Photo by Flickr user xinekite. Used under a Creative Commons license.

Bridget Crawford of Feminist Law Professors, who as a law professor hangs around mainly with people who ought to know better, actually ran into an... um... highly non-distinguished gentleman.

"Who will buy a cow if the milk is free?" These are the words that a man (age 60+) spoke in my presence about the plans of a younger woman (age 20+) to live with her boyfriend without getting engaged or married. The words made me nauseous.

Women are not like cows. Sex is not like milk.

She said it here.

I'm actually not sure who to feel more sorry for, Prof. Crawford, who merely has to endure his continuing existence in passing, or her communicant who for his entire life will have to wonder about that strange guy who's always staring out of that shiny flat thing behind the bathroom sink and looks just like him.

Actually that persistent little cow meme drives me totally up the wall! And consequently I'm rarely able to explain the problem as well, or as patiently, as does Crawford.

Viewed in an historic context, marriage has been the legally- and socially-sanctioned means by which women exchange access to their bodies for physical and/or economic security. As the cow analogy goes, then, a man has no interest in protecting (i.e., marrying) a woman from whom he receives "free" (i.e., non-marital) sex.

Interestingly, Crawford cites two authors who claim to be feminists who consider the idea of sex as something women don't want that can, however, be bargained for something else they do want as a laudable development! until the snow melts in the Spring.

In Hard Bargains: The Politics of Sex (1998), self-identified feminists Linda Hirschman and Jane Larson suggest that "by forcing the stronger player to bargain with the weaker for an explicit consent, we begin to ensure mutuality as a condition for all adult sexual exchanges." Viewed this way, sex is a commodity that may be more or less "mutual," depending on the relative strength of the parties' bargaining positions.

At this point do I even need to mention that kind of claim gone so far off-course into the dominant male paradigm of women as the "no-sex" class that the Civil Air Patrol and Coast Guard have both called off further searches for it till Spring? It's bad enough when men fall for that load of baloney. That any feminist, even a doctrinaire 2nd-waver, would still accept it, let alone applaud it, is... well... unacceptable!

And once again Crawford explains more gracefully than I

In my view, in relationships of near-as-possible economic and emotional parity, sex can fall on any point on a continuum from unilateral giving to unilateral taking. For some of us, our experiences cluster in the middle. For some of us, our experiences do not. But in the relationships I describe, sex occurs rarely at one extreme, the precise midpoint or even a fixed point at all. It is something we give. It is something we take.

Sex is not like milk. Women are not like cows.

In other words, between social and economic equals sex can be about, well, sex! Not an alienated exchange of one non-actually-a-commodity (an individual's body) for another non-a-commodity-either (a socially contrived economic or physical "security" that's appealing if and only if someone else is unable to achieve it on his or her own.)

And notice also that between equals sex doesn't have to be the precisely metered, balanced, and accounted for unisex sex envisioned by a very small subset of feminists in the 1970s (and squalled about ever since by legions of anti-feminists.) Because in the 1970s none but the most incredibly visionary feminists could see past the dire economic necessity that today we would call the glass floor where women earned 55 cents on the dollar and generally couldn't enter into any contract or obtain credit without the co-signature of a custodial male.

Instead, as Crawford puts it so nicely, " sex occurs rarely at one extreme, the precise midpoint or even a fixed point at all. It is something we give. It is something we take."

Sex is not like milk. Women are not like cows. In fact, 10th Commandment ("...nor his wife, nor his cattle...") notwithstanding, men are not like farmers either. And so sex is not something always bought! It is not something always sold.

Update: I just realized who I feel more sorry for... the guy's wife!

Photo by Flickr user S.Languay. Used under a Creative Commons license.

So… some bozo writing for Redbook magazine rehashes a plate full of stereotypes about men and tries to call it “male secrets.” And some (relatively uncharacteristic) bozo at WebMD decides his site has to channel it.

