Female Supremacy Articles - Page 28
Sarah Palin: Feminism's greatest leap forward since Madonna
By Camille Paglia
Salon.com
September 10, 2008
Conservative though she may be, I felt that Palin represented an explosion of a brand new style of muscular American feminism. At her startling debut on that day, she was combining male and female qualities in ways that I have never seen before. And she was somehow able to seem simultaneously reassuringly traditional and gung-ho futurist. In terms of redefining the persona for female authority and leadership, Palin has made the biggest step forward in feminism since Madonna channeled the dominatrix persona of high-glam Marlene Dietrich and rammed pro-sex, pro-beauty feminism down the throats of the prissy, victim-mongering, philistine feminist establishment.
In the U.S., the ultimate glass ceiling has been fiendishly complicated for women by the unique peculiarity that our president must also serve as commander in chief of the armed forces. Women have risen to the top in other countries by securing the leadership of their parties and then being routinely promoted to prime minister when that party won at the polls. But a woman candidate for president of the U.S. must show a potential capacity for military affairs and decision-making. Our president also symbolically represents the entire history of the nation -- a half-mystical role often filled elsewhere by a revered if politically powerless monarch.
As a dissident feminist, I have been arguing since my arrival on the scene nearly 20 years ago that young American women aspiring to political power should be studying military history rather than taking women's studies courses, with their rote agenda of never-ending grievances. I have repeatedly said that the politician who came closest in my view to the persona of the first woman president was Sen. Dianne Feinstein, whose steady nerves in crisis were demonstrated when she came to national attention after the mayor and a gay supervisor were murdered in their City Hall offices in San Francisco. Hillary Clinton, with her schizophrenic alteration of personae, has never seemed presidential to me -- and certainly not in her bland and overpraised farewell speech at the Democratic convention (which skittered from slow, pompous condescension to trademark stridency to unseemly haste).
Feinstein, with her deep knowledge of military matters, has true gravitas and knows how to shrewdly thrust and parry with pesky TV interviewers. But her style is reserved, discreet, mandarin. The gun-toting Sarah Palin is like Annie Oakley, a brash ambassador from America's pioneer past. She immediately reminded me of the frontier women of the Western states, which first granted women the right to vote after the Civil War -- long before the federal amendment guaranteeing universal woman suffrage was passed in 1919. Frontier women faced the same harsh challenges and had to tackle the same chores as men did -- which is why men could regard them as equals, unlike the genteel, corseted ladies of the Eastern seaboard, which fought granting women the vote right to the bitter end.
Over the Labor Day weekend, with most of the big enchiladas of the major media on vacation, the vacuum was filled with a hallucinatory hurricane in the leftist blogosphere, which unleashed a grotesquely lurid series of allegations, fantasies, half-truths and outright lies about Palin. What a tacky low in American politics -- which has already caused a backlash that could damage Obama's campaign. When liberals come off as childish, raving loonies, the right wing gains. I am still waiting for substantive evidence that Sarah Palin is a dangerous extremist. I am perfectly willing to be convinced, but right now, she seems to be merely an optimistic pragmatist like Ronald Reagan, someone who pays lip service to religious piety without being in the least wedded to it. I don't see her arrival as portending the end of civil liberties or life as we know it.
One reason I live in the leafy suburbs of Philadelphia and have never moved to New York or Washington is that, as a cultural analyst, I want to remain in touch with the mainstream of American life. I frequent fast-food restaurants, shop at the mall, and periodically visit Wal-Mart (its bird-seed section is nonpareil). Like Los Angeles and San Francisco, Manhattan and Washington occupy their own mental zones -- nice to visit but not a place to stay if you value independent thought these days. Ambitious professionals in those cities, if they want to preserve their social networks, are very vulnerable to received opinion. At receptions and parties (which I hate), they're sitting ducks. They have to go along to get along -- poor dears!
It is certainly premature to predict how the Palin saga will go. I may not agree a jot with her about basic principles, but I have immensely enjoyed Palin's boffo performances at her debut and at the Republican convention, where she astonishingly dealt with multiple technical malfunctions without missing a beat. A feminism that cannot admire the bravura under high pressure of the first woman governor of a frontier state isn't worth a warm bucket of spit.
Perhaps Palin seemed perfectly normal to me because she resembles so many women I grew up around in the snow belt of upstate New York. For example, there were the robust and hearty farm women of Oxford, a charming village where my father taught high school when I was a child. We first lived in an apartment on the top floor of a farmhouse on a working dairy farm. Our landlady, who was as physically imposing as her husband, was an all-American version of the Italian immigrant women of my grandmother's generation -- agrarian powerhouses who could do anything and whose trumpetlike voices could pierce stone walls.
Here's one episode. My father and his visiting brother, a dapper barber by trade, were standing outside having a smoke when a great noise came from the nearby barn. A calf had escaped. Our landlady yelled, "Stop her!" as the calf came careening at full speed toward my father and uncle, who both instinctively stepped back as the calf galloped through the mud between them. Irate, our landlady trudged past them to the upper pasture, cornered the calf, and carried that massive animal back to the barn in her arms. As she walked by my father and uncle, she exclaimed in amused disgust, "Men!"
Now that's the Sarah Palin brand of can-do, no-excuses, moose-hunting feminism -- a world away from the whining, sniping, wearily ironic mode of the establishment feminism represented by Gloria Steinem, a Hillary Clinton supporter whose shameless Democratic partisanship over the past four decades has severely limited American feminism and not allowed it to become the big tent it can and should be. Sarah Palin, if her reputation survives the punishing next two months, may be breaking down those barriers. Feminism, which should be about equal rights and equal opportunity, should not be a closed club requiring an ideological litmus test for membership.
