Figleaf's Real Adult Sex

More on the Allen/Broadwell/Kelly/Petraeus (in alphabetical order) kerfuffle from gender-determinism skeptic Echidne says

Take what is currently known (or asserted):  David Petraeus, a married man, had an affair with Paula Broadwell, a married woman.  It is argued that Paula Broadwell, a married woman, sent threatening messages to Jill Kelley, another married woman, to warn her off Petraeus.  Jill Kelley, a married woman,  may have exchanged "inappropriate" e-mails with John Allen, a married man.  None of these people are married to each other.

...

I understand the angle of these stories. It's Petraeus and Allen who are famous and well-known and they are men. But the facts of the case suggest that we should also ask why women cheat, given that all alleged participants in this mess had marital partners. Broadwell, too, seems to have "risked it all" to cheat: her marriage, her career as a biographer and the risk of the kind of public attention she is now receiving. Her position may not look as powerful to us but in terms of her own life the risks she took were huge.

Source: Echidne of the Snakes

Echidne points out what would probably be obvious minus the knee-jerk knee-squeezing twittery: It takes two to tango...

Heck, as she puts it

As I mentioned, I get the angle of these stories. But it takes two to tango, and in heterosexual extramarital affairs both partners can be married. Thus, the questions those headlines ask about men cheating disguise the fact that we should ask similar questions about women cheating.

I mean, seriously!!! So far everyone involved has had some degree of professional credibility and respect on the line. You have to be... well, there aren't a lot of choices here besides being head-up-your-butt invested in misogyny, head-and-shoulders-up-your-butt stupid, or maybe all-but-your-ankles-up-your-butt invested in the cheapest-possible interpretation of "evolutionary psychology" to miss the oh, gee, wow, surprising similarities between the behavior of the various career men and women involved.

Maybe it's because both women and men are, you know, people.

Naah.  The other possible explanations about genes or gender-determinism are so much more complicated they must be true.

This is going to sound a bit flame-y but I'm kind of stuck over an uncharacteristic, probably just off-the-cuff snippet in an overall very good post by E.J. Graff at The American Prospect. The main subject of the post, the knee-squeezing twittery by press and politicians about what appears to be a fairly routine affair between David Petraeus and Paula Broadwell.

I can easily see how that intense connection could become erotic—especially when it’s between a powerful man and an ambitious younger woman who’s trying to borrow some of that power for herself, that traditional method of exchanging power. (It may not be a feminist-approved method, but I’m writing about the real here, not the ideal.)

Source: TAPPED

Yes, Petraeus is 60, but Broadwell is 40.  At age 34, when they would have met, she was already a West Point grad, a military reservist with active duty experience, an accomplished athlete, and a Kennedy School grad student.  Meanwhile Petraeus was still just a colonel.  They had a common academic and professional interest in the then-still-under-appreciated field of counterinsurgency.

None of that overrules the possibility that Broadwell is just some older-than-usual groupie to Petraeus's Charlie Watts (the "superstar" drummer for the Rolling Stones, and yes I had to look up his name because as superstars go drummers aren't really at the top of the list.) But it does make it less attractive to leap to that assumption when other factors might make more sense.

Perhaps by working out of the D.C. based Prospect Graff has more of an inside scoop on their relationship than I do out here on the west coast.  But unless she's willing to spill I'm still more inclined to look at Broadwell and Petraeus as two mature, successful professional heterosexuals with a too-long, too-close history of common interests in situations where they were too often too far from their respective spouses. For too long at a time.

I'm sensitive to this in part because I'm really creeped out by the dominant male belief that women have no intrinsic interest in sex beyond its exchange value (Bogus Rule of Desire #1)  And so I'm creeped out by the implication that Broadwell's interest in Petraeus would have been that of a groupie or "gold digger" hoping to reflect herself in his power. (Because, see Bogus Rule #2, who ever heard of, or could stand the idea of, a man being sexually desirable?!?!?)

