Reading Nancy Rome's Washington Post article about what she sees as a growing movement of women who are childless by choice propelled me through an emotional gauntlet so strange that if I had a shred of dignity, I'd be too embarrassed to mention it. But in the interest of a good blog post, dignity be damned!
Rome's story, which begins with her own tale of finding herself childless after giving birth to a stillborn baby, then subsequently divorcing her husband and deciding not to have children, traces her discovery of a larger community of childless women who share the common fate of not having children in a culture obsessed with motherhood. Rome, a documentary filmmaker who has made these women and their stories the subject of her film in progress, cobbles together statistics to argue childless women are a growing trend in part because more women would have it so.
It's an argument that's certainly up for debate. But Rome points to U.S. Census figures that show that the proportion of childless women 15 to 44 years old jumped from 35 percent in 1976 to 44.6 percent in 2003 and that the higher a woman's income the less likely she is to have children. She also observes that the National Center for Health Statistics found that women who declared themselves voluntarily childless rose from 2.4 percent in 1982 to 6.6 percent in 1995.
The entire piece, which is filled with the poignant self-justifications that these women feel they must offer the curious (which roughly translate to: "I really do love children, I've just chosen not to have them"), makes me wince with self-recognition. I'm sure there have been times when I was construed as one of those self-aggrandizing moms who question women about not having children. Becoming a parent is such a point of no return that now the people (men and women) who choose not to go there seem exotic to me. At the end of the story, Rome returns to her own ritual of bringing "tiny white roses and rosemary" to her baby daughter's grave and suddenly my face crumples. By the time she says she "can almost bring [herself] to hold an infant" I'm blubbering all over my keyboard. I feel terribly, terribly sorry for her.
Then I pull myself together. What the hell is going on here? I don't think this is the response Rome is trying for. But like so many stories about women's choices nowadays this one leaves me confused. Why is this story so sad? Why do women feel like they have to define themselves as mothers or motherless, as stay-at-home moms or working women, or the endless variety of identities that veer from that looming norm? Why aren't there articles about men who are choosing not to be fathers? The problem for me about the childless by choice phenomenon isn't that it exists but that it's a category of identity at all. In the sense that it's a choice not to do something, it still feels reactive and defensive. In the end, I feel annoyed both with my tears and with a culture that still makes women who don't have children feel so out of step that it must be a banner of identity.
We've all heard various renditions of the story of the woman who cried rape. It's often dubiously told by men from behind bars, but sometimes it comes straight from the accuser herself. This week, a new version that falls into the latter category is making the rounds: On Monday, 27-year-old Biurny Peguero of New Jersey pleaded guilty to perjury after her false allegation about a gang rape sent William McCaffrey, an innocent man, to jail. He served three years of a 20 year sentence before she came forward with her confession.
It all began in September 2005, when Peguero went out drinking with friends. In the wee hours of the morning, she ran into McCaffrey and he invited her to an early-morning party. She ditched her pals and drove off with him -- but when they started blowing up her cellphone, presumably wondering where she had gone, she had Gonzalez drive her back to meet up with them. That did nothing to diffuse the situation, however: Upon her return, Peguero and her friends got into a physical brawl that involved hitting and biting. One woman even kicked and broke her car window during the clash. At one point, it's unclear why, one of her pals asked whether the man Peguero had disappeared with had raped her; she said "yes" to garner sympathy, according to court documents.
From there, news reports suggest that the lie spun out of control or something -- but such life-destroying dishonesty doesn't (casual shrug) just happen. Before she fessed up, it took repeatedly telling her story to police, lying to a grand jury, testifying during a rape trial, sitting through the falsely accused's brutal sentencing and twiddling her thumbs for three years while an innocent man sat behind bars. It was only upon guidance by a Catholic priest that she decided to turn herself in. Now, she rightfully faces a maximum punishment of seven years in prison.
Feminists are often characterized as applying the "guilty until proven innocent" rule to rape cases and the "innocent until proven guilty" standard to allegations of a woman crying rape. But mark this feminist's words: Some women lie about sexual assault and some rapists go free -- but the response in either case shouldn't split down gender lines.
