Category Archives: feminism

The Economist…

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Work and parenting

Motherly love

Jul 26th 2011, 10:20 by S.D. | LONDON

A WORKING mother knows that balancing the demands of private home and high-rise office is not her only worry. While busy, breadwinning fathers are unlikely to provoke moral panic, the public’s interest in how working women raise their children is easily piqued. One of Britain’s biggest-selling newspapers proclaimed fearfully on Friday: “Three in four middle-class mothers continue to work after having a baby, a study shows… The figures point to a relentless rise in the number of working mothers of very young children.”

ever, to dislodge the stigma that attaches to single parents.

Contrary to these veiled aspersions, the study in question should reassure career-minded mothers. Conducted by researchers at University College London, it surveyed 19,000 British households to determine how parental employment affects a child’s behaviour throughout the first five years of life.

The results will startle those who think that children benefit from having a stay-at-home mum. In fact, the paper indicates that maternal employment can often improve the chances of having well-adjusted kids.

For example, five-year-olds whose mothers had been at home when they were babies were more likely to have behavioural problems than other children. For each child, the longer the time their mother was off work, the more bratty was the child’s behaviour. Housebound women were also far more likely to report symptoms of depression than their working counterparts, problems which can only make the process of childrearing more difficult.

Of course, life can rarely be boiled down to simple equations of cause and effect. What complicates this picture is the correlation between work patterns and other factors like lower household income, poorer education and depression, which might affect whether a woman chooses to go to work. Interestingly, when the study adjusted for these factors, the relationship between bad behaviour and maternal unemployment remained strong for girls but not for boys. This may reflect, the authors said, “the importance of gender in family role model processes”—the inference being that girls benefit from having a mother as an exemplar of a woman who is successful and independent, while the effect is less pronounced for boys.

The paper also looked at the working arrangements of all adults in the household—a sensible method, and a point of distinction with other studies that focused exclusively on what mothers do with their time. Once again, the trends differed by sex. Boys, but not girls, were likely to suffer from their mother being the sole breadwinner, although once the results were adjusted for income, education and depression, the detrimental impact on boys disappeared. Boys thrived equally in homes where both parents were working, and in two-parent “traditional” families in which their mothers stayed at home. Girls, in contrast, appeared to have significantly fewer problems where both parents were employed than in traditional homes.

For social progressives, the results are mixed. Working women can head to their desks knowing that they are doing their daughters a service, and that they are not doing their sons any harm. Yet the study also suggests (the admittedly widely-accepted proposition) that the children of single mothers are more likely to be troublesome, and that the best arrangement for both boys and girls is to live in a two-parent household in which both adults are employed. These results provide a robust defence of why women should be supported in returning to work after childbirth; they make it harder, how

The study has other limitations, too. It restricted its analysis to white children because of problems with sampling other ethnicities. Statistically, that is not a huge drawback: 92% of Britons identified themselves as white in the 2001 census. A bigger issue is the way the data were collected, involving questionnaires about children’s behaviour, almost always answered by mothers. Working mums know that they are vulnerable to criticism from certain sections of society and the media; when surveyed, this might incline them to paint defensively rosy portraits of their children, and so to skew the results.

When I grow up….

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I’ve just launched into a speech about how I don’t want to be proposed to, when the woman next to us leans over and asks if he’s about to propose.
He laughs. I laugh. “No, definitely not.”
Her boyfriend leans over to tell her that she’s rude to ask questions like that.
She tells him that she overheard us talking.
We explain the situation.
We dated. We don’t date anymore. We like to eat dinner together. I don’t want someone to propose to me at a hibachi restaurant, although I’m open to the ring being presented on a tuna roll. I love sushi. And theoretically, I’ll someday love the man who’s going to be asking for my hand in marriage.
I laugh. I’m getting ahead of myself.
They’re noticeably frightened, possibly wondering if we’re unstable.
They’ve been dating for six months. They look like nice people. I hope it works out for them.

Life, as beautiful as it can be, is also an increasingly frustrating place. When I was little, all I wanted to do was grow up, so I could be independent and successful. Now that I’m grown up and independent, I’d much rather revert to the days of endless hours in the backyard climbing trees to read books than face the prospect of struggling mightily for the rest of my life.
Struggling for what? Success. What is that? I don’t know. Self-sufficiency. The end of monetary worry. An increased hatred of government involvement and taxes. I don’t know yet. I’ll let you know when I get there.

It reminds me of this: When all the trees have been cut down, when all the animals have been hunted, when all the waters are polluted, when all the air is unsafe to breathe, only then will you discover you cannot eat money.
They’re not wrong. But to a certain extent, money is necessary for survival. Ergo, work.