Here's another example of the physical fortitude and indomitable spirit that Palin as an Alaskan sportswoman seems to represent right now.
Last year, Toronto's Globe and Mail reprinted this remarkable obituary from 1905:
Abigail Becker
Farmer and homemaker born in Frontenac County, Upper Canada, on March 14, 1830
A tall, handsome woman "who feared God greatly and the living or dead not at all," she married a widower with six children and settled in a trapper's cabin on Long Point, Lake Erie. On Nov. 23, 1854, with her husband away, she single-handedly rescued the crew of the schooner Conductor of Buffalo, which had run aground in a storm. The crew had clung to the frozen rigging all night, not daring to enter the raging surf. In the early morning, she waded chin-high into the water (she could not swim) and helped seven men reach shore. She was awarded medals for heroism and received $350 collected by the people of Buffalo, plus a handwritten letter from Queen Victoria that was accompanied by £50, all of which went toward buying a farm. She lost her husband to a storm, raised 17 children alone and died at Walsingham Centre, Ont.
Frontier women were far bolder and hardier than today's pampered, petulant bourgeois feminists, always looking to blame their complaints about life on someone else.
The witch-trial hysteria of the past two incendiary weeks unfortunately reveals a disturbing trend in the Democratic Party, which has worsened over the past decade. Democrats are quick to attack the religiosity of Republicans, but Democratic ideology itself seems to have become a secular substitute religion. Since when did Democrats become so judgmental and intolerant? Conservatives are demonized, with the universe polarized into a Manichaean battle of us versus them, good versus evil. Democrats are clinging to pat group opinions as if they were inflexible moral absolutes. The party is in peril if it cannot observe and listen and adapt to changing social circumstances.
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French women 'are the sexual predators now'
By Henry Samuel in Paris
UK Telegraph
03/07/2008
French women are becoming increasingly assertive in their sexual habits, while one-in-five younger French men "has no interest in sex", according to one of the most comprehensive surveys of the nation's love lives.
Women now have more than twice as many partners as they did in the 1970s, according to the study by the French Aids research agency, which is backed by the government.
"Are women just like men?" asked Le Nouvel Observateur yesterday, which released extracts of the Study on Sexuality in France, a 600-page tome that brings together 12,000 in-depth interviews with people of all ages conducted during 2005-06.
One of the biggest changes in recent years, according to the report, was that male and female sexual behaviour had become increasingly similar.
The proportion of French women who claim to have had only one partner has dropped from 68 per cent in 1970, to 43 per cent in 1992 and 34 per cent in 2006. A woman's average number of partners has risen from under two in 1970 to over five today, while a man's has remained the same for four decades, almost 13.
French women's first experience of sex is now almost as early as that of the opposite sex: in 1950 there was a two-year difference, but the gap has narrowed to four months, to around 17 and a half. Meanwhile, more women remain sexually active for longer than previously: nine-out-of-10 women over 50 are sexually active today, compared to just 50 per cent of that age group in 1970.
"The good old dichotomy (male predators, females patiently awaiting the warrior's return in front of the cave entrance) is in big trouble", said Le Nouvel Observateur.
Female sexual emancipation has been a hot topic in France ever since President Nicolas Sarkozy met Carla Bruni, the Italian model and singer. The couple married last month.
Ms Bruni recently declared monogamy "terribly boring" and spoke in relaxed fashion about her numerous past conquests, including Mick Jagger and Eric Clapton.
"I am a tamer [of men], a cat, an Italian", she told Le Figaro last year.
"I am faithful... to myself. I am monogamous from time to time but I prefer polygamy and polyandry [its female equivalent]."
At the same time, she reinforced old stereotypes that link status and virility, by reportedly declaring: "I want a man with nuclear power."
Despite the changes in female behaviour observed in the study, some things have not altered in 40 years. Men found it easier than women to disassociate sex from love, but the research suggested this was due to nurture rather than nature. The study said: "Young women are still educated to consider their entrance into sexuality as a sentimental-relationship experience."
One of the more surprising findings was that one-in-five French men aged between 18 and 24 "manifests no interest in sexuality", while abstinence rates for men under 35 was twice as high as for women.
The two sociologists who compiled the research said that the French had fewer sexual taboos and inhibitions than before, but were more anxious about lovemaking.
Never have sex councillors been so busy in France: according to one estimate, they treat half a million patients per year.
Depressed, repressed, objectified: are men the new women?
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They're less fertile, more weight-obsessed and 'non-essential to parenting'. No wonder men are confused about modern masculinity.
Elizabeth Day
Sunday August 3 2008
The Observer
If recent research is anything to go by, 21st century man is in a desperate muddle.
In June, men discovered that their libidos are in freefall, prompting a 40 per cent increase in males seeking counselling for impotence problems. Their existential angst worsened in July, when British men discovered that they have the most unequal paternity rights in Europe. According to Nicola Brewer, chief executive of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, fathers in the UK are seen as 'not essential for parenting'. The same month saw the publication of a medical study that proved the quality of men's sperm declines to such an extent after they hit 45 that the chances of a partner's miscarriage are doubled.
It's not only their internal biology; men are also succumbing to the traditionally female preoccupation of looking good on the outside, too. Sales of male beauty products have leapt 30 per cent over the past decade. Almost 20 per cent more men are having plastic surgery than ever before while, last year, researchers from Harvard discovered that a quarter of anorexia and bulimia sufferers is male. During the fashion shows, male models had their own equivalent of the size-zero debate. 'Male models look chicken-chested, hollow-cheeked and undernourished' noted the New York Times.