Jeff Fecke, at Blog of the Moderate Left has a nice takedown…

Last night, I had a pain in my knee. (Probably bursitis; nothing major.) At any rate, I went to WebMD to check my symptoms and reassure myself that it was, indeed, nothing major, and I came across their list of most-read stories. Number one on that list? “11 ‘Don’t-Tell-the-Wife’ Secrets All Men Keep.”

Really? “All Men?”

The pain in my knee receding into the background, I opened up the story. And it did not disappoint in its craptacularness.

Like all “X things that are absolutely true about any given gender” stories, it was a mix of things that are true for all human beings, things that aren’t true for all human beings, things that aren’t true for all men but are supposed to be, and things that are just naked, raw sexism at its worst.

He said it here.

Fecke calls bullshit on each of the 11 “all things true” items in turn. Follow his link, above, if you want to find the original WebMD post as I’d rather not send them the traffic.

Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon takes her own stabs at the list. One that really hits home to me:

Secret #4: Earning money makes us feel important

In more than 7.4 million U.S. marriages, the wife earns more than the husband — almost double the number in 1981. This of course is a terrific development for women in the workplace and warmly embraced by all American men, right? Right?

Yeah, well, that’s what we tell you. But we’re shallow, competitive egomaniacs. You don’t think it gets under our skin if our woman’s bringing home more bacon than we are — and frying it up in a pan?

A lot of people come to me with questions like, “What do you feminists mean by ‘male privilege’?” This is a good example. Can you imagine a woman saying, “I know it’s shallow of me, but I need to make more money than you in order to feel all woman. Would you be a dear and hold back on your career to soothe my ego? Thanks!” while running out the door, sure the answer is yes. We’d rightfully consider that borderline sociopathic unwillingness to be generous to your chosen life partner, if a woman said it. But a man does, and it’s not considered right exactly, but at least just a cute “boys will be boys” matter that women are expected to tolerate.

She said it here.

See? It really is male privilege to say “By the way, hon, my ego is more important than you so do you mind, like, y’know, handicapping yourself economically? Besides, like, I can’t get it up if I’m not earning more money than you.”

It’s also… um… well, since it’s mostly conservatives[*] who are into this whole male-dominance thing, isn’t it worth pointing out that asking women to deliberately sideline themselves so they don’t outperform their partners sort of… like… affirmative action for men? I mean, and really, there really did used to be laws like that — in 37 states in the U.S. for instance, during the depression there were laws forbidding women from taking traditional male jobs, especially if they had a working husband. And… really… when you think about all the conservative handwringing over the ill effects of affirmative action on everybody else then doesn’t it stand to reason that… well… look at it this way…

Maintaining social conventions, let alone passing legislation, in order to artificially bolster the self-esteem of men by, say, handicapping otherwise perfectly capable, competitive women means you think men are really wimps, babies needing momma and daddy to pretend they’re really all grown up…

Now if we lived in such a society then we might predict a particularly mollycoddled set of men men would come up with, and make most popular on WebMD, a list of, oh, say, eleven fictional “truisms” they believe excuses them of any maturity, responsibility, authority, equality, choice, or authenticity. (Oh wait!)

Actually, as Marcotte puts it

...this entire list is insulting to men. Yes, it insults them in a way that a lot of men embrace, because it lets them off the hook for both house work and emotional work. But it paints men like little babies that immediately start to whine the moment even a minor task is asked of them.

Yeah, weird how anti-feminists who go on and on about “male bashing” feminists never notice how much utter bullshit they routinely bury men in! Sheesh! Thanks but no thanks, guys. I have a feeling real women like real men, not little boys all pretending to be big while wimping out on pretty much all responsibility that doesn’t involve bringing home money and shooting at something (each of which the average woman seem able to do about as well as the average man, or could if law, convention, stereotype, and fragile ego didn’t get in the way.)

