Archive for January, 2008
A Man and His Dog
The great pleasure of a dog is that you may make a fool of yourself with him and not only will he not scold you, but he will make a fool of himself too. ~Samuel Butler, Notebooks, 1912
From the dog’s point of view, his master is an elongated and abnormally cunning dog. ~Mabel Louise RobinsonOur dogs will love and admire the meanest of us, and feed our colossal vanity with their uncritical homage. ~Agnes Repplier
With the exception of women, there is nothing on earth so agreeable or necessary to the comfort of man as the dog. ~Edward Jesse, Anecdote of Dogs
Dogs have given us their absolute all. We are the center of their universe. We are the focus of their love and faith and trust. They serve us in return for scraps. It is without a doubt the best deal man has ever made. ~Roger Caras
Mr. Shirty McShirty has been dogsitting for over a week now. The relationship between this man and this dog is a sight to behold. I’ve never been much of a dog person myself (Dooce…I know) partly because my mother would have disowned me (i.e. she conditioned me so) and partly because, well, they smell, the slobber, they wag, they beg, and most of them are as big as me and maybe that scares me just a little.
But Shirty McS? Definitely a dog person. He’s pretty sure he WAS a dog in a past life, and a pack leader at that. Alpha male.
The thing is, if you saw these two beasts together for a day, you’d believe it. Rover (name changed to protect the innocent) yields to S McS in every way and seemingly loves to do so. When S McS locks Rover out of his office so that he can take a sales call, Rover whimpers softly outside the door for several long minutes, and then finally concedes to curling up somewhere and pretending to sleep. When he hears S McS wrapping up the phone call, and yes, he knows, he gets up and goes to the office door which opens on cue. Bizarre.
One week and maybe a half and these two animals are bonded like the best of brothers, only one, of course is Alpha. Wherever S McS goes, Rover goes. When S McS sits in a chair, Rover climbs into his lap and I feel compelled to let you know that Rover is NO SMALL DOG. Rover is a beast. Part dalmation and part BIG DOG, he takes over S McS’s lap, half the chair, and he’s still dangling in several places. He doesn’t seem to care. He just wants to be as close as possible to his master. His master of just under two weeks.
Rover is a friendly enough dog. He’ll greet you with the usual crotch-sniffing because nothing says, “Nice to see ya” like a snout in your soft spot. That doesn’t explain the instant and un-breakable bond of these two. I swear to you, I could walk in the room with a giant bacon flavored dog bone for a head and garlands of dog bones around my neck and Rover would take his eyes off his master only long enough to shoot me a glance as if to say, “What are you trying to prove here?” and then turn his adoring gaze back to Mr. Shirty.
In fact, if I hug Shirty McShirty in Rover’s presence, he becomes extremely distressed. He sits at our feet and barks, then backs up and barks some more until we give up the nonsense. I’m afraid if I gave McShirty a love pat I might end up on the floor with some slobbery teeth on my neck.
So I get it. Man loves Dog. Dog loves Man. And that’s just how it is.
Double-D Standards, Double-D Irony
A couple of recent conversations got me thinking. I have a lot of male friends, and among the range of men I know they fall all across the spectrum in their ideas of women, their level of comfort with their own masculinity, and their level of what I will unabashedly label homophobia.
I’ve noticed a certain disconnect in some of their standards. Some of them feel that it is fine and natural to ogle women. Some even feel that women not only should accept it as de rigeur, but that they like to be objectified sexually. Some of these men even think that women harbor fantasies about being “seduced” or raped. This may or may not be true on an individual level, but in my experience, men’s ideas of women’s fantasies and women’s actual fantasies are very different. Very different indeed.
Nonetheless, these same men often express and experience everything from discomfort to downright anger when they feel that they are being ogled by other men. Gay men. And I started thinking…what’s the difference, really? I mean, hey, gay or not, they’re just being “guys” and “all guys look” so “what’s the big deal?”
So a man can recognize his own displeasure at being ogled and lusted after by another guy, and yet disconnect this when it comes to women. Often when a woman expresses displeasure at unwanted advances, a man will tell her she is being uptight or even label her a bitch. (Mind you, not all men advance on a woman without getting the come hither cue, and those men are not likely to label women so. They’ve already got the boundary respect issue in their pocket.)