Every week, it seems as if there are new surveys and studies tripping over themselves to paint the grimmest possible picture of modern masculinity. They tell us that men are more neurotic and less fulfilled than ever before; that they are objectified rather than revered; that they are expected to be more in touch with their emotions and yet are criticised for it. Men appear to be confused about what they are and unsure about who they are meant to be. So with more of them feeling disenfranchised, disillusioned and disempowered, is it feasible to think of men as the new oppressed minority? Might men, in fact, be the new women? And, if so, who is to blame for making them feel marginalised?
In the UK, men account for 75 per cent of all suicides. They are twice as likely to die from the 10 most common cancers that affect both sexes and, typically, develop heart disease 10 years earlier than women. Although there is a national screening programme in place for cervical and breast cancer, there is no equivalent for men, in spite of prostate cancer claiming 6.7 per cent more deaths for men than cervical cancer in women.
While women still earn on average 12 per cent less than men and are severely under-represented in top-level corporate roles, men in full-time employment work an average of 41.9 hours a week, compared to women's 37.6 hours. According to the American men's-rights author Warren Farrell, there might be a glass ceiling for women, but there is also what he calls 'a glass cellar' for men. 'What I mean by that is men are both at the top of the economy scale and at the bottom. Of the 25 professions ranked the lowest [in the US], 24 of them are 85-100 per cent male. That's things like roofer, welder, garbage collector, sewer maintenance ? jobs with very little security, little pay and few people want them.'
Farrell says that women generally prefer a more flexible work-life balance and that implies 40-hour weeks 'at most'. Often, mothers are able to work fewer hours only because they are financially supported by their male partners. This, he claims, is the real definition of power. 'I define power as "control over one's life". A balanced life is far superior to the male definition of power: earning money someone else spends while he dies sooner.'
It would be easy to dismiss these arguments as anti-feminist but there are some commentators who think this could be a fundamental misreading of the movement's original goal: equality for both sexes, rather than the dominance of one at the cost of the other. Rosie Boycott, who co-founded the feminist magazine Spare Rib in 1971, points out that their first editorial insisted liberation should be for men as well as women. 'It is as much of a trap for a man aged 18-65 to feel solely financially responsible for 2.2 children and his wife, to be entitled to two weeks' holiday a year and to work nine to five, as it is for a woman to be responsible for all the childcare and housework,' she says. 'Men don't feel comfortable admitting that they're taking time off work to take their daughter to the dentist. We need a bigger critical mass of people to make that happen.'
But much of this remains a resolutely middle-class problem. At the lowest end of the economic scale, women are still attempting to shrug off the yoke of oppression and inequality. Meanwhile for many men, their loss of status in the home and the workplace is twinned with a loss of confidence in themselves. Neil Oliver, the television historian who has just published Amazing Tales for Making Men out of Boys, says that there is a conspicuous dearth of positive male role models. 'I grew up hearing tales of Ernest Shackleton and watching films like Zulu,' he says. 'The world in which I was a little boy was one of clearly defined roles for men and women and we don't have that any more, so men are struggling to readjust. Manly men have been hunted to near extinction in Britain and the concept of manliness has been outmoded. Yet the urge to be a man is a primal thing and still exists in boys today.'
In the classroom, too, boys are at risk of losing out on male role models. According to government figures for 2006, the ratio of newly qualified female to male teachers under the age of 25 was approaching seven to one. The introduction of coursework and modular exams is believed to play to traditionally female strengths ? girls tend to be more methodical while boys tend to follow high-risk strategies such as cramming the night before an exam.
Some critics argue that this creeping 'feminisation' has led to girls outperforming boys on almost every level: they use more words, speak more fluently in longer sentences and with fewer mistakes. By the age of 11, some 76 per cent of boys have attained government-set literacy standards, compared to 85 per cent of girls. At GCSE level, 66.8 per cent of girls achieved A-C grades in 2007, compared to 59.7 per cent of boys (in real terms, this means they trail behind their female counterparts by nine years).
Do these statistics have any bearing on the everyday experiences of ordinary men? 'I don't know if I feel oppressed, but there's a sense in which women can talk about us with impunity,' says a 32-year-old male lawyer from London, who does not wish to give his name in case his female colleagues start pelting him with rotten tomatoes. 'I've been in the office on several occasions where sweeping generalisations have been made about the general crapness of men: "Oh, all men are useless, no wonder he couldn't get the job done in time" ? that sort of thing. I don't take it all that seriously ? at least, not yet ? but I know that I wouldn't get away with saying the same things about women.'
For a long time, it wasn't particularly fashionable to stand up for men. Warren Farrell, the daddy of the so-called 'masculinist' movement, has been making his arguments since the late 1970s and frequently attracts outrage. His books ?Why Men Earn More and his latest, Does Feminism Discriminate Against Men? ? seek to redress what he sees as an endemic sociocultural bias against his gender.
In almost all respects, he believes that men are now the weaker sex: 'The problem with feminism is that it saw man as the enemy. When only one sex wins, both sexes lose.'
On a superfi cial level, Farrell's insistence that men are scrabbling around in the dark searching for their lost masculinity like a mislaid dumbbell seems ill-conceived and borderline offensive. However, over the last few months, several books have been written reiterating Farrell's belief that men are disgruntled with their lot and must fight back against a Western culture that worships womanhood while demeaning masculinity. Apparently, men are stymied by biology as well ? human genetics experts estimate that man will be extinct within 125,000 years owing to their declining sperm count and the mutation of the Y chromosome.
