. I think she was dreaming that I was the last cupcake on earth and she was guarding me from a pack of starving Africans.

Oooh, now we’re adding racism to the mix, along with fat-shaming and slut-shaming. Let’s throw in some public humiliation and double down on it – first have sex with a girl in front of the roommates, just like in one of those public-humiliation pornos, and then tell the tale on the intertubes. I guess we can be glad no one took any pictures, but geez! Is that all that’s stopping this encounter from appearing on Youporn? Oh, and the girl was ugly and fat (in case you missed that), but at least she wasn’t a cock-tease like his buddy’s intended target!

This would be a good time for us all to go wash our hands, gargle, and take a long hot shower, preferably with a loofah to scrub away the nastiness of this creep.

So can we extract any meaning from the existence of this blog? I agree with Courtney that there’s a need to talk about what’s going on with casual sex:

We are so hungry to talk out loud about hook up culture–both the sexually empowering parts and the totally sexist parts. We need a space where feminists can really delve into the complexity of this issue, without being labeled, writ large, traitors or female chauvinist pigs. The blog world serves some of that, but it seems like we’re still searching for a more nuanced conversation.

I doubt these juicy campus type blogs are the place to do it, but is there a way to structure such a space that would lead to a real conversation about hook-up culture?

Well, my classrooms often allow for that kind of space. Those conversations are a heck of a lot more nuanced than what I typically see on blogs, but I realize it’s a luxury to have ten weeks with forty people who are willing to explore new ideas in a sheltered space. Obviously there’s a need for more public discussions, too. Online? Hmm. I think feminist blogs can do this, but we only reach a small fraction of young women and an even smaller group of men.

Campus gossip blogs and websites are completely unsuited for this. I don’t think they even support Courtney’s contention that there’s a need for serious conversation on hookups, casual sex, and students’ desires. While I think such a need exists, this and similar blogs deny that need. They make absolutely no attempt to analyze or criticize people’s actions. They make no attempt at basic human decency. They’re all about letting one group of students feel superior to others. They use classic junior-high aggression tactics, being mean to someone who was unlucky enough to trust the post’s author. I enjoy a good snark or rant as much as any blogger, but where mockery and cruelty rule supreme, there’s no space for civil discourse.

In other words, blogs like this one are a symptom of the problems in hookup culture. It encapsulates the misogyny and disrespect for basic humanity that bothers most of my serious students. What’d yOU expect might serve as a cautionary tale, or as a place to start analyzing what’s fucked up about this scene. It’s certainly not going to be part of the solution. We can start conversations about this on feminist blogs, but real change will ultimately have to come through discussions and interactions in the meatworld (so to speak).

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Of Hairballs and Shaving: Feeling the Burn

I used to date a guy in grad school for whom shaving was pure misery. He got razor burn nearly every time. He’d let it go for a few days, and then I’d get whisker burn. (If I was lucky. Other times, we were so deep into poststructuralist theory that we were always already studying.)

I’ve been thoroughly shaved (serious TMI alert!) only for pelvic surgery and childbirth. No, shaving is no longer standard for giving birth. But if they think you’re possibly gonna need a c-section, out comes the blade. My midwife apologized about it, profusely.

The re-growth was miserable. Itchy, bumpy, red, stubbly. You want the antithesis of sexy? Ooooh, honey, I had it!

In the porn world, those itchy bumps can be photoshopped smooth or covered with makeup. The rest of us can’t photoshop as we go. Nor is adjusting positions to camouflage bumps the hottest way to approach your partner in bed. Expect a chirpy article on that from Cosmo, one of those days: “Nine Sizzling Ways to Hide Your Razor Burn in Bed!”

And so, when I read even fairly civilized discussions of removing pubic hair like this thread at Em & Lo’s, I react allergically to the men who expect women to depilate their ladybits. Women’s decision to do so for their own pleasure is another matter, though one that’s now highly, highly constrained and hopelessly entangled with porn images and men’s expectations. But the guys! The clueless, it burns! Worse even than razor rash!

As you’ll see from the Em & Lo thread, a common complaint among men is that they get hair in their mouths and – just when their partner is about to see stars – they have to stop and cough up a hairball. Giving their gals oral sex turns into a tragic reprise of Bill the Cat. Fellas, I have one word for you: plunger. That’s the effect you’ve got that gals don’t. Removing a hair from your bottom teeth is an entirely different operation than us untangling one from our uvula. By these dudes’ reasoning, men ought to be hairless from their kneecaps to their belly-button, if they ever hope for us women to go down on them.

Then there’s the obdurate cluelessness about the maintenance required. If you wax, you can’t repeat the operation until you’ve got about 1/4 inch of regrowth. That’s days upon days of furriness. Which makes waxing superior to trimming … exactly how, pray tell? As for shaving, see above: itch, bumps, redness, stubble.

But what about the equity argument? Increasingly, guys are shaving, too. Hey, if they enjoy the sensation, I say go for it. But even in a perfectly balanced world, where both men and women removed their pubes, the burden would still be grossly imbalanced. Swiping a razor blade anywhere near the vulva is visually and technically tricky. You’re navigating crevasses and valleys, not just a smooth hillock. Any slip will draw copious blood. Not to mention that you’re within mere centimeters of the pleasure dome at all times.

So when guys start scraping, waxing, and depilating their cocks, let me know. That would entail something close to equal risk. Until then, a lot of folks might be more relaxed – and thus have much better sex – with an occasional trim and regular doses of Laxatone.

Bill the Cat image found here, quite possibly in violation of copyright. I claim fair use, but if Berkeley Breathed objects, I’ll gladly take it down.

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Death of a Great Satirist: Jon Swift

I’ve been reading students papers instead of blogs this week, and so I was stunned just now to learn belatedly of the death of one of my very favorite bloggers. Jon Swift, the best and funniest faux conservative in blogtopia, died of an aortic aneurysm on his way to his father’s funeral. His real name was Al Weisel, he was a journalist, and he was just 46 (my exact contemporary). My thoughts are with his mother, Mimi, and his siblings, who now must mourn doubly, as well as the partner and friends he left behind.

I didn’t know Al, who, by all accounts, was a successful journalist. (Here’s the homepage for his latest book.) I only knew him through his writing as Jon. His pitch was often so perfect that he hoodwinked liberals and conservative readers alike into missing the satire. He’s one of the folks whose work convinced me that blogging was an interesting form I wanted to explore more, as a reader and a writer.

Skippy the Bush Kangaroo – who, with Jon, founded Blogroll Amnesty Day to boost small blogs – has pulled together a long list of tributes. I owe Jon a debt of thanks for including me in B.A.D. when I was first blogging and for graciously including me in his blogroll.

I always thought that Jon’s acerbic humor let him sound a call for integrity without sounding preachy. He was impatient with the wingnuts’ anti-intellectualism and greed. He pilloried their willful stupidity and cultivated lunacy. My favorite Jon Swift post was all of that: his takedown of Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism, generously illustrated with lolcats. And not just any lolcats. Kitler lolcats. (Or is that lolkitlers?)

Librul kitler from Jon Swift

The first post of Jon’s that I ever read was his Journalism 101. Of course, I read it a little differently now that I knew he was a professional journalist himself. The dry rot among his colleagues must have infuriated him. But typical for him, he channeled it into bleak, spot-on humor. A sample of his rules for journalists:

12. Journalists should not censor a story unless the government or a big advertiser asks them to.

13. Because space in newspapers and magazines is limited there is no room for ideas that are too far out of the mainstream or that challenge the conventional wisdom unless the ensuing controversy would sell more papers or magazines.

14. Plagiarism is strongly discouraged and anyone caught plagiarizing should be fired immediately and never be allowed to work as a journalist again, unless they are prominent or distinguished or a close personalfriend of the editor and have a really good explanation, in which case they should be given a second chance or even a third.

(Read his whole primer here. The links alone are awesome.)

You could spend days browsing his archives, and I did just that when I first discovered him. He hasn’t been blogging in the past year, but his old posts are as acerbically true as ever in this new Teabagger Nation. The loss to us, his readers and admirers, is nothing next to the loss to his family. And yet, I feel like I need to chime in because his writing didn’t just make me laugh or cringe in recognition; it touched me, too. I shed tears over his death. So I hope he wouldn’t mind a sad kitler in his honor. Even if the mustache is placed a bit too far north, the whiskers are appropriately at half mast.

