The Opinionated Bastard

When I was in my 20’s, I was a nice guy.

Which was terrible for my sex life, because all the women I met were into dangerous guys.

So I had to pretend to be dangerous.

It worked mind you, once I figured that out (and a couple of other things about women, like how to flirt), I was beating them off with a stick.

Now I’m in my late 30’s (38 on December 23rd).

Women are different now, they’re bored with dangerous. Now they like nice guys.

So I have to change my whole routine back to being a nice guy again. After lots of practice with my wife though, my flirting is pretty good though, so I’ve got that going for me.

Of course, I’m happily married, so this is all just to keep my wife on her toes. Plus women like it if other women are attracted to their guy. Some kind of “I’m the alpha female, you can’t have him” thing.

Now when my wife met me, she thought “Hmmm…he’s a nice guy, pretending to be dangerous. Wonder what that’s about.” She’s older then me, so she’d already gone through her “dangerous men are exciting” phase, and was now in the “dangerous men have boring, stupid problems” phase.

Every year, my wife and I have a huge fight over Christmas.

13 years, 12 fights. (We weren’t living together that first year, so we missed the fight. Thank god.)

Basically, she grew up in a household where Xmas started in October. They didn’t have a lot of money for gifts for each other, so the gift part was way reduced.

Instead, they spend months decorating the house, giving neighbors and friends tiny presents, wrapping presents. All kinds of stuff.

That’s not what we did at my house. At my house, we started Xmas in December after my Dad’s birthday December 1st. We didn’t do that much decorating in the house or outside other then putting up a Christmas tree.

Pretty much the fight is because I spend most of the holiday season thinking my wife is this insane Martha Stewart clone, while she spends most of the holiday thinking I’m an evil Scrooge.

At some point, it boils to a head, and she starts screaming at me about how it ruins Christmas for her to have to drag me through the entire process.

Which is, more or less, true.

On my side, I don’t mind doing more during the Holidays, I just never knew until this year how insane she was about the whole thing. October? Jeesh!

Anyways, we had it again this year. We’ll have to see what happens next year. After the fight we had me come up with a list of what Christmas stuff I thought was appropriate to do on my end. Maybe that will help.

My wife gets a Victoria’s Secret catalog about once/week. I look at them for fun sometimes. (I’m perfectly willing to admit I like looking at scantily clad women. Duh.) Overall though, I mostly just ignore them. They’re geared towards women, and selling to women, so they’re only mildly interesting.

Last month a catalog from Playboy showed up for Valentine’s Day. I couldn’t help myself I picked up the catalog and read every page. Then it struck me. The Victoria’s Secret catalog is geared towards women, and it’s filled with, let’s face it, skinny-ass stick figures. The message on every page of the Victoria’s Secret catalog is “spend $30 on this piece of lace, and you can look like this”.

The Playboy catalog is geared towards men. Its message is, “spend $10 on this piece of cotton, and your wife can look like this”. In fact, their catalog even says that!

The catalogs sound similar but the key is that the pictures are different. The women in Victoria’s Secret are skinny. The women in Playboy aren’t, rather the women in Playboy are well, Bodacious, or if you’re a traditionalist, voluptuous. So you can see what I mean, here are two images from their respective websites:

Victoria, the anorexia victim on the left, has no butt. The Playgirl, on the other hand, not only does she have a butt, but hers tells you to kiss it, which (blush) sounds kind of fun.

Now why am I blathering on about all this? Because it occurred to me that for all the things about unhealthy body images I hear from feminists, very little of that has to do with men. Men like looking at women, naked, scantily clad, fully clothed, whatever, but we don’t really like women who look like fashion models in real life. We like women who look healthy and fun. The woman on the left? She doesn’t look healthy to me, and she doesn’t look fun. The woman on the right? She looks healthy and fun.

Both scientists and art historians have noticed this as well. In the 17th century, this was considered the height of sexy:

Peter Paul Rubens, the Three Graces, 1639

Even though these women look like every woman I’ve ever slept with, they probably would no longer meet the modern standards of beauty. What’s changed? We have. In various studies by sociologists, when asked to choose the most beautiful images out of hundreds of photographs, both men and women chose the photos of the opposite sex they felt most reflected health. In other studies, when asked to choose between specific facial features (eyes, noses, chins, etc.), both men and women chose the facial features that were actually the most common: they chose the average nose, the average eye shape, the average chin.

