liberalism

Progressive Economic and Social Policy Supports Marriage Better Than Conservative Policy

Posted by figleaf | Tags:
Wed, 2010-03-03 09:32

Monica Potts of TAPPED mulls a new, more optimistic study on the non-death of marriage in America. (Emphasis mine.)

Lately, there have been a number of articles on marriage and women, particularly black women, as if the behavior of the American couple were fodder for a Discovery-channel nature show. But people don’t get married because they’re enacting some sort of population plan. They get married and stay married when they’re happy, mature, and meet someone with whom they have something in common. To the extent that policy is aimed at marriage, maybe we should worry about improving everyone’s quality of life first.

She said it here.

Funny about that. It’s also highly contrary to the traditional/conservative (and, I think, traditionally male) notion that marriage ought to be a burden or imposition — something forced on women, say, by economic necessity, forced on men by, say, desire for sex, forced on everybody by unplanned, unwanted pregnancy, etc.

Of course by the same progressive expansive opportunity-enhancing standards, and contrary to conservative coercive opportunity-limiting ones, marriage rights should be accessible and accepted for all relationships.

The bottom line, though, is that marriage is part of a social infrastructure not separate from it. The better the infrastructure the better the prospects for marriage.

Note: Speaking of which, read TAPPED’s A. Sewer on Washington D.C.‘s recently passed and so far not blocked marriage equality act.

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Appropriateness of Appropriate Responses

Posted by figleaf | Tags:
Wed, 2008-10-22 18:50

I saw the original clip at Yglesias’s blog but wasn’t going to say anything about it till Ezra Klein added a point near and dear to me…

Via Matt Yglesias comes a great clip of Rachel Maddow mocking Bill Bennett’s suggestion that feminists hate Sarah Palin because she’s hot, competent, and happy. If you want evidence that liberalism has come a long way in the last few years, you’ll get it here. Maddow isn’t outraged by Bennett’s comments, or compelled to demand an apology. Rather, she seems delighted by their evident absurdity:

[Key exchange from the tape:

BENNETT: I don’t know which drives them more crazy. Let me give you three things that I think drives them crazy, and you don’t have to comment. That’s she’s very attractive. That she’s very competent or that she’s very happy. You know, as a human being.

DAVIS: Yeah, all of the above.

—fl]

That’s a sign of a healthy political movement: You’re comfortable enough in your position that your enemies cease being scary and start looking hilarious.

He said it here.

Yes! Funny how once you turn over the rock and actually look the monsters you imagined under it are really moist, pallid, and soft… unpleasant sure but not nearly as scary in reality as the stories we tell each other while huddled around campfires.

And as long as I’ve brought it up Yglesias said in his post

The idea that feminists, like politically conscious people of all genders and ideological inclinations, might have substantive views on the issues that contradict Palin’s doesn’t seem to have occurred to them. But in general, women are more liberal than men. And John McCain is more conservative than most politicians and Palin’s record is considerably more conservative than McCains. There’s no great mystery here. And yet Davis and Bennett can’t help but compound their problems by suggesting that women are somehow incapable of reaching conclusions about politicians for any kind of real reasons — instead feminists just hate attractive women.

He said that here.

I’m going to fudge here a bit by saying this isn’t so much three men talking about Rachel Maddow talking about two other men trying to frame feminism. Over at least the last eight years… or the 1994 Gingrich “revolution…” or really since the 1980 Reagan campaign… they’ve gotten a largely free ride framing everything! So consider this acknowledgment that a lot of progressives, liberals, Democrats, pre-Maddow/Olberman cable producers… not to mention waaaaay too many ‘wingers like William Bennett and Rick Davis… have been taking the Right way too seriously. And acknowledgement, as well, that there have been plenty of others, like Maddow (ahem) suggesting we just turn on the lights.

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Bringing a Whole New Meaning To Sexual Politics

Posted by figleaf | Tags:
Fri, 2008-02-01 11:49

Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon posted a real eye-opener the other day. Bottom line: It looks a lot like Republican strategists are trying to drop their long-standing anti-sex rhetoric in an attempt to stanch the bleeding

Frank Luntz—you know, the conservative genius of focus group testing of language, and therefore the architect of so many nasty, divisive terms the Republicans have put into circulation—is talking a lot about how this survey was conducted in the interest of unity. This tells me a few things, not the least of which is that save-the-party-by-talking-unity is something Luntz is pushing really hard.

But what’s additionally interest is that Luntz thinks we can find the common ground in the bedroom. Actually, if you watch the video, his ideas aren’t all that offensive. He’s basically arguing that while Republicans might be slightly more conservative on average than Democrats about their personal sexual behavior, the gap between the two is small enough to be inconsequential. But where I found myself agreeing with him is that he argues that the gap is small because people across the political parties are pretty liberal in their sexual behavior. The prevailing Republican attitudes under the Bush administration about sex—that it’s dirty and wrong and you should only do it when you’re married and birth control and abortion and changing partners are terrible and experimentation is wrong, etc.—are not actually shared in any significant way by workaday voting Republicans. Colmes has the survey up; you can check out for yourself.

Read the quote in context here.

Marcotte closes with a point that I think will probably always distinguish the New Red Menace from True Blue Americans

Personally, I feel a bit outside of all this. The Republicans might be willing to embrace condoms, porn, and blow jobs, but I’m working on a more radical project, to move people towards not just a freer view of sex, but a more egalitarian one, a world where women aren’t just holes to be fucked, but real people whose humanity counts. Sex positivity is part of that, but we need more than that.

I think that’s about right. Goodness knows there are enough progressives who can’t quite grasp the notion that women are more than U-Store-It managers for their own pussies, but the dirty Reds are just never going to get a handle egalitarianism in bed because they think about everything too much in terms of land tenure to ever give up the idea of pussy as property, or men as lease-holders, or sex as resource extraction.

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