It's just weird coming from Graff instead of, say, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, or Satoshi Kanazawa.  And her parenthetical "It may not be a feminist-approved method, but I’m writing about the real here, not the ideal?"  Seriously?  That's also something I'd expect to hear on right-wing radio before I read it on TAPPED.  I mean, eww!

Probably a typo.

Photo by Flickr user Tim Ellis. Used under a Creative Commons license.

Well, turns out it's No-Shave November again, and once again I've spaced out nearly half of it.

You know all the controversies about shaving various parts of our anatomies?  Well, this month is a good month to just let go of all that.  Just put away your razors, depilitories, waxes, sugars, and tweezers, antiseptic (and analgesic) after-shaves, the works.

I've got a couple of sales calls this month so it might be a little touchy since contrary to Silicon Valley myths small business owners want their prospective web developers to be neat, tidy, and "pre-pubescent" looking.  Fortunately, at least in November, I've got a good excuse: I can say (honestly) that No-Shave November originated as a way to raise money for prostate cancer awareness.

I say honestly because a) I'm going to mention it to anyone who asks why I'm not shaving, b) because I'm going to donate money myself, and c) because I'm going to invite you to donate as well.

Here's a link to the Prostate Cancer Foundation's donation page.

Logo of the Prostate Cancer Foundation. Click the image to visit their donation page.

If prostate cancer isn't your thing you can still a) decline to shave and b) contribute to other major cancer prevention and treatment foundations

The links below are to the non-profit effectiveness rating group CharityNavigator's top-rated non-profits in their respective sectors 

• Breast cancer
• Colon Cancer Alliance (a direct link to the only group with a 4 star CharityNavigator rating.)
• Lung cancer and for good luck, and since that's what started this whole post
• Pro state cancer

It has been much noted in electoral politics that demographics in the U.S. are changing. Said notations have come with much rending of garments by "traditional" right-wing extremists. Who for some reason imagine an overwhelmingly majority-white population would give them the conservative/libertarian paradise they believe they'd be able to enjoy.

As South Carolina Republican Lindsay Graham complained to the Washington Post last month

We're not generating enough angry white guys to stay in business for the long term.

Source: The Guardian

The issue, according to a bunch of those same angry white guys, is that all "those people" are reproducing at rates higher than rates higher than angry white guys.

They think that's a problem.

I'm...

Gonna have to agree.

I'd just state the problem a little differently than they would.

Because... well... ok, quick question: who wants to reproduce with an angry white guy?

Or even more pointedly: Who wants to reproduce with an angry white guy willingly?

Not to grind this in too deep but this is yet another area where feminism would actually improve matters for the angry white guys who feel most threatened by it.

Part of why they feel threatened is that if feminism wins then they will no longer be entitled to effectively coerce partners to reproduce with them.  If feminism wins, they fear, then women will be able to support themselves on their own incomes and consequently will not be obliged to couple with them in order to keep rooves over their heads and shoes on their and their children's feet.  If feminism wins, they fear, then women will be able to walk down the street or sleep in their own beds with no further need of angry white guys to protect them from "big, angry non-white men."  If feminism wins, they fear, women (as members of the sexually-indifferent "no-sex" class!) will have no interest sexual or even social intercourse with men.

In other words, they fear, if feminism wins then a) no one will want to reproduce with angry white men, and therefore angry white men are doomed to extinction.

 I dunno.

Seems to me that the issue is that sense of entitlement.  And a big source of the anger is over a sense of loss of that entitlement.

And yet...

I've noticed...

By and large hetero women (the vast, vast majority in other words) seem perfectly interested in forming relationships with non-angry, non-entitled men. Short-term relationships.  Long-term relationships.  One-night-stand relationships.  Even long-term let's have a family relationships!  No coercion, leverage, wheedling, required.  And defniitely no anger required.

Just something to think about.