Beauty, it seems, is being healthy and average looking. No great mystery really. Both men and women are looking for mates, right? So they want good genes, which ultimately means looking healthy and “average” looking. Since most of us don’t have all of the “average” facial features, our standard of beauty is the few members of us that managed to get all of those average features at the same time.

Applying this to the painting above, in the world of the 17th century even the wealthy didn’t always get enough to eat. Children often didn’t live to adulthood, and birth control was more difficult. So in that world the Rubenesqe women above would look healthy and fertile, and by that world’s standards, sexy. In fact, the clothing of that period would actually exaggerate a woman’s hips, because being healthy was associated with having wide hips because so many women would die in childbirth.

In the 21st century, children live longer so we aren’t forced by that to have so many of them. Women also no longer die in childbirth on a regular basis. The end result is that we associate health with being athletic. When it comes to measuring the opposite sex, while the pictures of our standards of beauty have changed, the underlying basis, good health and good genes has not. Which makes sense, because people haven’t changed that much between the 17th and 21st century.

In the present, when it comes to the same sex though, it seems we disagree. The women and mostly gay men who control the fashion industry have settled on a standard of female beauty that to my eye makes the women look diseased. For a long time, I figured it was just my particular taste in women. Judging by the catalog I got from Playboy though, it seems I’m not alone, that men in general agree with me: we like women with a little meat on their bones. Because ultimately, we like healthy women not anorexic women.

In fact, it’s really obvious when I think about it. The sexual characteristics that I most notice on women are the sexual characteristics that are different between men and women. Women have boobs (duh) but they also have hips! And curves! Wonderful curves! Women with boyish hips don’t seem as attractive to me, but if a woman were obviously healthy, I probably wouldn’t notice because different people have different body types and what’s healthy on one person is unhealthy on another. Healthy and Fun, that’s what I look for.

So if you’re a woman, and you want to see what men consider beauty, don’t buy Cosmo or Vogue, buy yourself a copy of Playboy. You’ll see lots of women with real hips, and real smiles. Healthy and Fun.

Don’t complain to me about the fashion industries beauty standard though. As a heterosexual male, that has nothing to do with me. I like hips. As far as the standard body image goes, to be honest, I don’t even like it when women wear high heels, because then I have to listen to them complain about their feet hurting when they could have been having fun dancing.

Healthy and Fun Yes! Anorexic with sore feet, No!

I’m a small-l libertarian, so mostly I’m in favor of legalizing things. Then I read this piece on samizdata.

A 25-year-old waitress who turned down a job providing “sexual services” at a brothel in Berlin faces possible cuts to her unemployment benefit under laws introduced this year.

Prostitution was legalised in Germany just over two years ago and brothel owners – who must pay tax and employee health insurance – were granted access to official databases of jobseekers.

The waitress, an unemployed information technology professional, had said that she was willing to work in a bar at night and had worked in a cafe.

She received a letter from the job centre telling her that an employer was interested in her “profile” and that she should ring them. Only on doing so did the woman, who has not been identified for legal reasons, realise that she was calling a brothel.

Under Germany’s welfare reforms, any woman under 55 who has been out of work for more than a year can be forced to take an available job – including in the sex industry – or lose her unemployment benefit. Last month German unemployment rose for the 11th consecutive month to 4.5 million, taking the number out of work to its highest since reunification in 1990.

So if we legalized prostitution, then people who turned down said jobs could lose their unemployment.

Pretty good example of why policy is hard and you have to think of the big picture.

Update: You think I would have learned by now not to trust an article from the Telegraph. Turns out the story isn’t true. Snopes as always has wonderful coverage.

While I think the people at P.M.S. Media are freaking nuts, I do think its cool that they exist. Here’s their website.

Have Kids? Go read this

Slacker Parents Unite!

Boy, those feminists can get bitchy.

Here’s my run ins:

1 2

So the Noise, the local art monthly I write a column for came out this week. My piece is here, I posted it on my blog 3 weeks ago. As I expected, it had two slams against me. Funny thing is, the second slam is in the form of a letter to the editor supposedly written by a independent person. Except it quotes almost word for word what Sylvia said to me at the editorial meeting a month ago.