So ? although women hold only 17 per cent of parliamentary positions across the globe, despite there being only 10 female CEOs of Fortune 500 companies and ignoring the fact that it is still illegal for a woman to drive a car in Saudi Arabia ? it seems that, sometimes, it is harder to be a man.
Just ask Guy Garcia, author of the forthcoming The Decline of Men, an upbeat look at how the American male is 'tuning out, giving up and flipping off his future'. There is, says Garcia, 'a social predisposition to treat men as unworthy parents, betrayers and incorrigible philanderers'. Or there's Michael Gilbert, whose 2007 study, The Disposable Male, does pretty much what it says on the tin. 'Motherhood is immutable,' Gilbert writes. 'Paternity is the social construct. Amazingly, we have been doing everything we can to deconstruct it.'
Nor is it just men who have taken up the cudgel. This year saw the publication of Save the Males: Why Men Matter, Why Women Should Care by Kathleen Parker, a pithy stateside newspaper columnist who prides herself on her Coulter-esque capacity to say the unsayable. 'I think men are confused because they are receiving conflicting and often confusing messages from women and culture,' she explains. 'We want them to be providers and protectors ? except when we don't. We want them to count our contractions and share baby's midnight feedings, but then we want them out of the picture when we tire of them.'
Parker reserves much of her ire for 'the highly lucrative boy-bashing industry' that views sexual discrimination against men as a form of shared hilarity. So while you can buy T-shirts emblazoned with the slogan 'Boys Are Stupid ? Throw Rocks At Them', to claim the same about women would be viewed as an incitement to violence. Discrimination against men increasingly seems socially acceptable. 'When Susan Pinker, the highly regarded psychologist and journalist published her recent book, The Sexual Paradox: Troubled Boys, Gifted Girls and the Real Difference Between the Sexes, she received an email from a colleague asking her to give a comment 'on the difference between men and women's brains ? or rather, men's lack of brains!'
'It was a joke no one would make about women,' Pinker tells me. 'When you said you were writing a piece on men, I was just floored because my experience has been that no one cares a whit about men. I think there is a double standard. Because women have been discriminated against for so long there is a hyper-sensitivity about making jokes about them that doesn't exist for men. They are assumed to be fair game because they're on top. There's a notion that it's acceptable for women to treat men as dolts. It's a form of female bonding, as if it's known that men are a bit useless.'
Of course, lots of men are relatively happy with the status quo, but does this make it desirable or just? There is still a novelty factor attached to the notion of a full-time father and a mother who goes out to work: in many ways, the man who wishes to be a stay-at-home dad can be likened to the woman who wanted to be a surgeon in the 1950s. They both face a similar barrage of sexist assumptions.
'There is a culture of motherhood, a sanctity about it, that is quite strong in the UK,' argues Duncan Fisher, chief executive of the Fatherhood Institute. 'There's a gratuitous exclusion of men and the impression is given that you're left looking over the mother's shoulder. Midwifery services are described as "one-to-one care". After the birth, each mother is given a free magazine called "Mum Plus One". If a woman goes to a job office, she is asked "Are you a mother? Let's see what kind of job you want to do," whereas no one would ask a man if he was a father.
'The guy is just not factored in. That's OK if you're a well-resourced middle-class man who can assert himself. But that's why so many teenage fathers drift away: there's no expectation that they should be included.'
Yet research shows that children with supportive fathers have lower instances of substance abuse, higher self-esteem and higher educational achievement.
Nor is this cheerful presumption of man's uselessness limited to fatherhood. The Advertising Standards Bureau reports a steady increase each year in the number of complaints about the way men are portrayed on television as 'buffoons' or 'idiots'. A 2007 advertisement for MFI kitchens depicted a woman slapping her husband in a dispute about leaving the toilet seat up. 'If a man belittles a woman, it could become a lawsuit,' says Farrell. 'If women belittle men, it's a Hallmark card.'
Tad Safran, a Los Angeles-based scriptwriter and journalist, discovered this to his cost last year when he wrote a scathing piece in a national newspaper about British women's 'unkempt' appearance. 'The hate mail I got was insane,' he says now. 'I was called "Sexist of the Year". Maybe I deserved it, but certainly that wouldn't have happened to the same extent if it had been written about men.' As if to prove his point, a few months later, another British broadsheet published a feature entitled 'Are Men Boring?' Both articles were based on ludicrous generalisations but no one labelled the female journalist sexist.
Does any of this really matter when men occupy an almost unquestioned position of primacy in nearly all walks of life? Are they getting their boxer shorts in a twist about trivialities? And is it patronising to assume that the nagging disaffection felt by primarily middle-class men in the Western hemisphere is shared by men the world over?
Maybe. But, according to experts like Susan Pinker, there is a necessary truth here too: that perhaps our harmless chatter among female friends occasionally carries a deeper significance than we might like to think; that for all the sperm banks and Rampant Rabbit vibrators on offer, men still have a role to play that can complement women rather than limiting them. We might, she argues, end up demeaning our own gender: 'It does us a disservice to gloss over the fact that our husbands, sons, brothers or fathers are all unique individuals. I've never believed in this Mars/Venus division: we're all just people.'
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Best foreplay is husband who cleans house
BY KERRY BURKE AND BILL HUTCHINSON
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS
Thursday, March 6th 2008, 4:00 AM
Husbands who pitch in around the house get more sex than those who won't help clean up, researchers say in a study that could turn lazy guys into Ty-D-Bol Men.
The mop-and-glow report by the Council on Contemporary Familiessuggests men who wash the sheets have a better chance of turning their wives on under them.