How can these men not see the double-standard here? I can only guess at the explanations, but no matter which one I try, it still comes down to a very basic and fundamental issue. The lust, the attention, and the sense of privilege and right to lust and look, and maybe even act on it, is unwelcome.
So, guys in the audience. The next time you justify in your mind that a woman “wants it”, “expects it”, “doesn’t/shouldn’t mind it”, “deserves it” or at the very minimum that “you’re just being a guy and all guys look”, ask yourself if you would want to be subjected to it yourself. You can justify that you might want a woman to ogle you, make advances, or even seduce you by force, but if you can imagine ANY situation, even one that you view as “abnormal”, where you would feel uncomfortable, unsafe, or even angry with it, then you have to extend that right to women too. No one has the right to determine for someone else what they are comfortable with, or what they ought to be comfortable with.
Remember that, and teach it to your children.
Because She’s A Teenager, That’s Why
There’s a little morning ritual that my daughter likes to go through. It’s called “Not Getting Up if My Life Depended On it”. This morning, I wake her up several times, each time my assertions getting firmer and louder. Finally, she throws off the covers, pops out of the bed and brushes past me heading for the bathroom. I smile a little victory smile and go back to my room to get dressed for the day.
Several minutes into my morning prep, I realize something doesn’t feel right. Things are too…still. Too quiet.
I knock on the bathroom door. No answer. I knock again, still with no answer. There is not a sound coming from behind that bathroom door. Could it be…? I open the door and right there, on the floor, is the Mad Sister curled up on the bathroom rug! And because she’s a teenager, she is actually PUT OUT when I wake her up.
4 commentsVelvet Verbosity Lives
I’m here. I’m alive. And kicking. I’ll be back soon with something of actual substance. Send me some love. Tell me what you want to hear about. Give me a writing prompt.
3 commentsI Spent the Night with Ira Glass
Never mind. The more important question is, what did I like to do before my Macbook Pro and the internet sucked me into their firm grasps? Meditate, run, exercise, bike, read, write, see live music, photography, videography, make art, cook, have dinner with friends, listen to music, find new music, visit old bookstores, sit in cafes and write about the people I saw, volunteer, get involved, bury treasure, climb mountains, drink chai, write letters, learn guitar, LIVE.
Not that blogging isn’t some form of a lot of the above, but really, I was beginning to feel like I was sinking deeper and deeper into the pixels on my screen and I wasn’t liking the way it felt. I was never one of those people that got deeply sucked into television except for my yearly January binges of Law and Order while I was an undergrad (at 32) at Smith. I would get bored long before I felt entertained. I always liked to be doing rather than watching.
When I was about 10, the first versions of cable were hitting my neighborhood. I honestly don’t even remember if it was satellite dishes or cable that came first. I just didn’t care. So when my neighbors, the short hair twins, got more channels through whatever mechanism it was, they stopped coming out to play after school. Then they stayed in later and later on Saturday mornings. I would go over, knock on the door, and one or the other of them would run to the door, distractedly looking back over their shoulder as they quickly and breathlessly told me they “couldn’t come out right now because Tom and Jerry was playing on the television”.
“Well, when?” I would ask.
“After this are two more cartoons. We got all the channels!”
Then she, whichever “she” she was, would run back into the living room, leaving me with treasure to bury by myself. I just didn’t get it. Many a friend got taken by the television monster that year. Other than not having my usual minions to construct my elaborate fantasy world, I was perfectly fine with it. I was a pretty solitary kid and didn’t like most other kids anyway. Mostly because no matter how clean, kids always smelled funny to me. And they were every bit as mean as they were stupid. Kids were always being mean to one another and my gawd it was always a drama.
I did watch some television, of course. At night, when I couldn’t be outside anymore, and when there were cool shows on like Grizzly Adams. Man I wanted to be that guy. Not marry him. I wanted to be him. He was the shit! I wanted that life of false accusations forcing me into the mountainous wilderness where my best friend would become a Grizzly Bear and together we would live out our lives in industrious dignity.
Most importantly, I’d have to figure out all those animals and all those plants and back when I was 10 that was as good as life could get.
Since I had this unexpected gift of openness, I figured it was as good a time as any to bring up the birds and the bees. I learned that it is true that she knows girls who “service” boys that they have no connection to, and they get nothing in return. I learned (thank God) that she can’t understand this behavior or why a girl would do this to herself, particularly when there is nothing in it for the girl except a bad reputation. I learned that she feels it is partly fueled by boys’ expectations and the girls’ desire to be liked for any reason.
