That was the view religious conservative Douglas Wilson expressed in a piece reprinted by the unrelated Jared Wilson recently, as I covered in And: The reason we have so much rape is because society has imposed equality on the natural order where men rule and women submit. Unable to get the dominance fix they need, women fantasize about rape and men commit the crime.
As I noted at the link, this is bullshit, but this weekend it struck me it’s a particular kind of bullshit: A bullshit demand that the Wilson’s get society’s support for their brand of patriarchy.
The thing is, nothing about legal equality mandates that families exist that way. A lot of families don’t. The women believe God wants them to submit and so they choose to do so. Feminist enforcers are not going to bust into their house and force them to go out and walk or to have an equal say in the decision-making.
The catch, of course, is the words “choose” and “believe.” This kind of thing is only possible as long as the wife accepts it; if she doesn’t believe in it, or chooses not to accept it, then legally the husband can’t force her to do so. That, I’m pretty sure, is the sticking point: Equality doesn’t make it impossible to have a patriarchal complementarian marriage, but it makes it impossible to impose one on an unwilling woman.
As I noted in a previous And column, that’s why many conservatives struggle to stamp out feminism: If one women has the right to walk away from a domineering, abusive husband, all women do. Their wives do. And for men like the Wilsons, a world without guaranteed control over women is, it seems, a world in the grip of Satan.
More on misogyny here.
Monthly Archives: July 2012
Undead sexist cliches: Sexual equality destroys the natural order of things
Filed under Politics, Undead sexist cliches
Phone systems and links
As many bloggers have pondered, if the free market showers wonderful benefits on customers, why do we have to go through phone hell to get through to a live person?
I’m serious. Libertarians love to assert that the free market always works out well for everyone, yet does anyone think customer service has improved from 30 years ago? I understand it may have for the really, really well off (the best customers get a number to cut through the bullshit) but over all? I am not, I note, suggesting this is something the government should regulate, only that whoever’s benefiting, it ain’t “everyone.”
And while we’re on the subject, isn’t it interesting that when people complain about it, one of the commonest complaints is “I don’t want to press one for English!” Apparently it’s tolerable if the free market throws insane five-minute road blocks in the path of service but God forbid a company try to cater to non-English speakers.
On other notes:
•Ruther Bader Ginsburg’s biting commentary on the Supreme Court’s Obamacare decision. She guts the idea this is equivalent to forcing someone to buy a car or eat broccoli. The difference being that people without insurance aren’t choosing not to participate in the health-care market place—it’s just that they end up participating at the emergency room instead.
A Michigan Republican, however, asserts that the Supreme Court decision justifies armed revolution! I’m willing to bet that the government’s use of torture, summary execution, illegal detention and warrantless wiretapping didn’t rise to that level in his mind. Ben Shapiro likewise concludes “this is the greatest destruction of individual liberty since Dred Scott!”
Paul Krugman suggests that “what was and is really striking about the anti-reformers is their cruelty. It would be one thing if, at any point, they had offered any hint of an alternative proposal to help Americans with pre-existing conditions, Americans who simply can’t afford expensive individual insurance, Americans who lose coverage along with their jobs. But it has long been obvious that the opposition’s goal is simply to kill reform, never mind the human consequences. ” One conservative brilliantly riposted that when Krugman talks about a more decent society, obviously “he means one where all conservatives are killed.” Projection much?
•Catholic hospitals do not want you getting your tubes tied on their premises, or getting an abortion even to save your life.
•Now here’s a nutty one: Schools and summer camps that won’t let kids use sunscreen without a doctor’s note.
•If Limbaugh thinks people shouldn’t lie about their military records, why does he do it?
Books
THE ART OF THE PLAYWRIGHT by William Packard is a competent but formulaic “how to” book detailing the importance of characters having something to strive for, obstacles to overcome and interactions with other characters, all of which is, of course, common to any field of writing. Nothing really struck me as fresh except a discussion of visual symbols, but I admit I might think differently if I was coming to the topic cold.