William Deresiewicz has written a long, lovely essay on friendship for The Chronicle Review, ranging from "Achilles and Patroclus, David and Jonathan, Virgil's Nisus and Euryalus" all the way through present-day palhood. It's a fascinating read. Unfortunately, its conclusion -- that social networking means the death of genuine friendship -- is pretty specious for a piece that's otherwise so well-considered. "The Facebook phenomenon, so sudden and forceful a distortion of social space, needs little elaboration," writes Deresiewicz. "Having been relegated to our screens, are our friendships now anything more than a form of distraction? When they've shrunk to the size of a wall post, do they retain any content? If we have 768 'friends,' in what sense do we have any?" Whoa, whoa, whoa! Back up, my figurative friend. If you're going to automatically equate Facebook "friendship" and genuine companionship, then actually, the Facebook phenomenon does need some more elaboration.
At this writing, I have 658 Facebook friends. Without doing a proper audit of that list, I'd estimate that maybe 100 of them are people I've actually met, around 30 are people I would still call "friends" in any other context, and perhaps a dozen are good friends -- people I talk to on the phone, over e-mail and (geography permitting) in person, on a regular basis. Then there's my husband, all three of my siblings, a niece and two nephews -- people I wouldn't introduce as my "friends" in real life any more than the old classmate who unfriended me for being adamantly pro-choice. But somehow, this circumstance in which I have 658 "friends" while having only 30ish actual friends causes me no cognitive dissonance, much less despair for the future of human interaction.
I can handle an argument that social networking is sapping the word "friend" of its meaning. But then, as Deresiewicz himself acknowledges, that word has changed meaning many times throughout history. " Far from being ordinary and universal, friendship, for the ancients, was rare, precious, and hard-won." Then along came Christianity, which "discouraged intense personal bonds, for the heart should be turned to God... In medieval society, friendship entailed specific expectations and obligations, often formalized in oaths." The Renaissance brought back friendship based in "truth and virtue, again, above all," which basically lasted through the 19th century, and changes in commercial relationships cemented it: "Capitalism, said Hume and Smith, by making economic relations impersonal, allowed for private relationships based on nothing other than affection and affinity." Later, "as industrialization uprooted people from extended families and traditional communities and packed them into urban centers, friendship emerged to salve the anonymity and rootlessness of modern life." So, eventually, did the trend toward delaying marriage and away from close-knit, multigenerational family units: "We have yet to find a satisfactory name for that period of life, now typically a decade but often a great deal longer, between the end of adolescence and the making of definitive life choices. But the one thing we know is that friendship is absolutely central to it." And that brings us pretty much up to the present day -- so, why is friendship at risk again?
Because we no longer expect friends to be our soulmates, apparently.
That glib neologism "bff," which plays at a lifelong avowal, bespeaks an ironic awareness of the mobility of our connections: Best friends forever may not be on speaking terms by this time next month. We save our fiercest energies for sex. Indeed, between the rise of Freudianism and the contemporaneous emergence of homosexuality to social visibility, we've taught ourselves to shun expressions of intense affection between friends—male friends in particular, though even Oprah was forced to defend her relationship with her closest friend—and have rewritten historical friendships, like Achilles' with Patroclus, as sexual. For all the talk of "bromance" lately (or "man dates"), the term is yet another device to manage the sexual anxiety kicked up by straight-male friendships—whether in the friends themselves or in the people around them—and the typical bromance plot instructs the callow bonds of youth to give way to mature heterosexual relationships. At best, intense friendships are something we're expected to grow out of.
Instead, we have groups of friends we're not all that close to individually, which means that having hundreds of Facebook friends you've never even met is only the logical next step in the slow death of Platonic companionship.
For all Deresiewicz's writing talent and experience, he's getting a lot of words mixed up here. First, he confuses "Facebook friend" and "friend." Newsflash: People only end up with hundreds or thousands of "friends" on social networking sites because nobody really thinks they mean the same thing. The folks who are on my list because they read my writing on Salon are never going to call me to give them a ride home from the bar, or visit them at the hospital, or invite me over for a holiday dinner -- if for no other reason than they don't have my phone number, seeing as how we are not actually friends, and no one is the least bit confused about this.