"If a guy does housework, it looks to the woman like he really cares about her - he's not treating her like a servant," said psychologist Joshua Coleman, who is affiliated with the Council.
Coleman cautioned that the flip side could be worse than scrubbing the toilet.
"If a women feels stressed-out because the house is a mess and the guy's sitting on the couch while she's vacuuming, that's not going to put her in the mood," said Coleman, author of "The Lazy Husband: How to Get Men to Do More Parenting and Housework."
The study shows that men are finally connecting the dots, tripling their output of housework and child care in the past four decades.
"Men and women may not be fully equal yet, but the rules of the game have been profoundly and irreversibly changed," concludes the report, written by sociologists Scott Coltrane and Oriel Sullivan.
Brooklyn couple John and Mildred Merced, who have three kids and both work, said the study makes sense to them. "I do my part, and she wears short skirts in the kitchen and maybe bends over when she drops something," said a chuckling John Merced, 42, a metalworker. Mildred Merced, 31, a cook, said a little washing and folding on his part often leads to loving.
Sheryl and Mark Gauntlett of Queens had conflicting views on the report. "He's a good boy," said Sheryl Gauntlett, 35. "I think it results in better sex, but you have to ask him." So we did.
"It doesn't mean I'm getting any more," responded Mark Gauntlett, 38, a hospital administrator.
Reginald Michel, 26, of Central Islip, L.I., said that in a year and a half of marriage, he's seen no correlation between laundry and libido: "I do all the housework, but I don't get all the sex."
Heather Peterson, a spokeswoman for the Cambridge Women's Pornography Cooperative, said the report corresponds to what she and her colleagues have been preaching. "This is what women love to see. It's hot, quite honestly," said Peterson, whose group recently produced the book "Porn for Women" - a series of photos of hunks doing various domestic chores.
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Estrogen Fuels Female Need For Power And Control
ScienceDaily (May 22, 2008) — New University of Michigan psychology research suggests that the sex hormone estrogen may be for women what testosterone is for men: The fuel of power.
Until recently, some researchers doubted whether women had a biologically anchored need for dominance.
"Women have long been overlooked in biological research on dominance," said psychology researcher Steven Stanton. "Using a male model, the small body of existing research has struggled to link testosterone to dominance motivation and behavior in women.
"However, estrogen is very behaviorally potent and is actually a close hormonal relative to testosterone. In female mammals, estrogen has been tied to dominance, but there has been scant research examining the behavioral roles of estrogen in women."
The study by Oliver Shultheiss, a psychology professor who directs the Human Motivation & Affective Neuroscience Lab, and Stanton, who is completing doctoral work at the lab, was recently detailed in the journal Hormones and Behavior.
Schultheiss and Stanton measured women's power needs and then assessed salivary estrogen levels both before and after they entered a one-on-one dominance contest.
The researchers found that even before women got involved in the contest, higher power motivation was associated with higher levels of estrogen.
Winners of the contest showed even further increases in estrogen after the contest, but only if they had a strong need for power. Notably, this increase could still be detected one day after the contest was over.
In contrast, power-motivated losers showed a post-contest decrease in estrogen. These effects were not observed among women who did not possess a strong need for power.
"Our findings perfectly parallel what we have observed for power motivation and testosterone in men," Schultheiss said. "In men, power motivation is associated with heightened levels of testosterone, particularly after a contest victory. In women, estrogen appears to be the critical hormone for power motivation."
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All he wanted to do was take his wife's name
Reuters
May 6, 2008
All Michael Buday wanted to do was take the last name of his wife, Diana Bijon, when they married in the US.
But it took two years, a lawsuit alleging sex discrimination and a change in California law before he picked up his new drivers licence in the name of Michael Bijon on Monday.
"It was personal. I feel much closer to (Diana's) father than I do mine. She asked me to take her name and I thought it would be very simple. I never imagined the state would make it so difficult," Michael Bijon, 31, told reporters.
He discovered it would take a $US350 (A374) fee, court appearances, a public announcement and mounds of paperwork to make a change on his driving licence that is routine for women who marry.
After months of frustration, the Los Angeles computer programmer and his ER nurse wife Diana, 29, took their problem to the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California.
A double barrel name would have been no problem, nor would Diana and Michael deciding to each keep their birth names. But California and some 40 other US states provided no place on the marriage licence application, and driving licence, for the groom to choose the bride's surname.
"Women have fought for so long for equal rights and it feels like this is part of that fight," said Diana Bijon. "When we got married, the law basically said, 'Don't be silly, only a woman can change her name when she gets married."'
"I am really, really proud of him. Not many men would do this," she said.
A subsequent lawsuit led to a new California state law guaranteeing the rights of both married couples and registered domestic partners to choose whichever last name they prefer on their marriage and driving licences.
"This disposes of the rule in California that the male surname is the marital name to the same trash bin where dowries were once tossed out," said Mark Rosenbaum, legal director of the Southern California chapter of the ACLU.
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On African Island, women choose the spouses
Feb. 3, 2007
Associated Press
He was 14 when the girl entered his grass-covered hut and placed a plate in front of him containing an ancient recipe.
Like all men on Orango Island, Carvadju Jose Nananghe knew exactly what it meant. Refusing was not an option. His heart pounding, he lifted the steaming fish to his lips, agreeing in one bite to marry the girl.
“I had no feelings for her,” said Nananghe, now 65. “Then when I ate this meal, it was like lightning. I wanted only her.”
In this archipelago of 50 islands of pale blue water off the western rim of Africa, it’s women, not men, who choose. They make their proposals public by offering their grooms-to-be a dish of distinctively prepared fish, marinated in red palm oil. It’s the equivalent of a man bending on one knee and offering a woman a diamond ring, except that in one of the world’s matriarchal cultures, it’s women that do the asking, and once they have, men are powerless to say no.
