Archive for the 'Ladies' Category

No, no, no one is Charlotte Simmons.

Published
by
Dara Lind
on May 12, 2008
in Ladies, Navel Gazing and Yale
. 0 Comments

I have no quibbles with the thesis of Phoebe’s prof-crush piece — that just because an attraction to an authority figure can’t be realized sexually doesn’t diminish its sexual nature — but given that she admits that her assessment of hookup culture (”When there is mutual interest, nothing is holding anyone back”) is derived from the media rather than direct observation, I figured I’d offer a corrective from a school whose men can occasionally be more assertive than its squirrels.

Setting aside the obvious objection — that crushes very rarely proceed so rationally as to jump ship at the first sign of improbability of fulfillment — the fact remains that hookup culture isn’t a monolith that engulfs the entire student body and whips it into near-bacchanal. (I love Tom Wolfe as much as the next person, but I Am Charlotte Simmons was downright irresponsible in perpetrating this stereotype, and it’s time real live college students stood up and said it.) In fact, it seems to have very particular second- and third-order effects among those who don’t get involved, and instead position themselves in reaction to the ready availability of casual sex.

It seems apparent to me that one of the biggest problems with hookup culture is the way it compartmentalizes interpersonal relationships, turning sex into an aerobic activity rather than an expression. One of the effects of this is that the everyday campus atmosphere probably winds up feeling less sexually charged than it would if people had a healthier, more integrative attitude toward sexual relationships. So it’s ironic that the hookup refuseniks (most of whom, I find, tend to be guys) are explicit champions of this same compartmentalization, insisting that sexuality is an unnecessary use of their time and that they ought to be focusing on more lasting and transcendent things. This may just be where I go to school, but I know plenty of guys like this. And no, none of them are considering seminary; they’ve just instrumentalized their college experience to satisfy particular personal goals and cut out anything unnecessary, and welcome the categorization of physical relationships — even romance of any kind — in the latter.

(There’s also a variation on this, which recognizes sex as a separable biological urge and therefore permits hookups under the logic that they’re “filling a need” — but won’t allow the student to hook up with anyone he might develop a lasting interest in, because that would constitute distraction. I know it’s perverse, but it’s also equally reliant on the divisions hookup culture imposes and on disdaining the side of that division it reveres.)

But the Bacchae and the refuseniks intermix freely in other settings — and as Phoebe mentioned, the dance floor isn’t the only way a crush is developed. Is it so unfeasible that even someone active in hookup culture could develop an interest in that adorable neo-Platonist in her seminar, only to find out that they don’t go to the same parties (whether he is a proper refusenik, a romantic or just a conscientious objector)? Not only does she have to figure out how to charm him the hard way, but she has to contend with the (not negligible) possibility that he thinks she’s a slut. Would it be less “pathetic” to get over it? Possibly, if sexual satisfaction is the end goal. But readily available, compartmentalized sex seems like a silly thing to be chasing, especially with women who often feel we have other “needs” to attend to, like being brought flowers and taken out to dinner. If we also want what he wants, or what we think he wants, maintaining a crush on him — hopeless or otherwise — vindicates our own past promiscuity by reveling in the “purity” of unrequited attraction as we first knew it.

There are also plenty of other reasons why sexual desire, even mutually felt, can’t be fulfilled in college. Most relationships spend more time being complicated than uncomplicated these days, which leaves people in a state of attracted-to-other-people-but-loyal-to-just-one for weeks or longer at a time. The assumption (more hookup-culture fallout) that sexual involvement ruins an otherwise healthy friendship can keep mutually attracted friends apart. And, of course (as Phoebe herself should know!), there are TAs — young enough to be single and even likely to frequent the same bars, with that frisson of authority that is so key to the professor crush. (This is the other point Phoebe misses: the allure of the professor-student affair isn’t pedagogy, but the mystery and suggestive power that comes from the unequal power dynamic.)

To be honest, I think these weird convolutions — which usually result in an over-valuing of purity among anyone not going out every Saturday — are worse for campus cultures than hookups themselves. But don’t count the crush among its casualties just yet.

I could tell you why the ocean’s near the shore, but then I’d have to kill you.