It's bad enough when assholes in predictable, far-away-from-me places like Indiana, Missouri, and lifelong-government-beneficiary-and-Ayn-Rand-fan, but I always expect better from even the most conservative reaches of Washington State.  Silly me.  Evan McMorris-Santoro has the scoop.

John Koster, Republican nominee in Washington’s First Congressional District, was captured on tape over the weekend explaining why he is opposed to abortion in the case of incest and rape. Incest he said, was “so rare.” Then he turned to rape.

“On the rape thing, it’s like, how does putting more violence onto a woman’s body and taking the life of an innocent child that’s the consequence of this crime, how does that make it better?” Koster said. “You know what I mean?”

Source: TalkingPointsMemo

Koster's opponent, Democratic candidate Suzan DelBene, wasn't my first choice for the nearby Congressional District 1.  I supported and would have preferred Darcy Burner. 

But!

So a little while ago I donated to the DelBene's campaign.  If you feel the same way  you can donate to DelBene too.

To be fair, in the unlikely event it had been DelBene who'd said something so egregiously, viciously thuggish I'd have sent money to Koster.  But of course she didn't say anything nearly so ugly.  Instead he inexcusably did. 

Image via Facebook user 'A girl's guide to taking over the world.'

Amanda Marcott, writing at Tapped, gives a nice analysis of the annual excoriation of "sexy" Halloween costumes for women.  It's a good read (it starts like this.)

Every year, Halloween comes with its own predictable traditions: trick-or-treating, pumpkin recipes, costumes based on bad puns, and increasingly, the tradition of women wearing ever-skimpier Halloween costumes and feminists online decrying the trend through blogs and social networks. To quote the movie Mean Girls: “In Girl World, Halloween is the one night a year when a girl can dress like a total slut and no other girls can say anything about it.”

Mocking oversexed Halloween costumes is catnip to feminists. For one thing, it’s one of those arenas where the double standard is undeniable. Men’s costumes, at least those sold in Halloween stores, tend to be basic scary costume fare. Women’s costumes are so oversexed it gets silly. Sexy bacon? Sexy Finding Nemo? A sexy melon that is so sexy you can’t even tell what it’s supposed to be?

Source: The American Prospect

Further down in her post Amanda mentions that Dan Savage has weighed in on the matter. 

This season, Dan Savage criticized feminist bloggers on his podcast, Savage Lovecast, saying that some of the arguments he’s heard are sex negative, shaming women for exploring their sexuality. He celebrated Halloween for being a heterosexual version of a pride celebration—an opportunity to celebrate sexuality and have some fun—and said that sexy costumes are a natural an unobjectionable part of this. He acknowledged the double standard, agreeing that it’s unfair that women are the ones who strip down while men don’t, but pointed out that the culture at large expects women to be put on display, an expectation which carries over into Halloween traditions. All this negativity around sexy female Halloween costumes just comes across as prudish, he argues.

On Facebook I ran across this nifty image from RancidButter and it set me to thinking...

Image by Facebook User RancidButter.

What prompted me was the observation that, in addition to the actual victims Mourdock, Akin, and Co. would like to see sent to prison there's also the matter of what should become of, oh, say, the victim's parents, their sons or daughters, their girlfriends or boyfriends, or, of course, their husbands who help the victim free herself of the remainders of her assailant's tissue.

And that was the point it hit me.

Richard Mourdock probably isn't a rapist.

Sure, he might have fantasized about it from time to time.  As no doubt a lot of his sympathizers have.

But.

You know?

As any sex educator (or "bodice ripper" novelist) will tell you, sexual fantasy is soooooooo removed from reality.

And so Mourdock, like Paul Ryan (woo, especially Paul Ryan -- have you ever read Ayn Rand's "sex" scenes?!?!?) probably believe that rape is something that happens only to pretty, single, typically blonde or maybe exotically Asian or African American babes. Irresponsible ones.  Maybe "slutty" ones.  Definitely ones with no support. Who lives alone.  Who don't have family.  Definitely not ones that live with, let alone maybe support their family. Absolutely not someone who's married... one who already has children.  Who has a spouse who loves and cares for her.

