Catholic writer Kyle Cupp writes about the difficulties of the anti-contraception argument:

Opponents of contraception face seemingly insurmountable obstacles, not the least of which is their position’s antagonism toward today’s common sense view of sexual morality. Opposition toward contraception is not common; acceptance of it as a personal and social good is. A few voices cry out in the wilderness, but they are just that: a few, and, by today’s standards, uncivilized. {…}

Opponents of contraception cannot easily dismiss its judgments or wave them away as products of a perverse age. The proposition that today’s common sense view of sexual morality is perverse requires careful demonstration. Noting the correlation between widespread use of contraceptives with other social ills does not suffice. Even if one could prove a causal relationship between common acceptance of contraception and, say, the rise of cohabitation, one would still have to show that this growing acceptance of cohabitation is also a sign of corruption.

There is something to be said for not bending with the times. Manytimes, the people telling you how you need to bend with the times… well, don’t have your best interest at heart. They are not interested in your church’s survival so much as that you get out of their way.

Having said that, a church’s perishoners do need clues on how to reconcile their membership in the church with the modern world. And on this, the church has failed. Most have, but few so spectacularly on this particular issue.

Now, most churches have a prohibition on premarital sex. But the reconciliation, such as it is, is to say “Well, we can’t stop you from doing it, but don’t talk about doing it, and say with us that you shouldn’t do it.” The RCC takes it a step further, by essentially saying “We can’t stop you from doing it, but we will double up on the sinfulness of it by not allowing you to take comparatively common-sense measures to protect yourself from adverse consequences.

Most of the time, the result of this is that Catholics are among the most talkative people about their sexual sins than any other group I know. And they use contraception. And they talk about that, too.

What’s missing from all of this is exactly what the Church (and most churches) do want you to do. The focus on don’t makes sense in light of certain things, but it leaves certain logistical questions unanswered. Namely, if people are supposed to wait until marriage, and they’re not marrying until they’re 30, how realistic is this expectation?

The only church I have ever seen really tackle this problem is the LDS Church, and they have planted a flag on not waiting until you’re 30. Not just by saying “Don’t wait until you’re 30″ but also by actively trying to hook their youngsters up. The basic Mormon timeline, as best as I can tell, is that boys go to K-12, go on a mission for two years, then they’re 20 and the girls graduating high school are 18 and… there you go. It’s not arranged marriages and they want you to find the right person, but the order of the day is “get moving.”

If churches really want less premarital sex, and to get rid of the 20’s sex culture, they they need to work harder to prevent it from happening. Rather than wagging their finger over the fact that it is happening. Don’t tell me that they can’t do this because the Church doesn’t want to mettle.

Rather, I think they don’t want to do it because it’s politically difficult. Even among conservatives in the US, marrying in your early twenties is rather strongly discouraged for logistical reasons. Particularly among the middle class and upper middies whose money they often need and who don’t want the church telling them they need to marry that kid with the ear-ring that their daughter just swears she’s in love with. In an odd way, it’s here they’ve chosen to bend. Not against church doctrine, but against the inevitable results of failing to do so - the results running against church doctrine. Maybe that’s a crucial distinction, but it does come across as a somewhat disingenuous one.

Now, doing so would probably be a losing battle. The Mormons themselves seem to be losing their grip, with fewer boys going on missions and the prescribed timeline being disrupted. But the Mormons have advantages (an insular entertainment culture, 1.3 states they dominate, and so on). But it’s no less crazy than asking kids to wait for sex until they’re 30.

Of course, on the contraception discussion, this only tackles one part. Once married, the Church’s path is clear. Keep having kids. Clear, but ignored. But at least they went down swinging.

Alameida writes:

Occasionally a well-meaning friend will look at my bedside table and say, “wow, you’re taking so much medicine! Maybe you’d feel better if you just stopped taking so much! I’d feel bad if I was taking all those pills.”

I’m going to talk slowly, but here’s the thing: people take medicine because they’re sick. Why on God’s green earth would you imagine I am so stupid as not to have tried not taking medicine? The “not taking medicine” state is the very state in which I ever came to the doctor about a given problem, as a little thinking would make clear. “Oh, but maybe that’s gone now and you should stop taking them again!” You know what? I tried that too! Again, not a complete moron over here.

I am myself somewhat medicine-resistant. Not in the biological sense (that I have a tolerance), but in the temperamental. I twisted my back something irksome, and though I vaguely know I would feel better if I took some Alieve, I still haven’t done so. I have the vague feeling that medication is something to be avoided except when you really need it. I don’t take a real position on our “over-medicated society” (except perhaps as it pertains to antibiotics), though a lot of people do.

There is, however, a difference between saying “There are too many people on ADHD meds” and suggesting, to someone you don’t know really well, that they shouldn’t be taking whatever meds. This isn’t an appeal on the basis of “don’t judge me if you haven’t walked in my shoes” but rather an appeal to not personal judgments on relatively limited information. I had a… friend named Sally on anti-depression medication. Sometimes she would go off them. I could tell when she had. She would become erratic. She would become paranoid. She would, all of the sudden, be really bitter. Even on her meds, there was always a Good Sally and a Bad Sally. Off the meds, Good Sally would go to hibernation. There are other people I have known really well who talk about going back on meds where I think “This is less an inflammation of your depression and more just being sad and/or bored.” Sometimes I’ve been right (the medication didn’t help) and sometimes I’ve been wrong (it did). In the event that I was right, comparatively little was lost, in my view. In the event that I was wrong, I would have (if I’d said anything) told them not to do something that genuinely helped. It’s easy for me to say that they should grin and bear it.

This all ties into my original Unsolicited Advice.

Moving from the general (too many people taking medication, too many people going to law school) to the specific and universal (someone taking medication should consider stopping, don’t ever go to law school except under the circumstances I outline) is not just offensive to some, but often counterproductive. The better part is listening. And, if not directing (and definitely not directing), informing (”a lot of people think that going to Southeast State Law School will get them a good career. Sometimes it might, but a lot of those people are going to be very disappointed.”) A degree of humility is warranted, when you’re making guesses at someone else’s life.