You know, its funny, because what really happened is that I had three complaints about Sylvia:

1. She was a whiner.

2. Her writing was a boring rant no one would want to read.

3. It seemed to me that her piece confirmed the worst aspects of some feminists, the whole “we’re all victims of the patriarchy” nonsense, and then made comparisons I found offensive by drawing equivalency between genocide in some countries and wearing high heels in ours. I generally associate that sort of nonsense with lesbian feminists, as heterosexual feminists usually have a little more clue about men. Given that she also used the word queer, something most enlightened heteros won’t do, I assumed therefore that she was an intelligent lesbian instead of a clueless heterosexual.

That’s basically because I don’t disagree with most feminists, I just think the ones that blame all their problems on men are idiots. Men and women have different strengths and weaknesses, but not everything women struggle against is sexism.

Guess which one complaint Sylvia focused on to the exclusion of the others? The lesbian part of course. God forbid she actually improve her writing.

As an example, this month she had this 2000 word rant called Outdated Stereotypes of Feminism. Here’s an excerpt (bad punctuation and missing words are as published):

Feminists are Humorless

We tried and tried to come up with something funny respond to this one, but we just couldn’t think of anything because we…we’re feminists.

But, Seriously, folks!

Feminists would have all committed suicide by now if they didn’t have a sense of humor, for the reality of sexism is grim and serious, not funny.

That was the funny bit. The rest of the article was just as grim. Three women who know me read the part about me, read 2 sections, then moved on because it was too boring. Eventually, they got to my article, and complimented me on it.

Anyways, men and women have different strengths. Women are really good at networking, but that means that if you piss one feminist off, they tend to form a pity party to pick you apart. Hence the term feminist mafia. However, they picked the wrong fight this time. Ganging up on a single person who complained about a feminist being whiny is well, just silly. Ganging up on someone who has “The Opinionated Bastard” in his newspaper masthead for being opinionated is just stupid. Here’s what my masthead looks like.

Would you write a letter to the editor about someone who has this at the top of his column?

The other weird thing in the letter to the editor (first a fake interview, then a fake letter to the editor, geesh) was an offhand comment that PMS Media was doing their activities in no way to be self serving. It took me awhile to realize this, but that was supposed to be referring to me. Well, all Art is self serving, its all about the ego chicky-babes, otherwise no one would do Art. My main issue with these so called feminists is that all their art so far consists of “look at me, look how cool I am”. Do cool art, and people will know how cool you are. The letter to the editor also mentioned this terrible thing in Juarez. Which is funny, because if you go to the PMS Media website above, they’ll tell you all about how they traveled to Mexico to protest this horrible occurrence, but not one word or link about whatever the horrible thing was. I even emailed them and asked, but I never got an answer, so I still don’t know what the hell is going on with this terrible thing they’re supposedly trying to “raise consciousness” about.

It’s still weird how my situation parallels Estrich vs. Kinsley.

‘Ware the feminist mafia!

I don’t really consider a feminist worth listening to unless she’s read the following four books:

Games Mother Never Taught You

This book is the best book on corporate politics ever, and while its written by a feminist for women, its an invaluable guide to corporate politics that all men should read as well. I easily credit this book with probably about 25% of my current salary over the years, and about 50% of every raise I’ve ever gotten.

• If you think raises go to the person who does the best work and is therefore most valuable to the company, you’re wrong, get this book.
• If you don’t know the difference between a “staff” position and a “line” position, get this book.

Bottom line, is that the barriers to advancement for women are often not knowing the rules of the game more then they are actual sexism.

How To Win Friends And Influence People

This book is just a classic. Anyone who takes these principles to heart will succeed no matter what color or sex they are.

You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation Talking from 9 to 5 : Women and Men at Work

Men and Women often just don’t communicate, no matter how hard they try. These two books explain why, and I think its especially valuable where she talks about how that affects women in the work place. If you are a women, and you constantly say “I’m sorry” during a staff meeting, meaning “I’m sorry that happened”, your fellow workers are going to see you as weak and lacking confidence, even the other women. So you’re less likely to get promoted.

