Photo by Flickr user Jon Bragg. Used under a Creative Commons license.

Here's Lynn Gazis-Sax on the recent dealbreaker meme. Pointing out, correctly, that there's probably no controversy about what she calls "red flag" dealbreakers, and there shouldn't be much of an issue with "we don't share the same values" dealbreakers (say, a collector and a declutterer) there are also "shallow" dealbreakers. About which she has some great points (emphasis hers):

Finally, there are the “shallow” dealbreakers, the ones that involve looks, hobbies, tastes, etc. Now, the thing about shallow dealbreakers is that several things are true:

• You have the right to have any dealbreaker you darn well please.
• That “right” doesn’t mean a right never to be criticized for your dealbreakers (and it especially doesn’t mean a right never to be criticized for your dealbreakers if you announce them in a particularly rude way). It does mean that, once the deal is broken, the person you’re not going to date needs to accept no for an answer, and it does mean that at a certain point you get to tell people to butt out of your business.
• You should, in fact, not date anyone you don’t want. That applies even if the reason you don’t want him is contrary to other people’s values. It also applies if the reason you don’t want him is contrary to your own values. If, for instance, you really, really wish you could be sexually attracted to men (because your faith won’t allow you to sleep with other women), but you’re actually only attracted to women, it’s not fair to pick a guy you’re not attracted to and date him anyway. For as long as your attractions and your faith are in conflict, suck up and be abstinent; at least that way, you don’t wind up imposing on some unhappy man who would have liked a woman who actually found him attractive.
• At the same time, some “dealbreakers” may turn out to be more malleable than you thought they were. Sometimes people’s attractions even change (though the one about which sex you’re actually attracted to seems to be, if at least partly mutable for some people, pretty darn resistant to deliberate change). If you’re not happy with the men you’re actually choosing, you may want to rethink your choices. That might mean caring less about how a man dresses, or deciding that values are dealbreakers but tastes are fungible. The point here, though, isn’t to “settle” (and it isn’t that no one gets to have any “shallow” dealbreaker – see above about how you’re doing no one any favors if you date people you can’t find attractive); it’s to pick useful standards, ones that actually bring you a happy relationship, rather than being more exacting about things that matter less than about things that matter more.

Source: Noli Irritare Leones

I think the second point nicely handles, say, Jill Filipovic's defense of "shallow" dealbreakers while making sense out of Rebecca Watson's reservations about mocking those you've declined to date for "shallow" dealbreaker reasons.  While also nicely handling the case where when it's a woman who balks over a "shallow" dealbreaker it instantly stops being about the shallowness and turns into zomg there'sfeminernazifemalebichesusingwordsonmyinternetsmakeitstopppsss!!!!

But I digress.  One peculiarity in the discourse is an assumption that it's generally women who wield the dealbreakers.  Actually that's not all that peculiar in and of itself.  Inside the dominant paradigm where men are supposed to initiate and women are only supposed to accept or decline it makes sense that women's dealbreakers are visible (it's easy and almost inevitable to wonder "why did you say no") whereas men's are invisible (it's almost impossible to imagine anyone saying "why did you just not ask me out just then?")  And therefore inside the dominant paradigm it follows that there would be talk of shallow "gatekeeping" but none about the often equally shallow... I dunno... call it "gate passing."

What I don't get so much is how much of the conversation hasn't mentioned, or mocked, shallow gate passing.  (Note: if I was feeling more strident I'd mention how this is yet further another still instance where we men have the wind at our backs.)

Because it seems like the Lynn's points about dealbreaking apply equally to both responding to and initiating relationship overtures.

In a post titled "Germans prefer looks over wallet size," Patrick Morgan has some very bad news for sundry rump evolutionary psychologists, pickup artists, and all-round cranky misogynists (emphasis his)

Results of an explorative empirical study on human mating in Germany: handsome men, not high-status men, succeed in courtship.