In a previous linky-post, I pointed to the odd confederate subculture in Sweden. Dr. Phi responded:

As much as it warms my heart to see Swedes waving the Stars and Bars, I sincerely doubt they have a full understanding of, let alone embrace, its full cultural context as understood in America by either its supporters or its detractors.

This is absolutely right.

There was an episode of Daria wherein Daria’s friend Jane started dating a guy who was into swing dress and mores. One doubts that this character really wanted to live in the swing era (despite some protestations that they “had class” and such). Though technically it was an American style of dress (Mostly? I think?), the past is a foreign country, as they say. The further away you are removed from something, the easier it is to take a more superficial look at something. You can talk about how, during the swing era, they had class, without talking about how various segments of the population was treated. It’s more easy to imagine a way that things are - or were - without being confronted with some of the uglier details.

We do this all the time with pirates. There have been various attempts to dignify who the pirates were and whatnot, but mostly we don’t really think about it. We think about the way that we would have them speak, maybe the freedom of life at the sea, and in essence invent our own context for it.

Being from the South, the use of Confederate symbology has a much more specific meaning and context. Now, this meaning varies from person to person. Phi says that the Swedes don’t have the full cultural context, but to be honest not even Americans agree. If the flag meant what its detractors say it means, very few people would want to be associated with it. If it meant what its supporters say it does, there’d be a lot less in the way of objections. But though it means different things to different people, southerners know - or ought to know - more precisely how it is going to be received. Swedes, really, have no reason to care. They are unlikely to ever be confronted with someone who believes in means slavery (or a proto-nation built on slavery), Jim Crow, and so on. Just as Internet geeks have no reason to be concerned about old-timey pirates (they’re not impersonating the Somali ones, after all).

I don’t actually know Swedish culture very well, so it may well be the case that these folks are what we would consider white supremacists. It could actually represent a sort of anti-Americanism (chosing the symbols of a subculture that was at war with Washington, literally and figuratively). It’s difficult to say. But, even to the extent that this is true, it’s all still rooted in abstract notions and vagueries. Picking the parts of the culture and deciding that exemplifies the culture.

By modern standards, the lifestyles of neither the Athenians or the Spartans is something we would be remotely comfortable with. But we pick sides anyway. We conceptualize what they are really about. It’s easy to do because it means less to us than America’s Civil Rights struggles mean to Swedes.

Old-school readers of Hit Coffee and associated blogs will remember Sheila Tone’s “Prole Test.” Originally posted on Bob’s old blog, it went down when his old site did. However, as Charles Murray causes a wave with his Bubble Thickness Test, I thought that it was high-time to reproduce it.

—-

A few weeks back, Bob wrote a sweet little post about how people should be more sympathetic to my woes. (sniff) But he gives me too much credit, saying I was poor. I wasn’t. Not by any government definition anyway.

But I wasn’t middle-class, either. So what am I talking about? I hope the little quiz below helps clarify things.

The best term I’ve been able to come up with is working-class, which leaves some loopholes. How about semi-prolehood? Whatever it is, it describes an important difference. It means you’re not poor, but there’s still a big difference in what you get to do for a living, where you get to go to school, and how you live.

Remember, this isn’t about being in the underclass. That’s why many serious hardships aren’t scored. It’s about how you might eventually graduate from college, but you’ll never get to work for the New York Times. You could maybe be a lawyer, but you’ll never work for one of those big firms. Definitely a schoolteacher, but probably not a professor. And for God’s sake, don’t try to get into screenwriting or directing. Yes, I know about Quentin Tarantino, but name three others who are under 60. Finance or politics will also be rough (but good luck, Dizzy).

The following are a few telltale characteristics of the non-middle-class:

1. Military service.

This obviously only applies at times your family was in the United States, so apologies to recent immigrants. Did anyone in your family serve? As an enlisted person? No points for officers. One prole point for each grandparent, uncle or cousin. Two for each parent. Three for each sibling or yourself.

2. Professions.

Is anyone in your family a medical doctor? Minus three points for the first, one point for each additional. Minus two for the first lawyer or university professor (must be an accredited university), one for each additional. Either parent work for the government in a non-management, non-elected position? One prole point — unless it’s your mom and she was a teacher. Then no points, because women from higher classes often become teachers.

3. Education.

How many people from your graduating high school class went to an Ivy League university? Any? Minus one point for each, up to a maximum 3 points. Edit: Add one point if you had to travel more than 30 minutes to get to that high school.*

How many people in your immediate family (counting grandparents, parents, siblings and spouses) have a bachelor’s degree from an accredited, non-online institution? Minus one point for each — but only if they got the degree prior to age 24. Minus two points for each USNWR first-tier. Don’t count anyone you already counted as a professional in Number 2.

Two prole points if no for both parents and all grandparents. Three prole points if your answer is zero for all immediate family besides yourself, and you have at least one sibling.

Minus one if you graduated from any accredited college before the age of 24. Minus one more if it was a USNWR first-tier.

Notice there are no points assigned based upon who paid for your education. This is not an oversight. Many non-middle-class parents and grandparents — cops, aerospace workers — proudly pay for their descendants’ attendance at USC, Loyola Marymount, University of LaVerne, and Cal State whatever.

4. Health Insurance.

Growing up, was your health insurance HMO or private? One prole point for HMO or none.

I remember in a political science class, we were going on a class trip and needed to provide our medical insurance carrier. A list was passed around. I was last to sign. I saw that every other student had either Blue Cross or Blue Shield. And that was even at my crappy state school. (The polisci kids tended to be future lawyers, and seemed younger and wealthier than the general student population.)

5. Travel.

Prior to age 24, how many times did you travel outside the continental United States by airplane or boat? Minus one point for each time — but no points if it was to visit relatives. One prole point if your answer is never.

6. Discipline.

Did your parents physically discipline you after the age of 7? One prole point. Three points for after the age of 12. Minus one if your answer is never — unless you’re Jewish, then no deduction. My understanding is that Jewish people in the United States never physically discipline regardless of their economic status.