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Life, Death, and Tenure: Murder at UA Huntsville

I have a good friend from my time in Berlin who teaches at the University of Alabama-Huntsville. When I was pregnant for the first time, she helped instigate a baby shower for me. Last fall, she had a baby of her own.

When I heard about the murders at UA-Huntsville yesterday, I was nauseated with fear for her. I checked her Facebook. She’s okay. Never thought I’d be so grateful for Facebook.

But six other people are not okay. A biology professor, Harvard-trained Amy Bishop, is charged with murder after opening fire at a faculty meeting in her department. Three of her colleagues are dead, including her chair. Of the survivors, two others are in critical condition, and one is hospitalized in fair condition. My thoughts are very much with them today, and with their grieving and frightened families and friends.

Two aspects of this atrocity are unusual (and really, it’s sick that we should be so accustomed to shootings that there are actually norms for them, however twisted). Unlike most other university or school killings, the shooter was female. At Montreal’s Polytechnique, Virginia Tech, and Northern Illinois, the perpetrators were all men (and in Montreal, the motives were explicitly misogynist). As far as I could tell from Wikipedia’s information on school shootings, there are two less famous cases – at Penn State and Louisiana Technical College – where the shooters were female students.

Prior to release of the suspect’s name, many media reports referred to a “female shooter” or “female faculty member.” They don’t as often discuss “male shooters” because anyone armed with a gun is presumed to be male. Historically, that’s proven to be a pretty sound presumption. But it wouldn’t be bad if the term “male shooter” were commonly used; it could underscore that in most cases, the perp is a man or boy. Current practice generally erases the gender of the shooter, except when she’s female, thus obscuring how gender functions in most of these mass murders.

The second, more surprising oddity in the Huntsville atrocity is that Bishop is a faculty member. I don’t know of other instances where a faculty member of either gender has opened fire at work (though there are cases of professors committing murder, for sure). [Addition, 2/14/10: I got schooled in comments! Jennifer E. points out that back in 1992, a (male) engineering prof at Concordia University shot and killed fellow co-workers over workplace issues.]

Why could push a professor over the edge? Academia has lots of weird pressures, but one of the harshest is the race to earn tenure. Before much news was out, I was already wondering if tenure was part of the mess. And sure enough,  Bishop allegedly had just learned that she’d been denied tenure, according to the New York Times:

The shootings opened a window into the pressure-cooker world of biotechnology start-ups, where scientists often depend on their association with academia for a leg up. Ms. Bishop was part of a startup that had won an early round of funding in a highly competitive environment, but people who knew her said she had learned shortly before the shooting that she had been denied tenure at the university.

On Friday, Ms. Bishop presided over her regular class before going to a biology faculty meeting where she sat quietly for about 30 or 40 minutes, said one University of Alabama faculty member who had spoken to people that were in the room. Then, she pulled out a gun and began shooting, firing several rounds before her gun either jammed or ran out of bullets, the faculty member said.

Why was Bishop denied tenure? Her scientific credentials seem to be sound. She was involved in creating an award-winning new mobile cell-culturing system that was being marketed through a start-up. Her university would almost certainly have been a beneficiary of the patent. Usually a scientifically productive professor doesn’t need stellar teaching evaluations to gain tenure. Oddly, her page is still up at RateMyProfessor.com. The scores at this site likely skew toward malcontents who are motivated to get some revenge, the sample is definitely not representative. For what it’s worth, her ratings were mostly bifurcated between enthusastic students and those who advised avoiding Professor Bishop. I don’t see any red flags for truly abysmal teaching.

So the question remains: why was Bishop refused tenure? This is obviously speculative, but I wonder if “collegiality” was a factor. Some departments allow collegiality to enter into decisions; it covers everything from being a good team player to, well, not being a danger to one’s colleagues. In light of her apparent psychotic break (she has made statements denying that anyone is really dead), it seems likely that Bishop was already displaying erratic behavior before the shooting.

My friend wrote on Facebook:

I cannot mourn yet, but knowing who did this, and knowing how incredibly unsurprising it is, makes me want to vomit and scream both. I cannot move past rage right now to any kind of grief.

Clarification  from my friend via email, 2/14/10, 5:30 p.m.:

I would never have expected her to be violent.  Yet, discovering that there had been an act of violence on that floor of that building, my thoughts immediately went to her.  So, by unsurprised, I did not mean that I or anybody else had expected or feared violence from her, just that she was “off” enough and obsessed enough with her tenure case that it wasn’t hard to make the mental leap once one heard violence was underway.

So there appears to have been warnings, and yet no one realized the full extent of the threat.

Like any workplace, academia has its share of unstable people. While most people denied tenure find ways to rebuild their lives, it’s not uncommon for tenure battles to get ugly. From grad school onward, young professors make huge sacrifices of time, foregone income (compared to other fields), and often family and personal life. Junior people are frequently saddled with unreasonable workloads and impossible expectations. It’s devastating to anyone when that investment doesn’t yield the reward of tenure. Denial of tenure – which often means the end of a career – comes as an existential threat. If someone is already losing their grip on sanity, violence might well feel like self-defense.

Seen from that angle, it’s not so surprising that a faculty member went postal. The surprise is that it hasn’t happened until now.

Here in Ohio, there’s virtually nothing to stop a determined shooter. No registration of weapons. No permit required. No license. Down you go to Wal-Mart, where you can buy a handgun on the spot! The law does require a permit for concealed-carry, and it bans guns from college campuses. Oh, and it prohibits shooting a gun off in a cemetery. In other words, if someone loses their grip on reality, the state of Ohio will happily hand them a firearm.

It’s hard not to feel a little jittery at the possibility of copycat shootings.

The solution, obviously, isn’t a return to the Wild West. A year ago, I argued against a pistol-packin’ professoriate. Historiann comes to the same conclusion today.

We need, instead, to be aware. To realize it can happen here, no matter how idyllic the campus. To trust our instincts. In Bishop’s case, someone might have been able to see a red flag the size of a stadium, had it not been hushed up two decades ago. When she was 20, Bishop shot and killed her younger brother, aged 18. The current police chief is suggesting that procedural rules were unconscionably broken in the aftermath of this killing. Bishop was released to her mother without being fully booked. The case file went missing. The matter was quietly dropped

Whatever the truth about that incident in 1987, this much seems clear: Bishop has not just allegedly killed three (and maybe more) innocent people. She has left her four children motherless (if she’s convicted). She has squandered her scientific talents, including her research on ALS, Lou Gehrig’s disease, and Alzheimer’s. She has left the families of her victims bereft and grieving. She has deprived the world of her colleagues’ gifts. Remember, these were research scientists in biology! They studied life! What a cruel irony that in pursuing the secrets of life, they became vulnerable to a violent and early death. I’m praying, in my own odd agnostic way, that the survivors of this atrocity will find peace and healing.

Update, 2/14/10, 5:45 p.m.: My friend in Huntsville keeps sending links.

Eric Seemann, a psych professor at UAH, has given an interview (against the wishes of the university) that confirms my speculations about why Bishop lost her tenure case:

Despite her excellent research ability, Seemann was not surprised she struggled to obtain tenure.

“Amy was kind of hard to get along with,” he said. “I’ve talked to people who said, ‘Wow, she can be really arrogant,’ or be really headstrong. I knew that to be true. But at the same time she was brilliant. She was really one of UAH’s rising research stars. People I know in biological sciences would say, ‘She’s a great researcher, but she’s lousy to work with.’ ”

She was brilliant and she knew it.

“At one meeting I was with Amy, she was complaining to a group of us. She said she was denied tenure not because she was a lousy researcher — she’s not, quite the opposite — and not because she didn’t have good classes, she believed she did — I think some might say otherwise — but because she was accused of being arrogant, aloof and superior. And she said, ‘I am.’

“She said, ‘I am arrogant, I am aloof and I am superior in my attitude. But it doesn’t mean I don’t want to get along with people.’ “

Obviously academia is home to lots of arrogant assholes. Most of them never inflict more than psychological misery.

The difference here? A long-standing propensity for violence. It’s not just her killing her brother (though that would be quite enough). Back in 1993, while still a grad student, Bishop was suspected in an attempt to mail-bomb a Harvard prof with supervisory authority over her dissertation. Wow. I’m astonished that her husband didn’t wonder more about her stability. Well, maybe he did, but just kept his worries to himself. Publicly, he is saying that he had no inkling.

