The Lost Art of Self-Preservation (for Women)

Happy New Year

noreply@blogger.com (grerp) — Wed, 02 Jan 2013 15:21:00 +0000

I've had some requests from readers who have missed this blog, so I'm making it available for the now. I can't promise I will keep it up forever. I haven't deleted anything, and there wasn't a "preferred reader" list while it was blocked. Google has certain options for limiting readership, and I just took the easiest one that didn't jettison everything I'd written.

2012 wasn't a great year for me, and I'm glad to see it gone. But we are still alive, in good health, and together, and we have enough to eat and a warm, safe place to sleep. I have a new part-time job too, one I can do at home that should allow me to keep up with the responsibilities of my family. I took down the blog partly because I was concerned I would not be able to find a job in my field because of the opinions I expressed within, and since that is no longer really an issue, I'm reinstating it (for now).

I hope all of you who have read the blog and stayed with me are doing well. I have missed your voices.

God bless.

Anyone want to join me in a (probably) pointless exercise of dissent?

noreply@blogger.com (grerp) — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 20:19:00 +0000

I commented on Katha Pollitt's blog piece, "The 'New York Times' Misses the Mark on Inequality, Marriage," itself a comment on - yes - The New York Times's piece "Two Classes, Divided by 'I do'" which compared the lifestyles of two women who come from the same Midwestern, middle class background but whose lives diverged when they chose to have children in marriage and out of marriage.

Pollitt's position is that Jessica Schairer, mother of three, is a victim of a society that will not provide better solutions for her as a single mother. I left a comment there. It was almost immediately scrubbed. SOBL1 also posted (before me, I believe). Also scrubbed. Fortunately, I had copied my response, and so I reposted. I think they've left it up because several posters there have "educated me" as to the error of my ways and cold hearted villainy with their lengthy comments. However, they took down SOBL1's second response, backing up a comment I made.

So, would anyone like to join me in this fun little effort to, at the very least, annoy some comments moderator who may or may not be Katha Pollitt herself? Comment here.

Checking in and thoughts on mammograms and preventative health

noreply@blogger.com (grerp) — Sun, 15 Jul 2012 03:37:00 +0000

I've been lurking mostly around the web, although I'm still on twitter. For the last month I've been keeping busy with my son, who is on summer vacation, and dealing with the anxiety that comes from having an "iffy" mammogram, then a "suspicious" mammogram, and finally a biopsy. I owe at least one person an email; I've been more scattered, I'll admit it - I'm sorry.

I would like to make my experience of the last month a Piece of Advice, but I'm still trying to sort it all out. For my women readers, I'll say this: there is clearly a boatload of money in mammography and breast health. Women are told to take preventative measures with their health, including regular breast checks and pap smears. I've always been one for preventative measures - they are all about self-preservation, after all. But a system that tells patients they have to have routine tests and then from the results of the tests that cancer is a small possibility, knowable only if a large amount of money is spent on further tests - that would seem to be a system with built-in opportunity for fraud and advantage taking.

It turns out I don't have cancer, and I am very, very relieved and grateful. But if I hadn't had that first mammogram, I wouldn't have gone through the emotional roller coaster of the last month, and I'm not sure it's worth the couple grand this is probably going to cost me out of pocket for deductible to know that I have tiny benign calcifications in my left breast. I won't even know the true cost until they bill me because I couldn't get anyone to tell me how much it would be.

I received good care during my procedures, but I also got a couple of sales pitches for further cancer treatment services that made me realize that medicine truly is a business, and not simple ministration, now. Additionally, plenty of tests are run to limit the potential for a medical lawsuit - on your dime, if you are willing. In my case I think an equally valid choice would have been to wait another six month and monitor with further mammograms. However, both my mother and my mother-in-law lost their mothers to early cancer, so that approach was strongly discouraged on all fronts - family and medical.

All I have to say is watch yourself, research your options, and make your choices carefully.

Left a comment at Philly Mag

noreply@blogger.com (grerp) — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 15:07:00 +0000

I'm posting it here in case it accidentally "gets lost" over there. It's in response to Sandy Hingston's piece "Parents, Society to Blame for Guys Falling Behind" which is itself in response to her previous piece diplomatically titled "The Sorry Lives and Confusing Times of Today's Young Men" for which she got a significant negative response from...wait for it...young men. Here's my comment:

It's all about incentives and disincentives. Yes, the job market is brutal right now for young people, but it's not the economy that is halting marriage. Young men still got married in the Depression. Young men married during every war we've ever had. Technology throws a monkey wrench into things, but young men aren't eschewing marriage because of porn or video games. Having a kind, supportive, caring, nurturing, loyal, attractive living partner is going to be preferable to porn any day for the vast majority of men. But the system isn't producing kind, caring, nurturing, loyal, attractive women who want to be wives and mothers. It's set up to create crass, overweight, "empowered," mannish women who don't particularly like children or domesticity and who think sex is a contact sport and want to play until their fertility window is slamming shut.

This is not the kind of woman men get excited about committing to.

Furthermore, the system currently allows for a sort of children&home dream fulfillment without men via welfare/section8/WIC/food stamps/school lunches/medicaid. This version is decidedly inferior to traditional home and hearth, but it does allow women to have and raise children without men.

Many women opt for this version without even making a go of the other which makes a significant portion of the young female population single mothers. Here's another thing about men: they don't particularly want to raise other men's children either.

Additionally, the system is set up - not accidentally - to take both a man's money and his access to his children if his wife or girlfriend decides she wants out. And she doesn't have to have a good reason either. She's tired of him? He can say good-bye to his future. The police and courts will work hard to separate him from both his family and his money. Two generations of men have now grown up seeing their fathers fully shorn after divorce. That's a bit of a disincentive for settling down.

Want men to want to get married again? Get rid of sexist Police State laws like VAWA, make divorce harder to get, and give fathers default custody upon divorce. That right there will make divorce rates plummet because while plenty of women don't seem to mind chucking their husbands, they do not want to lose access to their children.

Women also have to realize that what men find attractive is not what women find attractive. Men are not sexually aroused by advanced degrees in liberal arts subjects, and they don't care if you crashed through the glass ceiling at work. They want to be around pleasant women who like men and will treat them with respect.

Hingston ended her piece with this:

I want them to know: Now that I better understand their plight, I don’t blame them for it. And I’m sorry, along with all the other parents I know, for our own contributions to the mess.

On its surface this sounds okay, almost humble, except that it offers no solutions, nor does it take any real accountability. I'm sure Hingston doesn't really think she failed in her parenting. Previous editorials would indicate that she feels her generation, the Boomers, solved all of America's problems:

We did, you know. We took the stark button-down black-and-white world we were born into and Kodachromed it, tie-dyed it, made it a rainbow of races and genders and candy-colored Spandex bike shorts. You think our force lay in numbers, but you’re wrong. It lay in the vision we had. You can’t comprehend that, because you’re [Gen X] so low-key, so small-scale, so It’s about intimacy. No. It’s not. Thomas Jefferson had it right: It’s about happiness. If you’ve ever had an honest conversation with your mom or dad, you have us to thank for it. If you get time off from work to take care of a new baby or a sick relative, you’re welcome for that. Getting a tax rebate for making your house more energy-efficient? Bike lanes, pocket parks, hate-crime laws, legalized pot, death-penalty moratoriums, organic food, space telescopes, genome-decoding — don’t you see what we were doing? We were taking the American dream to the max, pushing to its limits the pursuit of freaking happiness.

Hingston has made it plain before that it's not just the men of Gen Y who are useless, although men are inferior to women and generally superfluous. So I'm not falling for it.

P.S. I'd trade the bike lanes in a heartbeat for the 1965 divorce rate (10%). That Kodachromed world the Silents and Boomers created changed the childhoods of Gen X and Y dramatically for the worse.

Piece of Advice #101: Pencil "Have kids" into your life schedule

noreply@blogger.com (grerp) — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 05:34:00 +0000

[I had so much positive feedback, including a number of truly touching comments, on my last post that I thought I'd continue posting Pieces of Advice when and if I truly had something of substance to say. Again, thank you, dear readers, for your kind comments. I feel humbled to think that I've actually been of real help to some of you.]

Recently in the news there has been a ~~hysterical~~ emotional outpouring of support for Planned Parenthood, that lofty, lefty, government-subsidized purveyor of baby death, and some have even suggested that free birth control is a core American value. Which is a bit odd, given that the United States has a nonexistent population problem. At the time of the 2010 census there were 87.4 people per square mile, and we grow in numbers only via immigration. All of the screeching over nothing hints at a strange underlying agenda: keeping women from having children. (And not just too many children, but any children at all.) Again, this is odd, given that women were made to have children - biologically, it's kind of the point of women - and historically they've wanted to have them; were, in fact, proud of having and raising them. But as so much of modern life is illogical and counter to nature, we'll just let that conundrum sit there for now.

Recently I watched three movies. The first was The Pregnancy Pact, a film based on the events surrounding an explosion of pregnancies in a Gloucester, Massachusetts high school. In this movie Thora Birch plays a late-twenties single woman who has a video blog devoted to teen issues. She hears about what is happening at Gloucester, her old high school, and decides to travel there to interview the girls and the community about what is going on and why so many girls are getting pregnant. The film makes a vague stab at being neutral about abstinence programs and school-dispensed birth control, but its whole point is to illustrate 1) that getting pregnant in high school can ruin your life and 2) that motherhood is a lesser choice than, say, having an exciting video blog career. The lead pregnant teen makes a point of saying explicitly that she doesn't want a career, that she doesn't want to go to college, that she wants to get married and have children and stay in her home town, and that that's what will make her happy. And the Thora Birch character looks incredulous and sputters out a number of better alternatives to marriage and motherhood including "start a rock band" and "plant trees."

The second movie was He's Just Not That Into You, based on the book of the same title which offered women key advice about how to tell if a guy is...not into you. The movie has an ensemble cast composed of mostly childless actresses in their thirties and forties playing childless women with cube farm jobs. None of them are happy. One of them, played by Jennifer Aniston, has a boyfriend of seven years and wants to get married. She offers him an ultimatum of marriage or breaking up, and they break up. Jennifer Connelly's character is married to a man of significantly higher SMV (Bradley Cooper). She kind of wants to try to get pregnant. He cheats on her with Scarlett Johanssen. The main character, Gigi, played by Ginnifer Goodwin, keeps getting the runaround from men until Justin Long takes her under his wing and tells her what's what. Astoundingly, after giving her really solid advice and exhibiting no attraction to her whatsoever, he does a full 180 when she scolds him for never committing, tells her, "You're my exception," and renounces his poon hound lifestyle. The fact that none of these women - NONE of them - has children and most of them aren't married is not remarked upon. It doesn't seem worth mentioning.

The same is true in Bridesmaids. Kristen Wiig was born in 1973, but has never been married, doesn't have kids, has failed in her career and now works a dead-end job, and lives with weirdos (and then her mother). This movie was lauded as "powerfully authentic" and "refreshing." The women in it are awful - crass, stupid, selfish, self-involved, catty, promiscuous, physically gross, and highly competitive. Only one of them has children, and she hates them.

When I'd finished watching them, I couldn't help juxtaposing The Pregnancy Pact with Bridesmaids and He's Just Not That Into You in my head. The message of the first was that fifteen is too young to have a baby, and at least one message of the second and third seemed to be..that children are superfluous to women's lives? None of these women has children, and it's not even commented on.