7. Inheritance.

Prior to age 30, did you inherit money? If so, minus one.

Yes, choosing 30 is a bit arbitrary. It’s an age when you’re still in the youth demographic and at least one parent is usually still alive. How much you got doesn’t matter. You’re either from the type of family that does that, or you’re not. A semi-prole could easily have a parent die prior to 30, but the parent either would have died with no money or left all assets to the other parent, probably passing by intestacy. If both your parents died I’ll let you decide if the point is fair.

More likely scenario is that your grandparents left you money. That kind of estate planning is for the upper classes.

8. Traditional family.

Were your parents divorced or estranged prior to your entry into high school? If so, one prole point. Same if they weren’t married at the time of your birth. This does not apply if at the time of your birth, your parents lived in either California or New York and were working in entertainment or the arts. Those people live by different rules.

One point if a parent died prior to your entry into high school and the surviving parent failed to remarry within five years (speaks to economic problems and lack of social ties).

Do you know the full names and maiden names of your grandparents? If not, plus one. Great-grandparents? Minus one. Got any pictures of the greats? Minus one. Edit: Unless they’re still alive, then plus one. OK, no points either way if they’re over 100.

*******************************

If you ended up with any points, you’re on Sheila’s side of the wall. Sorry. Have a Happy Meal, it always makes me feel better.
_______________________________

* Like in Half Sigma’s high school, probably half the class went to Ivies, but he had to take a boat every morning to get there. That should count for something.
________________________________

Clarification: If you are married, include your spouse and his family in your the answers to 1, 2, 3, and 7. Those are about current status. Don’t count your spouse in 4, 5, 6, and 8. Those refer to your individual background.
______________________________

Addendum: Earn up to six additional points for Native American heritage!

The dynamics of predicted attractedness:

The researchers asked each of their subjects to rate their own attractiveness on a scale of 1 to 7. The students then had three-minute one-on-one conversations with five members of the opposite sex, a setup the scientists describe as “speed meeting.” (The goal wasn’t to get a date, because some of the participants already were involved with people outside the study.) After each conversation, they rated the other person’s attractiveness and sexual interest.
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The more attractive the woman was to the guy, the more likely he was to overestimate her interest in him, researchers found. And it turns out, the less attractive men (who believed they were better looking than the women rated them) were more likely to think beautiful women were hot for them. But the more attractive guys tended to have a more realistic assessment.

And the women? Perilloux and her coauthors found that women underestimated men’s sexual interest.

This doesn’t actually surprise me much in any event. It punctures part of the ideology that women have a higher estimation of their romantic prospects because they conflate sleeping with a man with the same sort of romantic possibility as entering a monogamous relationship with them.

But beyond that, the fact that less attractive men have “higher standards” is unsurprising not only by reading Roissy’s peanut gallery, but also from my own experience. Less attractive men tend to have less romantic experience. It’s through romantic experiences that we figure out where exactly we stand in the pecking order. I know that before I actually started dating, I had an inflated idea of what the possibilities were if I could just get from Point A to Point B. As I started getting more and more exposure to women, I started learning where I fit into things. This was a positive development and not just because I “lowered my standards.” It meant, among other things, that I started actually noticing my female counterparts.

For guys, that’s a big part of things. Hit Coffee friend Bob commented that unattractive women are, to men, background furniture. We see attractive women on TV; we notice the attractive women around us. We get a misguided sense of what “normal” is. And, along with the male tendency to view ourselves as normal, associate ourselves with women that are out of our league if we are not careful. I had every incentive not to do this, did not at all do this consciously, but it ended up happening anyway. Of course, I finally determined “my place” shortly before I lost weight, and then when I lost weight (and became more socially acclimated), my self-perception didn’t change with it. So it can absolutely work in reverse and we can become more female-like in our self-assessments.

Missing from all of this, of course, are the non-physical attributes of dateability. We tend to take for granted that men are physically-obsessed. Some men assume too much that women don’t care about looks (it’s all about “status” or alphahood or something else). Other men, though, tend to view all relationships the same way that we view women. Or, perhaps more accurately, the way we think we view women. The way that guys without romantic opportunities often do (because they don’t understand the difference between a plain or chubby girl we actually get along with and an attractive woman that we don’t). So, for instance, when we get rejected, we often think that it’s because the woman is acting on the basis that they are better than us rather than that they don’t see compatibility. This is especially the case among guys with scant dating experience. I remember when I asked out and was rejected by a chubby girl that I only asked out because I thought we were in the same ballpark (we were close). But we weren’t in the same place at all. That she was socially “better” than me was true, actually, but even if you overlook that, you still had an overall lack of compatibility. Along these lines, if nothing else:

I remember Eva saying that she and a previous boyfriend were having a hard time relating to one another because he was super-popular in school and she wasn’t. It sounds trivial, doesn’t it? Yet I am not sure it is.

There is also the issue of aspirational dating, wherein we try to define who we are by who we are with. The notion that being with an attractive woman means that we are inherently more attractive. The same goes to a lesser extent with popularity. Even with cliches. I had an attraction to flighty, gregarious sorts. In part it was a response to my discomfort with my more quiet, introspective manner. But when I was left to actually spend time with one, I discovered that even in the best of circumstances it was kind of hard to actually get along. Of course, I am not an “opposites attract” sort of person, on the whole. And sometimes it clearly does work. But whether it works or not, I think there is the tendency, among guys and girls, to sort of see ourselves in the person we are with. For less attractive or popular guys (in particular) and less attractive or popular girls (to a degree), I think it often results a repulsion for our “equals” if it means conceding where we are in the pecking order. This, combined with the overall lack of experience and increased likelihood of social isolation, contributes significantly to the inflated sense of attractiveness by guys.

But not so much for girls. I wonder why that is? I think that, to some extent, it is related to overall relationship dynamics. The guy is expected to ask the girl out. Therefore, if a guy does not regularly ask girls out, he is more free to dream of where he might be if he did. On the other side of the table, a girl who is not asked out is more likely to be confronted with where she happens to be. She might be able to get one night stands, but I don’t think she is likely to conflate that into something more the same way that a lot of guys do. The burden of doing the asking falls to the guys, but it also gives guys a greater sense of self-control. And the ability to tell themselves that they could do better than they can, if they would only press it (or figure out how).