[**] Yes, yes, some progressives too, but they’re generally chagrined rather than smug when called on it.

According to the editors at RH Reality Check...

This following letter was sent to Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi and Senator Harry Reid urging Congressional leaders to reconsider continuing federal investments in abstinence-only funding. The letter was sent by John S Santelli MD, MPH at Columbia University and signed by nine other prominent researchers in the field of adolescent sexual and reproductive health last Wednesday, Nov 21. It was sent to RH Reality Check yesterday and we are thrilled to post it below.

As a public service I’m reproducing the letter as well. If you get a chance, would you mind forwarding it to your own Representatives and Senators regardless of party or persuasion? If your legislators support real, pragmatic, comprehensive sex education they could probably use the encouragement. If they’re opposed, then they need a reminder that young people’s health shouldn’t be a partisan issue. Thanks.

Dear Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi and Senator Harry Reid,

As a group of leading scientists who have recently conducted research on adolescents, reproductive health, and abstinence-only education, we are writing to express our strong concern about increasing federal support for abstinence-only education (AOE) programs. This federal support includes monies going to states (Section 510 of the Social Security Act) and those going directly to community and faith-based organizations (the Community-Based Abstinence Education program). Recent reports in professional publications by the authors of this letter have highlighted multiple deficiencies in federal abstinence-only programs. As such, we are surprised and dismayed that the Congress is proposing to extend and even increase funding for these programs. In this letter we identify key problems with abstinence-only education. We also have attached recent scientific reports that are pertinent to the debate over these programs. We note that many of these studies have used nationally-representative data from surveys sponsored by the National Institutes of Health or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The federal programs promoting AOE have prompted multiple scientific and ethical critiques. These critiques were summarized in a January 2006 paper by Santelli, Ott and others. By design, abstinence programs restrict information about condoms and contraception – information that may be critical to protecting the health of young people and to preventing unplanned pregnancy, HIV infection, and infection with other sexually transmitted organisms. They ignore the health needs of sexually active youth and youth who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, and questioning for counseling, health care services, and risk reduction education. Withholding lifesaving information from young people is contrary to the standards of medical ethics and to many international human rights conventions. International treaties and human rights statements support the rights of adolescents to seek and receive information vital to their health. Governments have an obligation to provide accurate information to adolescents and adolescents have a right to expect health education provided in public schools to be scientifically accurate and complete.

Rigorous evaluations of AOE programs find little evidence of efficacy for federally-sponsored abstinence education. Several weeks ago Dr. Douglas Kirby, working with the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, released a comprehensive review of prevention programs for youth (Emerging Answers 2007). This review found that none of the well-designed evaluations of abstinence-only programs presented strong evidence of an impact on abstinence behaviors. (By contrast, Kirby finds clear evidence that many comprehensive sexuality education programs, which include information on both abstinence and contraception, do help young people delay initiation of intercourse.) The large-scale Mathematica evaluation of the Section 510 program, released in April 2007, found no measurable impact on increasing abstinence or delaying sexual initiation among participating youth or on other behaviors such as condom use. This well funded and very well conducted evaluation examined four exemplary local programs, tracking youth over four years. One of the few measurable impacts of the programs was a decrease in adolescent confidence regarding the ability of condoms to prevent HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases. Similar results on program efficacy were found by Underhill, who reviewed abstinence-only programs in a spring 2007 systematic review.

Virginity pledging, one aspect of abstinence programming, appears to have little long-term benefit in preventing outcomes such as sexually transmitted infections, although prevention of these infections is a stated goal of the programs. A spring 2005 longitudinal study by Bruckner and Bearman found that abstinence pledgers, when compared to non-pledgers, experienced similar rates of sexually transmitted infection. Pledgers did delay sexual intercourse for a limited period, but when they did start having sex, they were less likely to use condoms. They were also less likely to seek reproductive health care compared to non-pledgers.