Which brings me to my big news of the day: I’d like to be a family/couples/sex therapist when I grow up. (So like, now.)
This may of course be yet another passing career path, although I think this one is quite a bit more attainable than previous ones. MBA? Sounds like a great plan in theory, but in reality, I’m really not good with math. Law school? Too many damn lawyers already, but I do look really good in a suit.
And, as Ryan so kindly pointed out at dinner, it’d be great fodder for my romance novels.  (The counseling part, not the suit, although you never know…)

How did this come about?
Well, you know I get all hot and bothered about women’s issues and the like. And then I was reading this Catholic blog last week (which you’ll hear about at some point) that entirely misquoted a study. So Madeline tracked down the original study to find the data. And I realized that I was excited. Truly excited. Gender studies fascinate me. The social implications of sexuality fascinate me. The whole thing is really exciting and wonderful.

We shall see.

From Bad to Worse: Catholic Sex, Apparently

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Before I begin my rant for today, I’d like to show you my new shoes. I’m super excited about them. I needed a pair that was more slender than my running shoes, because they wouldn’t fit into the cages on my bike pedals and that was causing a problem.
These are lovely. They work!
Yesterday, Mike and I went on a long bike ride. From our house all the way to Quebec and Mississippi. I thought I was going to die, but I made it!
As we were headed back, we were starting to run out of daylight and since I don’t have any lights on my bike, I got nervous.
“It’s not Cape Town, Katie,” Mike was quick to remind me. Mama P wouldn’t let me be out alone after dark. It wasn’t safe.

After we got back, we made some stew and then went and got ice cream. It was a perfect night.
He’s decided to name his car “Frank the Tank,” which I entirely support.

Alright….

My dear friend Maddie sent me the link to an article yesterday. I started reading it not knowing what I was in for. I’ve included the text of the article in full below for your reading pleasure. The article is about Catholic relationships, living together before marriage, and the idea that sexual compatibility is a myth.

I beg to differ. I know plenty of Catholics who appear to be mutually satisfied with their romantic lives, with their marriages, and with their individual relationships with God. That mutual satisfaction might be that they are well matched conversationally, morally, spiritually and also sexually. There are plenty of options for compatibility, and I think that sexuality is one that cannot (and should not) be ignored.

There’s nothing worse than trying to engage in a relationship with someone when there is not a hint of physical frisson present. It can be a deep friendship, but true union in the biblical sense can only come from blissful physical encounters, which supplement the other bonds formed early on in the relationship and maintained as part of the continuation of that relationship. Of course, as we age (or perhaps not, I’ll let you know when I’m approaching “very elderly”), our focus on sexuality changes. It morphs, yes, changes over time, evolves, but it may never entirely disappear.

The author makes a very valid point in distancing living together from marriage by exposing the lack of promise in the non-marriage situation. To a certain extent, it is “I’ll only stay with you until I’m bored, or can’t stand you, or we have one too many huge fights.” But to a certain extent, I think he’s missing that point entirely. Many marriages begin unhappily, appear happy to the outside world, and then fail miserably, either in public or private.

“For better or for worse” isn’t real anymore. “Try it before you buy it” isn’t a bad philosophy as far as I’m concerned. And yes, I hope that people enter into marriage fully understanding the gravity of the situation, and that just because there are bound to be troubled times doesn’t mean the marriage is lost. However, the reality is that even those people who most stand for that idea of marriage sometimes screw up. Sometimes it’s better to get out. It’s painful and it shapes the rest of your life, but honestly, trying to save something that’s not worth saving isn’t always in everyone’s best interests.

I’d rather live with a dude, then hate him, and then leave him rather than marrying a dude, living with him, hating him, staying married for the sake of our offspring, and then eventually cheating on him and running off with my graduate school classmate who’s ten years younger than me but really gets me and writes better poetry than my husband could ever produce.

He also ignores the real implications of living with someone. That’s a strong relationship, whether it’s religiously binding or not. There are things to take into account like joint-bank accounts, the lease on the apartment (only get it in one person’s name in case of disastrous break-up), the cars, the potential for income discrepancy. Things that will have to be considered in marriage also have to be considered before co-habitation. Guests, dinner procedures, cleaning, shopping – the creation of a family unit doesn’t necessarily have to be decided by a piece of paper or God’s blessing. It can happen with two female friend living together. It can happen in a frat house. The proximity and presumptions create a family, regardless of definition.