But more troublingly, I think Deresiewicz is using the word "we" -- meaning all internet-savvy westerners -- when the words he's really looking for are "some men." He's absolutely right about the shallowness of "bromance" as its typically presented in pop culture, the way emotional reservation is held up as a masculine virtue, and the sexual anxiety that means a guy can't express affection toward a pal unless he follows it up with "no homo." But those things don't damage the whole concept of friendship as we know it -- they damage some men's ability to form close, non-sexual relationships. And I would hardly be the first feminist to say that sucks. In fact, much has been written about how rigid gender roles force boys and men to squelch their feelings and keep their emotional distance from anyone they don't plan on marrying (and even then, they're expected to publicly roll their eyes at any expectation of intimacy that doesn't lead directly to a blow job). Meanwhile, much has also been written about the strength and value of female friendship bonds, especially as family ties became less binding over time.
In a recent essay on motherhood -- which explores, among other things, the changing nature of modern family and friendships for women of the "creative class" -- Sandra Tsing Loh describes her sister as "a fearsomely strong figure, who, if I were left for dead in a pile of leaves at the bottom of a 15-foot hole, would be the first to run to the edge and fashion a rope of her own hair to haul me out," and then suggests, "As a philosophical midlife exercise, you should make your own list of rescuers -- that list may surprise or depress you." For me, it did neither. After my husband, I thought of half a dozen female friends who would get on the first plane to wherever that hole was and MacGyver up whatever device was needed to get me out of it. And I'd do the same for them, of course.
As it happens, we're all Facebook "friends," but that has exactly nothing to do with it. Years of love, loyalty, hard conversations, emotional vulnerability and just showing up are what make us, if not each other's classical soulmates, then at least each other's hypothetical rescuers. Social networking doesn't prevent anyone from maintaining that type of meaningful real-world relationship alongside hundreds of superficial connections -- but the myth that real men don't have feelings or need emotional support like some kind of girls sure can prevent them from developing anything deeper than a fleeting bromance.
I'd say more about that, but now I have to go get on a plane to visit my BFF. I guess it's possible that in this crazy modern world, I'll have a new one of those in a month, but since this one's been around for about 20 years, I don't hesitate to use the term unironically. I do wish everyone could have that kind of friendship -- but I really don't think it's Facebook that's stopping them.
Here at Broadsheet, we love us some earnest, academic talk about the sexual differences between men and women -- but this will not be one of those discussions. Sometimes, a girl needs a break from all the stuffy talk of nature versus nurture, and the satiric sketch "Are Women As Horny As Men?" (via Gizmodo) does just the trick. The skit opens with a man and a woman sitting at a bar debating that very question. Naturally, she argues that women are equal horndogs -- and he thinks she's insane. Then commences a dream sequence in which the world is turned upsidedown and men are sexually objectified by women. Without giving too much away, I can tantalize you with the fact that there is some beer gut on stripper pole action. As you might have gathered, it is extremely NSFW (or the faint of heart).
Steve Hall over at AdRants believes that "Cause groups and feminist blogging should be outlawed." Why? Well, before the authorities seize my laptop, I'll try to explain. A lot of people from those two categories were offended by a recent commercial for Method's environmentally friendly cleaning products, and the negative response prompted Method to pull the ad. The video is below, but here's what you need to know: It begins with a woman watching a bunch of happy, singing bubbles making her tub sparkly clean, then shifts to her getting into the shower and discovering those bubbles are still there, and they're not so nice anymore. In fact, they're the toxic residue of her environmentally unfriendly cleaning products, and they will not only slowly poison her but provide sexually threatening commentary while they're at it! "We give you the impression of clean, and then we get to watch you clean," one explains, at which point they all start leering at the now extremely uncomfortable naked woman and moaning "Oh, baby, yeah" as she washes herself, with the creepitude culminating in a chant of, "Loofah! Loofah! Loofah!"