A while back, in response to responses to the Anthony Weiner scandal, Megan McArdle wrote:

Society takes a greater interest in marriages than in other relationships because society, as well as the individual, has an interest in strong marriages. Strong marriages support a strong society. And society supports the marriage by encouraging people to do the very hard work of keeping their promises. One of the ways in which society ensures strong marriages is by tut-tutting (or worse) at people who don’t keep to their vows: who abandon spouses, treat them badly, or yes, violate their trust by engaging in covert sexual activity. I’m a big fan of sexual privacy. But you cannot have a public institution that rests in part on fidelity, and also complete privacy on those matters.

Call me old-fashioned, but I think that social sanction can be very helpful in assisting us in doing important but difficult things. Marriage is stronger if people who find out that their friends are cheating don’t say, “Awesome, is he hot?” but “How could you do that to Jason?” Marriage is stronger if people who cheat are viewed with slight revulsion, and so are the (knowing) people who they cheat with. Marriage is stronger when people who decide not to care for seriously ill spouses are met with an incredulous “What the hell is wrong with you?”, not “Yeah, I couldn’t handle that either.” Of course it would be nicer if we didn’t need this sort of help. But we are a flawed species.

This is, to be sure, a bit trickier in an era when people like me and Andrew accept that there can be healthy non-monagamous marriages. Maybe, folks have suggested, she was totally okay with this! This seems possible, but not really very likely. I know a decent number of people in open marriages, but they are very far from the majority of the people I know. Looking at what polls and research we have on this sort of thing, plus an unscientific survey of my friends and the women who have written me, I’m going to go out on a limb here and speak for heterosexual married women as a class: I’m pretty sure that most of us are not okay with our husbands sending racy photos to strangers, or engaging in phone sex with same within weeks of our wedding day. And if she’s totally okay with this, how come she hasn’t said so?

To some, marriage is a covenant with God. To others, it’s an agreement with the state. And others, it’s merely an arrangement between two people. I fall into the view that it is a covenant with society. As such, I agree with McArdle on the lack of complete unimportance of Weiner’s infidelity. Society is conferring benefits - tangible and intangible - to married couples, and I believe that married couple in turn should meet some rather basic expectations.

I believe this enough that I am uncomfortable with the notion of “non-monogamous marriages.” Not that I don’t think they can ever work. Not even that I disapprove of non-monogamy. But rather, that I think what is being described is something other than marriage. I don’t think that these people should be prevented from being married, but rather that individuals in society, as well as society as a whole, can pass judgment.

Except, of course, that there is not typically a way of getting marital benefits without it being called marriage. This is where I think the concept of Civil Unions can be rather helpful, for straights and gays alike. On the other end, I am actually sympathetic to the notion of “covenant marriages”, the marriage-plus deal that some states have tried to institute. By and large I would have the law look at all three in the same way, except for making it easier to get in and out of some than others, but a clearer outlining of expectations would ultimately be helpful, in my view. Before asking “Will you marry me?” I wish that more couples had a clearer idea of a fundamental pre-requisite question: “What does marriage mean to you?”

I am, to some degree, skeptical of the notion that we should always approach these questions individually. Without common definitions, and common expectations, society lacks a structure that is ultimately beneficial. Legislating morality is tough, and often undesirable. It’s social norms, and social expectations, that remain the best tool to make it largely unnecessary. And so when Anthony Weiner introduces his wife, I should have the reasonable expectation that they are monogamous. Even if his wife is okay with what he did, you still have a situation where Weiner sold us on one persona “Happily married man!” while in fact being another “Someone with looser notions of marriage than you!”

In response to a quote suggesting that men should never wear shorts, Drew Magary writes:

Then I have The Awl bitching at me about it too (”Men should not wear shorts. That is all.”). You listen to me, you anti-shorts gay mobsters: I WILL WEAR SHORTS IF I GODDAMN WANT TO.

I don’t give a shit what you deem appropriate or tasteful. I live in Maryland and for the next four months it will be 50,000 fucking degrees outside, and it’ll be so goddamn humid I’ll have to wear flippers to swim through the air. It’s HOT. It’s fucking deathly hot already. They don’t even have spring here anymore. There’s winter, then it rains a for a couple weeks, and then the entire landscape turns into A FIERY PIT OF HOT LAVA. There are elephants basting themselves with rain puddle water down my block. It is hot as shit.

Tom Ford, who is the guy staking out the anti-shorts position, would go crazy in the south or southwest. It seems that everyone wears shorts there for most of the year. And flip-flops, for that matter. Aesthetically, I actually agree with Ford. I think that men look better in long pants and consider flip-flops to be a little too casual. But the utilitarian in me does respect the fact that people who buck this preference are not frying in the heat. Which is pretty much what I do. I have finally given in and wear shorts in some circumstances. Limited mostly to expressly casual events, such as barbeques and family get-togethers at the Corrigan Compound or Shell Beach. But I’m never comfortable doing it.

Much to Clancy’s lament. She very much likes me in shorts. I have rather substantial legs (and did even when I was bone thin).

I am, of course, entirely double-standard on the issue. When i first met Clancy, she was wearing shorts and her marvelous legs were the first thing I noticed about her. She had a big bruise on one of the legs. Not only did that not deter my admiration, but it gave me an excuse to look at them. Though even with women, my feelings are mixed. Most of the time, I think that women look better in long pants (and full-on shoes). But as a “leg guy”, it seems partially tragic that they should cover them up.

On a sidenote, Redstone High School apparently does not have a minimum pant-length on shorts. For girls. They really, really should. Guys, meanwhile, are not allowed to wear shorts at all.

Meanwhile, some folks think that guys shouldn’t tuck their shirts in:

Pete has everything going for him. Including all of his aforementioned attributes, he’s a funny, gregarious, likeable guy. Pete’s makin’ it happen. Except for one thing. Pete tucks his shirt in too tight.