Recently there was an article in the Daily Mail about where all the girls who had been in Kate Middleton’s Brownie troop were now. Of the twenty-four girls, now all women in their late twenties or early thirties, eight (8) are now married (1 separated), four (4) of those with children. Additionally there are two (2) unwed mothers, and four (4) engaged women (including one of those unwed mothers who is “saving to get married”). This means only a quarter of these middle or lower-middle class, at least somewhat educated women have produced children, and only half of them are even close to providing the kind of suitable environment for children their great-grandmothers slid into by default. And all of them, including the future queen, are past the age of easy fecundity. The rest of them have exciting careers in HR, office management, the postal service, and dental hygiene.

I've touched on this before, but the fact is that there is a limited window to a woman's fertility. I know that the media says that singleness is great and that not all women want to be mothers, and I've heard a number of people say that they love having all their time to themselves and they can travel all they want and wallow in their Netflix queue and sleep in on Saturday mornings. This may be true, but there are also quite a lot of women my age trying to squeeze out a baby at the last moment, desperate to be mothers before it's too late.
And who do all those childless people think will take care of them when they are old? There aren't going to be pensions, and I'm not holding my breath for Social Security either. The money is running out, and the youth have not been trained to share. People only give sacrificially to those that they know personally and love.

Children are a lot of work and can be a lot of worry, but they are a great blessing. A society that sees children as a curse or an encumbrance to be avoided at all costs is very sick. People are meant to have families, to be a part of families. Look past the Cosmo propaganda and pencil having children into your life calendar. You may need to erase some of space set aside for partying, getting another degree, and traveling but those, while enjoyable, are of limited life value. Look at the female characters in Bridesmaids or He's Just Not That Into You. They were written by women screenwriters for women audiences, and not one of them seems happy.

(It goes without saying that the above will require looking for a suitable husband sooner rather than later. Don't sign up for single motherhood.)

Piece of Advice #100: Don't rationalize bad mothering

noreply@blogger.com (grerp) — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 04:18:00 +0000

Redbook offers its modern readership the classily titled piece,"WTF" Working Mom Moments! in which Paula Szuchman and Kate Ashford advise working mothers to forget about the guilt even when committing rather egregious neglect. Because nothing - really, nothing - is more important than the paid work/personal satisfaction combo feminists have been touting to women for forty years.

An excerpt:

A few weeks back, I dropped my daughter, Ida, off with a neighbor and rushed to work. This is the sum total of what I know about the woman I entrusted with my 18-month-old's life: Her name is Lisa, she lives on my block, and she has two kids. I didn't — still don't — know her last name, and I forgot to take her phone number with me to the office. I had chatted with her a few times in passing, on my way to our neighborhood park, and she'd nicely offered to babysit. So when my nanny called in sick at the last minute, I took her up on it.

During my commute to work that day, I couldn't believe I had left my kid with a stranger. If I'd stayed home, would the office have come to a standstill? No. Would I have been fired on the spot for taking a day off? Unlikely. But in the panic of that morning, all I could think about was the giant to-do list waiting at my desk, the inconvenience I'd cause my boss, and, most importantly, the shame of failing to manage my personal life in a way that didn't interfere with my job.

It's as if the day I became a mother I'd made some tacit agreement to never let my new, non-paying job interfere with the one that gives me a salary. How hopeful I was — and how very wrong. I had no idea that life with kids would be so messy and unpredictable, so marked by those WTF moments when the urge to be a perfect employee and the urge to be a perfect mom rush at each other in a game of chicken. Inevitably, one of them goes screaming off the track.

Most of the time, it's only a temporary derailment. Your boss forgives you and your kid forgives you. What's tougher is forgiving yourself.

A sample situation in which I, grerp, would consider giving a stranger complete and total access to my son without getting her name and contact information: The world as we know it collapses, there is violence in the streets, order breaks down, and police go door to door rounding up people of my racial/religious/socioeconomic group to be taken to an unknown location for indefinite detention.

That's about it. No hyperbole. The nanny-calling-in-sick scenario doesn't even come close to making this action responsible or acceptable.

I get that women work. I understand that with the terrible economy and the breakdown of the family, women often have to work. I also understand that child care is expensive and often inconvenient and that parents frequently have to take what they can get and punt when things come up. My family tree is filled with women who worked when their children were young. Both my grandfathers were seriously disabled for periods of time, and my grandmothers stepped up to the plate. My mother worked and worked outside of the home after I was 10. This is not a working mothers vs. stay-at-home mothers rant. This is a rant about putting first what should always be put first - your child's safety.

The above woman didn't have to leave her daughter with a stranger. She chose to. She didn't want to miss work. She didn't want people to know that she doesn't have everything in her life under control. And she probably didn't really want to stay home with Ida that day. So she chucked her daughter into the arms of a women she didn't anything about and punched in. And, having done so, she doesn't want to feel guilty about it. So she writes the above, "Who's with me?" manifesto. And women cheer her on because, well, we've all been there, haven't we?

What feminists do not acknowledge (but do know) about the work/motherhood dilemma is that it's not really much of a dilemma. If you screw up at work, you will be fired. To be fired from motherhood, you have to fail spectacularly and repeatedly, and this failure will have to be noticed and documented by teachers, social workers, police officers, and judges. Therefore, work will always come first because the pushback for failure will be harder and more immediate from a boss. To a child, "normal" will be what Mommy creates for her, even if that's neglect, abuse, chronic selfishness or the less malign flakiness.

What irritates me most about these sorts of articles is the idea that women must jump on the 7-7 treadmill for the betterment of the child, for the fulfillment of the mother. The majority of women out there working aren't doing so because they love it or because it's making their lives richer. They're doing it because they need the money to pay for food and rent. Their jobs aren't glamorous and never will be. They're trapped because of the economy, because of divorce or single motherhood, or because of outstanding student loans. And there is no "work/life" balance. There is only work and then whatever you can get done after work - the same grind people had before the period of the mid-twentieth century American prosperity. Only now Grandma's not living upstairs and can't take care of Baby while Mommy twists together silk flowers or does piecework, so Baby has to be schlepped to an expensive daycare. And children get parked in front of a TV or a game center and stay up all night and eat fast food and gain weight and lose both their ability to pay attention and their ability to interact with real people.

But it's all right in the end because "we become far happier once we accept that most days call for tough decisions." Or something.

Piece of Advice #97: Look farther into the future

noreply@blogger.com (grerp) — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 02:40:00 +0000

So I read the Kate Bolick article in The Atlantic that both Dalrock and Susan Walsh have commented on in the past few days, and in my mind I've been juxtaposing it with the posts found over at We Are the 99 Percent.

The thrust of Bolick's piece is that, yes, marriage is dying, but that this is not necessarily bad news for women because serial monogamy and other alternatives to marriage can be just as fulfilling, if not more so. Bolick says that she doesn't regret, at 28, throwing away a relationship that could have been permanent for reasons she is still unable to entirely define, even though no equally enjoyable or promising relationship materialized for her later. (Which makes her quite different in prospective from Lori Gottlieb, also of The Atlantic, whose Marry Him thesis is, more or less, "Any port in a storm," - storm being defined as, "in your mid- to late thirties.")

Bolick tells us that she isn't lonely, that her life is rich and fulfilling and full of friends who support her and offer her their plush digs in which to crash. She doesn't know if she wants children, and the men available to her now are unpalatable. Under those conditions who needs a husband?

The problem with this whole thesis is that while being permanently single may be a fulfilling and rich way for women like Bolick to lead their lives, it doesn't work as well for women who are 1) dumber, 2) poorer, 3) less intrepid/independent or 4) not possessed of generous friends of significant means. And it works really badly for women who want to raise healthy, well adjusted, non-poverty stricken children. The fact is, most women aren't very much like Bolick at all - which is why most women want to get married, because subconsciously they know, despite all the feminist propaganda that portrays marriage as a one-way trap to stifling, abused servitude, that marriage is a good deal for women. Women are smaller, weaker, more risk averse, more comfort seeking, and are rarely the kind of trail-blazing, money-making geniuses who can sit alone atop a heap of money and adulation. Almost all of them will eventually want babies too which will make them physically, emotionally, and financially more vulnerable than women like Bolick.

One of the themes that emerges from the We Are the 99 Percent posts is fear/anxiety. Over and over the posters, the majority of which are women, say they are scared. They don't know what is going to happen. They fear for the future if the government doesn't swoop in with the jobs, the debt forgiveness, and the free healthcare. The fact is that women are already the biggest users of the social safety net in terms of welfare, food stamps, WIC, subsidized housing, childcare vouchers, etc. Since they are largely covered for at least the basics of food and housing, what they are essentially demanding, then, is the eradication of risk. All risk.

While the economic situation is very complex, the timing of this tremendous outpouring of fear and despair is not coincidental. We are now at least three generations deep into the destruction of the traditional family. Boomer women came from intact families many of which would provide backup if and when they crashed and burned in their youth. Gen X women had a more fractured family landscape, but previous recessions were not as dire and grandparents often pitched in. Millenials, on the other hand, may come from a family tree with hardly an intact branch. Their Boomer parents can't afford to aid them because they need their own help. Forty percent of Boomer women are single and hardly any of them are adequately prepared for retirement.

I've heard many women say that they don't need men, that they are too much work and that these women value their time, space, and freedom. And it's true that childless women in their middle years may not need husbands. They are still working and most have not had health complications. But with age comes vulnerability. Women of yesteryear knew they could depend on their husbands and children to help them as they aged, if they had done their duty to their families. Who is going to do that for a single woman? A nephew? A good friend? I remember visiting my Great Aunt Lola when she was dying of cancer twenty years ago. Her husband of fifty years, a man I'd known as a rather absent-minded professor, obsessed with books and rather indifferent to the human condition either abstract or practical, tenderly doted on her as she lay on a cot in their small sitting room. Day after day he cared for her as she had cared for him throughout their lives. And when she died and my Uncle Ed became senile and frail, their oldest daughter came and took him into her house and cared for him until he died years later.

Who is going to tenderly care for the wave of single women entering into old age? Or the middle-aged ones who have compromised their health early with unhealthy habits and obesity? Not their husbands. Not their children.

So many women I've know stubbornly refuse to look beyond tomorrow, but life is long and, often, hard. I read this on Facebook the other day:

Boys play house...Men build homes!!! Boys shack up...Men get married!!! Boys make babies...Men raise children!!! A boy won't raise his own children, a man will raise his and someone else's!!! Boys invent excuses for failure...Men produce strategies for success!!! Boys look for somebody to take care of them...Men look for someone to take care of!!! Boys seek popularity...Men demand respect and know how to give it..BOYS DO WHAT THEY WANT, MEN DO WHAT THEY CAN & MORE!

The woman who posted it has three children from two different men. She is stuck in a mediocre paying, dead-end job. She divorced her first husband because marriage wasn't fun, then shacked up with a series of less and less stable men until she threw the last mooching bum out a year or so ago. She is 40. Now she is seriously looking for Mr. Right and says she won't settle for anything less because she's worth it. The handwriting on her wall was written nearly a decade ago when she had her second and then third illegitimate child: life-long poverty. Her parents have helped her out over and over. She never pays taxes, but always gets a big return in April because of her head of household status. She wants a bailout, but fails to recognize that she's been perpetually bailed out for the decisions she deliberately made her whole life. She will not be in a position to help her own children, and they will need help. Oh yes, they will.

This woman is far more representative of most women than Bolick will ever be. Read the above paragraph again. Does it sound like she thinks she's better off on her own? No.

There are, of course, alternative ways for people to care for each other outside of the traditional family, as Bolick mentions when she talks about the Begijnhof, a former Dutch religious collective. However, these types of communities generally constrict an individual's freedom with rules they make for the peace and betterment of the community and require self-sacrifice as well as long-term service to others. You can't spend your life having adventures and spending all your time and money on yourself and then show up sick and needy on the doorstep of some commune at age 65 and expect them to take you in.