Abstinence until marriage is another stated goal of the federal program; however, evidence from the past several decades indicates that establishing abstinence until marriage as normative behavior would be a highly challenging policy goal. Teitler has shown that over the past 40 years, the median age at first intercourse has dropped (and stabilized) to age 17 in most developed countries.

At the same time, the median age at marriage has risen dramatically. Today, sexual intercourse is almost universally initiated during adolescence worldwide. A January 2007 study by Finer found that almost all Americans initiate sexual intercourse before marriage. In fact by age 44, virtually everyone has experienced sexual intercourse but only 3% have remained abstinent until marriage. Moreover this is not a new trend; Finer’s data suggest this pattern has been true for much of the second half of the 20th century.

Importantly, the emphasis on abstinence-only programs and policies appears to be undermining critical public health programs in the U.S. and abroad, including comprehensive sexuality education and HIV prevention programs. During the period of increased state and federal emphasis on abstinence, declines have occurred in the percentage of teachers in U.S. public schools who teach about birth control and the number of students who report receiving such education. In December 2006, Lindberg and colleagues found that the percentage of teenagers who had received formal instruction about condoms and contraception declined from 89% in 1995 to 70% in 2002.

We also note that a December 2004 Congressional report on federal abstinence programs from the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Government Reform – Minority Staff found that 11 of the 13 most frequently used curricula contained false, misleading or distorted information about reproductive health – including inaccurate information about contraceptive effectiveness, purported health risks of abortion, and other scientific errors. Recent reviews of these abstinence curricula from Santelli and colleagues at Columbia University have found similar inaccuracies, particularly misinformation about the efficacy of condoms and contraception. This was the basis of an ACLU declaration on this topic from Santelli in the spring of this year.

Abstinence-only requirements also appear to be harming our foreign aid efforts. In April 2006, the U.S. Government Accountability Office issued a report titled “Spending Requirement Presents Challenges for Allocating Prevention Funding under the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief” that concluded that the “...requirement that country teams spend at least 33 percent of prevention funding appropriated pursuant to the act on abstinence-until-marriage programs has presented challenges to country teams’ ability to adhere to the PEPFAR sexual transmission strategy…[and] challenged their ability to integrate the components of the ABC model and respond to local needs, local epidemiology, and distinctive social and cultural patterns.”

We would note that all of the mainstream organizations of health professionals that focus on the health of young people have strongly criticized federal support for current abstinence programs. These include the American Public Health Association, the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Psychological Association, and the Society for Adolescent Medicine. We have also attached the weblinks to the policy statements from each of these groups.

The recent Congressional testimony of former Surgeon General Richard Carmona underscores these critiques from mainstream health organizations. Dr. Carmona’s testimony confirms the political motivations behind abstinence funding and the failure to address issues of efficacy and scientific accuracy. He suggested that ideology and theology have taken priority over women’s health in the current administration. Dr. Carmona reported that the Bush administration “did not want to hear the science but wanted to, if you will, ‘preach abstinence,’ which I felt was scientifically incorrect.”

Given these serious scientific and ethical shortcomings, we strongly urge the U.S. Congress to reconsider federal support for abstinence-only education programs and policies. We would be very willing to advise you on shaping alternatives to the current program.

Sincerely,

John S Santelli, MD, MPH

Columbia University

Peter Bearman, PhD

Columbia University

Claire Brindis, DrPH

University of California, San Francisco

Hannah Bruckner, PhD

Yale University

Lawrence B Finer, PhD

Guttmacher Institute

Laura Duberstein Lindberg, PhD

Guttmacher Institute

Mary Ott, MD

Indiana University

Julien Teitler, PhD

Columbia University

Deborah Tolman, EdD

San Francisco State University

Kristen Underhill, DPhil

Yale University

(Organizational affiliations are listed for identification purposes only.)

Cc Senate and House Leadership and Appropriations Committees

If you’re feeling civic-minded you might consider reposting this message on your own blog, with a link back to the original RH Reality Check post.

