Welcome, friends

Welcome to the folks sent over from Pandagon (lately linked in a roundabout but esteemed way to John Edwards). If he shares Kitty's delusion (in the comments) that magazines like Playboy share a philosophy of complementarity with the Magisterium of the Catholic Church, I hope he's never entrusted with The Football. The thought that he might confuse China with Chile would be a commensurate blunder.

But the following paragraph was actually quite interesting:

The theory of anxious masculinity, which is the idea that men who have absorbed our sexist culture are frantic to define themselves mainly as Not Women, makes the shift almost too easy to understand. For anxious males, everything women have has to be disavowed as poisonously feminine. When women didn’t generally have careers or college degrees or money of their own, then intellectualism and sophistication were available to anxious men. Now women can get a college education, making intellectualism the province of women and something to be disavowed. Same with the sophisticated tastes availabe to women now that we’re allowed more than to be domestic drones or dumb bunnies. (Except poor housewives—there’s still a lot of pressure if you stay at home to pretend your life outside of childcare no longer exists. Exhibit #1.) As women’s worlds expand, the things Not Woman for anxious men to participate in shrinks. For readers of lad mags, the only available solution is to fantasize about retreating from adulthood, because women are so free to participate close to equally in most areas.

I still hold that Catholicism saves women from the "domestic drones or dumb bunnies" routine, but what exactly are feminists fighting for now, except the right to imitate men in all things, esp. randy sex?

Comments

[Amy]

Wow, I didn't realize your posts were nonsensical Genevieve :) I'm glad we have such "enlightened" people to tell us these things!

[Dan S.]

"If he shares Kitty's delusion (in the comments) . . ."

It's not entirely clear why one might suggest that Edwards shares this very specific and unusual idea with some random person in the comments on a blog belonging to one of two bloggers that he hired as, basically, low-level tech-related staffers. Convenience?

". . . that magazines like Playboy share a philosophy of complementarity with the Magisterium of the Catholic Church . . ."
Nor is it clear why this is apparently such a ridiculous idea. Of course, it's understandable that devout Catholics would shy away from any linking of Playboy and the Church. But try to think past that for a moment. After all, no one's saying that the Pope is secretly Hugh Hefner, or that the details of their philosophies are close to identical. Certainly the Church is a proponent of complementarity, no? So what about Playboy? At least historically speaking, what sort of philosophy have they espoused concerning male-female relationships? Antagonism - different and opposed? No. Supplementarity* - (think of supplementary angles
http://www.mathsisfun.com/geometry/supplementary-angles.html
) - where the members of the pair may be identical or different, both in some sense complete in themselves, but also in combination able to be come together, with their specific natures, and become something even greater? Doesn't sound like Playboy to me. Complimentarity - with different essences, different social roles they need to fill, requiring each other for completion? Now, _that_ sounds a lot more like the relationship between the Playboy and the Playboy Bunny, no?

* - or mutuality, going off the very interesting link you posted.

" but what exactly are feminists fighting for now"
super-short & horribly oversimplified version? For your choices to matter.

[Kitty]

1. Ms. Marcotte has resigned from the Edwards campaign.

2. Thanks, Dan S. You got it exactly. Playboy and the Church both put men and women in completely separate social roles, with sexual intercourse as the key symbolic meeting of the two. Thus, every contact between men and women is, in some sense, sexual, and it becomes necessary for the proper function of society to keep women -- but never men -- out of any public role where sex would be inappropriate. Also, since sex is everything, men can't be held responsible for inflicting unwante sexual attention on women because the poor dears can't help themselves.

I know it's not supposed to work that way in theory, but can you honestly say it doesn't work that way in practice?

[Curious]

GSK said: "I still hold that Catholicism saves women from the "domestic drones or dumb bunnies" routine".

What does Catholicism give to women or do for women that any other lifestyle, culture, or religion does or can not?

I'm also unsure as to what you meant by "domestic drone" - is that a person who is primarily in charge of cleaning, cooking, childcare - tasks that are traditionally seen as domestic? If my possible definition of the term is incorrect, I'm very sorry for mistaking it. However, if my reading of the term is in accord with your use of the term, I am confused. If Catholicism removes women from the binary position of either domestic drone or dumb bunny, what happens to the domestic work? Who does it? Do men then do domestic work? What do women do?

[gsk]

Life requires work. We want clean clothes, food on the table, the toilet generally sanitary, and the children's noses wiped. All unavoidable tasks.

We have two choices:
1. honour them as foundational tasks filled with meaning;
2. hold them in contempt and pass them along to low-income workers

The Church does the former, seeing motherhood, home-making, and creating order as shot through with grace and meaning: building culture, forming souls, unfolding the universe and its beauty to children, fighting entropy, creating sanctuaries in which all souls can be their very best. It's a question of how to interpret life.

Feminists do the latter, saying that housework and child-care are oppressive, drudgery meant to enslave women, and men are off having all the fun. (Tell that to the linemen in subzero temps, the coal miners, the policemen in dangerous neighbourhoods, and the accountants the week before tax forms are due!)

Work is part of the human condition. There is no "hidden fun" that folks are hiding from women. For whatever benighted reasons, men of old thought they were sparing women the rat race. Women of old said "the rat race HAS to be better than laundry and matching sox." Maybe. But the laundry and sox still have to be done. It can be done with love and meaning, or it can be delegated to the cleaners on the corner for a price, while mum and dad are both eating lunch out, and junior returns to an empty house and logs onto the internet for companionship.

I am NOT saying that women shouldn't work -- but it is short-sighted to assume it's a binary equations. Consider the words of G. K. Chesterton:

"Why is it large to teach other people's children the 'rule of three' and small to be the entire universe to your own?"

(recited from memory, may not be exact)

[gsk]

Next: the difference between Playboy and the Church is that the former is utilitarian. "Find a warm body and hump your brains out; lather, rinse, repeat." That body is simply a means to your orgasm, and then either give her breakfast, her agreed price, or maybe (if she's really good) her own apartment so you'll have a ready access when you need a fix.

The Church says that sex is marvelous, wondrous, holy, and transcendent -- so it has to be approached with reverence. One can NEVER use another person, because the only response to a person is love. Authentic love is a total gift of yourself for the GOOD of the other. The beauty of mutual love is that both find joy in the same act and know that their gift of self has been received with due reverence.

I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that Hugh Hefner couldn't even name half the girls he's bedded -- not that he's forgotten but their names weren't important. They were warm bodies to meet his needs. He just hopes they were disease-free, on reliable birth control, and experienced enough to give him a good time. Where is the mutual respect in that?