It's interesting the romantic way Bolick describes this women-made "nest." For her, when women make the rules, the idea of “If you want to live here, you have to adjust, and you have to be creative,” isn't stifling or repressed, it's liberating. Hmmmm.

Wall Street didn't do this to you

noreply@blogger.com (grerp) — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 02:47:00 +0000

For the record, I think Wall Street is corrupt and has its tentacles around every aspect of contemporary America, and I think if there was any justice in the world, the banksters and their dirty, debt-baiting, money-sucking empires would have imploded without dragging all of the world down into the hole with them. And the student loan scam is a national crime scene, one with the government's fingerprints all over it too.

However, my dear young women, Wall Street didn't do this to you:

or to you:

Your own poor choices did that to you. In America birth control is legal and often free and no woman is forced to have sex with irresponsible men, and yet women often do have sex with violent, unstable, or irresponsible men, bring their children into the world and then expect society to mop up after all of this terrible decision making. [Exhibit A: Rodrick Dantzler, a man from my neighborhood who killed seven (7) people, mostly women and children this summer after his wife kicked him out. It was revealed in the news today that he had fathered a child not only with this woman, but with three other women, not including the other girlfriend he killed or the female friend wounded in the police shootout.]

Look at the guy - sex on a stick, right? No sane woman would let a long history of violent behavior, incarceration, and mental illness keep her from having a piece o' that, right? Wait, no. How can that be right? But apparently ole Rodrick was beating them off with a baseball bat, yeah.

And, as to why, as queried above, anyone should have to choose between food and rent - it's because these things cost money to produce, build, or maintain, and no one owes them to you just because you exist and want them. I agree that it's horrific that your three-year-old son should have to live in dire poverty, but who created that situation? One hint: not Wall Street.

To the pregnant woman with the health compromised baby: consider adoption. I'm serious. It's not going to get any easier or better for you. At this point, adoption is the best option for your long-term future and your baby's.

The middle class stumbles...after shooting itself in the foot

noreply@blogger.com (grerp) — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 03:23:00 +0000

As per usual, I've been reading a lot of financial and economic news, and right now there is a constant refrain of "the end of the middle class in America" in the news. The middle class has, indeed, taken a beating. Wages have stagnated, jobs have been outsourced. The Federal Reserve has been playing with the money supply, banks, let off their leashes, preyed on everyone they could catch, and the resulting boom/bust cycles made A LOT of money disappear. However, during the past 30 or so years when all of this was coming to a slow head, the middle class was doing a hatchet job on its economic future by participating or condoning the destruction of the traditional family and all the security it once afforded.

I'm not reading anything in the media about how divorce and illegitimacy are direct contributors to the spiking of the poverty rate - in particular, the child poverty rate.

Two of my old classmates are currently getting divorced. Amy* lost primary custody of her children in her divorce as her ex was a stay-at-home father [I have to say, this sounds off to me; how is this even possible? Her kids are school-age.]. She gets them a few hours one weekday night and every other weekend. She spaced on a critical job requirement and lost her teaching job; in this economy, it's almost outside the realm of the possible that she will find another. I don't know her financial details, but the divorce had to be costly, and she has a mortgage. She does have a new boyfriend. A year from now she will be either living with him or with her parents and declaring bankruptcy, if she hasn't already. The math supports no other conclusion.

Michelle's* husband came home one day and told her, "I don't love you anymore, and I think I want a divorce." He's never given her - or anyone else - a reason for why he wants this, he just does. Together, they were just barely holding their heads above water. They had a mortgage on a house that - like many, many houses in Michigan - is now underwater. Make that a mortgage and a second mortgage. They each had some credit card debt. She got downsized at work right before their second baby was born, and now only works a few hours a week. After the lawyers get paid, they will be so far below water that the surface light will not be visible. She has moved their two children into her parents' house, and he's looking for a roommate.

Michelle has two coworkers, sisters whom I also knew once upon a time. The first is divorced, the second is getting divorced. Her husband is bipolar and self-medicates with booze. She has a couple of kids and was living with her parents, but now has moved in with her sister. Her employment outlook is shaky; it looks like she's going to lose her job.

All of these women came from the exact same family background as I did: intact families with middle class incomes and college educations. All of them grew up in safe neighborhoods, went to good schools, attended church. And all of them are now toast financially. Not just for now, for at least a decade into the future, probably decades. Not because their jobs were outsourced or because they bet too much on derivatives or had a major medical event. Because of divorce. It is so depressing. And their kids won't even have the stability - financially, psychologically, or even possibly physically - that they had even.

When Amy posted on Facebook about how hard her divorce was, a laundry list of women I knew in high school posted things like, "It's hard now, but you'll work through the pain!" And, "You will make it; you're a strong woman." And, "God will walk you through this. Praying for you!!!" I had no idea so many people I'd graduated with were already divorced.

People think divorce is something you get through, but really it's very hard for women to recover from divorce. Remarriage is much less likely for them than their first marriage was, and they lose any/all of the equity they built in their twenties and thirties, starting over with a large debt hangover, expensive dependents, and a reduced ability to make money due to their family responsibilities. They can save less for retirement, one they will face alone, because it takes so much time to recover from the divorce.

And that's just divorce. Never married motherhood is a whole different scenario, bleak from the very outset financially for all but the richest moms. An old coworker of mine, Jenny*, has three children, by two different fathers (actually three of my old coworkers have children by two different fathers). The last guy mooched off her for the better part of a decade before she kicked him out. Her parents have bailed her out time and again. She's stuck making less than $30K, paying a mortgage on a old house that's underwater. Interestingly enough, her standards for Mr. Right have not lowered at all. She's even more exacting now about what she wants. Jenny's parents are, again, still together and financially secure enough, even now, to infuse her with cash every so often.

The upcoming waves of women who age into retirement age and extreme economic vulnerability are going to be catastrophic for America. So far we have papered over some of the damage with increased social spending, but that is not going to be possible in future. The first wave of unprepared Boomer divorcees is hitting now, and there are plenty of stories about women who "did everything right" - got college degrees (and more college degrees), got decent jobs, got downsized and now live in friends' attics all over the nation. What they have in common - no husbands - is never mentioned. Boomer women, at least, had good jobs once. Millenials may never have those kinds of jobs.

At a family reunion this summer I found myself talking to an aunt about her childhood. She grew up working class. Her father worked in a factory, did some kind of testing around huge chemical vats. He carpooled with four other men an hour each way to work. He barely made a wage able to support a wife and three children. Until my aunt was a sophomore in high school she lived in a basement. He built their house on his off hours with materials he could only afford to buy piecemeal. He dug the foundation first and they lived in that. When it rained, it got wet and they had to bail it out with buckets. They had a huge garden and canned everything they could. He hunted, and his wife canned the venison. Things were very, very close to the bone, but by the time she was in high school, the upstairs was finished and they moved into a proper house. He retired in his early sixties without a pension and promptly died of cancer, probably caused by his constant exposure to toxic chemicals. His widow worked part time at the dime store until her death some twenty years later, and left $50K to her children as an inheritance.

What struck me about this story was that it happened so close to when I was born, and yet it resembled my childhood not at all. My aunt is only about twenty-seven years older than I am, and grew up in the same community as my father. We Americans born after the temporary financial boom of the mid-twentieth century forget that this is the way people used to live, used to expect to live: a life full of hard, physical work and poverty pressing in on all sides. The difference is that my aunt's mother knew how to survive that and even save money, and we have all but lost the ability to be that thrifty or the willingness to learn.

We are going to have to learn it again, though, because we squandered the good times, and leaner days are ahead. If you are thinking of divorce, please read the above again. If your situation is not completely untenable, do yourself a favor and stay married.

*Name changed

Piece of Advice #96: Get to know your neighbors

noreply@blogger.com (grerp) — Thu, 19 May 2011 02:45:00 +0000

In an era of cheap oil and general prosperity, we as Americans have lost touch with our neighbors. People were very mobile, and it made little sense to get to know people who might be gone next year or next week even. And most people could "afford" - either really or via cheap credit - to pay people to do things they once relied on their neighbors to help with: snowplowing, home and car repair, child care. In the north, where I live, cold weather also complicates things. We may stop and shoot the breeze with people on the block on a warm summer's night, but once the temperature goes down into the forties, we hustle into the house from the car as fast as possible. Every year we take a six-month break from getting to know each other.

But neighbors are important. They can provide a daily social outlet, and they are probably physically closer than your friends and family. Having someone you trust nearby in an emergency can make a big difference in how that emergency gets resolved. These days people get a glimpse of how neighbors used to routinely pull together only when the weather gets bad. When we get 16 inches of snow here, we see our neighbors. It may be cold, but you will stand out there and shoot the breeze anyway about What a storm that was and Wow, that's a lot of snow to move.

The people around you likely have a number of skills you do not. You can learn things from each other. They may have equipment you can borrow or stuff you need that they no longer do. Putting in my garden this past two weeks, I've spent a lot of time with my next-door neighbor with whom I've pooled money to make the raised beds, and I've gotten wood ash from the guy who lives diagonally behind my house. He has a woodstove. When the battery-operated handsaw I borrowed from my father-in-law kept cutting out, another neighbor volunteered his saw and his electric drill. That made putting together my potato bins quite a lot easier. Two more neighbors stopped by our garden and took a look at what we are doing. We talked for about twenty minutes, and now I know both of their names and a little more of their circumstances.

Personally, I feel that America is getting less and less benign by the day, and I do not think I'm alone in that. Big Government and Big Business have almost finished consolidating their control over food, oil, money, medicine, housing - all of the stuff we need to live. We may still be able to do things about that, but in the shorter term, we need to be able to take care of ourselves and learn to pool our resources so that we can stay safe, warm, fed, and housed. The people you know and trust will be a stronger safety net than anything the government will provide. Human beings are programmed to care about the people they know and not care about the people they don't know. Strengthen your safety net by getting out there and getting to know your neighbors. Invite them over, cook them dinner, give or lend what you can, even if it's only a sympathetic ear at first. You will probably have to make the first effort, though, as many of us are so out practice in neighborly hospitality. Keep trying, though, and don't keep a careful ledger of the things you've done that haven't been reciprocated. That neighbor who lent me his tools? I blew out the snow from his sidewalk all winter long and lent him my snowblower for the big blizzards. And I took his girlfriend's son to the doctor when they were both on vacation and he didn't have a ride. And I've given them plenty produce from my garden in the last several years.

It's understood that you must vet the people around you for trustworthiness and make ties with only your reliable neighbors. If you live in a place without reliable neighbors, move now. Seriously. We don't have any time to waste getting to know each other and building real community and connections, and there's no point in casting your pearls before swine. Our standard of living is already declining and it's only going to get worse. Good neighbors are buffer and a blessing in hard times.

Piece of Advice #95: Grow something

noreply@blogger.com (grerp) — Mon, 16 May 2011 02:50:00 +0000

I've been absento for the last few weeks concentrating on the project of putting together 6 raised beds, mixing some good soil, and planting stuff. I've been gardening with my neighbor in some unused collective space for about 3 years now, but the results have been less than exciting. We can grow green beans, zucchini, and some herbs, but our tomato yields have been poor and root veggies haven't been much better. So this year we are trying the method advised in Square Foot Gardening. Hopefully, the mix Mel Bartholomew advises using will produce better results than the rocky, nutrient poor soil + fertilizer base we've worked with so far. I haven't given up on that. I spaded old leaves and wood ash into the existing garden and will add manure mulch as plants emerge, but we're going to use that space to grow stuff that will grow pretty much anywhere.