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Charging Hard against Dodge’s Dude-ism

So I’m assuming most of you saw the Dodge Superbowl commercial, in all its vile misogyny? If not, watch this steaming pile of stereotypes first …

and then proceed to see it cleverly deconstructed. These women clearly have way more humor in their pinkie toes than the men who made the Dodge ad have in their whole brains! (Mmmm, same goes for brains … more of that in the gals’ pinkie toes, too.)

(I saw this a bunch of places but first at sexgenderbody. Here’s hoping it’s new to a few of you!)

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Caturday in Wingnuttia

Not that I needed more reasons to despise Rush Limbaugh, but it turns out that among his many shortcomings, he’s clueless about cats and women. This gem (from last November, but still not stale) comes via figleaf:

LIMBAUGH: My cat — here’s how you can get fooled. My cat comes to me when she wants to be fed. I have learned this. I accept it for what it is. Many people in my position would think my cat’s coming to me because she loves me. Well, she likes me, and she is attached, but she comes to me when she wants to be fed. And after I feed her — guess what — she’s off to wherever she wants to be in the house, until the next time she gets hungry. She’s smart enough to know she can’t feed herself. She’s actually a very smart cat. She gets loved. She gets adoration. She gets petted. She gets fed. And she doesn’t have to do anything for it, which is why I say this cat’s taught me more about women, than anything my whole life. But we put voices in their mouths.

Figleaf comments that Rush apparently thinks “men are interested in women only for pussy.” And I can’t really top that for pithy insight.

But I gotta say: Rush doesn’t know cats. He might live with one who sees him as her meal ticket, but he’s still cat-illiterate.

Grey Kitty started her life as a traumatized little stray kitten who was separated from her mama too soon. She remained neurotic her whole life (and I say that in the most loving possible way). But she didn’t stay skittish forever. Over time, she responded to affection in her own way. She’d usually jump onto my lap if I draped a blanket or afghan over it – not at my will, but because she wanted to cuddle, and she pounced on the invitation.

GK wasn’t trained in some crude stimulus-response, behaviorist way. My mom discovered the blanket trick, but in retrospect it’s pretty clear that GK was training us, not vice versa. She sometimes chose not to jump on the blanket. When she did, she was responding of her own volition, like any good cat. That doesn’t mean her affection was an illusion; it means it was real.

Also, like any wise cat, she knew that a main purpose of her life was to clog my laptop’s keyboard with her hair, so blanket-plus-computer was well-nigh irresistible.

Funny thing. When men recognize women’s volition, they too might just respond warmly.

Cats can teach anyone, not just wingnutty dudes, a thing or two about balancing a sense of self with interdependence and love.

I guess Rush figures he’s an expert in love and women, having gone through three wives, plus a couple of high-profile girlfriends since his last divorce.**

Hmm. What if he’d stop putting “voices in their mouths” – be they women’s or cat’s – and just listen?

Bride-owning kitteh from ICHC?

** (In one of the great WTF moments in modern media history, Rush managed to attract my college classmate, Daryn Kagan, as one of his girlfriends. I didn’t know her, but it’s pretty evident she’s smarter, better-looking, and less politically retrograde than him.)

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Real Faux Lies: Palin Is Coming to Fox

We need a word for “Schadenfreude-in-advance.” That’s how I feel upon hearing (via litbrit at Cogimatus) that Sarah Palin is slated to join Fox News. Oh, the joys of fractured syntax! The invention of historical facts on the fly!

Howard Kurtz reports at the WaPo:

Palin, who resigned as governor of Alaska last summer, will appear as a commentator on various Fox shows. She will also host an occasional program that will examine inspirational tales involving ordinary Americans.

Palin will join Mike Huckabee as a Fox contributor who was also involved in the 2008 campaign. The exposure can only help Palin if she decides to pursue a 2012 presidential bid.

Kurtz gets paid for what, again? Oh, right, he’s a media analyst! Can I have a chunk of his salary? Because we all remember the wreckage of her Katie Couric interview. Only in a weird parallel universe would further exposure help Palin. That parallel universe does exist, and it’s one big tea party. Last I heard, though, the teabaggers don’t add up to 51% of likely voters.

Fox will obviously try to keep a tight leash on Palin, but any extemporizing will lead her straight through the looking-glass, into a world where up is down and lies are truth. Jon Stewart will have a field day. Let’s hope there are lots of Daily Show viewers among likely swing voters.

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Catholic Nurse Cites Her Conscience in Refusing to Help Gravely Ill Woman

There! Much better! My title carries a whole different set of connotations than the anti-abortion media’s headlines: “Catholic nurse forced to participate in abortion, lawsuit filed” (Catholic News Agency) and “Nurse ‘Forced’ to Help Abort (the New York Post). Despite vigorous googling, I’m not finding much other reporting on this story at all, except from Jill at Feministe. You know your sources are thin when the Washington Times appears to give the most dispassionate and complete account:

Catherina Lorena Cenzon-DeCarlo, 35, a Filipina nurse who is a permanent U.S. resident and married to an American, says that Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan “blatantly” violated a 35-year-old federal law that protects health care workers with religious objections from having to assist in performing abortions.

The hospital performed a late-term abortion on a woman whose health was not at risk, she says. The nurse is asking for a jury trial that could strip the hospital of hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding until it complies with the law….

According to the 26-page complaint filed in U.S. District Court for New York’s Eastern District, the lawsuit says when Mrs. DeCarlo was hired in August 2004, she told hospital officials outright that she would not participate in abortions. She is Catholic and her uncle is Bishop Carlito J. Cenzon, who leads the Roman Catholic diocese of Baguio in the northern Philippines.

The hospital did not object to this and gave her a form to complete that indicated her refusal to take part in the procedure. During the nearly five years from her hiring date until this May, the lawsuit said, the hospital had avoided asking her to assist on abortions, as it has a cadre of other nurses who have indicated their unwillingness to do so. …

But it was on May 24, a Sunday morning shift over Memorial Day weekend, when matters came to a head. The nurse said she was told she was assigned to help with a “D&C,” signifying “dilation and curettage,” a procedure to remove the remains of a miscarriage from a woman’s womb. But when she began preparing the operating room, she learned she had been assigned to help with aborting a 22-week pregnancy.

Dr. Noel Strong, the resident on duty, said the mother had preeclampsia, a medical complication involving hypertension and protein in the urine that is treatable with magnesium sulfate. Mrs. DeCarlo thought the preeclampsia not to be life-threatening and thus not an immediate cause for an emergency abortion. A flurry of calls then erupted between her and supervisors Fran Carpo and Ella Shapiro after Mrs. DeCarlo refused to take part in the procedure, the lawsuit says.

Ms. Carpo – on instructions from Ms. Shapiro – then forbade the nurse to try to find a substitute, adding that the doctor performing the abortion had called her, furious about the delay, the lawsuit charges. While Ms. Carpo said the patient was in mortal danger, Mrs. DeCarlo pointed out the patient was not even on magnesium therapy, the first step of treatment for the condition.

Ms. Carpo, the lawsuit said, was the manager on duty and could have easily stepped in as a replacement but instead threatened to charge Mrs. DeCarlo with “insubordination and patient abandonment,” charges that could have ended Mrs. DeCarlo’s career.

Mrs. DeCarlo broke down at this point and offered to get her priest on the phone to explain her point of view, says the lawsuit, but hospital officials were adamant that she participate. When she pointed out the abortion could be delayed until another nurse could be found to take part, she received more threats, the lawsuit says, until she finally capitulated, saying she would take part “under protest.”

When asked why she didn’t simply walk out of the building, one of her attorneys, Matt Bowman of the Alliance Defense Fund, said the plaintiff “strenuously protested to the point of tears. Employees should not be forced to choose between their jobs and their beliefs.”

The nurse said she was “forced to watch the doctor remove the bloody arms and legs of the child from its mother’s body with forceps” and carry those body parts in a cup to another area of the operating room.

Bear in mind that the only source of info for this story is the lawsuit filed. Everyone else is refusing comment. Of course the patient’s identity and history are being kept confidential, as well they should.

Jill and her commenters have done a fine job discussing the legal and moral obligations of hospitals and medical practitioners. I don’t want to rehash that here. I’ll just say that no nurse or doctor should be hired to work in the ER, as DeCarlo was, if they would withhold lifesaving treatment.

Instead, I want to look more closely at the medical issues. Preeclampsia is a fairly common complication of pregnancy, occurring in 5 to 10% of all pregnancies. It’s signaled by a rise in their blood pressure, protein in their urine, and (sometimes) edema, or swelling, especially of the extremities. Many women experience no overt symptoms and might not even know that they have it. Most women survive it just fine.