Published
by
Nicola Karras
on April 1, 2008
in Ladies and Navel Gazing
. 1 Comment

Either I’m being thoroughly straw-manned, or I was incredibly unclear. I think it’s the latter (or, at least, choose to believe that so I don’t have to start knocking heads), so I shall clarify:

The purpose of society is to mold and influence our souls. Contemporary American society does this, but in bad ways. The solution isn’t to make society less influential in our lives (or, in Freudian terms, to stop repressing), but to change society so that it shapes our souls in better ways. Tradition qua tradition doesn’t destroy women’s souls; if societal repression does that, we need to work within our societal framework to reform it, rather than uprooting the whole thing because it’s been tainted by the touch of oppression. Tradition does hurt women disproportionately; I don’t really see how anyone can argue with that. (Of course, you could claim that that’s a good thing…)

In short, as the RE put it, “if traditional gender roles are in danger of destroying ‘women’s ambitions, rights, and very souls,’ this means that tradition has already failed.”

That’s what I was trying to say.

Policy questions about the role of women in the workplace are also interesting, but I like theory better than policy. (Surprised?) Still, for Noah, I’ll add the following: social systems where it’s affordable (both economically and psychologically) to spend time with one’s children make people much more likely to have children. Paid family leave, reproductive choice, &c., contribute to a world where women can be better mothers. It’s frankly not affordable for many families to get by on one income, and plenty of women wouldn’t be happy staying home even if they could afford to. (Cf. Freidan.)

Freud, backwards — and in heels.

Published
by
Nicola Karras
on March 31, 2008
in Inexplicably Burke, Ladies and Philosophy
. 10 Comments

“How can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on treating her as if she were a perfectly normal human being?”

The most common thing people ask me (well, maybe second, after “how do you pronounce your name?”)[1] is how I can be both a conservative and a feminist. The shortest answer is Freud over Marcuse. I’m an inveterate contrarian, but Amanda at Pandagon comes surprisingly (if hyperbolically) close to summing it up:

The patriarchy, while being unfair, is the only way we have to maintain civilization itself, and without it, we’ll descend into anarchy with people killing each other in the streets. It’s a tad unfortunate that women’s ambitions, rights, and very souls have to be destroyed to maintain the system, and that even men, no matter how unwilling, have to be forced to uphold this oppressive form of masculinity that can destroy the bodies and spirits of gender non-conforming men, but we all have to make sacrifices to keep society going, don’t we?

The sort of patriarchy I oppose is the porn culture embodied by Sex Week, the idea that women are best considered to be sex objects. The sort of patriarchy that involves drawing distinctions between men and women is fine; the male dominance this entails is unavoidable. (This is why a recognition of privilege is so vital for conservatives. If we aren’t trying to destroy power imbalances, we have to recognize their full extent.)

Society requires the repression of certain instincts and desires. Freud’s critique is that society often represses more than it needs to: “if civilization imposes such great sacrifices not only on man’s sexuality but on his aggressivity, we can understand better why it is hard for him to be happy in that civilization.” Society doesn’t need to destroy women’s “ambitions, rights, and very souls” for its survival. Ambitions must be shaped and rights must be balanced with duties, but society makes our souls more human.

Of course, contemporary constructions of gender can be immensely damaging (e.g., pressure for men to repress any emotion besides anger). The solution, though, is not to create a non-repressive civilization, but to transgress, subvert, and reform our own traditions so that we repress the bad and nurture the good. A fair way of doing it would be nice, and is certainly something we should strive for — but we mustn’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

[1] The emphasis is on the first syllable: ‘nik e le. (WordPress refuses to show a schwa.)

The Profane Profession

Published
by
Kate Maltby
on March 13, 2008
in Inexplicably Burke, Ladies and Politics
. 0 Comments

A quick response to Nicola’s engagement with Jake on that grimy curbside business of prostitution would be to sagely nod and murmur in a slightly self-satisfied manner about the predictability of a classic libertarian vs traditionalist conflict. In the red corner: “Prostitution will always occur - we should provide clean economic channels for an inevitable series of transactions to occur in a crime-free environment”. In the blue corner: “Legalizing constitutes condoning! We can’t promote a culture that commodifies sex! Quelle horreur, the Queen of France, then the Dauphiness, would exclaim!” When Nicola argues that: “Conservatives should object to prostitution”, it sounds horribly like “objecting morally should be the same as criminalizing” - at which point Jake, I and all the other mishmash of libertarians and classical liberals can congratulate ourselves on being able to separate the two. Or affirm, as Jake does, that government cannot legislate social change.