In any case, why should you grow something? Because people need to know where there food comes from, how it grows, and what it tastes like when it is fresh and not steeped in a chemical cocktail. We as a society need to realize how terribly dependent we are on a food system that cares nothing for us as individuals and is content to undercharge consumers for "convenient" no-nutrient food while stealthily overcharging citizens via subsidies for Big Ag and Big Oil and uncounted environmental damage to the land we will need in the future long after it's been totally degraded. Our meat comes from animals who live short, terrible lives in Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations and whose poisoned, overmedicated flesh is sold to us as Grade A. Most everything else contains additives, preservatives, high fructose corn syrup, or soy.

Gardening is the first step to becoming less dependent on a system that cares nothing for health - human, animal, or environmental - and only for profit. It's also good for you. Growing things is practicing hope. It makes you move more in a variety of ways - digging, hauling, weeding, watering - and burns calories. People who garden connect with other gardeners for tips, and for encouragement. They share resources. They spend time together outside under the big free Vitamin D dispenser in the sky. They make critical community ties. The first time I sat down and had a meal with my neighbor - whom I've been living alongside for about 7 years now - was last weekend. I threw a chicken and some vegetables into a roasting pan at 4 PM and went out to dig out some sod with her. An hour and a half later I realized her husband was out for the night and she would be eating alone. I invited her over and we all ate dinner together. It was really nice, and I would not have done it had we not been working on our mutual project together.

Even if you only have time or space to plant in pots, try to grow some herbs because cooking with herbs is far, far superior to cooking without them. Plant some seeds, watch them come up, and realize what a miracle it is that life generates from such simple things - seeds, water, soil, sun.

Piece of Advice #94: Put your clothes back on. PLEASE.

noreply@blogger.com (grerp) — Sat, 07 May 2011 03:59:00 +0000

I was under the impression that the nearest Slutwalk to me was going to be in Detroit. Then someone linked to a truly local Slutwalk on Facebook. For those of you not in the know, Slutwalk started in Toronto as a protest against a police officer there who told women they could lessen their chances of getting assaulted if they didn't "dress like sluts." So a bunch of women got together and decided to dress like sluts because they could and have a parade while they were at it. In Toronto. In early spring. Good call.

When I checked out the local Slutwalk page, I saw this video featured as inspirational:

There are times when I feel I have truly fallen through the rabbit hole. Now is such a time. Women apparently feel that the new frontier of empowerment hinges on their ability to dress like brothel workers and demand others respect them for their bad taste and attention whoring. For this women are marching: to look like the best lay a gold-mining saloon could offer; as in, not obviously diseased.

Uh huh.

Look, let's be honest with ourselves as women. Can we all agree that we don't go out in a pink halter tops and satin hot pants because of the comfort factor? We don't dress that way to impress our girlfriends with our sense of style either. Women dress in miniscule, tight, sexy clothing to get the attention of men. And it is effective. Unfortunately, women can't always control how that attention channels itself. And instead of acknowledging that limitation - that this is a built-in trade-off for guaranteed male attention - they throw a group tantrum, wag a bunch of fingers, and attempt to control the reaction they provoke through chanting, and shaming, and what have you.

Wouldn't it just be easier to wear figure flattering clothing that manages to cover up the essentials? Women looked gorgeous in Edwardian clothing. The success of Mad Men has to hinge in no small part on wardrobe envy - women and men staring at how fantastic people used to look in tailored, buttoned up clothes. Most of the time, with clothes, more is more. Dress decently, and you spare yourself the possibility of trouble. You also spare the rest of us all of the parts of you we'd rather not see, but you force us to view.

And in other news: women passionately defend one teacher's right to write porn on her off time. While this is clearly within this teacher's legal right to self expression, we have come a long way down a twisty side road to Perdition if the right to write (and read) porn is what women will sputter and emote over.

Best of TLAOS-P(fW)

noreply@blogger.com (grerp) — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 03:43:00 +0000

The following is the advice that I would give over and over, every day if I could. A lot of this is buried in the archives, so thought I would highlight it again.

On relationships:

On developing your best self and being attractive to the opposite sex:

On money:

On unplugging:

According to my Google analytics stats, the only one of the above to be a top viewed page is "Do not embrace your inner slut." The other top pages are:

Piece of Advice #93: Don't get into cars with strange men

noreply@blogger.com (grerp) — Sun, 17 Apr 2011 03:37:00 +0000

I know this one seems pretty obvious, but apparently not:

Over at The Hairpin, the advice columnist, A Lady, answers a question:

I'm a guy living in a big Spring Break hot spot. During this time, one question always come up between my friends and I, why do women get into cars with strange guys? In my experience this isn't rare and it isn't limited to drunk college girls. So, whats up with that? It seems like a bad idea.

Spring Breeeaaak!!!!
What's up with the fact that you and your friends probably also see women binge drinking, smoking cigarettes, blowing coke, eating Red #5, TANNING WITHOUT SUNSCREEN, and all sorts of other dumb things and aren't at all phased? But when they pile limitlessly into cars with dudes they just met, you're all, "Somebody save the womennn!" Or that you don't think it's a bad idea for the guys in this story to let strange women into their cars? Hmmm? You and your friends are very nice, and it's very nice that you're concerned, but also any place that can be described as "a big Spring Break hot spot" sounds like Bad Idea Town, Population : D so it's interesting that you think the riding in cars with boys thing is a worse idea than all of the other things that probably go on, is all.
Since you're basically asking why women sometimes do risky things, I guess the answer is because women are human. Girls just wanna have fun. Sometimes it's fun to get in a car with a strange guy, 'cause cars are awesome, guys are cool, and strangers are exciting. And sometimes it's a bad idea to get in a car with a strange guy, 'cause cars are dangerous, guys are jerks, and strangers are terrible. No real way of knowing, other than to trust your instincts. You're way more likely to hear about the times a woman did something that turned out to be a bad idea, because Law & Order: It Worked Out doesn't air 25 times a day, and the 10 o'clock news is never like, "Coming up after the break, another wanton slut gets her shit banged out vacation-style by a guy she met in the parking lot, describes the entire ordeal as 'fucking incredible.'" Doesn't mean those things don't happen too. Not all men are predators on the hunt, and not all women are victims-in-waiting. Sometimes people are just people, tryna get they party on, you know? You know. Spring Breeeaaak!!!!

Sometimes I think women actually don't mind other women getting assaulted and killed so long as women in general can behave incredibly stupidly without any guilt. It would seem to be the only logical explanation for the kind of answer given above.

I'm going to give you the same advice your first grade teacher gave you: Getting in cars with strangers is a bad idea, even if they offer you candy (or orgasms). Don't do it. You could end up in little pieces. Or sold into prostitution by white slavers. You could get raped or contract HPV. Or maybe not, but why take the risk?

If you absolutely need to have your "shit banged out vacation-style" by a stranger, use a reputable service. Then the police can look up an address on a W-2 when they find your severed finger in his trunk. It will save them a considerable amount of time and, therefore, tax dollars.

Here's the thing about those tax dollars: the public pays for the work of 911 telephone operators, police officers and detectives, court personnel and judges; they don't come cheap, and most of these people have seen their hours cut in recent years. I would prefer they use what resources they have remaining to track down and prosecute crimes that are, say, not totally preventable. If you tan without sunscreen, the police do not have to get involved. I'd still recommend the sunscreen, but if you want to get wild and take chances there, go ahead. Don't take rides with strangers.

Piece of Advice #92: Be your kid's parent

noreply@blogger.com (grerp) — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 02:46:00 +0000

If you have children, your role in their lives must be: authority and advisor. Parents, of course, have other roles: nanny, nurse, cheerleader, banker, chauffeur, tutor. But first and foremost, you have to be their authority on what is right and wrong, good and bad, acceptable and unacceptable. You create their normal, you forge the lens through which they view the world. And you keep them from devolving into wild beasts, one correction at a time.

So far this blog has not been about parenting advice. I have one child, and he has not left the nest, not even close. I can't say with full assurance that his teen/young adult/adult years will be smooth sailing or that he will "turn out." I pray he will.

What I can say, with confidence, is that kids figure out early - early early - exactly what their parents' weak spots are. They know before they can talk or ambulate smoothly what buttons to push, and they happily will stab away at them until they get a reaction. And if you do not establish your authority, if you do not communicate clearly and unequivocally that the buck stops with you and that you will stop that buck, they will run roughshod over you. They will test you to see if you mean it, and if you don't mean it, they will take over. If they take over your house, your life with be exponentially harder because not only will you spend hours every day placating them and picking up after them, slaving to provide them with food they will deign to eat and clothes they will deign to wear, but you will have to spend additional hours explaining to other people (teachers, daycare providers, neighbors, friends) why they are so difficult and why it must be so. Putting your foot down and standing up to your kids is a lot of work, continuous work, but it is not so much as the alternative.

Yesterday Dalrock did a piece on Jennifer Moses who recently wrote a piece for the Wall Street Journal on tween and teen girls. It was called "Why Do We Let Them Dress That Way?" Here is the accompanying video:

This is an interesting video in a lot of ways. Moses saying that tween girls should not be dressing like prostitutes isn't really that controversial, is it? I know I've heard plenty of mothers lamenting about what is available in the stores for girls these days and how so much of it is inappropriate. But Moses knows that there is this large audience of women out there who will howl that, yes, young girls should be allowed to dress in hookerwear, to express themselves and their flowering sexuality, that it's never too young to sexualize or objectify a girl because the alternative is to accept that female sexuality should have boundaries - any boundaries - and women not being able to do whatever they want whenever they want with full approval is an unthinkable thought. Mary Elizabeth Williams at Salon has already rebutted condescendingly, and she, a self-admitted HPV-resulting cervical cancer survivor. Women are apparently willing to take cancer on the chin rather than reign it in at all sexually or even consider it.

Knowing these women are out there, Moses waffles a bit. The outfits, they are scandalous, but according to her, "There's no mother in the world who isn't doing her best for her daughter." The interviewer, also a woman, would like to blame it - the irony - on the media and at one point interjects something about fathers also being to blame, which Moses nods and agrees with.

But let's face it, men don't dress their daughters. Women do, and in adolescence, girls' female peers help a lot. It's a parent's job to make sure those peers don't get to override any objective morality or common sense. And here is where Moses completely bails. At the end of the video, after making her case for why this type of clothing is terrible, she says she can’t stop her daughter from buying hookerwear with her babysitting money, but she won’t pay for it herself, darn it.

Excuse me, but what?

Jennifer, if you can’t stop your 11-year-old daughter from dressing indecently and provocatively, you have got a serious parenting problem and it isn't fashion related. Pull her out and homeschool her. Send for pamphlets from convents. Relocate to Lancaster, PA. You are the adult. Seriously, you own her life. You pay for everything, and I'd bet that includes private lessons, a regularly updated wardrobe, sleepovers with her friends, vacations, birthday presents. Yank it all and then see if she still won't comply. Be brave.

I see parents in the public who are negotiating with their toddlers, putting forth complicated arguments about why they should eat the yogurt they just screamed for. Look, I know what it's like to have an oppositional child. My son is a born arguer; there is nothing he likes better than objecting to stuff. But he knows at the end of this little verbal dance, he is going to have to finish his dinner, drink his milk, and do his homework. Because I'm going to make him. It might not be fun. It might not be pretty - that's his call - but it will be done. All this may make me sound like a martinet, but, honestly, kids like having boundaries, and they like knowing that someone is actually in charge and that there is a plan. It's predictable, and they can maneuver within that predictability. They may test you with everything they've got, but they aren't happy when they win. They are miserable wallowing in their own brattiness. And so are you.

It is easier to establish a pattern of compliance if you start when they are toddlers, but unless your tween is a sociopath, it can be done at eleven, twelve, or thirteen. You might have to drag out the big guns to establish your authority, but better that than the alternative: stocking up on Pampers and opening a tab at your local tattoo parlor.