Here’s the part of the article that really irked me:

As someone who has only ever had one sexual partner, I cannot speak authoritatively on this matter, and I invite others of broader experience to offer their thoughts as well, but it seems to me that “sexual compatibility” so construed is a myth. It seems to presume that there is something almost biological going on wherein one must find someone with a similar sex drive, similar sexual tastes, even a compatible body.

But, from my limited experience, this simply isn’t how things work. If every man is to hold out until he finds a woman with a sex drive to match his, only a select few males will ever find a partner. Women’s sex drives are a different kind of thing than men’s. They require different stimuli, they naturally vary over the course of a mentrual cycle, and they are much more easily affected by the seemingly non-sexual aspects of the relationship. Sexual tastes and compatible bodies follow from this. If a man doesn’t recognize how a woman’s sex drive works, her sexual tastes (cuddling, for instance) will seem foreign to him, and her body will not respond to his in the way he expects. (One could write a whole other piece about how the porn epidemic is destroying any realistic expectations about women’s drives, tastes, and bodies.)

This poor man assumes that all women like cuddling and have low sex-drives. He assumes that his one partner is providing him with the best that she can do, but that’s okay because she’s just a woman.
Why would you ever marry a man who didn’t like to cuddle? (Just a thought, ladies. Lay out your expectations before you get married. Before you co-habitate. Second date, at the latest. I throw all dealbreakers on the table – including toe-walking and mouth-breathing – and see how it goes. Sometimes, it’s just doomed from the start.) 
He’s neglecting biology. The almighty clitoris. An organ absolutely unnecessary for reproduction. It exists only for female pleasure. If God only wanted us to have sex to affirm our commitment to him, then why would he include that little bit? If it’s meant to be the pleasure-less experience I can only imagine the author and his wife engage in, then why make it even possibly feel good? And why punish women for enjoying it?
(Don’t even get me started on prostitution, sex trafficking, etc, all of which are basically male-run industries in which females are put to work solely based on their biological sex and therefore, utility.)
Sex can supplement and enhance a healthy relationship. Just like anything, it’s often used in opposite and negative ways. It’s been sensationalized by the media, made into a both a weapon and a punishment, and those who actually fight to enjoy or embrace their sexuality are sanctioned both socially and religiously. 
Read this comment from a reader: 
Excellent. Additionally, I think a discussion needs to focus on how the woman resonates with the male’s mood and desires and how the male unconsciously influences the attitudes and behaviors of the woman. Safety is the prime instinctive need of the female in relationships. Safety is established by the male and the female is always instinctively attuned to this aspect of the relationship.

I laughed at this comment, and then choked on it because I realized that there are men and women out there subscribing to the beliefs that they need to maintain this heternormative power structure. Man = provider, woman = vulnerable. There are no blurred lines, no allowance for strong women or emotional men. No deviation! 
And it’s absolute shit. Yes, I will someday be the nurturer in my family structure. But it will be a role that I define for myself. There is no part of me that doesn’t want the cooperation and compassion of my husband through all things, including decision making, etc. But that doesn’t meant that I will be passive, eagerly awaiting his attention and direction. 
Surprisingly, I want to take on the traditionally feminine role in a future relationship. But I’d also like the respect, attention, and equal treatment that I deserve. I want someone who will adore me and listen, match my commentary with his wit, and who will make me laugh, yell at me for not squeezing the toothpaste tube correctly, but never protect me. I don’t want to rely on any man for protection, and the assumption that the comment above makes is that no woman will ever be equal to her husband, and instead will have to look to him for protection and guidance. 
In short, I’m torn on whether or not I’d live with someone before marriage. I probably will. I’ll also probably (statistically speaking) be divorced someday. 
But damn, I will enter into my marriage with love, with passion, and with great expectations, something that I worry gets lost in the mind of religious fanatics bent on procreation and utilitarian family creation. 
Here’s the full article, enjoy!



“I recently returned from Twickenham, England, the home of Catholic satirist Alexander Pope, where I gave a workshop titled “How Far Can We Go? Talking to Young People about Physical Intimacy,” at the 3rd International Theology of the Body Symposium. It was a very fruitful experience. Apart from making all kinds of interesting connections with other conference participants, I had my thoughts on several issues stimulated by the excellent feedback I received in the Q & A sessions of my workshops. I hope to share some of these thoughts with the readership here at Vox Nova over the next little while.