SOMETHING HAPPENED: A Political and Cultural Overview of the Seventies by Edward D. Berkowitz argues the seventies were the era when the standard solutions dating back to the post-WW II years finally stopped working: Centralized eonomic planning collapsed in the face of stagflation and the oil crisis, respect for our leaders vanished after Watergate, the Cold War tentatively gave way to detente and the struggle for group rights and the backlash against them took precedence over the Good of Society As a Whole (Berkowitz doesn’t consider that a bad thing, though he still paints them as symptoms of Me Decade selfishness). A good political overview, but not so effective on the cultural side; it also lacks the sense of fun Coming Together and Falling Apart had about the era (as someone who lived through the decade, I definitely prefer the latter book).
THE ENGLISH CIVIL WAR:Papists, Gentlewomen, Soldiers and Witchfinders in the Birth of Modern Britain by Diane Purkiss presents the war as less a matter of Parliament vs. King (though that was certainly part of it) than Protestant vs. Papist, the “godly” Puritans believing Charles and his Catholic queen were conspiring to reimpose the Pope’s rule on England. The flashpoint was Charles’ efforts to push his reforms of the church onto onto the Presbyterian Scots, which coupled with all-too-familiar atrocity stories of Irish Catholics Brutally Massacring Protestants (and paranoia about a lurking network of Catholic sleeper agents) convinced the “godly” their freedom was at stake, though some Puritans felt turning against God’s chosen monarch was even more ungodly. The war that followed led, of course, to conclusions nobody initially anticipated or wanted such as a kingless England (Charles comes off as a genius at snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, even more radical movements such as Levellers, Diggers and women’s rights groups plus infamous witch-hunter Matthew Hopkins launching his career—not to mention, of course, Cromwell’s army eventually taking over and dissolving the Parliament they’d fought to uphold. A good job on a subject I knew of, but not much about.
HARBINGER OF THE STORM: Blood and Obsidian Book II by Aliette de Bodard kicks off with the death of the Aztec Emperor, leaving everyone scheming and grappling for political power despite protagonist Acatl’s (high priest of the Aztec death god) insistence that delaying will allow the Lovecraftian star-demons to descend on the spiritually vulnerable empire. And then, of course, the killings start … A good sophomore volume in this series.
THE WICKER MAN by Robin Hardy and Anthony Shaffer adapts Shaffer’s 1973 film script in which a Scots bobby finds his investigation into a missing child leads him to a private island whose laird has brought back the old pagan religion—and, the cop suspects, may be including human sacrifice among the traditions. This is much more overtly Christianity vs. the Old Ways than I remember from the movie (but it’s been years since I saw it—and I haven’t seen the remake) and reminiscent of Shaffer’s Sleuth in the way the villain manipulates the protagonist as a pawn in his games.
Filed under Reading
He does whatever a spider can
(“Spider-man, Spider-man/Does Whatever a spider can.” was the opening refrain of Marvel’s 1960s Spidey cartoon. Hence the title)
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN (2012) is a poor relaunch from the Raimi series, partly I think, because it’s trying to hard to be different. Peter, for example, isn’t the put-upon nerd as much as just all broody and emo, and Andrew Garfield isn’t as good in the role as Tobey Maguire. Nor are the rest of the cast a match for Kirsten Dunst and Willem Defoe and the Lizard definitely isn’t up to supporting the entire movie as the villain the way the Green Goblin or Dr. Octopus did.
That being said, I really wish that they hadn’t gone back to the origin again. And this holds for whenever we get the next Superman or Batman film as well.
It’s not that their origins are bad. Hell, they’re classic, great explanations for who they are and how they came to be. That being said:
•There’s a lot more to their lives than the origin. And many more stories to tell.
•The origin’s been done. In Spidey’s case, only a few years ago. So why remake it?
•Doing the origin automatically puts limits on the movie because a lot of any origin is set-up. We spend lots of time in this one introducing Peter, showing he’s constantly bullied, developing his relationship with his Uncle Ben (a rather crotchety Martin Sheen) and Aunt May (Sally Field). I don’t object to drama, but I’d much sooner see drama involving Spider-Man (like the classic Stan Lee/Steve Ditko plotline in which Dr. Octopus’ latest experiment requires a chemical component that’s the only thing that can keep Aunt May alive).