To have refused, explained the old man remembering the day half a century ago, would have dishonored his family—and in any case, why would he want to choose his own wife?
“Love comes first into the heart of the woman,” explained Nananghe. “Once it’s in the woman, only then can it jump into the man.”
But the treacherous tides and narrow channels that have long kept outsiders out of these remote islands are no longer holding back the modern world. Young men are increasingly leaving Orango, located 38 miles (60 kilometers) off the coast of Guinea-Bissau, a country in West Africa. They find jobs carrying luggage for tourist hotels on the archipelago’s more developed islands; others collect oil from the island’s abundant palm trees and sell it on the African mainland.
They return bringing with them a new form of courtship, one which their elders find deeply unsettling.
“Now the world is upside down,” complained 90-year-old Cesar Okrane, his eyes obscured by a cloud of cataracts. “Men are running after women, instead of waiting for them to come to them.”
Standing in the shade of a grass roof, he holds himself upright with the help of a tall spear and explains that when he was young he took extra care to maintain his physique, learned to dance and practiced writing poetry—all ways in which men can try to attract women, without overtly making the first move.
In recent years, young men have become increasingly bold, going so far as to openly propose marriage—a dangerous turn, say traditionalists.
“The choice of a woman is much more stable,” explains Okrane. “Rarely were there divorces before. Now, with men choosing, divorce has become common.”
With records not readily available, it’s unclear how many divorces there were earlier, but islanders agree that there are significantly more now than in the years when men waited patiently for a proposal on a plate. They waited some more, as their brides-to-be then set out for the eggshell-white beaches encircling the island, looking for the raw materials with which to build their new house.
Women built all the grass-covered huts here, dragging driftwood back from the ocean to use as poles, cutting blankets of blond grass to weave into roofs and shaping the pink mud underfoot into bricks. Only once the house is built, a process that takes at least four months, can the couple move in and their marriage be considered official.
There are matrilineal cultures in numerous pockets of the world, including in other parts of Africa, as well as in China’s Yunnan province and in northeastern Thailand, said anthropologist Christine Henry, a researcher at France’s elite National Center for Scientific Research, or CNRS. But the unquestioned authority given to women in matters of the heart on this island is unique—“I don’t know of it happening anywhere else,” said Henry, who has written a book on the customs of the archipelago.
That things are changing is evident in the material chosen for the island’s newest house: concrete. It was erected by paid laborers, not local women.
Although priestesses still control the island’s relationship with the spirit world, their clout is waning, as churches sown by missionaries have taken root.
“When I get married it will be in a church, wearing a white dress and a veil,” said 19-year-old Marisa de Pina, who strikes a modern pose under the blond grass of her family’s hut, wearing tight Capri pants and sequined sandals.
She said the Protestant church she attends has taught her that it is men, not women, that should make the first move, and so she plans to wait for a man to approach her. To make her point, the teenager pops into her hut and returns holding a worn copy of the New Testament, its pages stuffed with post-it notes, letters and business cards.
It’s a decision that has caused strife inside the mud walls of her family’s house.
Like her niece, Edelia Noro wears store-bought clothes instead of the grass skirts still favored by some older women. She, too, attends church. But she said she doesn’t see why these trappings of modern life should alter the system of courtship.
More than two decades ago, she set off for the closest beach looking for the ingredients with which to propose to the man she loved.
Noro waited for the tide to recede, then dug in the wet sand for clams, collecting them in a woven basket. She was embarrassed, she said, that she was too poor to afford a proper meal of fish and could only offer her groom-to-be what she could gather with her own hands. So after preparing the dish, she placed it in front of him, then ran and hid behind a tree, peeking out to see his reaction.
“He did not hesitate and ate right away. I could see the love shining in his eyes,” she said, a glow spreading across her cheeks.
Although the island’s unique customs may be fading, there are still pockets of resistance. Often, it’s women that lure men back into the fold of ancient ways.
Now 23, Laurindo Carvalho first spotted the girl when he was 13. He worked in a tourist hotel, wore jeans, and owned a cell phone and thought of himself as modern and so he thought he could turn tradition on its head, asking the girl to marry him. With the wave of a hand, she rejected him.
Six years passed and one day, when both were 19, he heard a knock at his door. Outside, his love stood holding out a plate of freshly caught fish, a coy smile on her face.
Carvalho still wears sandblasted jeans and flip-flops bearing the Adidas logo, but he now sees himself as embedded in the village’s matriarchal fiber.
“I learned the hard way that here, a man never approaches a woman,” he said.
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Queen Vashti - from disobedient wife to religious feminist role model
By Tamar Rotem, Haaretz Correspondent
3/21/2008
Queen Esther is the religious girl's superhero. There is no prettier Purim costume than a pale blue dress tinged with gold. But it isn't just because of Esther's glamorous dress that she outnumbers Vashti at the Purim parade. Esther is the undisputed heroine of Jewish mythology. She represents the ultimate observant woman; her beauty and righteousness is hailed in Jewish literature.
In contrast, Vashti, who did not obey her husband King Ahasuerus, was excluded from the scroll and from Jewish history. However, despite the ridicule heaped on her, for the past several years the religious feminist movement has adopted the intriguing figure as a role model for women.
The story of Vashti's punishment at the beginning of the Scroll of Esther is misleading. It appears to be marginal drama designed to push forward the real plot: Esther and Mordechai's victory over the evil Haman.