At the end of my second workshop I was asked how to talk to young people about the pitfalls of cohabitation. As we are all aware, most of our contemporaries see it as foolhardy to marry someone if you haven’t lived with them. “Isn’t it just asking for trouble,” they suggest, ”to commit to someone when you don’t even know if you can stand to be in the same house with them?” This seems perfectly logical, of course, which is why, when a widely publicized study came out several years back (I read about it on MSN when I signed out of my hotmail account) indicating that cohabitation radically lowered the odds of marital success, people didn’t know what to make of it. It was simply inconceivable that people who did the smart thing and test-drove the relationship first would increase their chance of divorce by 60%.


The obvious explanation to many people was that it was religious people who didn’t live together before marriage, and religious people are less prone to divorce. But this second claim isn’t actually true, at least not very significantly. Furthermore, it was often suggested, religious people are more likely to stay in unhappy marriages, exactly the kind encouraged by the silly practice of not living together. But there is no evidence that religious marriages are unhappier than other marriages.
No, it turns out that it is not simply that a certain cross-section of society which doesn’t cohabitate also does not divorce. It is actually the case that cohabitation itself is a problem. Cohabitation ostensibly says, “We’re being prudent by not rushing into things. Our future will be happier if we make sure we are compatible by living in a situation that is very like marriage. And, if we find that this doesn’t work out, we can part ways before making a huge mistake.”


What is really says is . . . well, that last sentence should give it away.
In fact, though cohabitation looks a lot like marriage on the surface, it is missing the very heart of marriage, namely a promise to be faithful come what may. And without this promise, cohabitation ends up being not a close analogate of marriage, but it’s radical opposite. While marriage says, “I’ll be with you no matter what,” cohabitation says, “I’ll be with you as long as I can stand you.” It says, “If you do your share of the housework, and pay your share of the bills, and keep me satisfied sexually, I’ll stick around. But if you don’t, well, I guess it wasn’t meant to be.”


The kind of insecurity this un-promise engenders is at the heart of the increased failure of cohabitation-preceded-marriages (to say nothing of a series of cohabitating relationship which end without ever reaching marriage). When you promise to take someone in health, for richer, and for better, for as long as either of you shall like, you aren’t really promising anything. And, without a promise, the ambiguity of human relationships are unlikely to stand the test of time.


In the Q & A session I said that a test-drive says, “I will love you as long as you put the cap back on the toothpaste, and make the bed and remember not to use metal utensils in my non-stick cookware,” while a promise says “I will love you even if you don’t put the cap back on the toothpaste! I will love you even if you void the warranty on my cookware!”


Just as I thought I was hitting my stride, the questioner interrupted me and said, “We know all that. But kids are telling us that they have to live together to find out if they are sexually compatible. What are we supposed to say to them about that?” At that point, as happens with Q & A sessions, we were informed that we were over time. But I thought about the question and had an interesting talk with the questioner at the social on Saturday night.


As someone who has only ever had one sexual partner, I cannot speak authoritatively on this matter, and I invite others of broader experience to offer their thoughts as well, but it seems to me that “sexual compatibility” so construed is a myth. It seems to presume that there is something almost biological going on wherein one must find someone with a similar sex drive, similar sexual tastes, even a compatible body.


But, from my limited experience, this simply isn’t how things work. If every man is to hold out until he finds a woman with a sex drive to match his, only a select few males will ever find a partner. Women’s sex drives are a different kind of thing than men’s. They require different stimuli, they naturally vary over the course of a mentrual cycle, and they are much more easily affected by the seemingly non-sexual aspects of the relationship. Sexual tastes and compatible bodies follow from this. If a man doesn’t recognize how a woman’s sex drive works, her sexual tastes (cuddling, for instance) will seem foreign to him, and her body will not respond to his in the way he expects. (One could write a whole other piece about how the porn epidemic is destroying any realistic expectations about women’s drives, tastes, and bodies.)


The fact is that virtually every couple will go through times when their drives, tastes, and bodies seem less compatible and times when they seem more compatible. And, as most marriage counselors will tell you, in this their sex lives mirror the rest of their lives together. The real problem about the search for “sexual compatibility” is that it abstracts sex from the broader relationship. It makes good sex the result of a biological fluke rather than the natural outcome of a loving relationship. It absolves women and (probably, especially) men from taking the responsibility to be good lovers to their spouses. And, in doing so, it undoes one of the most important functions of sex in marriage.


The natural desire for physical intimacy should serve to help us focus on the other aspects of our relationship where our urge to serve the other person is compromised by human weakness. Foreplay starts with helping around the house and listening when someone has had a bad day. When “sexual compatibility” becomes something independent of relational compatibility as a whole, sex becomes less and less capable of confirming and sealing the commitment between two people who have promised their lives to one another. And when we strip sex of its power to hold people together by isolating it from its normal role in a relationship, we should not be surprised when marital breakdown follows.”