But in a small number of women – between 5 and 7 per 10,000 deliveries – preeclampsia progresses to full-blown eclampsia, which includes seizures sometimes followed by coma and death. It accounts for 17.6% of maternal deaths in the U.S and 15% of premature deliveries.

Just because preeclampsia is a fairly common condition doesn’t make it harmless. I know someone who died of it, a college classmate of mine. A former colleague of my husband’s lost his partner to it.

We don’t have many more tools to predict or control eclampsia than we did 100 years ago, although one major reason health officials tout prenatal care is that it can catch and monitor preeclampsia while it’s still mild. We also don’t understand its causative mechanisms, despite countless research studies. Magnesium sulfate can be given by IV to prevent seizures, and while it saves lives, it’s no miracle drug. The only definitive treatment is delivery of the fetus – and even then, the new mother remains at risk for a few days thereafter. Of the three major killers of expectant mothers 100 years ago – hemorrhage, infection, and eclampsia – we’ve only made great inroads against the first two, thanks to transfusions and antibiotics. Mortality from eclampsia remains significant.

So what was going on with the pregnant woman in DeCarlo’s case? Well, according to the Catholic News Agency, she wasn’t really in jeopardy at all:

Hospital officials told Cenzon-DeCarlo that the situation was an “emergency,” although evidence suggests that this was not the case.  The hospital itself labeled the case as a “Category II,” meaning that the operation needed to take place within six hours.  This would have allowed enough time to find another nurse without moral objections to assisting in the abortion, her lawyers said.

Matt Bowman, legal counsel for the ADF, explained that the hospital could not legally have required the nurse to participate in the abortion even if the case had been a “Category I,” meaning that the patient required “immediate surgical intervention for life or limb threatening conditions.”  Federal statutes prohibit recipients of federal health funds from requiring employees to perform abortions, Bowman told CNA.

However, the evidence in the case suggested that the patient was not even at the “Category II” level, as the hospital had claimed.  When the woman was brought into the room, Cenzon-DeCarlo observed no indications that the case was a medical emergency.  The woman’s blood pressure was not at a crisis level, and standard procedures for patients in crisis [administration of magnesium sulfate] had not been taken.  Yet the nurse was still required to aid in the abortion.

Since we don’t have any hard information, I’d like to put on my historian-of-childbirth hat and offer some informed speculation. Severe preeclampsia at 22 weeks’ pregnancy is not very common. However, it can occur, and there’s one variant that would demand immediate action: HELLP syndrome. Here’s how Reese at Feminist Mormon Housewives describes her experience with HELLP:

Earlier this year I had my first child. He was born at 28 weeks because my life was in danger. It turned out that I had HELLP syndrome, which is basically preeclampsia turned up to 11. My blood pressure was 186/110, my organs were failing, my red blood cells were disintegrating, and my platelet count was dropping making it so that my blood wouldn’t clot. If I could manage to function with my organs failing, and if I could have avoided having a stroke or heart attack, I would have bled to death in childbirth.

If the patient at Mt. Sinai was suffering from HELLP syndrome, the attending physician could have very reasonably determined that there was no way she could hold out for several more weeks, hoping for a viable but very premature fetus. Indeed, he judged her case serious enough to require intervention within the next several hours. This suggests either HELLP or another serious complication, such as a severe headache (indicating a high risk of seizure) or chest pain (possible embolism). If you’re going to go straight to delivery (in this case, abortion, because the fetus was still a couple weeks short of the very outer limit of viability), then you might start administering magnesium sulfate as seizure prophylaxis as part of pre-op procedures, but the main priority would be to get the operation underway. Ordinarily a nurse would start an IV. In this case, the assigned nurse was arguing with her supervisor instead of tending to the patient. Could that possibly have anything to do with why the patient wasn’t on magnesium sulfate?

The patient’s relatively normal blood pressure is a red herring, because as emedicine notes, HELLP can present differently than regular preeclampsia:

HELLP syndrome (hemolysis, elevated liver enzyme, low platelets) is a form of severe preeclampsia that has been associated with particularly high maternal and perinatal morbidity and mortality and may be present without hypertension or, in some occasions, without proteinuria. [my emphasis]

So we don’t know all the details, but certainly my speculations are a whole lot more believable than a scenario where mild preeclampsia was used as a pretext for elective abortion at 22 weeks. This was presumably a wanted fetus. On the off chance that it wasn’t, the woman could have sought elective abortion, which can still be carried out legally at 22 weeks. While it can be tough to find a provider for late-term terminations, last I knew New York City was one of the meccas for women needing such abortions. So there’d be absolutely reason to show up in the ER, hoping on spec that you could get an elective abortion. There’s also no reason why an ER doctor would prioritize a procedure if it weren’t urgent. Folks in the ER have a few other problems on their plate.

Just imagine you’re a woman hoping to bring a child into the world. Imagine you get sick with a condition in mid-pregnancy that you’d never even heard of. Imagine hearing the ER doctor – whom you’ve never met in you life – tell you that you need to abort in order to save your own life; otherwise, HELLP syndrome is liable to put you into liver failure, possibly complicated by kidney failure and blood that refuses to clot. And then imagine that your story of loss is plastered throughout the court system and the yellow press, trumpeted by pro-lifers as evil incarnate, and held out as an example of women’s and doctors’ supreme depravity.

No, we don’t know exactly what happened. But my speculative reading of the paltry facts is a whole lot more coherent and compelling than the tale DeCarlo tells in her court filings. Given that DeCarlo is the niece of a Catholic bishop, this whole thing stinks of a set-up. If it’s not, why she didn’t she just quit on the spot when her boss ordered her to aid in an act she considered murder? I’d like to think that I’d have that much moral courage. Instead, DeCarlo cooperated just enough to add drama to her lawsuit – after she’d gambled with a woman’s life.

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In Case You Hadn’t Noticed, I’m No Jane Austen

Reader kind enough to peek in on Kittywampus probably noticed it’s been mighty quiet the past two weeks. While my trip to California was good, it was also all-consuming in terms of time and energy. I needed to finish grading exams while spending intense time with family – plus I only had a poky dial-up connection. In a way it was good to be partially unplugged for two weeks, but I sure didn’t manage to write much.

And so I’ve been marveling anew at how Jane Austen managed to write in the midst of a household without any peace or privacy. Virginia Woolf described it thus in “A Room of One’s Own”:

If a woman wrote, she would have to write in the common sitting–room. And, as Miss [Florence] Nightingale was so vehemently to complain,—”women never have an half hour . . . that they can call their own”—she was always interrupted. Still it would be easier to write prose and fiction there than to write poetry or a play. Less concentration is required. Jane Austen wrote like that to the end of her days. “How she was able to effect all this’, her nephew writes in his Memoir, ‘is surprising, for she had no separate study to repair to, and most of the work must have been done in the general sitting–room, subject to all kinds of casual interruptions. She was careful that her occupation should not be suspected by servants or visitors or any persons beyond her own family party.” Jane Austen hid her manuscripts or covered them with a piece of blotting–paper.

It’s not just that Austen lacked time and privacy; she was constantly surrounded by other people whose needs, desires, and demands took priority. Of course, the press of familial obligations was even more intense for the vast majority of women who lacked an education and the modest comforts that Austen enjoyed. Ditto for women of Austen’s own class who had husbands and children. It’s remarkable that any woman could muster the intellectual and emotional focus to write more than a shopping list.

Now, my literary aspirations are many leagues lower than Austen, but I got completely derailed just by moving into my mom’s house for two weeks and becoming a temporary homeschooler. A while back, I wrote about why I don’t homeschool. I considered writing something about my temporary experience, but really I only have one thing to say about it: My kids’ teachers rock. I’ve always appreciated their talents, not to mention the structure that school provides, and now I’m grateful down to my bones. The kids did pretty well after their initial outrage (“But Mama, we’re on vacation!”) and before they hit a wall on the last day – when I resorted to bribing them with chocolate milk.

Then there was cable news, which tends to extinguish all brain activity. My mom kept the TV off more than on, but Tiger Woods was still inescapable. We also heard about the White House gatecrashers and got a whiff of the mammogram brouhaha … oh, and did something happen with Afghanistan? Seriously, if you were only relying on CNN, you might not have noticed the escalation at all. Then again, if you were relying solely on the blogosphere, you might get the impression that Obama’s policy comes as a surprise. But he was pressing for an escalation as early as August 2008. In his big Berlin speech, he called for expanding NATO’s engagement. Like the rest of the audience, I thought this was a terrible idea, but I didn’t doubt his sincerity. He didn’t have an exit strategy then, and he hasn’t cooked up a definition of victory now, either. Without clear aims, as Lindsey Beyerstein reminds us, the Afghan war is an unwinnable game of Al Qaeda Whack-a-Mole.