So what?… you say. Big deal. So Pete’s neat. He wants to be presentable. Look his best. Clean cut. Professional. An upstanding citizen. He should tuck his shirt in, and as tight as the lug nuts on his truck too. Right? Wrong.

And let me make this clear, I’m focusing on the social aspect of shirt tucking, at work, tuck to your hearts content. I’m not the boss. Maybe he likes it that way. They’re usually ‘tight tuckers’ too.

Socially, it never fails. I’ll step out with my buddies – and one of them (sometimes more… unfortunately) has their shirt jacked in so tight it looks as if it was painted on. It also never fails that when they make their approach (some are better than others) the first thing a woman notices is the ultra tight tuck. It’s never good, regardless of shirt type. Here’s why…

Bah. Just as pants (with beltloops) ought to have belts in them, shirts should be tucked in. Everything should be fastened, buckled, and tied. That’s just… the way it should be, dag nabbit. In addition to that, I typically tuck in my shirts because I wear the belts and without tucking in my shirt, the belt buckle can make contact with my skin, which is a sort of uncomfortable feeling. Clancy thinks I should almost always leave my shirts untucked (and thinks that of most men), but I just have trouble with it. I have trouble with things not being in their rightful place, and a shirt tail’s rightful place is tucked in. I actually take it to very unfashionable extremes, tucking in Hawaiian shirts and sports jerseys some of the time. Both are no-nos. And I recognize that it looks a little goofy, but that’s society’s problem. There is a practical element to it, too. I keep my phone on a belt holster (another fashion no-no, actually) and it’s more accessible when my shirt is tucked in.

The article mentions four things in particular that shouldn’t be tucked in and I actually agree with one of them. Sweaters should not be tucked in. It also mentions jerseys, which I agree is the norm but am iffy about myself. He’s wrong on button-downs and t-shirts, though.

The only real exception are for people who are overweight or have really odd body shapes. The only time I stopped tucking in my shirts was when I hit my peak weight. I bit the bullet, got a ton of undershirts (intentionally too small, though now they’re too big), and let the shirts hang. When the weight came off, that bow to aestheticism came to an abrupt end.

Incidentally, they also have an article on belts, which I actually agree with (for the most part)! Especially the parts about belts and shoes matching. Despite my devil-may-care attitude towards phone holsters and the like, I am meticulous about this. My boots, belt, and watch all need to match. I keep brown and black variations of each and, unless I’m off my game, all three are brown or black. When these three things don’t match, it just feels wrong.

All of which is to say that there are reasons why I had trouble with the ladies prior to meeting my wife.

I discovered a long-time acquaintance is a red diaper baby. Her parents are bona fide Communists, as were her grandparents. The sort that hoped that we would lose the Cold War. This actually explains a great deal. She’s one of the most conservative people I know, in the traditional sense of the word. And her mannerisms really strike one as a fundamentalist Christian or something. She’s been mistaken for right-wing by mutual acquaintances. It’s the lifestyle that she leads. And yet her politics were way out in left field. Why?

Well, if you’re a real traditionalist, and you were born into a family where the family tradition is Communism. You keep up the fight. You honor your family’s heritage and accept the wisdom handed down from one generation to the next. Their good guys are your good guys. Their bad guys are your bad guys. Your tribe is the USSR, defunct or not, and not the nation in which you were born and raised.

Pterodactyl wrote a post I commented on a little while back. She clarified her meaning in the comments:

The post also considers the parallel case of hypergamy on the part of men, both in culture and history. The observation is that while male hypergamy has the element of the aspirational (seeking to date/marry up), it also has a strong element of the aspersional (casting aspersions and worse, e.g. ill-treatment, on lower-economic-status females).

For men and women both, the nature of what we are attracted to can be mysterious. I’ve often stated that the degree to which looks matter is understated in women and overstated in men. I was going to elaborate on that, but apparently I already have. And I can definitely buy that economic status is something that is understated in male preference. I do have a couple of caveats on that, though. First, while it’s understated for men I don’t think - for reasons that could be purely social conditioning - it is as big an issue for men as it is for women. I know, I know, I’m a guy married to a doctor. And I’m a guy that broke the heart of a girl who spent her first fourteen years in a trailer park. But I’m not a typical guy. And, if we’re willing to use education as a proxy for status, there is some backing on this*:

Our results show that educational homophily is the dominant mechanism in online mate choice. Similarity in education significantly increases the rate of both sending and replying to initial contacts. After controlling for the opportunity structure on the platform, the preference for similar educated others is the most important factor, particularly among women. Our results also support the exchange theoretical idea that homophily increases with educational level. If dissimilarity contacting patterns are found, women are highly reluctant to contact partners with lower educational qualifications. Men, in contrast, do not have any problems to contact lower-qualified women. Studies of educational homogamy generally show that couples where women have a higher level of education are rare. Our study demonstrates that this is mainly the result of women’s reluctance to contact lower qualified men.

This also has ramifications for how women blame male bias against intelligence for their dating woes the same way that guys blame female bias against niceness. But anyway…

This is one of those things where I suspect that the filtering against women of lower economic status happens for ostensibly other reasons. I didn’t care that Julianne was raised in a trailer park. I did care, though, that neither she nor her family had an iota of fiscal responsibility. But the two were probably not unrelated. There have been other cases where I couldn’t quite put my finger on the reason, but it turned out to be a basic incompatibility (not wholly unrelated to the different environments in which we grew up) or intelligence (which links to other things).

Of course, I speak of this as a male from the “upper middle class.” Sheila, who comes at this as a woman from the working class, has an entirely different perspective. So there is, at least, a contingent of guys that are looking to really trade up even at the expense of things that guys are “supposed” to be interested in. It’s possible that it’s something that women of means run into above and beyond whistling construction workers.