Yet while I agree with the libertarian conclusion in favor of legalization, such an argument tends to straw-man the traditionalist position. It’s not that traditionalists don’t realize that prostitution will always occur. They know only too well. They recognize, frequently, that there is nothing that can be done, however hard they bring down the force of law, that can dent the durability of the oldest profession in the world. In fact some may even recognize that by criminalizing prostitution they run the risk of increasing the incidence of it, and certainly make the lives of vulnerable women far nastier and often shorter. The tension between Nicola’s and Jake’s views, however, actually stems from an even more basic traditionalist criticism of libertarianism’s laissez-faire approach : that shame is good. As always, this leads back to the dance of the seven Burkean veils that seems to preoccupy the Right at Yale. The “sacred” veil of which Nicola speaks is not imposed by those who are ignorant of that which lies beneath. It is merely that the illusion is more useful, and more bearable than the reality. This particular function of the veil is to split our vision of ourselves into two tiers: the grimy world of our failings and the elevated ideal, which even if rarely lived purely can at least provide a exemplar to which we can aspire. Legislators who outlaw prostitution do not delude themselves that prostitution will cease overnight. They merely hope that it will become invisible. Yes, invisibility is even more dangerous to the women involved than visibility. But a world in which we at least kid ourselves that we treat each other’s bodies with dignity makes the personal ties on which society is based far more sustainable.

Which leads me to the problem of my personal contradictions. I continue to support the legalization of prostitution on the quasi-economic grounds that legalization lessens the actual suffering posed to women. Yet like any good anti-Marxist I have always considered the aesthetic and intellectual wellbeing of society to be far more important than mere economic conditions. So I continue to apply my libertarian economics to my cultural concerns with the old “a cultural free market creates the most vibrant cultural life” chestnut. This argument is worth at least a whole blog post of its own, so you’ll all have to keep watching this space. Clues: cultures are defined by oppositions engaging with a theme, high culture is frequently inspired by its opposition to low culture, a world in which we are free to listen to Britney Spears is a world in which some will always react by turning to Bruckner to make sense of it all. You need not have read your Foucault to accept that it is impossible to prevent the discourses of the noble society and the base society from negotiating each other.

The argument that “the government cannot legislate social change” misses the point of Nicola’s claims, for she does not dare to hope that true social change can be effected, only that those elements which already exist can be separated from each other and labeled appropriately. To take up arms against it, therefore, one must argue that this very taxonomy of shame is unviable. One can disagree with the aesthetics of the traditionalist ideal - which in the specific case of prostitution, would be unlikely. One can disagree with the prioritizing of cultural health over the economic well-being of individuals - in which case both sides of the argument are premised on a false dichotomy. Or else one can disagree with the heart of the traditionalist argument and posit that such a division between the real world and the ideal world is thoroughly unhealthy.

EDIT: I’ve straightened out the formatting here; I’m not entirely sure what was wrong with it. –N

Ruminations on the Oldest Profession

Published
by
Nicola Karras
on March 12, 2008
in Inexplicably Burke, Ladies, Navel Gazing, Philosophy and Politics
. 5 Comments

In the shadow of Spitzer, Jake asks why conservatives should be opposed to prostitution.

I suppose the family-based argument has some validity, but it’s incomplete: it says nothing about unmarried people without families who could engage in a consensual exchange. ($5,500 an hour indicates that both parties are VERY happy with the deal they’re getting. I don’t see why government should stand in the way of blocking that commerce.)

Most of my objections to prostitution are phrased along feminist lines, contra the Third Wave “oh, but it’s so empowerful!” way of thinking that says as long as it’s your choice it’s just peachy. Some of that applies here, too — even if one disregards the obvious situations where prostitution is the best of a bad series of options, and thus a reasonable thing to pick, I’m willing to believe that there will still be some women who want to be prostitutes.[1]

The question, however, isn’t what they want, but what they should want.

Conservatives should object to prostitution because it profanes something that should be sacred. When inspected from a purely materialist level, traditional marriage is essentially an extremely inefficient kind of prostitution. But that isn’t the point. Commodifying the body, objectifying the sexual act without the emotional and spiritual content it should carry, breaks down our very notions of humanity. We are possessed of dignity, which is beyond price, and which is doubly important to the feminine. Dignity is so often the only — or, at least, the most effective — way to relate to power from a submissive position, because so long as it’s respected it requires the dominant force to behave differently.