Piece of Advice #91: Know when to walk away (from the targeted criticism)

noreply@blogger.com (grerp) — Sun, 13 Mar 2011 03:58:00 +0000

Reader Anna asks:

"OT here - so I managed to get in a feminist flame war (on a Christian site no less!) for having anti-feminist views. The flamers were old boomer Christians of a denomination that is egalitarian. Rather than dig through the previous 90 pieces of advice, do you have any posts on this phenomenon? It is a tactic of self-preservation, how not to get in a flame war with feminist Christians."

My advice is 1) you have to say what you have to say and then move on, resisting any and all urges to defend your arguments (which they never really listen to anyway) and yourself (whom they don't know) and 2) blow it all off.

If you are a woman, the first advice is going to be much easier to take than the second because every group of women has a functioning tool of reinforcement of the groupthink (herd mentality). It's called: you agree, you're in (provided you meet their other requirements as well); you disagree, you're out. Very, very powerful, this tool is. Most women will silence themselves rather than disagree outright and be shamed or ridiculed. I did. For years I participated in communities filled with women who expressed opinions I vociferously disagreed with and remained mostly pretty quiet - because I wanted to be a part of these groups. And in my personal life I am much more discreet with my opinions than I am on this blog because I have roles to play that involve other people who need me to play those roles. And I know what women can and will do to women who rock the boat too much, mouthing off against the "truths" we have so recently established as truth-y. (IRL I actually know a number of nice women with whom I have had productive conversations about the kinds of things I discuss here; I'm talking more about a group dynamic, which has a life of its own.)

I think it's of value to get other opinions out there and express them plainly and logically, but on the kinds of boards Anna mentions, you have to know you're screaming in the wind. People don't want to hear, they don't want to listen to stuff they dislike, and they will shout you down and attack both your opinion and you personally. Sometimes you don't even have to go to these boards and they will still talk about you (search around on this board and you'll see other female bloggers - Terry, Laura Grace Robins, Hestia, Laura Wood - they also eviscerate for sport. Fun times.).

Personally, I've been taken apart on Twitter and discussed repeatedly, even psychoanalyzed on other blogs. The comments are mostly of this type:

Somebodies got stuck in the 50’s and didn’t want to leave.
… the scary part is that people with the mentality of those posters are VERY loud in the USA...
It seems the gene pool needs a little cleaning again….
Wow. It’s hard to believe people like this still exist.
I find it hard to believe that we’re even having this discussion in 2010.
An astonishing demonstration of internalized misogyny.
...infuriating whatthefuckery.
I know octogenerians who are more in tune with the times that she appears to be.
Sometimes I wish we could make a stupid bomb that would only kill stupid people, like my husband jokingly
...she should have known better than to spew what she spewed on a public blog…
...comments made that tore open some very ugly, very deep wounds.
She seems to be a rogue agent, much like La Palin. But I wouldn’t want to see her fired. It’s much better to pick up a rock and expose what’s underneath to the light than to pretend there’s nothing there.
There are some seriously scary people over there pontificating on how the world should be in their small minds and refusing to accept the opinions of others.
Twat
Nong ("It’s Aussie for nitwit, dipstick, dill, silly person – generally someone not to be taken seriously.")
Complete nutters
intolerant and hateful
incredibly ignorant
ridiculous
...behaves like a tool.
a bad apple

I will admit that when I first started blogging, and during a particularly intense period last year, these comments really stung. I felt the full force of the shaming. I felt - briefly - ashamed. Not for my opinions, but for the bad taste I'd shown in stating them. I had to stay away from my keyboard. I knew that any defense I offered would only be happily received as more fodder for the mockery. So I never commented on any of the blogs addressing me personally. That was a good decision.

And, eventually...it ceased to matter to me what these people thought about me. None of them knew me. Not really. Not personally. No one was going to bring over a casserole and let me cry on her shoulder if I found a lump. The internet is full of people we don't really know, even after countless conversations. Commenters come, commenters go. They may be enraged at your opinions and hate "you" for awhile, but I found it helpful to remember that, unlike nearly all women, I am an INTJ, and, really, we don't care that much about what people think of us.

Flame wars feel really intense when they are happening, but ultimately they're entertainment for all the other people who get to watch someone get taken apart. They are remembered, but less and less clearly as time passes, and then not at all. Engage in them only when you simply must vent some spleen and then only when you feel you have nothing to lose. Otherwise, state your points, follow up once or twice, and then move on. Anything else you give will be cannon fodder. Did you notice the thinly veiled violence in the comments I quoted above. An interesting sort of "civility," huh?

Besides, mainstream Christianity is a dead man walking. You are talking to people who will leave no legacy because their beliefs are so shallow, unvetted, PC, and passionless that no subsequent generations will be able to assemble enough energy to take them up.

Piece of Advice #90: Don't sign up to be part of his harem

noreply@blogger.com (grerp) — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 17:06:00 +0000

Modernity has layered the concept of marriage with so much emotion and romanticism that we women tend to forget that, at heart, marriage has always been an economic arrangement. Women and men exchange sexual freedom and the ability to "trade up" for, in his case, ownership, proximity, and the assurance of parenting his own children as well as regular sex and, in her case, financial support and protection during the vulnerable times of pregnancy and motherhood and eventually old age, as well as investment in her children.

That's the matrimony deal. Now people being complex, marriage is also a number of other things. Historically it was often the opportunity to merge powerful families and build up capital. Sometimes when people have been exceptionally well suited, it has been the chance to live with a best friend and best lover forever. To less well suited people it was often an inescapable prison. Marriage is sometimes miserable, more often bearable, frequently - when its players are mature adults - workable, and, on the other end of the spectrum, sometimes very pleasurable. The same marriage can, in fact, cycle through those states from misery to ecstasy under different circumstances with that marriage still fulfilling its main societal goal: insuring that men stay invested in the welfare of children, their children, the next generation. Most women don't need a contract to stay invested in their children because they know for certain their children are theirs. But men, who do not grow their children inside them, need a bit more proof that all that energy they are going to expend is going to their own progeny. Thus, marriage.

Now, the harem. Historically, only rich and powerful men have been able to afford to have a harem. The care of many women and the resulting children is prohibitively expensive, but for men who can afford it, the incentive is sexual access to a variety of women he is attracted to. Not all harems have been the middle-eastern, guarded-by-eunuchs variety. Wealthy European men had a string of mistresses instead, but it was the same deal. For the women involved this arrangement provided financial stability, but usually far less paternal investment in her children. Her provider usually had a wife and legitimate children, and his time was taken up with them.

The final sex-for-money deal is the brothel. This transaction is far simpler. Sexual participation for a set fee. The wages earned, if generous enough, can be saved up and used for future needs, but this is a 401K deal at best, not a pension. What's more, brothel work generally excludes a woman from the first two options as men are only interested in wives if their chastity can be counted on and mistresses if they are 1) very beautiful and 2) rather particular. Men do not invest at all in brothel children as paternity can not/could not be determined.

Women, the only one of the above three options worth pursuing is marriage. The price of sex has been driven so low by porn and promiscuity that the mistress deal is off the table for all but the fabulously beautiful and well connected, and the fabulously beautiful can and should shoot for marriage anyway. It's a far better deal. For many woman who do not understand the economic underpinnings of relationships the dating scene has become a weekly grind of less and less enthusiastic brothel work - for the price of dinner or perhaps even a latte - leveraged against the potential of a future better deal. But the longer a woman stays in the dating sphere, the less likely she will be able to make that happen. Because most women are competing for the same successful, colorful, or aggressively sexual men, and those men, having such a supply of sex at no cost are the least likely to offer anything else, especially to women who are older and more jaded. Why would they?

All of the above came to mind when I was directed to the blog of dating adventures, A Pre-life Crisis. The author is considered by her friends to be "the brunette 'Carrie Bradshaw'." She states that she hasn't paid for dinner in a year and dates all of the time. In an arc of posts about her most recent dating adventures, she describes meeting The Lawyer who is tall, dark, handsome, successful, well educated, athletic, and lives in New York (the author lives in Boston). They met in a bar when he was visiting her hometown, hit it off, and then a little over a week later she went to New York City to spend the weekend with him and salivate over the designer clothes and accessory shops on Fifth Avenue. Then, when she got back to Boston, he completely blew her off, finally texting her some generic messages a week or so later.

Now, despite the fact that this woman's lifestyle and materialism conflict heavily with my own values, I write this out not to mock or excoriate her, but because pursuing men who won't commit to them is becoming a common experience for women. This guy, this sexy, young lawyer guy isn't going to start something serious with her. Even if distance were not an issue, he's the kind of guy women will travel from out of state on their own dime to gift with sex. That's nice work if you can get it. He's twenty-seven, is unlikely to want children right now, and has no other incentive to offer something more permanent to a woman. Additionally, she sounds very expensive. He's undoubtedly up to his hairline in student loans, but whatever successful lawyer cash does come his way after bills are paid he probably doesn't want to go straight to Armani, Harry Winston, and Versace. Bagging him as a husband would be quite a coup for her, but, let's face it, he's not going to be faithful anyway. Men with those kinds of options seldom are. It would be far, far better for her to take a good hard look in the mirror, tally up her assets realistically, and then look again at the line of men taking her out to dinner. Odds are that, among that number, there's at least one guy who would not use her for sex, toy with her emotions, and would eventually be willing to commit to her. He might not be a tall, dark, handsome, hockey-playing lawyer guy, but to this middle-aged married woman's eye, Lawyer Guy is not so great.

Piece of Advice #89: Don't take it personally, we just don't want to pay for your stuff anymore II (public sector edition)

noreply@blogger.com (grerp) — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 04:17:00 +0000

From the mailbox today, reader Janice says:

I'd just like to comment on one current situation. I am a federal employee. I chose to join the "feds" a few years ago, after almost twenty years of various private sector jobs. I admit, I was like you, my jobs were just a way to make a living, I was always drawn to creative pursuits (which, I do admit, are not practical ways to make a living) and I was laid off many times in my private sector career, and yearned for something more stable (especially since I was single and over a certain age- the writing was on the wall, so to speak.) I chuckle now, because, I know that there is no such thing as "security", but federal employment seemed like a better bet than most things going.
I've realized several things. Mainly:

People who have spent their entire career/several years in government have NO clue. They have never been laid off, and have no concept of what its like to have a job one day, go to lunch, and come back and find out that you and your entire department has been let go (with one week of severance pay, if you are lucky) They whine about not getting a raise. I tell them that if they were in the private sector, many of them (myself included) would more than likely not have a job at all.

I think its appalling that the union members expect everyone but themselves to contribute to their retirement. I do not, nor have I ever been part of a union, but the expectations of those who's future if financed entirely but someone but them, again have NO clue. I am lucky to have the government TSP program, but I contribute to my own retirement just as I have for all the years in the private sector to my 401 K ( when I could afford it.)

There is more, but I am still amazed every day in the wake of what is going on that the union members just DO not get it. File this one under "Don't take it personally, we just don't want To Pay for your Stuff anymore" Part II- Federal Edition.

This is an interesting perspective. I have been watching what has been going on in Wisconsin and in other states with a nail-biting interest. I have hesitated to comment on it here because my parents (and my grandmother) were public schoolteachers and have sympathy for the union position. I respect their contributions and their hard work, and, what's more, I don't wish to see them lose their pensions. I also think teaching school can be very demanding and has gotten progressively more so as the two-parent family has crashed and burned. It is difficult to effectively teach children who come to school hungry, whose home lives are chaotic, whose parents have no interest in their success or failure to learn. My family is full of teachers, my nearest neighbor is a teacher, I taught school myself for a year abroad, and I didn't care to continue doing it stateside.