Of course, perhaps the most important thing from the Bakadesuyo cite is the fact that educational homophily is preferred across the board. This suggests that at least as far as education goes (and likely, by extension, social class) most people are most comfortable where they are. This makes sense to me. I never really got the sense that my education and my job were a real selling point among women that I would have thought it might be since it would be a chance at a middle class life and all. In a vacuum, maybe it would be so, but in the real life the end result is different interest, different ways of communicating, and overall incompatibility. What would Cinderella and the Prince really have to talk about?

On a sidenote, this all refers to traditional hypergamy, which is in reference to socio-economic status. A lot of what Alpha Theorists are talking about involves something somewhat different, which is sexual status, which is determined by such factors as testosterone and sexual worldliness. And the type of hypergamy that Ptero points to with regard to men has as much to do with sexual status as well, specifically in the domain of looks and non-single-motherhood.

Related link.

* - I hate to blockquote nearly the whole post, but it’s kind of necessary for context. If you’re not reading Bakadesuyo, you should be. I have to prevent myself from simply linking to what he writes every day.

Phi looks back, with some regret, on foregoing a relationship in his youth on the basis that the relationship had a sell-by date on it:

Question: would my present self counsel a different course of action to my past self?

Sadly, yes. I say sadly, because I still think my reasoning then was conscientious (or at least, that variety of conscientious that mothers tend to approve of). But I now know the alternative sucks too.

So my present self would say to my past self: go for it! Be honest with her about what your plans are, but if she’s still game for a date-stamped relationship, well then: she’s cute, and she’s making it easy! And face facts: alpha girl isn’t available, especially to your nerdy ass.

And believe me, you really, really don’t want to get to be 23 without having had a girlfriend, without having been kissed, on the grounds that you weren’t ready to get married the next day. Because when you’re 23, the girls, even (or especially) the girls at church, will expect you to have already done those things, and they’ll hold your lack of experience against you. A lot.

I half-agree with Phi on this. I agree with his advice, but I don’t think the new advice is worthy of sadness. Experience is a good thing. I specifically mean relationship experience and not (just) sexual experience. There comes a point of diminishing returns (and, perhaps, negative returns) with a lot of experience. But if you, like Phi and myself, are hardly in danger of becoming jaded and numbed by excessive experience, I believe that you take experience where you can get it.

It’s not just that future partners might “hold [it] against you,” but that experience breeds knowledge. Knowledge of yourself and knowledge of how relationships work. My road with Julianne was rocky early on and barely survived our first year for no other reason than I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t know what reasonable expectations were. I didn’t know the line between being consciously non-obsessive over a relationship and not taking it seriously enough. I didn’t have a clear idea of the distinction between “we’re having a fight” and “we’re breaking up.” Granted, some of these things vary greatly (and all of them vary a little) from partner to partner, but there are certain baselines.

More than that, though, you learn what your baselines are. I had to learn that the “girl of [my] dreams” isn’t worth it if I am miserable throughout. I had to learn what expectations I was willing to commit to and what was just “too much.” And a lot of this relates back to having to learn what kind of girl I wanted to spend my time with. There is the tendency at least among some guys to underestimate (in some ways) and overestimate (in others) what they want. Prior to Julianne, I really thought just about any girl who fit a certain criteria would do. She fit all of them and more. But I discovered, along the way, that there were scores of things that I had never contemplated. That I could be with a woman that was beautiful, smart, loving, and that still wouldn’t be enough because - much to my shock - I need a particular kind of these things to settle in for life. That some of the things that I thought were really important turned out not to be.*

My relationship with her failed anyway, of course, but for much better reasons. And, of course, every relationship failed until I met my wife. But they all failed for different reasons. I can’t say that I learned something from them all (I can be kind of dim sometimes), but I learned a lot.

Like Phi, I was pretty serious-minded growing up. Starting with a girl named Tracey, I immediately measured up every girl I dated for long-term prospects. Sometimes I knew it wasn’t there. Sometimes I chose not to care. Sometimes I cared when I probably shouldn’t have in part because I feared they were looking at forever. But particularly in a case like Phi’s, where everyone knows the score, I really don’t see much harm in plowing forward. Don’t do anything you will regret, knowing what you do about the finite nature of the relationship, but experience what you can. For guys like Phi (and, probably to a lesser extent, myself), you only get so many opportunities.

* - Which is why a girl holding it against you is not entirely unreasonable. Unfair to you, perhaps, but reasonable for them. If you had the opportunity to enter a relationship with someone that was clueless about relationships, or with someone that knows what they’re doing, you go with the latter. Clancy has benefited immensely from the fact that Julianne and Evangeline and a others came before her. The fact that her romantic history was more restricted was, if not a problem, something we had to work with in the early stages.

This article from The Frisky has gotten attention, where the writer takes a women’s group to task for putting Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow on a sexiest list:

But Tebow has one major problem in my book: he’s openly and loudly very anti-choice, to the tune of taking out an ad during the Super Bowl in order to share his pro-life views with the world. Why, for the love of Ryan Gosling, would a major woman’s website feel the need to laud a man like that? I mean, after all, it’s not like a woman’s right to choose has been in any way compromised this year or anything. Luckily, their other 24 picks are decidedly less lame.

Abortion politics aside from the moment, this is an extraordinarily narrow way to look at it. First, a crush is not a declaration of loyalty to everything about a person. I’ve had crushes on some of the most inappropriate people over the years. It’s daydreaming of a sort. But if we’re going to take this more seriously, Tebow’s position on abortion is part of a much larger picture. He’s a fundamentalist Christian. There are aspects of this that even a liberal can appreciate, like when he entered the BCS national championship game carrying flowers to give to his mother (not a Christian thing, per se, but part of the family-is-all-important-bundle). But there are aspects that (secular) liberals can’t. Abortion is only one of it.

Perhaps the strongest argument against dating someone with different views on abortion than your own are the practical implications. From a man’s perspective: if she gets pregnant, will she abort? Some will hope so, others will hope not. From a woman’s perspective: if I choose to abort, will he be supportive? The asymmetry of this question actually makes the question more important for men than for women. Since, legally speaking, he has to live with whatever her choice is. But for Tebow, and regarding relationships with people like him, it’s at least somewhat off the table unless (a) you don’t want children after you’re married or (b) you would be willing to abort - within the context of marriage - because the timing - or the baby - isn’t right.