However, on second reading, it is impossible to ignore the important social debate surrounding Vashti. Vashti's tragedy takes place during a feast at Ahasuerus' Shushan palace. On the seventh day of the feast, "when the king's heart was merry with wine", Vashti is invited "to show the nations and the princes her beauty; for she was fair to look on" the scroll states. Vashti refuses, sentencing herself to death. The king's anger burned in him, but it is his advisers who consider her representative of her sex.
"This is an ancient patriarchal society," says Dr. Yaakov Maoz of the Israel Association of Community Centers' Jewish Studies Department. "The advisers warn the king against a trend of contempt for husbands in the kingdom, nipping the Vashti feminist revolution in the bud."
In a modern, feminist reading of the scroll, the heroines Vashti and Esther are diametric opposites. Vashti is strong, does not agree to showcase her beauty, does not agree to be a sex object; while Esther uses her beauty and her sexuality.
According to Hanna Kahat, founder of religious feminist forum Kolech, the selection of Vashti as the new female model by religious women in the U.S. in the 1980s, followed by religious women in Israel, is an expression of rebellion against the religious establishment. As such, it suited early Orthodox feminists to adopt Vashti, as women sought models of women leaders with whom to identify. In this way, they began to revive and redeem marginal characters who had been excluded from mainstream interpretations because they threatened the male establishment.
"This is also what happened to Lilith," Kahat explains. "She became more popular than Eve." According to talmudic literature, Lilith was Adam's first wife and his equal. The feminists love the egalitarian aspect.
According to Kahat, the sages did not like Vashti. "She is so prominent in her determination that it surprises me she wasn't identified as a positive character. For them, she represents the foreigner, the stranger, and is virtually satanic. There is no compassion or understanding for her."
Kahat points out that Vashti becomes a fantasy "sex symbol." Why, she asks, isn't Esther who acts in a blatantly sexual manner, held up to that kind of characterization by the commentators?
Ruhama Weiss, an instructor of Talmud at Hebrew Union College, believes the sages were in conflict regarding the fact that "Vashti fights for her modesty and her honor, while our heroine Esther is willing to work through the bedroom."
However, it was important for them to show the different fates of she who is willing to integrate into the patriarchal system and obey its rules, and she who fights it, which is why Weiss says the sages blackened Vashti's name. Why didn't she show up when the king summoned her?
Some commentators say she developed leprosy, others that she grew a tail. In other words, because her beauty faded on the day in question. Other interpretations argue that her fate was retribution for mistreating Jewish women.
Vashti may be the new heroine of feminist women, but Kahat says in recent years there has been a return to Esther, as well as to the matriarchs Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel and Leah.
"It is not post-feminism or a return to conservatism," she says. "There is an understanding that these characters are part of our tradition and maybe we are trying to deny them. For instance, Esther's heroism. She starts out completely passive but undergoes a transformation. She takes her own fate and the fate of the Jewish people into her hands and becomes a true Jewish leader."
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Women Are Gaining Ground In Family Decision Making
By Donna St. George
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 26, 2008; Page B01
Count this as another busted myth of modern times: In family life, the husband always wields the television remote.
Lately, the wife is just as likely to be changing the channels.
A poll released yesterday by the Pew Research Center showed that 21st century couples share decision making in many aspects of American family life, and nowhere is that equity greater than in front of the household television. The poll found that 27 percent of people say women control the remote; 26 percent say that men do; and 25 percent say the couple decides together.
This change in everyday life could be one small sign of a larger social shift in the last generation, experts say.
"I think the big story over time is the rise in shared decision making," said Andrew Cherlin, a professor of sociology and public policy at Johns Hopkins University. "It's not the same as the '50s and '60s, where 'father knew best.' "
This was reflected in interviews yesterday with men and women across the region, many of whom noted that family life brings together a combination of lead-taking, choice-making and responsibilities. With much to do and little time, some things are divvied up, and others are shared, they said.
The poll includes the answers of 1,260 people who were married or living together as a couple; it has a margin of error of 3 percent. Overall, the poll reports that in 43 percent of couples, women had the most to say in a combination of four categories: decision making in finances, weekend activities, television choices and big-ticket purchases. Decision making was divided equally for 31 percent of couples, and men took the lead in 26 percent of couples.
Matt McCoy, 55, a machinist and father of two from Derwood, noted that his wife of 32 years keeps track of the checkbook, pays the bills and "did pick out everything for her kitchen." Still, he said, "other things we have decided together."
When it comes to television, though, there are differences. He likes sporting events and old movies. She likes "American Idol" and "Dateline," he said. Often, he will offer to relocate to the bedroom television when his wife wants to watch a program in the family room.
"I think we solve that problem with two televisions," McCoy said.
In Falls Church, Kristin Rodriguez, 42, said that with three young children and a part-time job as a social worker, she tends to have more say in choices of what to spend money on and where to spend weekend days as a family. Her husband works full time at an office.
When he comes home, he often defers to her and the children about television choices, though it helps that they have TiVo to record racing events and football games that he prefers. "I think he's learned to wait for us all to go to bed, and then he can watch what he wants," she said.
In prime-time hours, she handles the remote.
Pew researchers said that the television results could be affected by the fact that families have multiple televisions. They noted that a study by Nielsen Media Research showed that American homes, on average, included more televisions than people.
Cherlin, the Hopkins professor, said he was impressed that so many people who were polled said that their household decisions were jointly made, even though they were not given that choice as an answer to the poll's questions. They volunteered it.
"I'm struck by the fact that, overall, 31 percent of the people said the decision was shared, even though that option was not read to them," he said. "Clearly, there is more sharing than there used to be. There is more variation in who makes the decisions and less of a sense that the home is the man's castle."