I learned that we can still talk when we remove the electronic distractions that make it much easier to walk away then to talk. I learned that she still likes to have her hands massaged.
When my children were young, I purposefully kept television out of their lives for a long time. As they got older, all those things crept in, one by one, until we were all holed up in our sections of the house, chattering with everyone but each other. Our conversations were reserved for the rare dinner together when our schedules didn’t conflict, or car rides.
I’m going to turn off the internet and cable more often!
No Internet and Two Angry Teens
This morning I announced, rather firmly, that I would be canceling internet service and cable television. Evil Knievel and The Mad Sister murmured “whatever” into their pillows and then promptly fell back to sleep because they stay up too late watching television, playing XBox Live, updating their Myspace, Facebook, Twitter and SO on. Not to mention I myself have been staying up way too late blogging, reading blogs, commenting, etc.
What? Did you hear something?
So I will be composing blog posts in Word and then only checking during lunchtime and at the end of the work day for comments. If I’m scarce on your blog, forgive me. I need to reign this in for my family or we’re all going to end up looking like the Simpsons.
Two weeks. That’s the goal.
1 commentLions and Tigers and Porn, Oh My - II
Remember that book Forever, by Judy Blume? Remember how utterly scandalous it was at the time that Judy had the nerve to write about two teenagers having sex? When I hold that in contrast to what we accept from the porn industry, knowing full well that our teens are seeing it, my brain makes a little cracking noise. The two lovers in Forever discover sex with each other. It is a beautiful and moving story of sexual discovery and awakening between two young people who love and respect each other. Parents did not want their young impressionable teenagers reading this book. My school banned it and suspended kids found with it.
We got around this by distributing the book in a brown paper bag. By the time it made its way to me, the bag was thin and wrinkled and the binding of the book had disintegrated. This story of two virgins learning about their bodies was hardcore stuff that our parents and teachers didn’t want us reading. Yet most had Playboy, Penthouse, and Hustler right under their beds. That was ok. In fact, it was “understood” that it was a right of passage for boys to sneak their fathers skin mags to share with their friends so they could learn about the female body and sex. Boys will be boys.
Remember, pornography is only a bunch of images and fantasies. It has no effect whatsoever on real life. So the explosion of its availability should not cause us concern whatsoever. I wonder, what then drives growing trends such as blow-job clubs among young adolescent girls. I wonder whatever gave them this idea, or what they get out of it. I wonder how they have come to believe that servicing a guy in this way without any reciprocation or respect is good for them. I wonder.
In my research for this post, I found an amazing post, that coincidentally covers both Judy Blume’s book Forever, the trend of girl on boy casual oral sex, and pornography. It’s long, but well worth the read.
Let me interrupt this post to say, SEX is not a dirty word. I repeat, SEX is NOT a dirty word. Sex is a beautiful, natural, wonderful act! We humans are incredibly blessed in this department because our brains evolved to include emotion and reason and intelligence, and we get to have sex because we want to and choose to, not just because we are driven to procreate. And sex is so much better because of it. It can be infused with eroticism, and fantasy, and love, and intimacy, and discovery along with the pure pleasure.
The second thing I want to say is that not only do I not hate men, I love men. Truly. All my life some of my closest friends and companions have been men.
So when I’m against pornography, or the sex industry in all of its forms, I am not against sex and I’m not against men. I’m against the diminishing of sex. I’m against a devolution of men and women. I’m pro-humanity. I’m pro-women and pro-men. I’m PRO SEX! Between real men and real women, people with minds as well as bodies. I’m pro-girls and pro-boys who should get the opportunity to discover sex in their own time, with each other, on the same level, like in the book Forever. And I truly think that the pornification of our culture is robbing too many of our children of that opportunity.
It needs to be talked about, and in a way that makes sense. Not in a sexual freedom vs. sexual repression way. Not in a right vs. left way. Not in a men vs. women way. In a genuine, open, inquisitive way that is relentless and unforgiving in the search for the truth about pornography and the sex industry.
The following is an excerpt from a 2004 article by Robert Jensen. Read the full article here.
The only resistance is collective, and the pornorgraphers want to squash it
When I critique pornography, I often am told to lighten up; sex is just sex, people say, and I should stop trying to politicize pornography. But pornography obviously is political. Telling men stories about sex in which women are three holes and two hands, not people, is
political. It offers men a politics of sex and gender. And that politics is patriarchal and reactionary.