However. The public sector gets and has gotten a compensation package that is far more generous and more dependable than the one private sector workers get, and we the poorer are paying out of pocket for public workers to get them. This has been said better and at length around the web, and I will direct you to them. Today Kevin D. Williamson opined on this in his piece, "Upending Our Caste System" for National Review, and last week Chuck, aided by Novaseeker, did an outstanding blog that said all I was thinking and more. Please forgive me, but I must quote copiously:

(Novaseeker:) As for the substance, these teachers unions, and the Democratic state senators who are staying out of Wisconsin to prevent a State Senate quorum, are basically subverting the democractic process. There was an election last November, and the Republicans won, both in the state legislature and in the state house. The teachers got to vote along with everyone else. And the Republicans won. The unions don’t get a second bite at the electoral apple by subverting the democratic process to, in effect, nullify the results of an election. This is in outright defiance of the will of the people of Wisconsin, who just elected the GOP to these positions a few months ago — and Gov. Walker’s views were well-known before he was elected. The Democrats attacked him for these views during the campaign, and they lost. Now they are simply trying to relitigate the election. Bastards, cowardly, subversives. The state senators who are refusing to show up should be ashamed of themselves. The teachers who “called in sick” to march in anti-taxpayer rallies (because that is what they are) should be docked pay and given warnings that if they do this again they will be subject to progressive discipline. I don’t get to play hooky from work for political reasons — why should they, and not least of which on the taxpayers’ dime.

These public sector unions are way, way out of hand. Let’s get this straight. Those of us in the private sector have to pay into our own 401k plans (pensions being a thing of the past in the private sector) and essentially finance our own retirement. At the same time, we are also subsidizing the retirements of these public sector employees, who pay less into their retirement accounts than we do, while *we* make up the difference in taxes. This is fair? I don’t think so, and a LOT of people agree. And let’s not kid ourselves, either — the average wages of public sector employees are higher than the average wages of private sector employees, as well, so here again we have people of lesser means subsidizing those of higher means. And all because of the thuggish unions. Disgusting.

It’s good that this is coming to a head, however. The public sector unions, as large as they may be, are outnumbered vastly by people in the private sector who, in a time of fiscal austerity and budget cutting all around (private and public), have mostly no stomach at all for these crybabies who want to preserve their golden apple at the expense of everyone else. The ones who are on their side are the die-hard lefty activists — 60s retreads and their younger counterparts like Daily Kos and so on. The mainstream people in the middle (and of course almost everyone on the right) are dead-set against them, and this public sector union issue is now becoming a huge political win, I think, for Republicans, due to the way that moderates also tend to feel about these public sector unions.

The left has to support them, of course, because they are a main pillar in the program of extending the government. If you have a big enough group of public sector employees who are dependent on the state budget for their livelihood, you can rest assured these voters are going to back the political party that is in favor of spending and against spending cuts, and also in favor of expanding the government — meaning more jobs for them and their friends. So you get this vicious political cycle — the government employees vote overwhelmingly Democratic, and then the state expanse the public sector, and then there are more people voting for the Democrats. So of course the left has to support them. Take away public sector unions, and this pillar falls down, or at least is severely damaged, so it’s no real surprise that the Democrats and other leftists are making their stand in Wisconsin.

They cannot win politically, however, unless they simply shut the government down. That will cost politically at a time when they want to be blaming the Republicans for government shut-downs — but in this case the Republicans have the votes they need, and it’s the Democrats who are blocking the Democratic process in an extra-constitutional manner. It’s desperate and disgusting, but quite revealing of what the left in this country is capable of.

and then:

(Chuck:) Some are calling Scott Walker the “Mubarak of the Midwest”, but, in reality, it is the government workers who have dictatorial power. If anything, Walker is the anti-Mubarak. The Republican governor is the analogue to the revolutionists in the streets of Egypt. It is the government workers who are an atomized version of the Egyptian dictator, for it is they who can’t be deposed. Their wishes must be acquiesced at the point of a gun. Taxpayers in that state have to pay their taxes lest they face heavy penalty, fine, and possible imprisonment. If they skip out on prison, rest assured that someone with a gun strapped to their hip will come looking for them.

As I've said many times here at The Lost Art of Self-Preservation (for Women) if you owe something to someone in perpetuity, you are, in a very real sense, their debtor, their thing to control. The various layers of government have created via taxes a web of servitude. If income disappears or prices inflate, we could choose to buy less. Even something truly necessary, such as heat in winter, could be consumed less. My family could live in one room or in the basement to conserve it. But if I can't pay my property, state, or federal taxes, I could lose my home and/or my freedom. I can't choose to pay less of them just because I can't afford them. Knowing this and wishing to be as free as possible from a required payment that is not negotiable, I support Scott Walker's desire to put the taxpayer in the driver's seat in regards to its employee contracts.

In the above video David Gregory repeatedly tries to put Walker on the defensive by stating that the unions are now willing to compromise on salary and pension, but does he think that we the public are so stupid as to believe that this year's compromise means anything? It is a temporary setback in a war of aggression. The heat is on. When an adult comes out of a house and onto the street, the bully who has the neighbor boy by the shirt and is ready to pound him, lets go for an instant and smiles innocently. But what happens to the kid when the adult goes back inside? We all know. It would be foolish to believe for one instant talk can solve anything. Talking to a bully is only forestalling a beating.

Gregory also carps on about "shared sacrifice" insinuating that this is all just a vendetta by a greedy governor unwilling to also give things up. But the governor represents the taxpayer, and the private sector taxpayer has already been squeezed like an orange. Just for reference I went and looked up my husband's tax returns for the past 11 years. I knew we'd taken a huge hit, and this was confirmed by a little number crunching. In 1999 he paid approximately 2% of his gross income for health insurance. Each year, this steadily increased until in 2006 it was 15% where it stayed, give or take a percentage point, until 2009 when his work moved to discontinue the PPO plan they offered (by that time also encumbered with deductibles and copays) and replaced it with a high-deductible major medical plan tied to an HSA. The percentage he contributed remained at 11-12% of his gross income, however, approximately two-thirds of it went into a savings account that remains his until it is spent on future medical bills.

Just to make this clear, that 15% was of his gross income, not 15% of the cost of the insurance. We were bearing 50% or more of that cost. His employer also froze his pension in 2006.

While all this was happening in the private sector there wasn't too much outcry from the public sector about unfairness and lost benefits and people going hungry down the line into old age. This is only to be expected because humans tend to care only about the things that affect them. The unions care because they don't want to lose their power, influence, and money stream. The public sector employees don't want to pay more for cruddier benefits, and the taxpayers don't want to pay for others what they don't get even themselves.

But here's the deal: there are more taxpayers than there are union leaders and public sector employees. And there isn't any money, so this must be solved now. What's interesting to me is how young Scott Walker is. In a very significant way, this is intergenerational conflict. We will see what the Gen X politicians do now that the can of indebtedness has been kicked their way.

Why is this piece of advice relevant to The Lost Art of Self-Preservation (for Women) readers? Because so many public sector workers are women and are, therefore, dependent on the increasingly overburdened and hostile taxpayer for their livelihood. Expect and prepare for your standard of living to decline.

It's not so sexy when it's real

noreply@blogger.com (grerp) — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 15:28:00 +0000

It looks so sexy, right, when cute little Avril sings about having been good all her life? But What The Hell, it's time for a little rabble rousing including theft, destruction of private property, attempted shoplifting, and basically being a gigantic bitch to her boyfriend. Girl Power! Girls rock! Don't let 'em keep you down, Avril! You go!

So millions of young impressionable girls absorb that message, and you get this in real life:

She drives in a snowstorm, gets caught in a massive 50-60 vehicle pileup, and a tow truck pulls her out. But the bill - $225 - is more than she wants to pay, so she goes on a rampage at the towing company, assaults an employee, and does about $10,000 worth of damage to the office. In front of her boyfriend and son. I watched the raw footage yesterday, and the saddest thing about it was her child crying and begging her to stop.

In the discussion on M-Live yesterday, many people objected to the cost of the tow. I found this comment very enlightening:

Liberals demand a high level of regulation and control:

- US DOT compliance and number

- Michigan Public Service Commission authority and door tag

- drug testing for any CDL drivers - commercial license plates

- marking requirements

- license and liability insurance

- OHSA, EPA and Workmen's Comp regulations

-record-keeping up the wazoo

to name a few. This is before any ordinary and normal business expenses like rent, wages and taxes and more taxes on top of the taxes.

A service business like towing is high risk (drivers are hurt or killed everyday) and low profit or no profit.

All you armchair business geniuses, however, can see big profit margins (mostly non-existent), so by all means please run out and buy yourself a new tow truck and start making that big money.

At the end of the day, when your stuck with a smashed car, an unpaid bill and a trashed office, and had your business flamed in M-Live by all the local Harvard MBAs, was it really worth it?

It is very expensive to run a small business, and not that many people are willing to go out in a blizzard and risk both life and property to tow out people like this woman. From the video, it doesn't look like the owner is operating in the lap of luxury.

This woman will now be arrested and charged with several felonies. As she should. I hope they throw the book at her. Assault is assault, no excuses, and no passes because she's female. She could have really hurt that man, and the wrecker is unlikely to get a dime out of her and will have to muddle on and replace his own equipment. His insurance premium will probably go up.

Again, the sad thing here is the situation of the child. I can't comment on her mothering skills, except to say that no mature adult would do what she did and certainly never in front of her child, but it seems unlikely that his father is an active parent and upstanding citizen. He may be one of millions of fathers shafted by family court and denied access to his kid, but it's more likely she chose a thug to have a baby with. Which means the boy will probably go to a relative or to state custody. All of which is made possible by a society that tolerates illegitimacy and gives financial incentives to women who can't afford to have children but do anyway.

I've been following the discussion between The Thinking Housewife and The Spearhead, which more or less boils down to whether men should be encouraged or coerced to marry or otherwise support women when marrying or supporting women is 1) contrary to his own best interests and 2) could lead - via family court income extraction - to servitude and/or lifetime penury. While I am a strong believer in marriage as a building block of civilization, my view is that men should not be encouraged or coerced to marry for several reasons:

1) The short term good marriage offers for women and children can easily be undone by women at any time if she decides she wants out. And, yes, for the people who will sputter at me, men can walk too. But we are not trying to shame or coerce women into marriage here. We know subconsciously that marriage is a very good deal for women; we've just been trying to repress it because it seems "sexist." Coercing men to contract themselves to women and then allowing women to break that contract at will makes no sense.

2) The short term isn't even the point. Those conservatives who want the traditional family back want it back long term. Bailing water by the bucketful into a breaking dam is a futile action. Laughable, really.

3) Allowing the marriage market to readjust via supply and demand is much more effective. If you bring something to market highly overpriced, no one will buy it and you will go home none the richer. You can either lower your price or keep your goods. Wives are currently overpriced not because intrinsically they are better or worse than they ever were but because the market itself has been distorted by government intrusion - family courts, no fault divorce, affirmative action - and because the goods themselves have been damaged by the stuff we women have been telling ourselves for decades and the lives we've been leading in response. You can monkey with the system a little longer or try and shame or coerce the buyer into taking something he doesn't want, but that's just kicking the can. The market always corrects itself. Kicking the can will just result in a little more violent correcting. People know when they are getting a bad deal and they resent it and work against it. They will undermine you, run away, revolt, and eventually, given nothing more to lose, set fire to everything. It's the way people work. It's the way people have always worked. Property owners during the Depression bulldozed their own buildings rather than pay exorbitant property taxes the could not afford because they couldn't get rent from their tenants. They bulldozed their own buildings.