Conservatives should object to prostitution for the same reasons they object to hookup culture. Consent is necessary but not sufficient to establish morality.

 

[1]If someone could craft a policy that could distinguish between women/girls forced into prostitution by physical or economic coercion and women who really do want to be prostitutes, and could protect the first and permit the second to do as they pleased, most feminist critiques of prostitution (read: the ones that do not include the term “false consciousness”) fall apart.

Sed Noli Modo

Published
by
Nicola Karras
on March 9, 2008
in Extemporanea, Ladies and Yale
. 0 Comments

Apparently, I’m a conservative Christian [NSFW]. I’m curious how on Earth I could have forgotten converting, or, alternatively, how one could have gotten that idea from the blog.

Man, I thought Sex Week was over, and I was very glad about it! Kate, I think, summed it up best: the entire business was poorly thought out, poorly executed, and then defended zealously by a group of overly-sensitive planners. Sheer incompetence, combined with a lack of propriety and/or respect for women, is inevitably going to lead to ugliness. (Cf. the first link above?)

And now to return to Russell Kirk…

Must I recant my pedantry?

Published
by
Nicola Karras
on February 26, 2008
in Extemporanea, Ladies and Politics
. 0 Comments

Feministing links to an article by David Gelernter decrying the degendering of language. Some of his points are, I admit, a little overblown, but generally I agree.

Much to my mother’s distaste, I have come to use the “he” rather than “he or she” or “they” to refer to a hypothetical human being. (Also, when I am interspersing my thoughts with quotations from Hannah Arendt, who — victim of the patriarchy as she was[1] — only uses “he,” it reads much better than way.) Things that are not specifically coded as feminine are inherently coded as masculine. The female is other, and our language represents this.

However, the most interesting thing (aside from the very cute suggestion that we return to the traditional Old English werman and wifman, reserving man for the equivalent of homo or anthropos), was learning that the singular “they” is not, in fact, a hideous neologism that squats on the face of the English language like an obese toad.

In fact, Jane Austen has been known to use it.

Now, make it a Brontë and I’m sold.

 

[1] And by “patriarchy,” I mostly mean Martin Heidegger. This had far more to do with her mental health than her pronoun choice, though. One day I will write a post about Simone de Beauvoir’s relationship with Sartre and Arendt’s with Heidegger. It may be titled “Arguments for a Separatist Philosophical Commune,” and will probably include a plan for importing men to do heavy lifting, getting things from tall shelves, etc., then returning them to the wild.

Rape: No, really, it exists. Really.

Published
by
Nicola Karras
on February 25, 2008
in Ladies and Politics
. 0 Comments

I’m a little too frustrated about this/in need of dinner before class to be coherent. Kate may be.

In the meantime, Cara underlines the most important point:

Actually, it is highly common for a woman to have sex with a man after he has assaulted her. It’s called denial. When a friend rapes you, and he didn’t punch you in the face to make it happen, chances are you want to believe that it was all a big misunderstanding. Realizing that you’ve been raped by a friend, your boyfriend or your husband is extremely painful. It’s wrong. You don’t want it to be real. Also, we have idiots like Mac Donald writing for nationally distributed new papers, who say that the rape most women experience doesn’t count as rape.

EDIT: Also, here.

EDIT #2: And on the 25% statistic, see here.

Poor unfortunate souls: Sex Week organizers face moral choices?

Published
by
Kate Maltby
on February 21, 2008
in Ladies, Sex Week 2008 and Yale
. 1 Comment

Nicola and I aren’t actually joined at the hip, so I’m hoping that we don’t make a habit of attending events together and then both blogging our responses here.

Yet we did double-team when telling the Sex Week organizers exactly what we thought of their woman-as-commodity fest. To their credit, they did organize a “feedback” session at which all were welcome to come and raise concerns about Sex Week - only to then appear shocked when we criticized “without knowing what goes on behind the scenes”. Apparently basic logic did not feature in the plan.

The point that most succinctly summarizes the boundless pool of criticisms I have of “Sex Week” (The Joy of) is demonstrated by the fact that at a scheduled screening of pornography, when porn director Paul Thomas finished showing his “cheerleading porn” videos and moved onto some more violent depictions of sadism, the organizers leapt up in the middle of the hall, burning with righteous anger, and ordered the guest to turn off the entire spectacle. “We really dropped the ball on this one,” says one organizer, apologizing for the screening, who later objected to the sadistic screening on the grounds that it was “sexually unhealthy and disrespectful to women”.