And definitely not someone they know. 

And that's the whole problem!

They probably aren't rapists!

And so they can only imagine "what it would be like." 

And, I guess, they're imagining it wouldn't really be all that bad, you know?

And since they have no real... well... conception of what it's really like, or what a large cross section of the population the victims really fall into...

They just don't think it through.

Not the consequences of their other fantasies about "life."  Meaning, of course, "unborn" life but not, you know, actual adults with actual lives life.

Fantasies.

You know, sexual fantasies really aren't all that bad.  Even really bad ones.  Sex researchers and educators have pretty much demonstrated that as long as you're clear about the difference between fantasy and reality, and you're not acting them out even really, really bad erotic fantasies are... not a threat.

No, it's not so much the want-to-feel-good sexual fantasies that are the problem.

Instead the problem is regular old conservative want-to-feel-good-about-myself fantasies.

Especially ones you want to enact into, you know, actual law!

That?

That's a problem.

Fantasies belong between the ears, or maybe even in the bedroom.  But not in the law books, ok?

So Richard (DIck) Mourdock has a big sad ("it has been one of the toughest days of my life") about the very suggestion that just because (he believes, after he "struggled with it myself for a long time") God intends a rapist to get his victim pregnant that he therefore intends for the rapist to actually, you know, rape his victim.

Because, you know, he and his ilk also claim even if the father is a sinner God says his child is completely innocent and just as precious as any other life.

Oh really?

Let's see what his part of the Bible say about God's attitudes towards the offspring of guilty people:

(Exodus 34:6-7) - "Then the Lord passed by in front of him and proclaimed, "The Lord, the Lord God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in loving kindness and truth; who keeps loving kindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin; yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations."

Uh oh!

Not that we really expect Mourdock, Aiken, Ryan, or other nominally Christian extremists to be authentic, let alone consistent, about their respect for the Bible -- after all their entire political agenda involves the repeal of the Sermon on the Mount!  But if we take them at their word then they're stuck with only a few very ugly choices:

If God meant what he said in Exodus 34:6-7 (and elsewhere around the Old Testament) then He doesn't think a rapist's baby is all that innocent or worthy of protection after all.  In which case Mourock et. al are seriously misinterpreting what God wants, Or.

If God meant what he said but a rapist's baby doesn't fall under the Exodus 34:6-7 clause then God sort of necessarily really doesnt think a rapist is guilty of iniquity.  In which case Mourdock et. al are seriously misinterpreting what God wants.

If God really didn't mean what he said in Exodus 34:6-7, or, worse from their claimed position, he meant it but it's not that big a deal to ignore Him, then they're throwing open the Biblical-interpretation cafeteria door, in which case they need to explain... well... why we have to listen to them pulling the God card on any number of other issues... where, after all, they're generally far more at odds with the black and white text than are, oh, say, most liberals and progressives.

Personally I think there are plenty of other positive, uplifting, and non-getting-into-other-people's-business versions of Christian theology that don't require literal interpetations of every line of text.  Which considering Jesus' absolute and unambiguous condemnations of hypocrisy and empty piety ought to comfort Mourdock, Akin, Ryan, and their ilk enormously. 

But!

If they're going to keep insisting we adopt their spiteful, narrow, supersticious and suspiciously self-serving interpretations then... one way or another Mourdock is wrong that God both doesn't intend for a rapist to commit his crime but does intend him to impregnate his victim.

Seriously, gang.  If you're going to be a Christian in the first place you've got to see the Bible as more than a magic rattle you can shake any time you want to feel good about being a self-serving dick.

Note: I've been using the words "rape" and "rapist" in these last few posts because that's the language Mourdock, Akin, Ryan, and the rest insist on using.