Finally, I think the ideas represented in the letter, as well as the policies proposed, are level-headed, moderate, and well-founded in the reality we’ve got rather than any of the various realities ideological prudes or libertines might wish we had. If you find any of the points raised in the letter objectionable and/or factually incorrect please let me know in comments. Thanks!

(Hat tip: Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon.)

So through a Technorati link I discovered Rachel Kramer Bussel’s got a cross-dressing erotica blog. Although I tried cross-dressing once for a HNT photo I didn’t get enough of a rise either for myself or from readers to bother trying it again. (Note: just because it doesn’t get my motor running doesn’t mean I don’t totally get that it really revs other people up.)

But anyway, I noticed that Vixen of Secrets of a Blue-Eyed Vixen showed up in her partner’s button-down shirt for today’s HNT, and between that and finding Rachel’s blog immediately afterwards I got the cross-dressing epiphany that a woman in a man’s shirt is, like, the hottest kind of lingerie you can get. Mmm. Forget untying bows and laces, how about unbuttoning buttons one by one!?!?

Men’s shirts on women. Manly, yes, but I like it too! :-)

So there I was minding my own business, walking back to the car from the big-box bookstore this afternoon. We trek across the parking lot… it’s crowded with lots of holiday shoppers… find the car… hop in to the driver’s seat and…

riiiiippppppp!

Doesn’t get any more Half-nekkid Thursday than this, lemmie tell ya!

My loss is your gain. :-) Click the image below for a slideshow.

Happy HNT (or Half-nekkid Thursday!)

Photo by Flickr user Sugar Crisp. Used under a Creative Commons license.

Courtney Martin, writing in The New Statesman articulates why I think almost everybody who’s sure they know what feminism is needs to take another look:

My vision of feminism is defined by three major components: educated choice, genuine equality, and radical authenticity. Ask my friend Jessica or my pal Daniel and you will get slightly different answers, but you can bet that we’ll all be talking in the same general language and in the same philosophical country.

Educated choice: Both men and women need to have access to choices and, even more, they need to have the tools necessary to make good choices. It is not enough to just say that women should have access to abortions, for example. They also need to know all of their options and feel like they have a full understanding of the health risks and quality of life issues that each entails; they also need to have the economic provisions to make whichever choice fits their lives and values best.

Genuine Equality: We all deserve the same opportunities, the same access. This is a pretty straight forward concept in theory, but in practice, it is hellishly complicated. Take something like U.S. college admissions. Sure anyone can apply to Harvard, but not everyone comes from a family that can pay for an SAT tutor or has the cultural capital to encourage college. Until the U.S., and other western industrialized countries, recognize the way that networks and subtle class/race/gender dynamics influence supposedly non-discriminatory institutions, our work will not be done.

Radical authenticity: This facet of feminism gets talked about far too little in my opinion. A visionary twenty-first century feminism should aim to support both men and women to be their most authentic selves in the world, shedding prescribed gender roles and really getting in touch with their authentic desires, passions, and ethics. Feminist workplaces, for example, would nurture both men and women having present relationships with their children and fulfilling work lives. Men should be empowered to express a complex range of emotions, just as women must learn how to handle conflict healthily and assertively and take care of themselves, not just everyone else.

The most exciting thing about feminism, is that it is ultimately about leading more fulfilling, ethical, joyful lives, characterized by more healthy and genuine relationships. Who could argue with that?

She lays it out beautifully here.

To imagine feminism is still just a bunch of “bra burners” from the 1960s (an era when women were not allowed to buy a car or house or credit card without a custodial man’s signature) would be to imagine that “kids today” are all smoking banana peels and saying “groovy” without irony. In other words that was a very long time ago in a world that, culturally, is very far away.