As with any political issue, successful strategies of resistance to injustice and oppression must be collective. There cannot be personal solutions to political problems. If we avoid engaging political problems in public and hope to make the best of things in private, we fail. Pornographers know that, which is why they want to make sure no collective remedies for women (through legislation or the courts) are considered, let alone enacted. But they also would prefer that none of these issues even be discussed in public. In recent years, their strategies for cutting off that discussion have been remarkably successful. When we criticize pornography, we typically are told we are either sexually dysfunctional prudes who are scared of sex, or people who hate freedom, or both. That works to keep many people quiet. The pornographers desperately want to keep people from asking the simple question: What kind of society would turn the injury and degradation of some into sexual pleasure for others? What kind of people does that make us — the men who learn to find pleasure this way, and the women who learn to accept it?
The pornographers want to label any collective discussion of the meaning of intimacy and sexuality as repression. They want to derail any talk about a sexual ethic. They, of course, have a sexual ethic: Anything goes. On the surface that seems to be freedom: Consenting adults should be free to choose. I agree they should. But in a society in which power is not equally distributed, “anything goes” translates into “anything goes for men, and some women and children will suffer for it.” Any society that claims to take freedom seriously must engage in a discussion about power, and take steps to equalize power. That means taking steps to end men’s domination of women.
There are many controversial questions in the pornography debate: What is the nature of the relationship between sexually explicit media and behavior? Under what conditions can the consent of people involved in acts that may be detrimental to their own well-being be questioned? What harms of speech acts can trump free-speech concerns?
But there should be nothing controversial about this: To criticize pornography is not repressive. To speak about what one knows and feels and dreams is, in fact, liberating. We are not free if we aren’t free to talk about our desire for an egalitarian intimacy and sexuality that would reject pain and humiliation.
That is not prudishness or censorship. It is at attempt to claim the best parts of our common humanity — love, caring, empathy, solidarity. To do that is not to limit anyone. It is to say that people matter more than the profits of pornographers and the pleasure of pornography consumers. It is to say, simply, that women count as much as men.
Amen.
4 commentsVelvet Verbosity Goes to Manhattan
If any of you were waiting with bated breath for my next installment and wondering why I didn’t deliver it is because I was swooped away on a business/pleasure trip to Manhattan. Stayed in the beautiful and quiet Tudor City section of Manhattan at the Tudor Hotel at the United Nations and enjoyed a blues show, an afternoon with my brother, and dinner with an art gallery manager. Oh, and a fabulous bubble bath that got a wee bit out of control when I decided to mix bubbles with jacuzzi jets. Fun, but bad idea.The biggest highlight was hanging out with my little bro. He showed off his IPhone by finding us all the antique shops and thrift shops that were close to us. We met up in Union Square and had a late lunch at a Thai restaurant that was every bit New York as a visitor could possibly stand. Cafeteria style but hip and packed to capacity with chattering New Yorkers. Except for the two guys who planted themselves next to us and never spoke a word to each other after the first two sentences they exchanged in Russian when they first sat down.
After we got away from the Silent Russians, we poked our noses in all the underground antique and thrift shops we could get to without my feet falling off. The best was a little place run by an older couple and a friendly cat.
4 commentsLions and Tigers and Porn, OH MY!
Woman Remodeled posted about PETA, the objectification of women and her views on pornograhy. I had already been thinking about posting on the topic, but now I have to. I’m one of those people that WR refers to as “not ok with it”. When I was younger, pornography was available but someone had to go out, in public, and buy it, or wait for it in the mail. For most people it wasn’t worth the bloody effort. And getting hold of more hardcore, deviant, or illegal stuff was no easy task.
But isn’t the internet a beautiful thing? Just turn on you computer and ask yourself where you want to go, and you’re there, instantly, cheaply, and anonymously. Addicts call this the three A’s. “Accessible, Affordable, Anonymous”.I don’t share Woman Remodeled’s laissez-faire attitude of porn. We share no cross words over it, but we’ve had many long conversations exploring our own views on it. I’m against pornography, not blanketly, but against the allowance of it being so prevalent and so easy to get. My objection to it is not moral or religious. I am thoroughly dismayed that the few people who are blogging against pornography do so from a heavily Christian slant. Unfortunately, that only furthers the case for the proponents of smut because they can easily draw a clear line in the sand.