Sexual Personae : Art & Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson

Camille Paglia is controversial, but undeservedly so in my opinion. If you ask an art historian about sociology or politics, she’s going to tell you its all about art. In her case, since Camille has drawn some really interesting parallels between art and sex, she’s going to tell you its all about sex. That doesn’t mean she’s right, but its an interesting perspective.

In this case though, this book is a tour de force presentation of how there are two main themes in art: the Apollonian (which she associates with the masculine) and the Chthonian (which she associates with the feminine). Its the most interesting and thought provoking book on art I’ve ever read.

W.L. Gore Medical is based in Flagstaff, so they’ve given me interesting insight into how an organization run on more feminine principles might work.

It doesn’t.

In a traditional, more masculine enterprise, there would be a strict hierarchy.

At W.L. Gore everyone is an associate, so in theory, everyone is equal.

The reality is that there is very definitely a hierarchy at W.L. Gore, its just completely hidden so it takes a new employee about a year before they can become very effective if they have any large amount of responsibility so they need “buyin” from multiple people. It also means its very hard to push through any decisions there, because it requires too much consensus, so everyone has to be comfortable.

There’s a very dark side as well. Because there are no clear lines of authority at Gore, you can only be effective if everyone likes you. Now not only does that have nothing to do with how effective you are at your job, but say something happens in your personal life. Like you get divorced. Now man, woman, or beast, you’re going to be bitchy about your divorce for about a year.

The consequence of all this feminine touchy-feely stuff? You get laid off, because you’re grumpy, no matter how well you may be doing your work.

I’ve heard academia can be even worse…but they at least have the concept of tenure.

Then again, I don’t really associate any of this with the feminine. From what I’ve seen, feminine pecking orders can be pretty similar to masculine ones. Its that I’m constantly reading stuff from feminists who think that if women ruled the world, it would be this big happy place where people sit around singing Koom-By-Yah…

Not gonna happen.

via Volokh a quote from either Slate or Anne Applebaum:

Perhaps male columnists are just not interested in this issue because it doesn’t represent the sort of “hard news” they’re used to commenting on. More likely, they are terrified to opine on the debate because the inquiry is so fraught with the possibility of career-terminating levels of politically correct blowback — a la Larry Summers — that they deem it better to hold their tongues and wait for the storm to pass.

Ok, I’ll bite. While I’ve been willing to comment on my own run ins with issue, mostly, I find the whole issue boring because its just whining. Men really don’t find whining interesting because we don’t do the sort of “trouble talking” that women do.

As for why there are more male opinion columnists then women, there are some gender differences I think.

• Men are more egotistical, so they’re more interested in writing an opinion column or blogging in the first place.
• Men are more confrontational in general. In men’s conversations, there’s often a game of one-upmanship, so there’s definite precedent for disagreement in conversation. Women tend towards agreement in converstation. You’re much more likely to hear a man say “you’re full of shit and here’s why” then you are to hear a woman say that.
• Ever notice that blogs written by women have more details about their lives and tends more towards journals then opinion essays?

This is covered quite well in this book I recommended previously:

You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation

It’s inevitable for the wars of the 21st Century.

Despite ernie, my socialist comment troll's opinion, I am not a Repulican Theocrat. So this story pisses me off.

I think that we should have both women and queens in the military.

( Yes, I know the queens comment is offensive. I never said I was nice, just tolerant.)

Saudi Woman Turns 25

Well, the most romantic movie ever is now out on DVD. Naturally, I’m talking about the movie Mr. and Mrs. Smith. You’re not sure that a movie about two assassins who find out five or six years into their marriage that their spouse is also an assassin is romantic? Because they spend about half the movie trying to kill each other? Because after trying to shoot each other, blow each other up, and drop elevators on one another they end up in a martial arts/gun battle which culminates in their house blowing up?

I don’t see why you should hold that against the movie.

My previous “most romantic movie ever” was a tie between two John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara movies: The Quiet Man and McLintock. In The Quiet Man, right after getting married John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara have this huge fight. This results in her telling him that she’ll “clean the house, and keep the land”, but that she won’t have sex with him until he beats up her brother. The climatic finish of the movie begins with him dragging her 5 miles on foot, “just a good stretch of the legs”, back to her brother’s house after she tries to leave him. John Wayne throws her at her brother’s feet and tells the brother that if he doesn’t cough up the dowry, he can have his sister back.