4) As women we need to absorb these hard truths and hope for a swifter correction to this market. Because:

We don't want that violent correction. Widespread violence is beyond the ability of women to control.
We have it harder when we allow this. Women who act badly work against the interests of other women. They create problems other women - grandmothers, social workers, teachers, second wives - have to mop up. They make us all look bad too, especially when we say nothing about the grievous wrongs they do to their men and children.
We see the unhappiness and dysfunctional lives of countless women around us. Does anyone think either of the women in the above two videos are happy? And the Lori Gottliebs of the world who spent their youth getting overeducated, proud, and sleeping with men who cared nothing for them - are they happy? The Sex and the City women - with their fancy, create-nothing jobs and no children - are they happy? One of the women I once worked with spent her twenties and thirties with a number of completely unsuitable men. She is now writing online letters to her future husband, the man she knows will come to her. She had some fun in her day, yes, but she seems profoundly miserable now. Letting women do as they will, with no restrictions, when they are young has not lead to widespread societal happiness and prosperity. Even as a fantasy, it's kind of depressing. How 'bout we chuck it?
We allow the souls of these women to be imperiled. The argument I'm referencing has a certain religious component to it. We need to remember that when we allow people to behave badly without consequences, we create tyrants and bullies who only get worse. Not only are they unhappy and a danger to others but spiritually they are degraded. How can we as Christians advise others to avoid the near occasion of sin when we are in fact constantly sustaining and shoring up a society-wide sinfulness?
Finally and very importantly, we should care about the suffering of our men. They are our fathers, brothers, sons, nephews, friends, and coworkers. They are a part of us. When they hurt, we should hurt and we should want to stop the injustice they face.

Piece of Advice #87: Ditch the TV

noreply@blogger.com (grerp) — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 18:19:00 +0000

And its corollary, Piece of Advice #87b: Don't let your kids watch TV

Television has become so ghastly, so utterly depraved in so many different ways, it's surprising we are not hearing a regular denouncement of it from the collective pulpit and other organizations which promote decency.

When I was a kid the rule in our house was you had to read an hour for every hour of TV - which automatically cuts the number of potential hours watching TV in half and, really, even further because even a voracious reader is only going to bank so many hours for, say, Saturday morning. Also, there were only five channels, two of which were the same network and one of which was PBS, and the VCR didn't make its appearance until I was in high school. As a result I never developed much of a TV habit.

We had cable when we were first married because my husband liked the political/economic analysis channels, but we cancelled it because he found watching on a regular basis provoked a lot of anger and anxiety. I hardly ever watched because I'd flip through the channels and find nothing I was remotely interested in. I was much more entertained reading.

There are four main benefits from not watching TV:

You are spared the advertising and thus the pressure to constantly want and buy things that are utterly unnecessary for happiness. No doubt I've saved countless dollars just from ignorance. From a parent's perspective, my kid also is unaware of how much stuff I'm not buying him and more or less happy with what he's got. I notice this benefit when I give him soup, a roll, and a cup of tea after school for a snack and he gobbles it up, smacks his lips, and asks for more. He does not demand Dora the Explorer fruit roll ups or what have you. He did ask for a Batman lunchbox this fall when he saw one in Meijer, but - well, let's face it, who wouldn't want one of those? Batman is cool.
You are spared the constant barrage on your traditional morals and values. The funny, cool people on television are very frequently cruel, spiteful, stupid, promiscuous, and selfish, and every cutting edge show pushes a sexual agenda contrary to real Christian or Jewish beliefs. The writers of these shows know that if they can make their characters sympathetic, the viewer will cut them a break when they do something immoral because they like them. Every episode watched then is an assault on any solid moral standards as we struggle to pass judgment on the actions of "people" we like. Can anyone doubt this has an effect in real life situations? The most dangerous type of person to a collective moral standard is a "nice" person who behaves immorally because we don't like to condemn the behavior of nice people. But if it is immoral, we really have to. Excising TV from your life will at least eliminate this dilemma from one area of your life. As a parent, if you do not let your child watch TV, you have a far greater ability to shape what they believe without unwanted intrusion. You will not be inviting immoral people into your house, and you will not have to answer so many difficult questions until your child is at least old enough to understand nuance. Essentially, you can guide them according to your own beliefs until their moral compass has been fully created.
You will not be tempted to enjoy the humiliation of real people or feel superior to them. The rise of reality TV has essentially been the reappearance of the freak show, writ large. We would be ashamed to peer at and mock people with physical deformities, but we don't hesitate when it's people with no sense, no intelligence, or no morals. Some of the people on reality TV shows are true sociopaths or actual villains, but most of them are stupid, undisciplined, or morally malformed, often due to the kind of bad parenting we see all too often. If we cannot help them, we can at least not elevate or celebrate them, watching happily as they inevitably crash and burn on the public stage.
You will have much more time to do actual worthwhile things.

I have a television, but it is old and I do not have a converter box (and did not have an antenna before that). All the television we watch comes either from the library or we own it. In this way I have total control over what my son and I watch. We do watch the occasional educational program, and he has a little library of VHS tapes I've approved for his entertainment (I have one as well). It would have been a lot easier for me to let the TV babysit him sometimes, but I'm glad I've done it this way. The long-term rewards far outweigh the temporary ones.

It's been so long since we've had TV that I am frankly astounded by what they allow on TV when I see it at other people's houses. We are nearly to the gladiatorial games level as a society here, and it's frightening how easily we've embraced this.

Piece of Advice #86: Don't kid yourself about abortion

noreply@blogger.com (grerp) — Sat, 22 Jan 2011 15:28:00 +0000

It's killing. A baby. And if you're the one having the abortion, it's you who are killing your baby.

I'm not trying to be shocking here, actually. It is what it is. The child you conceived is living inside you, and you are doing what you can to make it not live. That's killing, a gerund we use typically when we talk about the deliberately caused death of living things with faces. We have shrouded abortion in so much nice-y nice language over the years, and the media has done everything it can to make anti-abortion people (which is what I am - anti-abortion - I have no problem with that label and do not see it as negative) seem like complete nutjobs, that people have mentally downgraded this type of killing to something vaguer and more benign.

An unplanned, unwanted child in utero is a fetus. A planned or unplanned, wanted child is a baby and gets a pregnancy countdown widget like this:

And we have lived for decades now mentally shifting between "fetus" and "baby" depending on the circumstances, getting more and more comfortable with this verbal game of Spare the Feelings of (Mostly) Promiscuous Women. Because being politically correct and supporting "choice" is more important than live babies.

While it is true that not all women who have abortions are unmarried, the vast majority of them are and the majority of them never have been. And the vast, vast, vast, vast majority are not having abortions because they were raped, molested by a family member, or their lives are in serious physical jeopardy. Abortion is the ultimate backup plan for promiscuity.

It is no coincidence that abortion "rights" were demanded and given closely following the release of the birth control pill (in itself, the 1st barrier to chaste behavior down) and the Sexual Revolution (2nd). If you can have sex without the fear of pregnancy or social stigma, you're going to need a backup plan. Because sometimes birth control fails, and, more importantly, plenty of women will fail to use it correctly or use it at all. Some of them won't use it because they are broke or don't like the physical side effects. Some of them won't use it because they can't think beyond the short term. And some of them won't use it because they think a baby will get them a husband, a boyfriend, or love. So, it's obvious, given all this planned and unplanned user error, that abortion is that necessary third step to make sure women can have all the sex they want with anyone they want and never have to have a child. Unless they want one. Then they can make that sexy stranger guy cough up child support for the next 18 years. No reproductive freedom for him! But I digress.

I've been anti-abortion for a long, long time. I've prayed the rosary and done novenas for babies in danger. I've given money to Right to Life. I've prayed and demonstrated before clinics. This was an issue that really mattered to me long before I found out that I couldn't have a baby and had to grapple with dearth of adoptable children - the reality of all those millions of mothers choosing to kill their babies rather than birth them and then place them for adoption. Having thought and read about this issue, sometimes very deeply, I've concluded that the only "moral" justification for abortion is if you believe that humans do not have souls and are of only ephemeral value or no value at all. The attempts to determine life or humanity such as brain activity or viability outside the womb are distractions. If humans have souls and have value, then they have value from the moment they exist. And if humans are inherently valuable, we should protect them, even the smallest, most vulnerable ones. Especially the smallest, most vulnerable ones. However, if they do not have souls or value, then babies in utero are equivalent to the small saplings that grow up in inconvenient places every spring and can therefore be rooted out with the same lack of qualm. Following that logic, though, all of us older trees should be cut down when we stop being useful or stop bearing fruit. Do we want to think that way?

The New York Times has a piece today entitled "Lawmakers in Many States Pushing for Abortion Curbs." Reading this made me happy. Not because I think we are looking at the end of abortion or even a significant elimination of most abortions. As long as we allow and encourage young women to be promiscuous, we will have abortion, and even if we were to outlaw surgical abortion (which we won't), there will still be pills to take the morning after or later on. No, it made me happy because this year is bound to be a nail-biter for the kind of woman who thinks killing her own baby should be a right and protests loud and long for it. For those nervous ladies, I have this advice: you can always not have sex. I've heard tell that works amazingly well to keep the babies away.

Piece of Advice #85: Exit the blame cycle and do something useful

noreply@blogger.com (grerp) — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 03:19:00 +0000

On my last piece of advice (Expect and prepare for your standard of living to decline), commenter Dragline said:

"The point is we should not expect top-down solutions to our problems. And blaming "them" (pick your "them" and add your favorite "ism") isn't going to get you anywhere, except perhaps self-destruction. Or a job on today's cable TV "news".
If you go back to your 4th Turning posts and the best characteristics of our (Gen-X) generation, it is the ability to dig deep, be tough and be pragmatic. When they say "surrender", we say "Nuts."
We need to focus on ignoring government (until we clean out the Boomers) and building communities -- on-line, with neighbors, whomever. And finding ways to live on less and celebrating the freedom of frugality."

This is definitely what I was getting at. While it can be absorbing and interesting trying to isolate how we got into our current messes as a society, ultimately determining whether the republicans, democrats, feminists, blacks, whites, illegals, Boomers, X-ers, G.I.s, corporations, or socialists are most to blame is not going to be of real help to the individual or the family during hard times. It would be far more useful to pursue the two-fold strategy of increasing both self-sufficiency and strengthening community bonds. None of the above in aggregate will be there to save us in crisis. They don't care about you. They don't care about me. The only people who do care are the people around us whom we cultivate as friends, neighbors, and family. We all need to make more of those connections because they will provide strength and shelter.

I've talked before about developing your own skills. Knowing how to make and fix things is important not just because it makes you more self-reliant or because it will save you money, but because it gives you something to trade in informal negotiations and makes you a more valuable person to know. We have lost so much knowledge of how to do basic things. It's a sad thing to admit, but I basically taught myself to cook in the last three or four years. I believe I have a pretty workable repertoire of foods I can competently prepare now, and my husband is quite happy with my progress, but the fact remains that I am no chef. Compared to the average 1940s housewife, I'm a a novice. Since very few women now cook, however, my efforts look nothing short of miraculous to my husband's coworkers who marvel over the stuff I send in his daily lunchbox. I've also noticed that good food predisposes people to feel more positively about you. I'm not above using that if I have to in the future.

I've also given away "free samples" of my other skills to my neighbors. I babysit for free occasionally. I blow out the snow from the sidewalks on either side of my own. I share the produce in my garden when it gets prolific. I also wave and talk to the people in my little area and try to build community in small ways. I do this because I was taught to do so by my parents but also because when your city significantly cuts back on its police force as mine did a year ago, it's a good idea to know the people around you. They can help keep an eye on your house when you're gone. They would be the ones to form a neighborhood watch to stop a rising tide of crime. And they're the ones you'd swap stuff and skills for when money gets tight.