At my dad’s house, Fox News rules. I discovered that while my dad is tracking conversations pretty well in person – better than on the phone, and much better than I hoped – he gets lost when Hannity is out-shouting his family. Also, technology defeats him utterly. He can’t get into his computer accounts because in a flight of minor paranoia he made up a fake maiden name for his mother, and now he’s forgotten both his passwords and the fake maiden name that would allow him to retrieve his passwords. He’s also forgotten how to operate his TV/satellite remote (which I admittedly don’t get, either), and so we had to rely on his wife to squelch Hannity.

Anyway, I’m back in Ohio again, hoping to patch together a few coherent thoughts. They’re sure not going to add up to Pride and Prejudice, but at least I promise not to be all Tiger, all the time.

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The Tyranny of Youth – Now for Men, Too!

Since I’ve been home for the holidays, I’ve availed myself of my mom’s People magazine collection. Actually, she doesn’t buy People very often. She mostly likes the year-end roundups – and, as I noticed this week, the “World’s Hottest Men” issue.

I guess I’m my mother’s daughter, because I like hot men, too. But darn it – of People’s 110 picks, there were just two men older than me who rated individual features: George Clooney (48) and Alec Baldwin (51). Then there were two pages of miniscule pictures devoted to the theme of “hot at any age,” which included one man for every age, up through Gabriel Byrne at 59. So that added another 10 “older”men who were in their fifties. They were quite evidently only included to make the politically correct point that men over 50 can be handsome, provided you only look at tiny headshots that don’t cross the dangerous threshold of 59, after which all hotness apparently plunges off a cliff. It’s a pity, because the aged-59 slot was occupied by Gabriel Byrne, whom I rather like and would prefer not to see fall off a precipice.

Now, I’m not actively averse to People’s number 1 hottie,  Johnny Depp, who’s just my age (46). I positively adore Robert Downey, Jr. (44 but perpetually endangered), and I plan to enjoy him for as long as he can stay alive and out of rehab. Harry Connick (42) is charming and a pretty decent musician. George Clooney (48) is sexy, smart, and classy. Any list that includes him can’t be all wrong.

Otherwise, though, I wasn’t taken by the list so much as taken aback. Suddenly, it seems as though men, too, have to be young to be hot. Or maybe it wasn’t so sudden, and I just wasn’t paying attention? And what’s with all the hair product, fer goodness’ sake? Since when did plastic become sexy? Dudes who wear more hair gloop than I should just go ahead and get themselves laminated.

I’m still all in favor of women enjoying men’s visual charms, but if boy toys now must be actual boys, we’re all going to miss out on a lot of fun and beauty. And yet, that appears to be the trend. A few months ago, I groused about how the young blokes featured in Filament magazine were, well, very young. I’m now starting to grasp where they fit in the overall pantheon of contemporary male beauty. They rock more of an alt-aesthetic, but their general youthfulness is actually perfectly mainstream. (Suraya of Filament pointed out in comments to a later post that they plan to include more older models in future issues. I think that’s a wonderful plan, and I also admire the thoughtfulness Suraya’s investing in Filament’s development.)

Of course the tyranny of youth is nothing new for women. But while turnaround may be fair play, it’s not fun play. It’s limiting for heterosexual women and men, alike. In my mid-forties, I really dig men a few years older (as well as a few years younger). But with the fifty-plus men already mostly disqualified from hotness, what will I do when I’m a randy old gal in my seventies? My mother (who’s north of 70, herself) agrees with me that George Clooney is the bee’s knees. It’d be lovely if he could inspire a new appreciation not only for older men’s charms – as, in fact, I thought Paul Newman had already done – and for older women’s sexiness, too. And yes, at least some men appreciate women over forty and fifty. Just to pick one data point, my husband digs Sandra Bullock and Madonna as much as ever.

So what would it take to turn the trend around, and celebrate our potential for sexiness at every age, for every gender? Short of a revolution in which we seize control of the media, that is?

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Swine Flu Hits Home

No, I’m not sick, nor are my kids – and my husband got the swine flu shot this morning, as one of those “lucky” people who are likely more vulnerable than average. But as I was stirring the dinner pots this evening, my sister called to tell me that her daughter (my six-year-old niece) has got swine flu. It struck with the GI symptoms are a hallmark of swine flu. By now, though, my sister suspects that Tamiflu may be making things worse, as my niece puked just once before taking the first dose and six times since. (She also has the other classic symptoms: a cough, high fever just short of 103, chills.)

I’m assuming – hoping – that my niece will recover quickly, as most kids have. But even “mild” flu is pretty wretched. I suspect there’s a lot of misconceptions afloat about what “true” flu is like. People think it’s just a little tougher than a cold, or they confuse it with “tummy flu,” which is not flu at all. By now, a couple of my local friends have nursed kids and spouses through what must have been swine flu, even though they didn’t go to the doctor. None of them suffered serious consequences. Even so, the flu hit them hard.

And that’s why I really don’t understand the suspicion people harbor about being vaccinated. Two-thirds of Ohioans say they don’t plan on getting the shot. That number may be inflated due to fatalism as vaccine deliveries take even longer than expected; people figure they will have been exposed anyway before they can even get the shot. Way back in June, Knitting Clio commented here that parents’ unfounded fears of autism might deter them from vaccinating their kids. I’m sure that’s part of the picture, too. Lots of folks seem to believe that the vaccine is “new and untested.” In fact, it’s produced in the same, depressingly slow process used for regular flu vaccine. (If you’re a fence-sitter, yourself, and you need data on the safety and efficacy of the vaccine, go on over to Effect Measure and read their recent archives.)

More disturbingly, health care workers – including those serving the high-risk group of pregnant women! – are highly skeptical about the vaccine. Consider this abstract for a study just published by D.E. Broughton et al. in the November 2009 issue of Obstetrics and Gynecology:

OBJECTIVE: To explore obstetric health care workers’ attitudes and beliefs regarding influenza vaccination in pregnancy.

METHODS: A survey consisting of 16 multiple-choice questions was administered to nurses, medical and nursing assistants, receptionists, and clinical administrators in obstetric settings. Survey questions addressed general knowledge of influenza and recommendations for vaccination during pregnancy, as well as personal beliefs about the acceptability of the vaccine in the pregnant population. The study was conducted at two sites, Women & Infants Hospital in Providence, RI, and Magee-Women’s Hospital in Pittsburgh, PA. Variables were compared by Fisher exact test.

RESULTS: Two hundred sixty-seven completed surveys were available for analysis, with a completion rate of 85%. Almost one third of health care workers surveyed do not believe that vaccines are a safe and effective way to decrease infections (31%) and a minority believe that vaccines are safe in pregnancy (36%). Just over half of health care workers know that pregnant women are at increased risk of complications from the flu (56.6%). Only 46% were able to correctly identify influenza symptoms, and only 65% would recommend influenza vaccination to a pregnant woman if indicated. A small percentage would be willing to give an avian influenza vaccine to pregnant women during a pandemic if it had not been tested in pregnancy (12.3%).

CONCLUSION: Many obstetric health care workers lack knowledge regarding the safety and importance of influenza vaccination during pregnancy. Misinformed or inadequately informed health care workers may represent a barrier to influenza vaccine coverage of pregnant women. This lack of knowledge among the health care workforce takes on added importance in the setting of the H1N1 2009 swine-origin influenza pandemic.

(Source: Abstract for D.E. Broughton et al., “Obstetric Health Care Worker’s Attitudes and Beliefs Regarding Influenza Vaccination in Pregnancy,” Obstetrics & Gynecology: November 2009, Volume 114, Issue 5, pp. 981-987; my emphasis)

Got that? Precisely the people who are gatekeepers in caring for a vulnerable group, pregnant women, are appallingly ignorant about the risks of flu in pregnancy and the safety of any vaccines in pregnancy, not just the one for swine flu. And yet less than half of them can even correctly identify flu symptoms. (Please note that the study did not look at doctors.)