Still referring to E.J. Graff's probe into Republican rape apologists' pulpy decay here. Graff quotes Jessica Valenti in The Nation

As Tennessee Senator Douglas Henry said in 2008, “Rape, ladies and gentlemen, is not today what rape was. Rape, when I was learning these things, was the violation of a chaste woman, against her will, by some party not her spouse.”

She also quotes Irin Carmon in Salon (emphasis mine.)

“Dear everyone asking what it is about Republican candidates and their clumsy talk about rape: This is a feature, not a bug.” Really. Mourdock, Akin, Walsh, Angle—all of them are simply saying straightforwardly what they and many other people around them believe. ... They believe that most of what you and I would call rape today is just some slut who got angry because the dude didn’t take her out to breakfast the next morning.

Ok, look. I know, I know, back between roughly the early 1700s and late 1900s social and especially economic forces made it extremely important for women to protect their "virtue."  A.k.a. their resale value in the male virginity-fetish market.  With the result that any hint of "lack of virtue" could result in very real risk of social, economic, and even physical harm.  And consequently one can imagine (and I do stress imagine here) that women might have felt some pressure to claim that any consensual sexual "lapse" was actually somehow the result of coercion by her male partner.

But...

But...

C'mon!  Look what we've seen just among right-wing extremist conservatives in America!  In 2008 the daughter of an arch-conservative Vice Presidential candidate has an out-of-wedlock daughter.  Consequences to either the daughter or the candidate?  Zero.  Compare that to, say, the 1972 Presidential race where a male VIce Presidential candidate was forced to step aside just because he had been treated for depression.  Depression!  See also the nude photos of arch-conservative radio shock-jock "Dr." Laura Schlessinger. Consequences?  Zero!  Allegations of an affair by South Carolina Gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley.  By a political ally no less.  Consequences?  Zero. 

Among less prominent women in the 21st Century the issue of the importance of "feminine virtue" gets more hazy rather than less.  Yes, Minnesota Senate Majority Leader Amy Koch had to step down when it was revealed that she'd had inappropriate relations with a male employee.  But the actual uproar, and cause for her stepping down, had more to do with him being a subordinate than about Koch's actual sex life itself.

And about that male subordinate?  Interestingly, he's filed a wrongful termination suit against his former employers on the basis that female employees who'd had similar relationships with male legislators had not been fired.*  A.k.a. discriminated against for having willing or unwilling sexual relationships.

Does this mean everything everywhere in America is just hunky-dory for women who choose not to remain "untainted?"  No.  Duh.  Of course not.

But!

It does imply that Republican knuckledraggers who like to imagine that women have any image-protecting (or even job protecting!) reasons to "cry rape" are simply talking through their hats.  Where "their hats" is a euphemism for "their stupid, lazy, throwback asses." Because for the most part, and largely thanks to feminism, the incentives for "crying rape" here in the 21st Century "today is not like it was."

* This is SO not a whutaboutthemenz/reverse-discrimination ploy, at least not on my part. Here in the 21st Century NOBODY should be punished for being a victim either of workplace sexual harassment or sexual favoritism by a superior.

While reading E.J. Graff's exploration of Republican attempts to justify their gut conviction that rape is bad but rape pregnancy is very, very good the following knee-jerk right-wing syllogisms popped into my head.

1. Pregnancy from rape is very good.  So good that the government should force victims to remain pregnant through live birth.
2. Rape, on the other hand, is very bad.  So bad that rapists should be executed.  Even, presumably, rapists who impregnate their victims.
3. Single motherhood, on the other hand, is also very bad.  So bad that every child should have both a mother and father.
4. ???
5. Republican policy success!

Each of the first three steps, above so obvious to these guys.  So obvious you can just see their earnest enthusiasm bubbling over.  You can practically understand their confusion and frustration that what's so obvious to them should not seem obvious to others.

Obviously something is missing.

What, er, conceivable argument can you put in line D that will square their little hippie-dippy feeling-good-matters-most circles with honesty, integrity, consistency, responsibility, or any of the other attributes these same guys used to accuse 60's-era hippies of lacking?