The film makes a conscious effort to rework some of the details of the origin (on a minor note, it occurs to me that both this and the Raimi film slightly soften Peter’s fatal mistake. In Amazing Fantasy #15, he doesn’t stop the hood because he’s had his first taste of success and he figures it’s not his job to go catch a crook. In both film origins, he has a grudge against the guy who’s getting robbed so it’s not quite as jerky) rather than follow it faithfully as the first movie did (updated to the 21st century, of course—no reference to Spidey debuting on the Ed Sullivan Show). Not to mention adding a lot of stuff regarding Peter’s father and the dark secret that sent him away. So why not go all the way and skip the origin? It’s unlikely anyone who’d want to see this doesn’t already know it.
Another problem is that as usual, the movie has the usual Hollywood impulse to tie all the origins together: Peter’s origins and the Lizard’s come from the same experiment which it’s clearly implied will ultimately create the Green Goblin. I understand the logic—mainstream audiences only have to accept one weird element this way—but I kind of like the comics premise that weird things happen all the time (someone’s been mutated by a freak accident? It’s Tuesday). And I think comics have percolated the mainstream far enough that the audience can probably handle that.
Movies
THE TALL BLOND MAN WITH ONE BLACK SHOE (1972) is a French spy farce in which an ambitious intelligence official with an eye on his boss’s job becomes convinced the eponymous protagonist is a secret agent sent to eliminate him; what he doesn’t realize is that the boss has arbitrarily picked an innocent man out of a crowd to drive the underling to steps that will permanently discredit him (“We put out the cheese, he built his own trap around it.”). The results are hysterical as the Tall Blonde Man (Pierre Richard) wanders through a series of traps, attacks, seductions and conspiracies without the slightest idea what’s going on. Given the references to French privacy laws in the ending credits, I wonder if it’s a response to a specific French scandal; in any case, great fun, far superior to Tom Hanks’ remake, The Man With One Red Shoe. “Wait until you retire to get literary.”
THE TALL BLOND RETURNS (1974) when a cop tracks the deaths of the previous film to the intelligence head, who then tries to have Richard eliminated, fails, then has to prove he’s every bit the invincible secret agent he’s supposed to be (this is much more a James Bond parody than the first film). Not quite as funny as the first film, but still very good, and equally cynical. “I don’t care if he wet the bed until he was 12!”
I’ve sometimes told TYG that WHAT’S UP DOC? (1972) is Our Story, since it has a shy intellectual (Ryan O’Neal) meeting a wildly unconventional woman (Barbara Streisand) at a convention who immediately puts move on him (okay, maybe that’s not exactly how it happened 🙂 ). Director Peter Bogdanovich’s screwball comedy is, regardless, very funny and quite charming as Streisand seduces O’Neal away from fiancée Madeline Kahn, Sorrell Booke tries to steal jewelry, scheming musicologist Kenneth Mars competes with O’Neal for a grant and John Hillerman, Randy Quaid and M. Emmett Walsh get bit parts. Wonderful fun which TYG enjoyed too (though as usual she’s agog at 40 year old fashions and tech). “This man is in possession of top-secret government … underwear.”
BETWEEN THE FOLDS (2008) is a good documentary on modern origami, where designs range from ultra-realism (“So if you show up with a spider, next year someone comes back with a scorpion—eight legs and claws!”) to aesthetes who build designs around a single fold, not to mention practical applications (how to compress airbags, for instance). Fun, and some of the designs really are astonishing. “I think as I grow older, I use fewer folds.”
Filed under Movies
Feeling sluggish
Not today, particularly, and not feeling sleepy or tired, just slow. As if getting my writing done were pushing up a steep hill.
A lot of that, I think, is the lingering effects of visiting Mum, and working on various stuff for her since returning (though not as much as expected). Even though it’s been more than a week, I still feel a lingering sense of temporal shell-shock, as though I’m massively pressed for time. As I’ve noted in the past, this can induce a sense of “Fine then, I’ll just stare at the Internet!” reaction to my cruel fate. Which is stupid and unproductive, but I couldn’t quite get past it.