It’s not alarmist to say that as a result of people’s ignorance, hundreds or thousands will die unnecessarily. A three-year-old in my town died in late October after testing positive for inluenza A. While definitive testing will take weeks, virtually all of the flu currently in circulation is swine flu. It’s reasonable to assume that swine flu is what killed this little person. It’s also reasonable to assume that many of us will know someone, sooner or later, who suffers the loss of a family member.

As usual, Jon Stewart got it right: It’s only us wimpy pasteurized milk drinkers who are sure we want to be vaccinated. Otherwise, we’d know the shot was only a government plot! Glenn Beck said it, so it must be so!

If you can’t view the video, please click here. Via Effect Measure, which is such an awesome blog I’d probably read it even if I weren’t worried about the flu.

Note: I intentionally refer to this illness as “swine flu” and not H1N1 because H1N1 is a broader subtype of flu, and because I don’t mind keeping the spotlight on reckless agribusiness practices that may foster the genetic reshuffling of the virus.

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Einstein Fail: I Want My Money Back

So I read in the New York Times that the Baby Einstein company is offering a money-back deal for those of us whose kids watched their silly videos and didn’t turn out to be the next Stephen Hawking … yet. I’ll confess to owning the original Baby Mozart, plus Baby Shakespeare and a couple more. I didn’t let either kid watch TV during the first year of life, but once the Mammary Channel went dark, they seemed to be casting about for new entertainment. The alternative was Teletubbies or Barney. Einstein was a no-brainer. So to speak.

The jury’s still out on whether my kids are geniuses (evil or benign), but I’m pretty sure a critical mass of my brain cells dissolved while watching those puppets and hypnotic mechanical toys. (It says something about our kid culture, I’m afraid, that one last refuge of mechanical toys is the television.)

So I’m thinking about demanding money back – not because the kids haven’t yet managed to fold gravity into the grand unification theory, but because my repository of names is shriveling and the rest of my brain is sure to follow. I figure my gray cells might be worth 4 x $15.99. But that would require me to remember where I stashed my stamps.

I will say one thing for the Baby Shakespeare video: It had the wonderful W.B. Yeats poem, “The Cat and the Moon”:

The cat went here and there
and the moon spun round like a top,
and the nearest kin of the moon,
the creeping cat, looked up.
Black Minnaloushe stared at the moon,
for, wander and wail as he would,
the pure cold light in the sky
troubled his animal blood.

Minnaloushe runs in the grass
lifting his delicate feet.
Do you dance, Minnaloushe, do you dance?
When two close kindred meet,
what better than call a dance?
Maybe the moon may learn,
tired of that courtly fashion,
a new dance turn.

Minnaloushe creeps through the grass
from moonlit place to place,
the sacred moon overhead
has taken a new phase.
Does Minnaloushe know that his pupils
will pass from change to change,
and that from round to crescent,
from crescent to round they range?

Minnaloushe creeps through the grass
alone, important and wise,
and lifts to the changing moon
his changing eyes.

Oooh, that makes me shiver – with the beauty, not fear.

But then again, there’s that line about spinning ’round like a top:

Moon kitteh from ICHC?

In all other ways, though, the big “baby video” winner at our house was the highly obscure “Baby Babble.” Next to the slick Baby Einstein series, its production values were based on string and chewing gum. “Baby Babble” showed two speech therapists playing with toys and puppets, making noises like “pop pop pop pop pop pop.” The intent was to get your kid to talk – to the TV, which seemed a little twisted – but hey, the Tiger had no stable words at 18 months and we were getting nervous. We tried “Baby Babble” when the Tiger was two years old but still not even saying “no.” And guess what? He started to say “pop pop pop pop pop pop.” From there it was a short skip to “cookie” and then “Mama, can us eat some candy for desert? Why not? But you said I could have a Tootsie Pop! You did! Did you know there’s Tootsie Roll inside?”

That goofy “Baby Babble” video did more good than all the Baby Einsteins put together. It might even trump the year of speech therapy that the Tiger put in as a small cub.

Now, I’m just wondering where’s the video that would get my kids to listen when the grow-mutts talk?

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An Unusual Case of Father-Blaming

One reason I remain fascinated by the Heene “balloon boy” spectacle is that you don’t often see such a blatant case of father-blaming in the media. I can easily name famous mothers who murdered – Susan Smith, Andrea Yates – but I can’t think of a father who killed his kids and drew similar media attention. We all know that the mother of Britney and Jamie Lee Spears is a lousy mom. I can recall the name of JonBenet Ramsey’s mother (Patsy). Who are their fathers? No clue. [Update 10/22/09, 12:30 a.m.: I'm not suggesting Patsy Ramsey murdered her daughter, and in comments Mandolin notes that she was exonerated. My intended point was the media and much of the viewing public - myself included - forged a broad consensus that sexualizing one's child prematurely and letting them be judged on appearance is not healthy. The media blamed Patsy for this almost exclusively.]

And even if you’ve forgotten who Nadya Suleman is, you likely remember “Octomom.”

I’m not defending the actions or judgment of any of these women, just observing that it’s unusual for media attention to focus on fathers’ misdeeds. To be sure, not every last commentator is pouncing on Richard Heene. At the HuffPost, Norman Lear expresses empathy for Heene, saying he just wanted to grab his 15 minutes. Lear conveniently ignores the fact that most fame-hungry adults neither break the law nor drag their kids along for the ride.

It’s telling, though, that Lear doesn’t see any need to defend the kids’ mother, Mayumi Heene. Why, exactly, is the media focusing on the “bad dad” this time, and practically giving the mother a pass?

Well, for one thing, in their TV interviews Richard has done almost all the talking. Mayumi has hovered at the edge of the spotlight. That makes him appear more culpable, even if they both agreed to the hoax.

For another, his overbearing attitude makes it easy to believe that he hatched the balloon scheme and bullied the rest of the family into going along with it.

Racism just might play a role, too. Tracy Clark-Flory of Broadsheet reports that when the Heenes were on Wife Swap, Richard yelled to his ersatz wife:

“You’re a man’s nightmare. I’m so glad my wife was born in Japan” — presumably because Japanese women like his wife, Mayumi, know how to be appropriately obedient to their husbands.

It’s possible that the media are cutting her more slack because she’s assumed to be stereotypically subservient. If so, that’s the kind of “understanding” that mothers really don’t need.

More optimistically, it’s even possible that our culture is starting to turn allergic against the sort of toxic hypermasculinity that Richard Heene exudes. (Jeff Fecke of Alas just beautifully dissected this brand of masculinity.) We can hope, right?

And then there’s the fact that Richard Heene is an obvious whackaloon. He calls himself a research scientist though his last paid job was laying tile. He believes the world is due to end in 2012. His motive for doing reality TV is evidently to raise enough money to opt-out of world destruction, possibly by building a bunker.

Am I missing anything? And can you think of other “bad dads” who’ve captivated the media? Surely there must be some that I’m forgetting.

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Four-part Harmony Collides with Wookies; World Does Not End

Maybe it’s just ’cause I’m the daughter of a mother who has sung in barbershop quartets for the last quarter century. Maybe it’s because I remember Jaw, ET, the original Star Wars trilogy, and Indiana Jones from their big-screen debuts. Maybe I’ve got a secret Wookie fetish, but if so, it’s hidden even from me. Anyway, via Renee of Womanist Musings, here’s a tribute to all that. I am impressed – knocked flat on my  behind – by the creative arrangements and the singer’s kick-ass vocal range.

Enjoy!

Oh man. Upon hearing this for the fourth time, I’m starting to worry that I do have a thing for Wookies. Here I thought I’d moved up from Luke Skywalker to Han Solo as I grew up. But Chewbaca? This is very concerning.

Update, 10/20/09, 10:30 p.m.: In comments, Sugarmag pointed out that this video is lip-synched – so much for that Bobby McFerrinish vocal range! – and KRS posted a link to the (apparent) original version by an a cappella group called Moosebutter (if, indeed, the concept of “original” still exists on the Web). Here it is:

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How to Prove You’re a Lousy Parent

So you’ve probably all heard about the balloon boy, even if you watch as little TV news as I do (zero, that is). Yesterday, Falcon Heene, a six-year-old boy in Fort Collins, Colorado, went missing. His family reported that he had apparently floated away with an enormous helium balloon that they kept tethered next to their home. A massive search-and-rescue effort was mounted before Falcon was found a few hours later, hiding out in the rafters of the family’s garage.