The brother coughs up the dowry, and a sucker punch. Just when you think a fist fight is about to break out, the fist fight you’ve been waiting for the whole movie, Maureen O’Hara interrupts to tell John Wayne that “supper will be waitin’ for ya” and walks off as proud as can be. Later, she welcomes both husband and brother home for supper when they come in drunk as well, Irishmen who’ve just had a fist fight.

They don’t make movies like that any more.

In McLintock, Maureen O’Hara and John Wayne bicker through the entire movie plus he drinks a lot. In that climatic finish, he chases her through the entire town while everyone looks on and cheers. When he catches her, he gives her a good spanking, with a rather scary looking shovel provided by her daughter and prospective son-in-law.

They don’t make movies like that either.

In case you haven’t guessed, not only am I part Irish, but I’m married to a woman who’s even more Irish then I am. I’ve made a careful study of all those movies that other people find “romantic” and I’ve discovered two things:

One, they’re right about 9 1/2 Weeks. Though come to think of it, there’s spanking in that movie too. Quite a bit actually. Hmmm…. And I wouldn’t call it romantic, per se. Rather, watching it with someone you love is romantic, but the movie isn’t really romantic, they break up at the end. (I know, half of you have never gotten all the way through to the end of the movie when you’ve watched it together. Well, sorry to burst your bubble but that’s what happens.)

Two, the rest of you must be total pansies. Or none of you are Irish, which is the same thing really.

I don’t think its just the Irish who think that fighting is part of love, romance and marriage. I mean what idiot in Hollywood came up with this idea that love and romance is all sweetness and light? That’s got to be the biggest load of well-meaning-but-ultimately-stupid-nonsense I’ve ever heard. I have news for you all: If you agree with your loved one 100% of the time, you’re with the wrong person; you married yourself.

I really think Hollywood is doing our generation a disservice by portraying all married couples as never fighting. Think back on every sitcom or movie you’ve seen in the last 20 years. Did any of those people ever have one of those top-of-your-lungs, break-the-dishes, scare-the-pets, duck-because-you-have-to kind of fights that you’ve had with your loved one? No, right?

I’ve had several friends of mine tell me that they were surprised to find out that me and my wife fought. Well of course we fight. We’re married. Fights and power struggles are as much a part of being married as rings.

Some people have told me that they don’t like these movies because they feel John Wayne “dominates” Maureen O’Hara. Now granted, these movies seem to portray what we’ve come to call a “traditional” relationship where the man is supposed to be the “head of the household”, and this is supposedly demeaning to women. Though if you think that Maureen O’Hara was ever dominated by John Wayne in a movie, you must have gone to the bathroom during the good parts.

Besides, my wife tells me she and I have a traditional relationship, and if you think that means I’m charge, well, you’re an idiot. I may be the “head” of the household, but she’s definitely the “heart”, and what that really means is that I’m in charge of certain things, things I happen to be good at, and she’s in charge of other things, things she’s good at. It’s really all about partnership, and covering your partner’s weaknesses with your strengths. All the people I know in “traditional relationships” have divided up responsibilities that way; and the division between “head” and “heart” is different for each of them. To quote my favorite feminist Camile Paglia: “sex is complicated”. The people who talk the most about “modern” vs. “traditional” relationships all seem to be single. All the married people I know don’t care, they just wish it was the other persons job to do the dishes.

McLintock is romantic because even though these two people are having a bad moment in their marriage, you also see how much they’ve accomplished as a couple. As John Wayne puts it: “All that growin’ together”. You know that the marriage of two people who have been through as much as they have will survive. The Quiet Man isn’t really about the fist fight, its about two people from very different cultures learning to communicate their needs. Mr. and Mrs. Smith is really about being honest with your spouse and about working together as a couple on the challenges of life. Granted most of us don’t have to fight off 50 ninjas, but think of them as 50 bill collectors and I think it applies to everyone. What makes these movies romantic to my way of thinking is that they are all about couples who have problems, and overcome them. That’s true romance. Or at least Irish Romance.

So this Valentine’s Day, think back on a few fights you’ve had with your loved one, and smile.