Similarly, to imagine feminism is still just a bunch of stay-angry shaved-headed, hairy-armpitted “feminazi” separatists from the 1970s (an era when the the legal defense for a husband raping and beating his wife was still “it’s ok, Officer, she’s just my wife” and a prominent black-power leader said the only place for women in his organization was “on their backs”) would be to imagine that a five-megabyte computer hard drive was the size of a washing machine and cost eleven million dollars and nobody thought “Six Million Dollar Man” Steve Austin’s double-wide sideburns and shirt collars looked hokey. In other words that was a very long time ago in a world that, culturally, is very far away.

So take another look at Martin’s three pillars of feminism: educated choice for men and women; genuine equality and not just lowest-common-denominator-accounting unisex-bathroom parity; radical authenticity and not some kind of made-up crap about how women are just life-support systems for pussies and men are just wallets with feet. For instance.

Anything in there about hating sex? Um, no, that would be an artifact of the anti-feminist “no-sex” class paradigm. Anything in there about women hating men? Nope. I mean sure, a lot of women hate men and some of those women are even feminists, but far, far, far more anti-feminists female and male hate men. (At worst, as Amanda Marcotte puts it, if feminists have higher expectations of men it’s because they have more faith and love for them than anti-feminist culture grants us.) Anything in there about hating other women who like porn, who give “Teh Blowjob,” wear lipstick, or party hearty? Nope. I mean, sure, some feminists hate that stuff, especially in cases where it’s pretty clear that practitioners don’t recognize they have a choice in the matter, but far, far more non-feminists, men and women, hate that stuff every bit as much.

Seriously! Take a look at that list. There’s nothing there that threatens men. There’s nothing there that “defeminizes” women. There’s nothing there about unisex bathrooms (not essential to genuine equality anyway) Burning bras (not radical authenticity anyway.) Shaving or not shaving armpits or legs (not educated choice anyway.)

Anyway, next time you find yourself starting a sentence with “I’m not a feminist but…” or “except Teh Feminists hate it when you…” or any sentence containing the word “feminazis” then stop for a minute and ask yourself… is that still true? Has it ever been true? Is that belief held only by feminists or do equal or greater numbers of non-feminists believe that as well?

The bottom line, though, is that yeah, women will be infinitely better off with feminists than non-feminists but so will men.

(Via Hugo Schwyzer.)

OkCupid user Mehinda, in her User Journal asked

What is the equivalent of misogyny against men?

I’ve heard this question/challenge before, usually as some sort of counterbalance for accusations of misogyny in statements/current events, etc. Usually it’s a man who (a) claims that the women decrying misogyny are guilty, themselves, of misandry (or at least misandrist thinking) or (b) suggests that there are two sides to every problem, that violence exists—outside of, or above, things like misogyny. That hatred is hatred, regardless against whom it’s directed.

She poses the question, and answers it, here.

Hmm. Y’know, in a way it’s kind of a red-herring question to say “isn’t there something women do back to men that makes what men do to women seem less ruthless and wrong?” Because the answer is a) sure, there are some things women do back to men and b) typically it’s a reaction to what men have been doing to them and therefore, while objectionable, it is typically provoked.

Trying to compare how mean one gender is to the other under the current system, especially if the comparison is intended to “balance things out” such that nobody has to change, just isn’t productive.

So lately the question I’ve been working on is “just how much do misogynists hate men too?” And when you start looking it’s kind of scary. For instance dumping on women for wearing “revealing” clothes and, especially, claiming that if she comes to harm from men she had to have been “asking for it” implies that men are dangerous, criminal, controlled by their hormones instead of reason, incapable of self-control, and so on. Which, ironically, are the charges feverish anti-feminists accuse “Teh Feminists” of making against men. And which accusations, presumably, people have in mind when they ask “but isn’t there some equivalent to misogyny?” The answer, it turns out, is “yeah, the word for that is also misogyny!

What’s really bizarre is that if you add up all the male qualities tradition demands women to counter and “tame” you’re left wondering why exactly those traditionalists imagine men are the superior gender.