As I mentioned before, we all have to prepare for our standard of living to decline as wages continue on their downward slide. But that doesn't have to mean things cannot be done and we must lie around helpless. Rather it means we will not be able to pay strangers to do them with disposable income. Several of my neighbors have chains saws and could probably be persuaded to help me cut down a branch that comes down in a future storm - if they know me enough to care and if I've got something to trade either now or later. This giving and taking of free labor is what was previously known as community, and it worked well for thousands of years. It is both cheaper and more expensive that what we've been doing. We abandoned it because it requires more than money. Communities expect things of their members. They judge when people are lazy or do not conform to community standards. And an individual's "bank account" within a community is always needing replenishment. Skills and tools are not always needed, but shows of courtesy, politeness, loyalty, and integrity are.

I would encourage you to strengthen the bonds you have with the people you live, work, and worship with. As I stated in my previous post, we as a nation still have many resources; we just need to learn to identify and share them better. To protect ourselves as individuals, we have to lessen our emphasis on individualism. The future will see the re-emergence of communities. If we establish them now, they will be up and running when we really need them.

Piece of Advice #84: Expect and prepare for your standard of living to decline

noreply@blogger.com (grerp) — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 03:29:00 +0000

It seems to me that there are quite a lot of people out there who think that when we shake the dust of this "recession" off our boots, things will go back to normal and it will be Disney World/McMansion/retail therapy time again.

This is not going to happen. I live in Michigan. We have been in a one-state recession/depression for a full decade now. All of our good jobs shipped south and east after NAFTA passed, and we've been scaling back every since in fits and starts, mostly in fits. Despite all of this practice we've had at getting poorer, we're still fighting the realization that that means there isn't any money, as evidenced in a recent HuffPo article, "Hamtramck's Budget Nightmare: Michigan Town Left with Nothing Else to Cut":

In November 2009, Cooper sat down with the unions and laid out the city's problem. Representatives from the Ranking Officers Association, the Fraternal Order of Police, the International Association of Firefighters and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees sat around the table in the conference room at Hamtramck City Hall, a three-story converted hospital building, as Cooper walked them through a Powerpoint presentation.

The union workers have traditionally enjoyed solidly middle class wages. Under their existing union contract, police lieutenants will earn $78,000 this year, not including benefits. A patrol officer makes up to $58,000. A typical firefighter makes up to $55,000.

Cooper aimed to roll those numbers back. Though Detroit had yet to officially stop paying, he was already worried. He told the unions he wanted to cut benefits. If the unions didn't accept his proposals, he would have to start laying off workers.

But in Hamtramck, labor contracts bar such layoffs without the assent of the unions, and Cooper was swiftly rebuffed in his effort to gain it.

The unions were enraged. Just months earlier, the local branch of the International Association of Firefighters had finalized a new five-year contract with the city. The police, too, were bitter, especially given that they collect cash by issuing traffic tickets and seizing drug proceeds.

"We're the only department in the city that's actually generating revenue besides the income tax department," says patrolman Jon Bondra.

After the November meeting, the police unions rejected Cooper's request for concessions. Instead, they agreed to a creative plan to raise cash: They would implement a strict traffic safety program, with officers working overtime to write as many tickets as they could.

Traffic enforcement has proven to be a bonanza. In its first year, the program earned the city just over $800,000, according to estimates from Cooper and police officers.

Still facing a considerable shortfall, Cooper sought and gained concessions from the International Association of Firefighters, which, in January, agreed to forgo payment for 13 annual holidays. The union also agreed to increase its contribution to a pension fund in exchange for keeping a pay raise. And the union assented to keeping a single position vacant.

Kind of amazing, huh? Ten years, all our good jobs shipped out, daily media coverage, and the cops in Hamtramck would rather shake down the citizenry for more cash than accept that this is the new normal: lower wages, crappy benefits, and an attitude of gratitude just for having a job. It's been a steep learning curve with plenty of denial built in.

But given our terrible long-term employment outlook and shaky financial institutions, the enormous shortfalls our local, state, and federal governments are looking at (but not really facing), and rising food, energy, education, and health care costs, it would not take a genius to conclude that things are going to get worse for the average joe, not better. So adjust your future outlook accordingly. Personally, I think it's time the media stopped running those articles on how hard it is for a middle class family to get by, and start running more pieces on intergenerational and community cooperation. Doubling up, the backbone of family economies before the rise and fall of an American manufacturing economy, is going to be the trend. We are also going to have to learn to cooperate and get along with our neighbors, because we are going to need them. The best thing we could all do is to learn to live below our means as practice. In the short term, money saved can be used to pay down debt, set aside for emergencies, or used to purchase things that will allow us to be more self-sufficient. In the longer term, it will prepare us for the austerity ahead.

Most importantly, do not delude yourself that the government will be able to legislate or stimulate us back to prosperity or catch us gently on the way down. The good news is that America, at least, does not lack for resources. We only lack knowledge of how to use them more efficiently, sparingly, and cooperatively. These are the things we should be trying to learn again.

Piece of Advice #83: Grow old gracefully

noreply@blogger.com (grerp) — Sat, 08 Jan 2011 03:11:00 +0000

In trying to find a suitable image for this post, I easily found an untold number of photos of once stunning women who have made themselves into circus freaks via plastic surgery in an attempt to hold on to the gratifying appreciation once freely and generously given to them.

Don't do that. Time humbles and fells all men and women. Best not to fight too hard against the master. By all means, keep your grooming standards high and wear clothes that flatter you, but know that the time for red dresses and glittery hair baubles is not in your forties.

It is ironic that the demand for plastic surgery as increased in pace with the grrrl power propaganda. It is as if we believe that if we repeat the mantra that women's looks are nothing compared with her intelligence and her moxie, it will eventually become truth.

The sad fact is that looks do matter. The beautiful people do get more chances. And beauty is fleeting, gone before it can properly be appreciated, and never returning. Filling your lips with collagen, getting your tummy tucked, your eyelids lifted, and your forehead botoxed will make you look different, but it will not make you look young. At best, it will give a strained facsimile of youth, but never the real thing. Melanie Griffith at one time was an attractive woman. She has a handsome younger husband she would like to keep. But does she look better with all the work she's had done than what she would have aged into without it? It's doubtful. She is less desirable than a very average looking 20 year old. Those 30 years make a difference. Fecundity has its own allure, she is no longer fecund.

It's no wonder women have so much interest in who has or hasn't had work done - we know these women are trying to cheat the clock and hold men's (and women's) eyes a little longer and we know that they are no longer entitled to it. They had their days in the spring sunshine, and those days were longer than they were for most of us. It it autumn now, though, and time to wrap up. Age will make you humble and vulnerable, but wise too if you focus now on other things. And beauty, while valuable, is not the only thing of value. Look inside and see what else you have to offer and what skills you can develop.

I write this on the last day of my thirties, and I am determined to take my own advice. We all age every day. Try and be at peace with it, physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

Piece of Advice #82: Endeavor to be useful rather than just pretty

noreply@blogger.com (grerp) — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 05:10:00 +0000

Hat tip to terry@breathinggrace for today's title. I'd been struggling with a way to frame my thoughts in a Piece of Advice, and she summed it up perfectly.

I was perusing OneSTDV's blog the other day and read his piece, "Good Girls Gone Bad." In it he gives his thoughts on the Youtube sensation juicystar07 (the girl on the right in the above video). He describes her as "a beautiful, sweet, and just plain adorable "good girl" and says:

I've followed her off and on since I blogged about her awhile back, just mainly because she's a fun, not too serious, nice girl. Yet, Miss Fowler has a lot of haters, so there's a ton of information about her on the Internet. Most of the information constitutes attempts to undermine her purported "good girl" image, such as that she takes money for product reviews, that she's a bitch in real life, and other stuff like that.

I have to say, this was so interesting to me. In the video OneSTDV showcases, juicystar07 does look very young, pretty, and appealing, but my two-word almost immediate reaction to her was, "Regina George," and I believe I can say that with very little jealousy in play. I hadn't actually ever heard of her before, so I went and did a little research. She and her sister (the girl on the left in the video above) have made hundreds of Youtube videos demonstrating beauty tips and other girl topics. They also do video "hauls" in which they show off stuff they've just purchased - again, refer to above vid. They been at it a couple of years and have become popular enough, with enough subscriber interest, to snag an offer for a sister reality TV show. Their real names are Elizabeth and Lisa Fowler, and they hail from Tennessee. Their father is a gynecologist. They've recently moved to L.A. and they also seem to have both gotten the same nose job as a token of their success. The nose job thing has resulted in some interesting online outrage from young women who reject that as a valid choice for "good role models" such as juicystar07 and allthatglitters21. There are also rumors that they are both fake and bitchy and that they are essentially shills for the beauty business rather than objective reviewers.

Having read a significant amount of online commentary - most of which could be boiled down to either jealousy or female attempts to curb other females' power, I'd have to say, as objectively as I can, given that I am also female, that it's unlikely that the Fowler girls are nice people and they are definitely not good role models.

First, the "good girl" debunking. These are pretty girls at the height of their social/sexual power. It's hard to say what they really look like under all that makeup, but they are attractive and can certainly get more attention from men (and other women) than they need. They also come from an affluent background and have clearly been spoiled. You cannot buy all the stuff that they display on their haul videos on the paycheck of a retail wage slave. Daddy bought a lot of it, probably most of it, at least until recently when they started getting freebies in exchange for publicity. People who spend copious amounts of time thinking about the shallowest aspects of themselves and how to garner more attention - and, therefore, more social power - aren't in the same category of "nice" as, say, Anne of Green Gables who was expected to pull her weight on a working farm and had a strict female relative clamping down on any show of pride or vanity. Any girl that has ever gone to high school would know that the juicystar07s of the world are going to be queen bees, a la Regina George or Cordelia Chase, no matter how Girl-Next-Door the exterior. Girls with social power use it. And girls who crave their own reality TV shows are fame whores of the highest order. There may be something to them underneath all the glitz and attention seeking, but it has not been developed. At all. Have they learned any domestic arts, child caregiving, or any other useful or marketable skill? I doubt it.

Now on to the "good role model" debunking. Youtube has a number of videos of young girls declaring how outraged they are that juicystar07 and allthatglitters21 got nose jobs. They "feel betrayed" and "have unsubscribed" to their Youtube channels now that they know that these two are not the role models they seemed to be. I find this logic (and outrage) confusing. Yes, it is foolish, shallow, vain, and frivolous to get their perfectly fine noses reworked, but juicystar07 and allthatglitters21 made hundreds of videos detailing 1) exactly how shallow and vain they are and 2) teaching other girls how to deceptively alter their features with makeup. Plastic surgery would seem entirely in keeping with their mutual worldview and previous behavior, none of which at any time was good role modeling. Good role modeling is not about giving makeup tips or publicly seeking fame and wealth. It's about showing other people how to be better - more compassionate, more empathetic, harder working, humbler, kinder, more generous. It certainly isn't constantly buying and hawking cheap products made in foreign sweatshops by people working for slave wages. It isn't spending someone else's money or figuring out how to get free stuff in exchange for free shilling. Fame and wealth isn't character and will prove for these two to be ephemeral. They have assets - their looks, whatever talent they may possess, a family willing to invest in them. It is clear, though, that instead of using these to gain skills or form families they will squander them in pursuit of fame and publicity, fun times and the chance to "explore their sexuality" in the Big City.

Their parents would have better served them taking them to a real sweatshop and the community it supports rather than a NYC fashion show and nipping the Youtube attention seeking in the bud when it began. Learning how to support yourself is essential to any young person, but these girls are not teaching that or any other truly useful thing.