“If you’re on that side, clearly you’re a prude, but if you’re on THIS side you’re fun and free and sexually LIBERATED!”
If only life were that simple.
I object to pornography in the same way I object to fast food, or factory farming, or excessive consumption. It’s not about “right” or “wrong” morally. To me, it is about the health of a nation and its people, and since WR brought it up, I’m going to spend a few posts talking about it.
Neither the hardcore supporters of porn or the religious “prudes” are right on the issue. There are other reasons to think that free, easily accessible pornography coupled with anonymity isn’t such a good thing. I have several points to make but today, I want to point out one of the serious flaws in the proponents’ argument.
Most supporters of pornography will tell you, “it’s just images, it’s only fantasy, therefore it’s harmless”.
Blink. Blink blink.
Oh how I love this argument. I do so wish I could stand on a debating podium and rip this one to shreds in front of a live audience and then walk home with a big fat trophy leaving my opponent to weep over her big plastic boobs.
Ok, that was harsh. I digress.
Seriously, if images had no impact on the human psyche, if fantasies could wield no influence over human decisions and actions, then WHY would the business world spend BILLIONS of dollars on marketing? And what sells more? A text-only ad or a full blown, full color, mini-length movie featuring an OBJECT OF DESIRE??
Another argument, closely related, is that there is no direct correlation between watching pornography and acting out sexually. What they mean is that there is no direct correlation between watching a violent rape pornography scene and then going out and raping a woman. This is more or less true, but not entirely true and I’ll cover those stats tomorrow. But neither is there a direct correlation between watching a commercial and jumping up to go buy the featured product. So why would marketers continue to make commercials? Because there is an effect, and it is cumulative. It happens over time, and it happens by changing people’s minds slowly, slowly and surely. You probably don’t have the slightest clue how insidious, clever, and powerful advertising is. Even if you don’t feel like you’re being affected, you are. Somewhere, sometime, some advertising is going to plant little seeds of desire in your mind. Marketing plays on the basic human condition of dissatisfaction. Dissatisfaction=Desire=Survival. This formula got us this far, and marketers now know how to plant suggestions about what particular things we should desire next in order to survive.
Like cars. Do we really need them for survival? We sure think we do. I bet your first thought is, “But Velvet Verbosity, you NEED a car.” Do I? Do you? Does anyone need a car? Why? To get to your job? So that you can pay for your car? Did we need to build our lives around the dependency on a car? I know lots of people who get around just fine with public transport or bicycles. Desire makes us need a car, not necessity. Desire for mobility, for freedom, for ease of living, for sex appeal, to have an outward trophy of our succes.
The flames of that desire are fueled by commercials, and that advertising worked SO well that our culture is saturated with cars. Cars are so normalized in our culture that we really think we can’t live without them. Really? Would I die if I didn’t have a car? No. I would not. I would find a way to make my life work without one.
Images are powerful. The idea that consistent use of pornography will not have a cumulative effect of some kind is about the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard. Well. Except for that one argument against gay marriage, “What’s next? Marriages between humans and animals?”. Right, because that logically follows. Maybe if you’re a follower of bestiality porn it does.
So, am I saying that if you watch enough rape porn you will eventually go out and rape a woman? Yes. I am saying that. And here’s the rub, it might not be reported, because it’s been normalized in the pornography desensitized mind of the victim through the prevalent, steady, pornification of our culture. Or, if reported, the rapist may not be prosecuted or punished to the full extent of the law, because, as studies have shown, violent pornography makes people less empathetic to the victim and more sympathetic to the rapist.
However, most men will still not go out and perpetrate a violent rape on a strange woman. Instead they will coerce their girlfriends and wives to act more and more porn-like in the bedroom. You don’t think so? Do you think that women decided that learning how to pole dance in their very own home was fueled by a woman’s deep seated desire to fulfill herself by learning how to wrap herself around a pole? Or that women risk their lives going under the knife to have their breasts and genitals reshaped and reworked to look more and more like porn stars because it empowers them?
In 1968 we shouted and burned our bras. In 2008 we shut up and fill em up. You tell me where the empowerment is in that. We women too have been duped, duped I say, by the pornification of our culture.
It is late, and I don’t have time to link to stats and studies tonight, but they are out there and I’ll get them to you.
3 comments