After the ad began airing, humorless "cause groups" and feminist bloggers raised a lot of questions about it. Questions like, "Who the hell thinks it's funny to watch a naked woman being sexually harassed, even by animated bubbles?" And "Were they on crack?" And "They do realize their market is women, right?" And "Seriously? Seriously?" So eventually, decision-makers at Method went, "Huh. Given that the market for this product is primarily female, and this commercial seems to alienate a lot of women -- not to mention attach our brand name to threatening bubbles, even though they're supposed to be from the other brand -- perhaps the wisest business decision would be to stop airing it."
But you know who thinks it's funny to watch a woman being sexually harassed by animated bubbles? Steve Hall, that's who! "Words fail at this point," he says in a post optimistically titled "The Last Word on Method's Horny Shiny Suds," but that doesn't stop him from using them. In addition to his recommendation that feminist blogging be criminalized, he also thinks that the following would be appropriate punishment for angry women who toss around inflammatory phrases like "rape culture" just to make sure normal people never get to have any fun:
Everyone with a stick up their ass over this should promptly shove it all the way through until it pops out the top of their head. Hopefully they'll die and allow the rest of us to "use the loofa" [sic] without feeling like we're being gang raped in the shower. (Where the hell do people come up with this crap?)
Also,
Just for fun, Dow should hire an army of men in Scrubbing Bubbles costumes, send them to BlogHer (and the rest of the female conference circuit) and have them ejaculate foamy white stuff all over attendees. That ought to get some panties in a bunch.
So, to sum up: Because women told Method that the ad was offensive to its target demographic, and Method responded by taking Steve Hall's favorite commercial away, all the women who complained should be prohibited from writing on the internet, die violently, or maybe just be the targets of a little public faux-bukkake. Now that is how you defend freedom of speech while reminding all right-thinking people that this feminazi nonsense about "sexism" and "misogyny" and "trivializing violence against women" (who the hell comes up with this crap?) is just cuh-razy! Well done, sir!
Hall also thinks "Brands should grow a pair and proudly lift their middle finger when confronted by a gaggle of idiots who have nothing better to do than to suck the last drop of humor out of life." That suggestion might have some validity -- from a business standpoint, if not an ethical one -- if the commercial were serving its purpose, and the outraged critics were never going to buy the product in the first place. But this really can't be emphasized enough: Liberal, educated female consumers -- a group that often overlaps with feminist bloggers -- are the fucking market for environmentally friendly cleaning products. Men who think sexually threatening bubbles are a laff riot may enjoy the ad, but the only important question for Method is whether they will then think, "I shall reward these creative geniuses by buying their soap." Logical answer: Probably not! And almost certainly not in numbers large enough to justify alienating women. So what Hall is saying -- in his capacity as an advertising expert -- is, "Brands should lift their middle finger at their actual consumers, rather than acknowledge a failed concept and move on, because I think the ad is funny." I guess we can agree on one thing, then: Words fail.
Jamie Frevele wants you to take her hand in right to marriage. So much so, in fact, that she has put it up for auction on eBay. In the item listing, she writes: "I'm an unmarried heterosexual woman, and since I probably won't be using my right to get married, I would like to give it away." She lives in New York, the state that just rejected a bill to legalize same-sex marriage, so she well knows that the right to wed is a hot a commodity: "I will write you up a fancy, wonderful, articulate proclamation handing over my right to get married," she says. "I have no official documentation because this is something I was born with since I was born heterosexual."
She was also born with a sense of humor. Frevele is a comedian who produces her own short comedy sketches online and this auction is part of her routine -- only, she's aiming for a political point, not just laughs. She explains that all proceeds will be donated "to an organization that supports LGBT rights since the government designed to protect all of us is picking and choosing based on what they think is icky, weird, or [unknown] to them." She may be offering up a strictly "symbolic gesture," but Frevele promises that "your bid, on the other hand, is real, and the donation you make to an organization that supports those who have been treated as second-class citizens will be well worth it."
It isn't every day that basic civil rights are auctioned off on eBay -- and bidding has stalled at the low price of $138. What a steal! Also? Shipping is free.