In fact, of course, men are perfectly capable of civility and self-control, as well as love, passion, subtlety, compassion, and real, mature, non-Beavis-and-Butthead lust. The system that brings us misogyny dismisses, denies, and denigrates those male qualities even as it disses women.

So yeah, there is an equivalent to misogyny and it’s called misogyny and it’s overwhelmingly common. Should we ever clear that up we could address the much worried about but tiny fraction of authentic, non-provoked misandry in an afternoon.

If you’re one of those rare University of Texas students who just. aren’t. sure of the difference between men and women you don’t have to force them to wear dresses or pants. Just wait 24-48 hours and look at their chins. The test isn’t 100% effective since, like everthing else about gender the edges can be a little, well, fuzzy. But as I said in the referenced post, you could always just… ask.

Happy HNT (or Half-nekkid Thursday!)

[p.s. And my Bell’s palsy is almost completely gone. Still can’t whistle but I can blink, wink, and kiss. Thank goodness! And thanks for all your kind words and wishes over the last two weeks. —fl]

Photo by Flickr user misterbisson. Used under a Creative Commons license.

Meghan O’Rourke of Slate’s XX-Factor blog says

Three cheers for Stephanie Coontz’s piece in the New York Times today in defense of taking marriage private. She asks:

Why do people—gay or straight—need the state’s permission to marry? For most of Western history, they didn’t, because marriage was a private contract between two families. The parents’ agreement to the match, not the approval of church or state, was what confirmed its validity.

She offers a persuasive case that in today’s climate—with divorce rates still high—we need to rethink the state’s involvement in marriage. And she points out the logical peculiarity of the fact that unmarried couples who’ve cohabited for 19 years might have no hospital visitation rights—while two kids who get married on a whim automatically do.

O’Rourke said it here.

All well and good in an abstract “right on / all wrong” sea of opinions left and right. But O’Rourke brings the point down to cold, hard brass tacks when she adds

These are all questions I’ve had on my mind, because I got married this summer after a six-year relationship. I’m happy to be married—in fact, this week, I’m particularly glad, because I’m scheduled to have surgery, and if I weren’t married, my partner might have met with far more resistance from Oxford Health Plans when he called on my behalf to investigate the fine points of the claims process. Being able to say the words my husband to doctors and nurses has made bureaucratic matters far easier to manage than the words my boyfriend ever did.

In the face of that it really isn’t ok that an unmarried couple of 19 years (or nearly 30) should face very real legal discrimination that a couple who’s marriage lasts less than 55 hours wouldn’t have to.

Knowuddamean?

Exhibit A: Knitting by Christina of Vovare.

Exhibit B: Crocheting by me.

And so you know I’m not immune to typical male vulnerability, I’m totally intimidated that hers looks bigger than mine. :-) Totally semi-serious. It’s a complete reflex! Yeah, I get over it pretty quickly but it always surprises me when I get caught me off guard like that. Kind of like flinching even decades later when you spill your coffee or tea in case your kindergarten teacher somehow was still right on your case. :-)

Hey! But speaking of size, hers is 25 stitches cast on, I’m pretty sure mine was 27, but she used #7 needles (U.S.) and my hook was, I think, a five. Which is exactly the sort of irrelevant justifications we make up when we’re indoctrinated to worry about size whether it’s penis size, bust size, waist size, height, weight, you name it. We’re all so different, and so cool, and it’s so foolish to compare blunt numbers anyway but if you do put a number on something then we just reflexively gotta compare. As if everything was a race. And there was only one way to win it. And only one person on the entire planet could be the winner.

Wild huh?

—-

All joking aside, one of the very nice things about a crocheted cock-cozy vs. a knitted one: crocheting is way easier to pull out while you’re still wearing it, and the little nubbly vibrations circling round and round and round as you pull might not ever get someone off but they feel very, very nice!