I say “after you’re married” because, if Tebow is sincere in his beliefs (and all indications are that he is), there is no sex prior to marriage anyway. The second is a bigger factor. But, again, it’s all part of a bigger picture. Tebow likely has very traditional attitudes towards male-female relations and these are guided by his Christian values. Even if abortion isn’t an issue (say, one of them is infertile), it seems doubtful that this Frisky writer would be on board with the larger context through which Tebow sees marriage.

But practical implications aside, to what extent should we consider the other’s views on this contentious issue? I take a pretty laid back attitude towards such things. I’ve dated everyone from birthers to card-carrying members of the Green Party, from pro-life to having had 3.5* abortions. Perhaps it’s because I don’t fit precisely into a liberal or conservative mold that I don’t have a particular tribe to choose from. So to me, I guess, it almost always comes down to practical implications. Almost, anyway. I would have had a hard time marrying Clancy if she had been an abortion doc. So in that sense, I can understand where the author is coming from, given how strong her views are on the subject.

It doesn’t strike me as reasonable, though, to expect everyone in your gender to share not only your views on abortion, but also to feel so strongly about it as to refrain from crushing or fantasizing about someone with differing views.

On the other hand, Tim Tebow for President does represent an ideological unseriousness (or a right-wing bent from a site where you wouldn’t expect it). I find it bizarre that the Frisky author found the inclusion on the list objectionable rather than the pseudo-endorsement.

* - The .5 is a miscarriage that probably would have been aborted.

“One of the most powerful feelings I came back {from his first trip to Europe} with was a feeling of anger at the fact that if I had been born into almost any other time or place in history, I would’ve been screwed over for life. Sometimes I don’t know how to deal with that.” -Samson’s Jawbone

The following are a couple of arguments for and against state lotteries. I often find that the best way to explore issues is to create arguments from the perspective of characters in my novel-writing. So that’s what I’ve done here. Neither BC nor RK are straight-line partisans, though they each have their histories and backstories. BC is coming from a more liberal perspective (particularly economics, he considers himself socially liberal but has a stubborn conservative streak on some issues). He comes from a Catholic, blue collar background, though he himself has gone to college and “made good”, so to speak, with a career in computers. RK comes from a thoroughly white-collar, WASP family. He went to law school, but is among those that had difficulty converting that into a sustainable legal career and instead works as a security/investigations consultant for a Pinkerton-like organization. He is a soft libertarian, but breaks to the right on some cultural issues.

The role of a government in society is a subject of constant debate. Some believe that it is the role of society, through its government, to protect the least among us. Others believe that doing that interferes with the free market, which ultimately helps everybody or if not is otherwise more just. Whether we believe in the redistribution of wealth or not, one thing we should all agree on is that it should not be the business of the government to specifically target the poor and working classes for the benefit of the middle class and beyond. Ultimately, however, that’s precisely what lotteries do.

One of the jobs I had in college was working at a gas station and truck stop on the edge of town, right beside an industrial park. With the manufacturing sector struggling, I spent a lot of time serving people with generally poor economic prospects. Some of them worked in the industrial park, some stopped by just to go place to place in search for a job. Some worked part time. Some worked off the books for a meager income. One of my job functions was to cash checks. Often, very meager checks. Some days I would think that it is the responsibility of the government to help these people out. Other days I would think that the government already is often helping these people out and subsidizing self-destructive behavior. But even apart from the welfare quandary, the government already assists in their counterproductive behavior. Every Thursday and Friday, generally paydays, they would cash their checks and spend the first of their newfound money on three things: cigarettes, alcohol, and lottery tickets.

There aren’t any easy answers on what to do about cigarettes and alcohol. We could criminalize them, but that hasn’t really worked historically. We can tax them, but in addition to providing a (maybe needed) disincentive, it is also regressive. The end result isn’t that my patrons would buy less, but rather they would just end up spending that much more. But the third item - the lottery - is really extremely easy. Gambling is illegal in {BC’s home state}. While it still goes on, I’m sure, it’s made inconvenient enough that those that want to destroy their lives gambling will go to Las Vegas, Atlantic City, or Louisiana. The fact that they can instead gamble at any local convenience store creates demand. Markets tend to do that, and for some things (like the City of Las Vegas) perhaps it is the free market at work. But state run lotteries are not. They are run by the state. The enemy isn’t some marketing guru in a Vegas high-rise that has determined that if you add this smell and take away the windows and clocks people will piss away more and more of their income. It’s the state. It’s us.

Lotteries are popular because they are generally instituted to pay for things that people like, such as education. Others like it because it “taxes stupid.” But aren’t the stupid taxed enough already? Not in the literal sense, but they will live their lives stupid. I have no delusions that my former customers would be a-ok but for the state lottery. They were often alcoholics or worse. Some of them maybe just need a good job to get back on their feet, but others would screw it up even if they had it. Their position in life is the result of their screwups. Due, in large part, to the fact that they are stupid. They lack impulse control. The odds against winning the lottery as so high that they can’t even wrap their heads around the numbers. They are (usually) the products of our public school system. It is the height of irony that our system takes money from the ill-educated to put right back into the system that failed to educate them in the first place. But even if the system can’t educate them, their own limitations mean that they will likely live their lives without financial or physical security. They will never be able to afford the lifestyle of the smart. They’ll never be able to achieve it. They’ll never be able to plan for it. While it may give us satisfaction to tax this, we’re aiming our barrels at people that cannot really take care of themselves or we’re contributing to the decisions that make it so they will not. One way or another, the state will end up taking care of them anyway.

Whether gambling itself should be legal is a difficult question. But even if we agree that it should, it shouldn’t be the government doing it. The only reason we might want the government to do it is if we believe that they will do it more ethically. But they see the same dollar signs that private industry does. {BC’s home state} recently fiddled with the rules to make already long odds of winning even more long. Because they, like any good marketing company, recognize that sales go up as jackpots rise. And jackpots rise when people don’t win. So less winners equals more money. They’ve essentially discovered the same scent that Las Vegas casinos push through their vents.