Brett Salkeld is a doctoral student in theology at Regis College in Toronto. He is a father of two (so far) and husband of one. He is the co-author of How Far Can We Go? A Catholic Guide to Sex and Dating.
 
http://vox-nova.com/2011/06/14/is-sexual-compatibility-a-myth-some-thoughts-on-cohabitation/
 

 

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Ferocity.

Something I’m learning from Carlos.

Act preemptively and base everything on your gut.

Your past guides you more than you think but shouldn’t affect anyone’s future perceptions of you.

I’m hurt; I’m annoyed; I’m angry.

No one should make me feel like I’m less than a human being, whether it’s intentional or not.

I am Katie Barry and I do what I want.

"Their Dangerous Swagger" by Maureen Dowd

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From The New York Times:
It was set up like a fantasy football league draft. The height, weight and performance statistics of the draftees were offered to decide who would make the cut and who would emerge as the No. 1 pick.
But the players in this predatory game were not famous N.F.L. stars. They were unwitting girls about to start high school.
A group of soon-to-be freshmen boys at Landon, an elite private grade school and high school for boys in the wealthy Washington suburb of Montgomery County, Md., was drafting local girls.
One team was called “The Southside Slampigs,” and one boy dubbed his team with crude street slang for drug-addicted prostitutes.
The young woman who was the “top pick” was described by one of the boys in a team profile he put up online as “sweet, outgoing, friendly, willing to get down and dirty and [expletive] party. Coming in at 90 pounds, 5’2 and a bra size 34d.” She would be a special asset to the team, he noted, because her mother “is quite the cougar herself.”
Before they got caught last summer, the boys had planned an “opening day party,” complete with T-shirts, where the mission was to invite the drafted girls and, unbeknownst to them, score points by trying to rack up as many sexual encounters with the young women as possible.
“They evidently got points for first, second and third base,” said one outraged father of a drafted girl. “They were going to have parties and tally up the points, and money was going to be exchanged at the end of the season.” He said that the boys would also have earned points for “schmoozing with the parents.”
His daughter, he said, “was very upset about it. She thought these guys were her friends. This is the way we teach boys to treat women, young ladies? You have enough to worry about as a 14- or 15-year-old girl without having to worry about guys who are doing it as sport.”
Another parent was equally appalled: “I think the girls felt like they were getting targeted, that this was some big game. Talk about using people. It doesn’t get much worse than that.”
Landon is where the sons of many prominent members of the community are sent to learn “the code of character,” where “a Landon man” is part of a “true Brotherhood” and is known for his good word, respect and honesty. The school’s Web site boasts about the Landon Civility Code; boys are expected to “work together to eliminate all forms of disrespect” and “respect one another and our surroundings in our decorum, appearance, and interactions.”
The Washington suburban community of private school parents has also been reeling this spring from the tragedy involving former Landon student George Huguely V, a scion of the family that owned the lumber business that helped build the nation’s capital.
Huguely, who was a University of Virginia lacrosse player, was charged in the brutal death of his sometime girlfriend, Yeardley Love, a lacrosse player on the university’s women’s team who also hailed from Maryland.
The lovely young woman’s door was kicked in and her head was smashed over and over into the wall.
The awful crime, chronicled on the cover of People with the headline “Could She Have Been Saved?,” raised haunting questions about why Huguely had not already been reported to authorities, even though other lacrosse players had seen him choke Love at a party and his circle knew that the athlete had attacked a sleeping teammate whom he suspected had kissed Love. Huguely had also been so out-of-control drunk, angry and racially abusive with a policewoman in 2008 that she had to Taser him.
In The Washington Post, the sports columnist Sally Jenkins wrote about the swagger of young male athletes and the culture of silence that protects their thuggish locker-room behavior.
“His teammates and friends, the ones who watched him smash up windows and bottles and heard him rant about Love,” she wrote. “Why didn’t they turn him in? … Why did they not treat Yeardley Love as their teammate, too?”
Some of the parents of girls drafted for the Landon sex teams think that the punishment for those culpable should have been greater, and the notification to parents should have been more thorough. Was the macho culture of silence in play?
Jean Erstling, Landon’s director of communications, said she was “aware of the incident” but that “student records including disciplinary infractions are confidential.”
She said that “Landon has an extensive ethics and character education program which includes as its key tenets respect and honesty. Civility toward women is definitely part of that education program.”
Time for a curriculum overhaul. Young men everywhere must be taught, beyond platitudes, that young women are not prey.