I know that plenty of people would question the wisdom of keeping something akin to a weather balloon in a place where a kid could get to it, and I do wonder, too. It’s not so different from having a swimming pool, which also requires increased vigilance from parents. But I’m not quick to condemn on this score. After all, lots of parents have swimming pools, and virtually all parents of six-year-olds let them out of sight on a regular basis.

The media are now questioning whether the whole incident was a hoax, intended to gain publicity for a couple who’ve already done reality TV, appearing on Wife Swap. Here, too, I’m inclined to be agnostic unless more damning evidence comes out.

So why do I think Falcon has lousy parents? This:

(Via Andrew Sullivan)

If your child starts to vomit on national TV, you stop the interview! You do not carry on! At the absolute minimum, one parent takes the child off the set while the other continues.

And if you’re not a media pig, maybe you don’t put your kid on TV in the first place. Especially when he’s surely been traumatized.

Update 10-16-09, 6:30 p.m.: In comments, erniebufflo fills in the details and gives an all-too-persuasive interpretation:

The poor kid was on two different morning shows today, puked on the first, and then went on to puke on the second.  So not only did they go through the first interview, they made the kid do another, KNOWING he was very sick. Which is obviously why they had the puke-receptacle at the ready, because they knew it was going to happen.  But this is a dad who made a rap video in which the kids decry “pussification” which includes, to him, time-outs and using toilets. And this is a dad who called TV stations before he called 9/11.  And this is a dad who created a “bitch o meter” for a “nagging” wife he was paired with on Wife Swap, who thanked God his wife is from Japan, I guess because he feels Japanese women are more properly subservient.  And this is a dad there is video tape of launching the balloon HIMSELF, video which makes it clear that the boy could have never been inside. Bonus? He throws a little hissy fit in the video because his wife accidentally let go of the balloon’s tether.

My theory? The balloon got away, and post hissy fit, he knows that there’s going to at least be some fuss over the UFO he’s just released, so he calls the news channels and claims his kid is inside, to at least use the publicity to his own benefit rather than being the guy who freaked some people out with the big balloon, so he can be the poor storm chasing dad instead. This guy sucks at everything.

Uff da. I got a bad vibe from the father, and now I guess I know why. Pussification? Geez, I’d hide in the rafters, too.

Update 10-18-09, 11:30 a.m.: Here’s the “pussification” video. I can’t understand half of the lyrics, but what I do understand just makes me sad. Heaven help these boys if they ever need to cry.

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Baby, It’s Judgmental Outside

Figleaf is asking what folks think are the creepiest old song lyrics, as viewed from our (now hopefully enlightened) present-day perspectives on gender and power. I have to agree with him on Rod Stewart’s “Tonight’s the Night.” (Virgin child indeed! How can you think that line these days without picturing Roman Polanski, Jack Nicholson’s hot tub, and a vat of Quaaludes?) Ditto on Paul Anka’s “Having My Baby.” Eww. Whose baby?? But it’s easy for me to despise the ideology in those songs, because I’ve always thought both of them were sappy, treacly, and musically insipid.

Other songs are easy pickins, too, even if I like and respect the musicians: “Under My Thumb” from the Rolling Stones romanticizes abuse. I can no longer hear “Wicked Uncle Ernie” from my beloved Who without wondering exactly what Pete Townsend was searching for on those child porn sites he visited (ostensibly for research). And then there’s the Gershwin oeuvre. “Someone to Watch Over Me,” indeed! I love Gershwin, I enjoy playing the songs on my piano, but some of the lyrics are just retrograde.

But back to figleaf’s list. I’m not ready to call “Baby It’s Cold Outside” a straightforward date-rape story, as he does. Let’s look at the lyrics. In case you don’t know the tune, it’s sung by alternating female and male voices, with the woman starting off first:

I really can’t stay – Baby it’s cold outside
I’ve got to go away – Baby it’s cold outside
This evening has been – Been hoping that you’d drop in
So very nice – I’ll hold your hands, they’re just like ice
My mother will start to worry – Beautiful, what’s your hurry
My father will be pacing the floor – Listen to the fireplace roar
So really I’d better scurry – Beautiful, please don’t hurry
Well maybe just a half a drink more – Put some music on while I pour

The neighbors might think – Baby, it’s bad out there
Say, what’s in this drink – No cabs to be had out there
I wish I knew how – Your eyes are like starlight
To break the spell – I’ll take your hat, your hair looks swell
I ought to say no, no, no, sir – Mind if I move closer
At least I’m gonna say that I tried – What’s the sense in hurting my pride?
I really can’t stay – Baby don’t hold out
Ahh, but it’s cold outside

C’mon baby

I simply must go – Baby, it’s cold outside
The answer is no – Ooh darling, it’s cold outside
This welcome has been – I’m lucky that you dropped in
So nice and warm – Look out the window at that storm
My sister will be suspicious – Man, your lips look delicious
My brother will be there at the door – Waves upon a tropical shore
My maiden aunt’s mind is vicious – Gosh your lips are delicious
Well maybe just a half a drink more – Never such a blizzard before

I’ve got to go home – Oh, baby, you’ll freeze out there
Say, lend me your coat – It’s up to your knees out there
You’ve really been grand – I thrill when you touch my hand
But don’t you see – How can you do this thing to me?
There’s bound to be talk tomorrow – Think of my life long sorrow
At least there will be plenty implied – If you caught pneumonia and died
I really can’t stay – Get over that hold out
Ahh, but it’s cold outside

Baby it’s cold outside

Brr its cold.
It’s cold out there
Cant you stay awhile longer baby
Well…I really shouldn’t…alright

Make it worth your while baby
Ahh, do that again.

(You can read the lyrics and hear them sung here.)

So let’s start with a couple of lines that I do find creepy, sung by the man:

What’s the sense in hurting my pride?
Baby don’t hold out

This is definitely manipulative. The “hold out” prase is repeated later, too. It’s also icky because pride has no business in a make-out session. If his pride is that fragile, then he needs to get over himself. If pride is the only reason he wants her, then she has every reason to want to run back out into the cold. I don’t get a warm and fuzzy feeling from the line about “no cabs to be had out there,” either. While it’s probably factually true in a blizzard or ice storm, the man’s using it as an argument, conveying the possibility that the woman may be trapped against her will.

More ambiguous is this line:

How can you do this thing to me?

Is the male singer lamenting the woman’s possible departure? If that’s how you read it, the line is manipulative. But might he also be marveling at how much she turns him on? If so, that’s not necessarily pernicious at all.

I’m sure some people will read the cocktails as evidence of date rape. That’s only the case, though, if you assume that a couple of “half drinks” are going to render the woman incapable of consent. I’m not willing to read that much into the scenario; if you count every sexual encounter where alcohol is present as “rape,” then you’ve criminalized upwards of 90% of the sex that occurs on my university campus. (Whether that much drinking is desirable is another question.)

But along with the couple of definitely manipulative lines, the male singer also says some things that are solicitous and just plain warm:

Been hoping that you’d drop in
I’ll hold your hands, they’re just like ice
Beautiful, what’s your hurry
Listen to the fireplace roar

There’s a sweetness in those lines, as well as in the various compliments he gives her. (Quick! Somebody please tell me my hair looks swell!) But the really unexpected line comes right before the really objectionable one about his pride:

Mind if I move closer

Wow. He’s asking for explicit verbal consent! How often do you see that in a song – of any era? How often does that happen in real life, even today? This doesn’t neutralize the icky line about his pride, but it certainly complicates the potential date-rape narrative.

Turning to the woman’s lines, you see a lovely example of what figleaf likes to refer to as the first of his Two Rules of Desire: The woman is presumed not to have autonomous desires, and she comports herself accordingly.

But!! Look at why she’s resisting. It’s not because she’s not interested. She’s just playing the gatekeeper role. And she’s doing it for the same reason many of my students still do it, 60 years later: because she doesn’t want to be slut-shamed:

I ought to say no, no, no, sir
At least I’m gonna say that I tried …

My sister will be suspicious
My brother will be there at the door
My maiden aunt’s mind is vicious …

There’s bound to be talk tomorrow
At least there will be plenty implied

That’s the voice of a woman who knows darn well what she wants – she wants him! – but she’s hemmed in by the double standard. She ought to say no, no, no. She’s gonna say she tried – because she knows that otherwise she’ll be seen as easy.