It’s been really bad trying to do stuff in the evenings. Theoretically I take a long lunch, then make up some of the time in the evening, working on various secondary projects. But by the time 7 pm rolls around (earlier I’m cooking, meditating, packing for the move, talking to TYG) I have little stomach for doing anything but relaxing (though a lot of time I just distract myself with odds and ends on the Internet, which is not the same thing).
A minor point is that we’re escaping the upstairs heat (the a.c. in our rental doesn’t work so well up there) by sleeping in the spare bedroom, which is my office. So my normal morning rituals get thrown off, which shouldn’t be a huge problem, but it throws me off more than it should.
I’m not quite sure how to get out of the resulting funk from all this, but get out of it I must.
Speaking of Mum, at least the news is good. They’re cutting back her 24/7 care next week to about eight hours a day (much cheaper, obviously) and my sister’s up there doing some stuff for her (as she lives in Germany, that’s above-and-beyond, IMO, and I greatly appreciate it).
Now, as to writing: This week I devoted myself to going over the rewrite of The Impossible Takes a Little Longer, with a particular eye to the scenes I changed most, and everything involving my villain.
The results? Mixed. On the whole it looks good and the changes I made this week made it better. But the scene where they first meet really needs some heavy work; a couple of other chapters need some minor adjustments. So I’ll do that Monday when hopefully my mind is a little sharper.
That took up my fiction time this week. Ehow wise, here’s the list:
•What Is LP in the Mortgage Industry?
•What Are the Benefits of FHA Refinance Vs. Conventional?
•Deferred Compensation Tax Rules
•Joint Checking Account Rights
•Do I Need a Building Permit for a Porch if I Do the Work Myself?
•Can I Claim My Car on My Taxes if Work Pays for Gas & Insurance?
•Does COBRA Apply to Dental Coverage?
•Can You Withdraw 401(k) Money for College?
•Proactive Communication
•Is an Inherited Retirement Account Taxable?
•Hedge Fund Pros and Cons
•Qualifications for Veterans Benefits
•Which Loan Origination Fees Are Tax-Deductible?
•Can an LLC Be an Individual or Sole Proprietor?
•Deduction Limitations for Rental Property
•What Paperwork Do I Need to Refinance?
•Advantages of an Irrevocable Trust
•What Happens When a Trust No Longer Has Assets?
•What Happens at a Home Appraisal?
•Do You Pay Taxes on Pensions From the State You Retired In or the State You’re Living In?
•Who Signs a Mortgage?
•Refinancing Vs. Extra Payments
•What Happens When the Stock Market Crashes?
•What is a Non-deductible IRA Contribution?
Links with breakfast
A running theme in the media is that there’s something unethical about Obama criticizing Romney’s business record. FAIR pushes back at a fact check that falsely claims Obama is lying. And then the NYT accuses Obama of “vote suppression” because he’s running ads to discourage voters from supporting Romney (because what sort of fiend would run ads suggesting you not vote for his opponent?). Likewise, alicublog rips holes in the right-wing claim that Romney doesn’t outsource American jobs.
•Some Mitt Romney lies. And here’s how an urban legend that the EPA is using drones to spy on polluters develops.
•I don’t like the Chick-Fil-A CEO’s stance on gay marriage, but that should not be grounds for government refusing to let the company open new stores.
•Thoughts on Penn State’s failure to do anything about Jerry Sandusky. And on Southern Baptists’ failure to police their own ranks.
•A right-wing pundit argues that as a Latino, she can’t possibly be racist even if she did call Obama “a monkey.”
•An argument that luck plays a role in the life of successful people.
•A defense-industry lobbyist argues that since defense contractors made the equipment used by the SEAL team that took out Bin Laden, the real credit goes to the defense contractors. As Wired points out at the link, why not give the credit to all the workers who welded the equipment together?
•The continuing war on American unions.
•A church group comes up with an alternative to usurious payday loans (a good alternative, no less)
•The Texas Republican Party platform, 2012. Further discussion here.
•Tennis authorities are upset because women players grunt when exerting themselves and it’s not ladylike.
•Echidne takes on another article on how powerful women destroy each other. Jessica Valenti looks at how we frame debates over child care.