Recent research on human mating depicts men as searching for physical attractiveness (PA) and women as searching for status.

...

Surprisingly, the answers given by male and female subjects regarding sociosexual behaviour and mating preferences are predominantly congruent. Sex differences among preferences for good looking and high-status partners were small or even insignificant. Lower educated subjects had considerably higher status preferences than higher educated individuals. In both sexes, PA was much more preferred in a potential partner than status. For both sexes, physical appearance was decisive for the subject’s dating attractiveness.

Source: Discover Blogs NCBI ROFL

Actually it's surprising if and only if you fall for the first bogus Rule of Desire. If you do then you're going to be a lot more comfortable believing that women are more attracted to money or power than to, you know, physical desirability.

If you're over all that then you're probably going to be even more comfortable with (yet, still, further) confirmation that both men and women are human beings.

Photo from ochairball.blogspot.com

My respect for Ezra Klein has always been high.  Now it's through the roof.

...the single hardest thing I've read about the shooting in Tucson, the piece that made me angriest. It's a 2007 New York Times “Vows” column about the marriage of Gabrielle Giffords and Mark Kelly. This is the part I can't get out of my head:

"They began a long-distance phone and e-mail friendship during which she would sometimes coach him on dating other women. ('Call her the next day to say thanks, even if you didn’t have a great time,' she once said.)"

Gabrielle Giffords is a real person. She's been on bad dates. She's wondered why men didn't call her back. She has slightly old-fashioned ideas about courtship. She isn't just a symbol of democracy or civility or senseless violence.

It seems like the job of the writer in these situations is to search for some meaning, or try to counsel calm, or try to rationally analyze the various ways the country is reacting to the tragedy. But that's not how I feel. The shooting was awful and it makes me sick to my stomach whenever I think about it for too long and nothing will put it right and it's not like human beings have suddenly paid off their cosmic debt: More bad things will happen to good people in the future.

Source: Ezra Klein

The focus of politics may be... well... polity and not any individual human being.  But Klein gets that for all that, politics is still made out of human beings.  Good for him.

As usual these days I'm decades behind in my reading.  But just in case you haven't seen it, or perhaps have forgotten it, I just want to give a big shout to Em & Lo for their December 2 post about how to politely reject overtures.  What's golden is the perspective (and advocacy) they bring to it for hetero men and women.

A note to straight guys: You are less frequently hit on, and thus you have less practice at rejecting an unwelcome pick-up. Which means you’re frequently awkward and weird about it. But women especially need to be encouraged in their attempts at seduction — if only because you guys are constantly complaining that they don’t make the first move often enough! Don’t go along with a hook-up just to avoid hurting her feelings, but don’t treat her like a desperate Donna either. She’s not desperate for hitting on you (who made off with your self-esteem, anyway?), she just knows what she wants and goes after it when she wants it. And ladies, don’t take it personally if he blows you off rudely; he’s just had less practice than you.

A note to the straight gals: You are less frequently the picker-upper, and thus you’re less familiar with the sting of rejection. (Which is why all of you should attempt at least one pick-up to experience it first-hand, in the same way we should all wait tables at least once in order to empathize with servers the world over.) Approaching a stranger in a bar takes more bravery than root canal surgery or listening to a Celine Dion album in its entirety. So be gentle, ladies. And guys, don’t take it personally if she blows you off rudely; she’s just heard a lot of dirty catcalls and cheesy pickup lines in her time and is used to putting up walls.

Source: Em & Lo

It's true -- once you've been part of a pickup situation where the traditional gender roles are reversed you get not only a ton of perspective but also a great deal of sympathy.

Also it's just a darn good idea to kick to the curb most of the assumptions underlying the he asks / she answers tradition of dating.  They were really nasty assumptions back when we could assume that nearly any man had more economic and social power than nearly any woman.  And while it's 100% true that we don't yet have real gender parity it's also 100% true that the difference is small enough that the nasty logic of tradition no longer holds.