And look at the social control! Her whole family has got her under surveillance. The reference to the maiden aunt is partly just reinforcing a stereotype of the shriveled up, sexless old maid, but it’s also describing one of the real ways that women have historically policed other women’s sexuality. In doing so, they may have thought they had the young woman’s interest in mind, but they ultimately, collectively helped enforce the patriarchal control of women’s bodies and sexuality. And the singer sounds as though she’s perfectly aware that this is more about family honor and community standards than her own well-being.

Maybe I’m a little soft on this song because I like it. There’s no question that the two singers are pressed into roles that undergird a rape culture. She means yes, and yet she says no no no – under duress. This is obviously some seriously fucked-up communication, and it’s just as obviously a way of navigating repressive social norms.

And yet – the song is more complex that the date-rape scenario suggests. I’m not nominating it to become the new third-wave feminist anthem of sex positivity, but there is that one shining moment where he asks permission. And there are those flying sparks of her fiery, authentic, and potentially autonomous desire, if only she didn’t have to fear slut-shaming. For the young woman, it’s cold outside, but it’s not the weather she fears; it’s the icy, judgmental reaction to girls who say yes. That raging blizzard? It’s the storm of shame she can expect the next morning.

Update 10-20-09, 10:45 p.m., better-late-than-never edition: Right after I wrote this, I checked out a bunch of different versions of it, and it’s amazing how different musical interpretations can slant the sexual politics of the song. Here’s Doris Day and Bing Crosby:

Poor Doris Day. I don’t think she was actually the prude that her reputation made her out to be, but she sure did play a lot of characters whose job it was to “hold out” while the male lead tried to whittle down her resistance. You can hardly hear her sing without those good-girl characters resonating in every note.

But when it comes to vocal mannerisms, I think Cerys Matthews (here with Tom Jones!) works harder than Doris Day to play the passive coquette. There’s also a clip where Jessica Simpson outdoes Matthews with the breathy girlishness of her voice, but it’s too insipid even for the standards of this lowly blog. Matthews sounds like she’s about eleven years old and Tom Jones is what he is, but they’re backed by a snazzy big band, which is really the saving grace of this arrangement:

Now, Dolly Parton brings a tartness to the song that makes you believe she really does want him. That is, until you realize what she wants is Rod Stewart. Given the choice between Tom Jones and Rod Stewart … well, I’d take Bing Crosby.

It’s striking what a difference the tempo makes. Just slowing it down can take it from chirpy coquettish to sultry. I like it slow. (Read that as you will.)

And then there’s the sole clip I found where the “male” singer acts rawly aggressive instead of suave – except that here, a woman (Selma Blair) takes on the “male” part and practically ravishes her partner.

It’s silly in its own way, in the tradition of “let’s destroy the patriarchy and replace it with a matriarchy!” But it’s worth noting that if Gap had made the same ad, with the same choreography, without reversing the sexes, we’d much more likely see it as a straight-up rape scene.

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More on Letterman: Workplace Romances and Horndog Bosses

Once upon a time, long, long ago, I spent a couple of years outside of academia, working for the state of California at a regulatory agency. This was the mid-1980s, and so deregulation was en vogue, even though most of my coworkers were Democrats who’d never voted for Reagan. The day after the SCOTUS nomination of Douglas Ginsburg went in flames because he’d had the temerity to inhale, it was clear that 1) most of my colleagues in the policy division had a libertarian streak, and 2) none of us were viable candidates for higher office.

Maybe that slightly libertarian climate allowed for other mild indiscretions, too – or maybe it’s just that workplaces always breed sex. One of my colleagues, a very bright woman in her late twenties, was dating the executive director, who was probably fifteen years her senior. I was mildly shocked when I realized they were together. He was her boss, after all, though not her direct supervisor. But they were both single. They were in love. They were upfront about their affair but didn’t let it interfere with work. Though I lost track of them years ago, a quick internet search revealed that they’re Facebook friends, so I’m guessing they’re still a couple or at least real-life friends.

That was twenty years ago, but in principle, I still think it’s not desirable for a person with any supervisory authority to date a subordinate. As a university instructor, I believe it’s wrong for professors and TAs to get sexually involved with students who are currently in their classes. If the connection is real, it can wait until after finals to be consummated. There’s just too much potential for abuse of power on one side, and for infatuation with power on the other.

If the instructor is the student’s adviser, that’s a stickier situation. The best solution would be to set the student up with another adviser. In some cases, though, this isn’t possible, especially if a graduate student is doing specialized work that only one faculty member can advise. Similarly, my colleague and our executive director could only have eliminated the boss/subordinate relationship if one of them had left the Commission. He was the top cat, after all.

So I think allowances sometimes have to be made for love. It would be a shame to condemn serious relationships, because sometimes, you meet the right person in the wrong place. It would be a shame to stand in those cases where the meeting of two people is a small miracle. Obviously it’s not possible to know in advance which relationships will be “serious,” and reasonable people disagree on what “serious” even means, but at a minimum, both parties should have intentions beyond a hot fling. Besides, I’m talking about ethics here, not rules or laws, so there’s room for individuals to interpret their own situations. And just to be clear, I’m only addressing scenarios where there’s an imbalance of power; I don’t see any ethical problem with two employees hooking up, however casually, if neither is in a direct line of authority over the other.

Now, how does this pertain to Letterman? Well, since he was the top cat, any workplace affair would involve a subordinate. That’s always inherently problematic. He seems to have had a sustained affair with the one woman whose name has been revealed, and if that were the end of the story, I’d be inclined again to give it an ethical pass. (Of course, if he and his then-girlfriend, now-wife Regina were ostensibly monogamous, that presents a whole ‘nother ethical problem, but here I’m only considering the sexual ethics of the workplace.)

However, Letterman also apparently had a series of affairs. As Echnidne puts, it he appears to have harvested his subordinates for sex. And that’s a crucial distinction from a boss who has a single liaison with a subordinate, because such “harvesting” is toxic to the workplace climate. People start to wonder if sex is being exchanged for favoritism. They wonder who’s doing the boss, and who’s not. The talents of women who’ve been promoted come under scrutiny, especially if they had a public affair with the boss. But even those who never slept with him may be undermined, as Tracy Clark-Flory notes at Salon:

A friend raised an excellent point in an e-mail to me: “His apology to his staff raises an under-covered feminist issue: Bosses who are hound-dogs taint the reputation of their women subordinates who don’t sleep with them,” she wrote. “I won’t mention names, but when I had a boss like that, a lot of people assumed that of me, yuck, and I fucking hated it. To this day, I think people think that helped me.” There is no question his staff is currently playing a game of whodunnit; all female employees are now suspect. That’s especially true for those who have climbed the ranks, and many have at the “Late Show”: Three of the five executive producers are female and Letterman has a reputation for promoting women. How sad that instead of celebrating that, many will start questioning it.

So the activities of horndog bosses can harm all of their underlings. And while I know horndogging isn’t an exclusively male activity, I’m pretty confident that this is overwhelmingly a problem of heterosexual male bosses and female underlings. Most such situations aren’t actionable under sexual harassment law (unless there’s a clear quid pro quo trade of sexual favors for workplace perks), but that doesn’t make them ethically or politically okay. Horndog bosses set back the cause of workplace equality.

There’s also the little issue of age dynamics. As Suzie points out, Letterman was known for dating interns. These are women who would have been fresh out of college, or maybe even still students, thirty to forty years younger than him. I know an awful lot of women that age. Few of them are secure and mature enough to hold their own with a man so much older and more powerful. That’s not to say the women who had sex with were incapable of consent, only that the situation is inherently coercive, especially when, as Suzie further notes, these women may have wondered if their career hinged on saying yes. Melissa at Shakesville worries:

If there is an expectation, even an implicit or oblique expectation, that sleeping with the boss may be part of your job, whether there can be genuine and undiluted enthusiastic consent is a serious question.

We don’t know the answer to that question, but that shouldn’t stop us from asking it.

And yet, there’s been a lot of shoulder shrugging at the big feminist blogs. Tracy Clark-Flory at Salon, Jill at Feministe, and Vanessa at Feministing have all argued that Letterman probably didn’t break any law, and thus his behavior oughtn’t raise our feminist hackles. But the legal standard alone is a mighty low bar. At a minimum, we know that Letterman’s conduct was unethical and potentially harmful to all of the women who worked for him. Sure, if an extortionist had never forced the issue, we wouldn’t know about his affairs  – but now that they’re in the public eye, we shouldn’t give workplace horndogging a free pass just because Letterman isn’t a hypocritical Republican, or because his offense is much lesser than Roman Polanski’s, or even because he’s still a funny, basically likable guy.

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