So there are some types of porn which are demeaning to women, we are told. Therefore, Sex Week organizers censor them. If so, then one would infer that the other images are not demeaning! Censoring some images of sex implies an endorsement of others. Yet at the feedback session, the organizers of Sex Week insisted that they weren’t endorsing any particular practice, just bringing everything to the surface so that we can discuss it in a neutral environment. (Giving away free porn DVDs doesn’t count as endorsing porn, apparently).

My question is as follows: there are two types of Sex Week one can plan to organize. In the first, no particular perspective is endorsed, no depiction of sexuality is privileged above another, as much as can be reasonably given space in the time frame, and therefore the value judgments of the organizers do not provide a imposition of community mores. In the second, the organizers present particular perspectives on sexuality as worthy of acknowledgment, or “healthy”, and censor images which they consider demeaning. For which version were the organizers aiming?

The response to my question: “you have to understand that this is really emotional for us. It was really hard to make decisions.” No really? Dealing with issues of sexuality is emotional? Assuming positions of leadership and responsibility on campus is emotional? You really do learn something new at this university everyday.

Sado-masochism is a common expression of human sexuality. The urges to exercise or yield power, to escape or assume the pressures of being in charge, or to make intimacy with a lover a reassurance of be love even when confessing the darkest things about us, stem from the significance to all of us of natural power dynamics that do not have to be gendered. That it frequently is channeled into unsophisticated porn products in which dominance is always directed along gender lines, with all the one-size-fits-all tackiness of the mass market, should not be used as a reason to deny its existence.

What is most demeaning to women is the casual orthodoxy affirmed throughout Sex Week and throughout the mainstream media that in “healthy” sex, a woman is still an object whose job is to make herself as conducive to male pleasure as possible - when a man only has to make sure he enjoys himself. “Cheerleading porn”, which the organizers think is an acceptable contrast to sado-masochistic porn, suggests that woman’s role is to appear immature and innocently vulnerable, anxious to look sexy for her man. The very posters used to plaster advertising for Sex Week all over campus - the first thing confronting me when I open my front door in the morning, the standard representation of “Sex” that I had to walk past everyday, was that of a naked, nubile woman, leaning back in the most receptive position imaginable. So much for “a mature and broad range of perspectives on the significance of sex”.

In Which A Curmudgeonly Victorian Is Invoked

Published
by
Nicola Karras
on February 15, 2008
in Ladies, Politics, Sex Week 2008 and Yale
. 0 Comments

Victoria Wild in the YDN:

[Sex Week's] advertising does not attempt convey a message (other than times and locations); we leave the message to the presenters.

Laying aside, for the moment, the idiotic claim that advertising does not convey a message, and focusing only on the second half of this ridiculous sentence… Leaving the message to the presenters is the problem.

Pluralism for the sake of pluralism is nonsense. There may well be more than one right way of doing things (I’m looking forward to Sunday’s Sex & Spirituality panel), but there are also wrong ways.

‘May not every man in England say what he likes?’ — Mr Roebuck perpetually asks; and that, he thinks, is quite sufficient, and when every man may say what he likes, our aspirations ought to be satisfied. But the aspirations of culture, which is the study of perfection, are not satisfied, unless what men say, when they may say what they like, is worth saying, — has good in it, and more good than bad. (Matthew Arnold, 1869)

Do any of these planners actually think that pornographers are the people to consult about a healthy cultural attitude towards sex? Do any of them think that looking like a porn star is the key to love and intimacy? Do they really think that screening pornographic films — notable for the objectification of bodies, particularly women’s, and the decoupling of the sex act from emotion — will help anyone “get beyond the awkwardness, the discomfort, and the taboo” that pornography has produced? Do none of them see a problem with porn culture?

Maybe they’re only interested in titillation and giving the student body what it wants. Weakness is, if not exactly excusable, then at least understandable. But if this is only a manifestation liberal idea that we ought to be exposed to everything because we can, by ourselves, come up with the right answer — if it’s about “empowering” women by showing us that we get to participate in our very own degradation — if it’s really about letting pornographers get their message across…

I may have to go for that taser after all.