•A Gawker article critiques the nostalgia for the Mad Men era and points out that it wasn’t so wonderful if you weren’t a privileged white dude (something I’ve discussed before—also here)
Filed under Politics, Undead sexist cliches
Now, some good personal news
July 9, TYG and I bought a house.
I would have blogged about it immediately but what with flying out to Mum, posting, as you know, fell way behind.
The house is great—out of the eight or nine we originally looked at, it was top pick for both of us. It’s located closely to where we walk and bicycle, so we can head out without having to squeeze bicycles into TYG’s car (that will knock an hour off on the bike trip). We’re also within biking distance of a grocery store when I need something short notice, and a block from a drug store and a bus stop.
Another plus: I’ll have a home office that isn’t doubling as a spare bedroom so I won’t have to work around guests. Not to mention that we’ll be getting a new bed, so I no longer have to try sleeping on what feels like a big suety lump.
The sellers need time to get their own house finished, so we’re in a rent-back situation: They pay us rent until early Sept. when they move out.
While I’ve written lots about closings, homebuying and mortgages, the closing was still an experience. Very long, lots of paperwork to sign and the nervous reading of just how much we’ll be paying. I won’t specify but they’re right, it certainly is the biggest purchase we’ll ever make.
I’ve been working steadily on packing my books (TYG’s been packing her stuff too) so that I won’t be slammed at the last minute and have to take off work to get it done.
We’ll see how that works in practice.
Story behind the story: Instruments of Science
The newest story in my Applied Science series is finally out. The last two should be up in a few weeks. So as usual, here’s the backstory—more unusual than most of ’em.
As some of you may recall, I’ve been working on my novel Brain From Outer Space since forever (needless to say, this year’s been too chaotic to get very far). I wrote the opening to give readers a clear sense of the setting: A 1950s where all the Sf movies of the era actually happened and the Science Investigations agents have to deal regularly with mad scientists, mutants, pod people and other threats (hmm, no wonder I liked Fido‘s approach of treating zombies as a routine problem).
At some point I got the bright idea of turning the opening into a short story. The Steve/Gwen storyline was largely self-contained (though it pays off later in the book) so by trimming back Dani’s role and cutting out everything else, I had a workable short. I sent it around with lots of rejections, then sent it to Big Pulp, which bought it. Not only that, they suggested a whole series of stories set in the same world.
Believe it or not, I didn’t immediately go Yeah! I sat down and thought hard whether I could actually come up with 12 shorts using the same setting. I didn’t want to do 12 Steve/Gwen vs. mad scientist stories and I doubted anyone would want to read them if I did. But with some suggestions from Bill Olvisi at Big Pulp, I shaped up a list of stories: First “rogue science” case (Atoms for Peace) Dani coping with a mutant attack (Claws That Catch), Steve and Dani meeting (Blood and Steel) and some stories that were just stories rather than turning points.
And now, after nine stories, we finally catch up to the original (retitled as the whole series is now Applied Science). So, yay!
Filed under Brain From Outer Space, Story behind the story, Writing
Links again
Still trying to catch up but it’s like the Augean stables on my bookmarks. Only with less dung.
•A special vault guards three million different varieties of seeds.
•Gary Wills on why who we vote for does matter.
•I think I may have posted this before, but it’s worth mentioning again: Several leaders of the religious right apparently picked gay marriage as the Great Cause because of its fund-raising potential.
•David Brooks still believes (at least as of last year) that war is good for the Middle East. And he’s always ready to assure us that the wealth of the 1 percent is nothing to worry about.
•The Pentagon predicts cutting the military budget will worsen unemployment. The Nation argues that putting the money into other government programs would improve things. Among other reasons, because so much of military spending goes on things (high-tech, top-flight materials) rather than people.
•We have a secular government in this country, and that’s a good thing.
•Conservative bloggers freak out over Gay Pride Week.
•For sheer nuttiness: Limbaugh claims making the villain in the new Bat-movie “Bane” is obviously an anti-Romney slur.
I suspect this is an example of what Stephen Colbert calls “truthiness”—it doesn’t matter that it’s bullshit, it tells audience members who want to think there’s a vast conspiracy against the glorious Republican movement that yes, they’re right! It fits and confirms their preconceptions and that makes them happy.
Filed under Politics