One of the most notable results of the poll, he said, was on joint control of household finances. Among men, 37 percent said they controlled finances, with 30 percent saying their partner did and 28 percent saying finances were handled jointly. "I think that's a big change from 50 years ago," Cherlin said. Back then, he said, "some wives didn't even know what their husbands were making." Less surprising, he said, was that women took charge of weekend activities and major household purchases, many of which he said are related to home life.
Krista Atteberry, 41, a Hyattsville mother and city council member, said she sees many women take the initiative and step up as "household managers" amid the complexities of family life, but adds: "I wouldn't say decision maker. I would say decision guider."
But when it comes to television, Atteberry admits that she has turned her husband into a fan of "Project Runway." Many of her female friends also do not easily relinquish control of the remote, she said.
"I think women are just like, 'This is what I want to watch tonight. Give me a break.' "
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Tilda Swinton: Her toyboy, elderly lover and an intriguing ménage a trois
By ALISON BOSHOFF
14th February 2008
Tilda Swinton stormed the Baftas with her paramour, 29, at her side. So what happened when she took him home to stay with her partner, 67, and their twins? Welcome to an intriguing ménage a trois.
There is something captivating and other-worldly about Tilda Swinton; her powder-white skin, as luminescent as a teenager's, her heavily lidded deep green eyes and that shock of incredible red hair.
Even if she were not dressed in an avant-garde gold Dior gown and carrying a Bafta statuette, as she was on Sunday night, there would be a reason to stare.
Indeed, she is so extraordinary that at first you barely register whether there is a man on her arm, and if so who it is.
This week, a handsome German-born artist named Sandro Kopp - 29 to her 47 - was playing the role of consort.
Kopp met her while playing a Centaur on the Chronicles Of Narnia film three years ago. She was the star of the film, the White Witch.
There seems to have been a coup de foudre,and the pair were spotted together outside a gym in Los Angeles last year.
His status as her new man was cemented, then, by his first official red-carpet appearance at her side this week.
Handsome and softly spoken, he trailed behind her discreetly at the official after-party at the Grosvenor House Hotel, and the pair disappeared into the night in the early hours.
Friends say that they plan to attend the Oscars together next month, too.
But the question of who is playing a supporting role to Ms Swinton is not exactly clear cut.
For at home - a spectacular pile on the banks of the Moray Firth - is Swinton's long-term love John Byrne.
And yesterday he revealed that he is very much a part of Swinton's life still.
Indeed, he made it clear that he and Swinton still love each other, and that they continue to raise their ten-year-old twins Xavier and Honor together at their whitewashed home, which is in a secluded spot at the end of a tree-lined road.
This is extraordinary enough.
But there's more. The twins, it emerges, were with Swinton and her lover at the Bafta's ceremony, and returned to the family home as a group - including Kopp - on Tuesday afternoon.
They were greeted at the door by Byrne, who helped them with their cases.
The unconventional ménage then retired inside.
Kopp, it seems, is staying over in Scotland for a few days, with the full blessing of Byrne, an eccentrically bewhiskered figure who, aged 67, could almost be cast in the role of grandfather.
Who is - ahem! - occupying which bedroom is a rather tricky question which, for whatever reason,
Byrne prefers not to answer.
"I wouldn't encourage you to ask anything like that," he growled.
"It's nobody's business. It's our business. It's nobody in the world's business."
It's no wonder that heads turn in Nairn when they see Swinton, Byrne or, very occasionally, Kopp out shopping in the village.
The locals are kept busy trying to work out what on earth is going on behind the closed doors of the Swinton-Byrne residence.
The truth, according to associates of Swinton, is that she is very deeply in love - with both men.
And far from being a passing phase she is said to hope that it continues indefinitely. "All I can tell you," said a London associate of the actress, "is that Tilda is delightfully, extremely happy."
Sandro is her man when she travels - he is an artist and claims to have bases in New York, Paris, Germany, Rome and New Zealand.
He accompanies her when she is filming - indeed he's thought to have been with her when she shot the sequel to The Chronicles Of Narnia in Prague last summer.
He has painted her more than once, and seems quite devoted to this unconventional, highly intelligent woman, who read English at Cambridge and was the head girl of her school, West Heath no less, where she was also an exact contemporary of one Lady Diana Spencer.
But when Tilda goes home, she goes home to Byrne.
Which brings us back to Nairn, which, despite its reputation as the "Brighton of the North", is a small seaside resort town, the kind of place where, as Swinton once said: "Everybody kens yer faither."
North of Inverness, it's a place which has a reputation as a lovely spot for well-heeled folk to retire - rather than a bohemian paradise of free love.
Swinton was this week, though, doing her best to pretend that her living arrangements are absolutely nothing out of the ordinary.
"What arrangement?" she said, exiting a scruffy Land Rover.
"There is nothing to be cleared up.
"What is true is that John and I live here with our children and Sandro is sometimes here with us, and we travel the world together. We are all a family."
Asked if she was sharing her affections with both men, she said: "That is absolutely none of your business."
She added before heading indoors: "John and I have two children; we are together, very happily living in this house.
"Sandro and I travel the world together. What you must also know is that we are all very happy."
"I could call it a double life but actually it's really quite integrated," she says.
"It's just a working life - I go away and then I come back. John is always at home."
Byrne, it seems, does not try too hard to make sense of what is going on, but just holds on to the idea that they have always been "the best of chums" and will continue to be.
He told an interviewer: "They're frightening creatures, women, they really are. An extraordinary species.
"We really don't have a clue."