There are a lot of great things about being a ladyblogger, but one downside is the constant e-mails from publicists who just know your audience will be interested in their vaguely female-oriented products and "story ideas," no matter how useless and/or disturbing they are. If you've never seen such a pitch, Jezebel periodically rounds up some of the worst examples ("I don't know if you were aware, but FuzziBunz Pocket Diapers recently went through a small renovation of its One-Size Cloth Diaper"), and a quick review of my trash folder reveals e-mails about things like weight-loss cookies, hand sanitizers and hair extensions, all of which might as well say, "I have never actually seen your Web site" in the subject line. The best ones, though, are those that attempt to include a news peg. Today's mail brought us the subject line: "Story idea? 5 Ways to Use Technology to Catch Your 'Tiger' in His Tracks."
Ladies, are you suspicious that "your man is pulling a Tiger Woods"? All over this country, complete nobodies are probably juggling multiple extramarital affairs the press couldn't care less about, leaving those nobodies' wives and girlfriends with no way to uncover the truth, apart from paying attention and asking questions. Until now! "Intelius, an ecommerce company that empowers consumers with online information to make intelligent decisions" would like to offer five suggestions to "give you peace of mind without [your] being a stalker."
First, let me give you a tip for free: If you're so convinced your partner is cheating on you that you're moved to indulge in technology-assisted snooping, unless you are living in a madcap romantic comedy, you are probably not going to learn that his strange behavior is part of an elaborate engagement plan and/or a plot to demonstrate how much you mean to him. So "peace of mind" might be a bit of a lofty goal here. A more realistic aim would be "finding out the truth you already basically knew in a way that makes you feel like a huge jerk, at least if you have a soul." But if you're still interested, let's take a look at the totally not stalky suggestions for spying on the person you ostensibly trust most in the world.
Suggestion No. 1: "'Forget' your smartphone in his car and continue sharing your location. Log into your Google account and you'll be able to 'follow your phone.'" What you won't be able to do, of course, is use your phone. But hey, who needs to check in at work or make plans with friends and family when there's sleuthing to be done? Of course, if you'd rather just steal his phone, then you could make use of the Reverse Cell Phone Directory. "Intelius's service allows users to look up unfamiliar cell phone numbers to find out who is calling their boyfriends, girlfriends, etc." I would suggest that asking is another way to find that out, but who am I kidding? Anything that involves trusting your partner or acting like an adult is long out the window in this scenario. Next step: Facebook! "Is there a sudden and noticeable increase in fb activity between your man and women you've never heard of before? You may not have his password, but you can still check in to see who has been giving him attention." (And if you do have his password? Even better! Nothing solves relationship problems like reading through your partner's private messages.) Checking his Facebook activity is obviously a brilliant suggestion if you're lucky enough to be dating someone who's not only cheating, but stupid enough to leave evidence of it visible on a public social networking page. But if you're not so lucky, at least maybe you can have a fight about some random woman he's not seeing! That's sure to be terrific for both your relationship and your own position relative to the moral high ground.
If those suggestions don't satisfy all your totally not stalky needs, you could also try "SlyDial. A voice messaging service that connects you directly to someone's mobile voicemail so you can covertly see who is calling your husband, bf, etc." What? You say that does sound a little stalky for your tastes? Come on! I mean, you're just breaking into his voice mail, not putting him under video surveillance or anything! Oh, wait. Final idea: "Webcams. While it should be a last resort, concerned mothers install nannycams, so why shouldn't suspicious wives install hidden webcams?" Um, because their husbands aren't children? Because it's a hideous violation of his privacy? Because if you think installing a webcam to keep track of your husband's movements sounds like a good idea, A) your relationship is almost certainly not worth saving, no matter what you find out, and B) you should probably see a therapist about your control issues?
I mean, here's what I don't understand (which is among the many reasons why I'm not the best person to send such a pitch to): If you're so suspicious that you're willing to follow any of this advice, let alone the most invasive suggestions, why wouldn't you just leave him? What is the payoff of spending time, money and energy to monitor a dude you do not trust, in sneaky, underhanded ways that will guarantee he doesn't trust you, either? Because realistically, the only possible positive outcome is that you learn he's not cheating, and by some miracle, he never learns that you went all Nancy Drew on him -- and the relationship probably ends anyway, because the fact that you felt compelled to invade his privacy so spectacularly indicates that it was already completely freakin' broken. And that the problem was not just him.
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