It’s a fact of life that very, very few of us will grow up to be rich. The more you redistribute income, the more you’re preventing people from becoming wealthy in the first place. The less you redistribute income, you’re supporting a status quo in which the wealthy get wealthier while the rest of us get by. Sure, there are people that find the magic formula to become the new rich, but that is exceedingly rare. It requires risks that few want to take. It requires smarts that few have. So you have those that already have money - and lots of it. You have those that have the smarts and gumption to risk it all to become rich. But that’s not most people. Most people just want enough money to get by and a savings to retire on. That’s hard enough. Making millions? That’s for other people. It may be a depressing thought, but it’s true.

Lotteries circumvent that. They provide a way for anybody with a dollar in their pocket to become wealthy. Almost none of them will, of course. The numbers are out there for everyone to see. And even the innumerate among us know that the odds are longer than we can possibly imagine. But as they say, you can’t win if you don’t play. And if you can’t win, you can’t dream of becoming a millionaire. When you buy a lottery ticket, you’re buying more the long odds at a jackpot. You’re buying a ticket to dream.

This is particularly true when it comes to the working class and below. Not only will these people never be wealthy, but they will probably never be comfortable. They’ll likely never have a comfortable retirement. They’ll probably always be living from one paycheck to the next. The lottery doesn’t change this. This is the way of the world. But the lottery provides them the ability to imagine a different life. A better one. We’re talking about a lot of people who don’t have anything to look forward to. Even if it’s almost entirely illusory (and even if winners lives don’t actually improve), the lottery is a little, quiet voice that says “it could happen to you.” It’s a reason to get up in the morning. It’s a form of entertainment. We spent all kinds of money watching people throw balls of various sizes and shapes around. That’s a game we have no stake in. If our team wins, we don’t materially benefit. There is no material benefit at all, no matter what happens.

If you look at the lottery in this way, it’s no less counterproductive productive than paying $3 to drink a beer so that you can watch the game on the bigscreen or spending $50 a month for cable so you can watch a game on TV. Most members of society have their basic material needs met. Even the losers who used to come to BC’s convenience store most likely had a roof over their heads and were (statistically) more likely to be overweight than not eating enough. So what do you do with the rest of that money? There’s really no right answer. But the lottery is, itself, not really the wrong one. I remember reading a comic strip once that said “Leo forgot to buy his lottery ticket, so he decided to play the home version” and shows him burning a $1. But isn’t it worth something to have that ticket in your pocket, to turn on the TV and watch the news for the winning numbers, and for some portion of the day to imagine how life could be if you won? But almost nobody expects to win. It’s all part of a carnival roller coaster. It’s living.

And if we’re going to allow for this sort of thing, then why not have the state do it? The state may be no more responsible than private industry (something “my side” has been saying for years). But it’s profits to the state that would otherwise go to someone else. And, though this argument doesn’t appeal all that much to me, if you’re concerned about gambling, it makes the state less likely to legalize it writ-large, because it would cut into the state’s profits. Allow people to bet on horse-races or drop their quarters in casinos, then they will will devote less money to the system that the state profits from. And given the short time horizon on horserace bets and slot machines (which don’t even make you pull down a lever anymore), you run the risk of the dumb population throwing a whole lot more money a whole lot more quickly with just about any major form of gambling than a daily lottery outside of the stock market.

Pterodactyl has a really thoughtful post on Sweet Valley High, her decision to choose male priorities over female ones, and male status-hunting:

Although I’m far ahead of my peer group in what may be termed “worldly resource competition” matters (professional/business etc), I’m far behind in the social realm – particularly the girly stuff, dating and so on. You may have picked up on some of that, what with my (partly tongue-in-cheek) references to My Little Pony, 80s cartoons etc. It’s nostalgic escapism from a high-pressure present, into a time of wonder and possibility (relatively speaking).
A Study of Male Hypergamy amongst the Manosphere, e.g. Vox Day

At some point in my life (around late elementary school/early junior-high age), I decided to be a man. No, this isn’t about the true confessions of a K.D. Lang fan (I’m straight), nor tranniness, nor some sort of gender confusion – to use a favorite feminii (lefty feminist) buzzword, I’m “cis gender”. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

What I mean is, I decided to pursue what has traditionally, or stereotypically, been viewed as a male path: admitting to oneself that one is dissatisfied with one’s economic position in life (rather than trying to delude oneself otherwise, and girlishly preening in one’s current place), and being aggressive in going for self-improvement through a single-minded pursuit of worldly resource competition endeavors. In practice, such a single-minded and aggressive pursuit involves what some may view as a male mentality (relatively unconcerned with popularity, relationships etc) and male lifestyle (femininity is time-consuming, and after some brief late-elementary school forays at The Limited and Claire’s, around the early junior-high timeframe, I transitioned to full-on tomboy mode –I still don’t have any real knowledge or experience in fashion, or applying makeup).

There are a lot of separate points that she makes and each one of them could be the subject of a different post. But there were two aspects that I found most interesting. Choosing masculinity, in a sense, and the making of a choice at all (not between masculinity or femininity, but of choosing paths in general).

I suspect that the author and my wife would get along quite well if they ever met, because a lot of what I read echos some of the early things I learned about Clancy. There were a number of reasons that Clancy and her two very independent sisters chose a different path. And to some extent, the sisters’ stories are different from one another. But for Clancy and her younger sister Ellie, it seems that there was a cycle of antipathy between them and their surroundings. It’s difficult to know whether Clancy and Ellie spurned feminine society first and society responded accordingly or whether it was the other way around. But that, combined with an uneven relationship with their father and their father’s uneven relationship with their mother (all since rectified), created a doctor and a lawyer who were not going to rely on any man and were not going to buy into a culture that demanded that they do.

Leaving aside feminine culture specifically for a moment, to some extent there are choices that we all make. Or that we fail to make. It’s something that I have thought about regarding myself as I look back at K-12 and (to a lesser extent) beyond. My decision to reject my high school’s culture, for example. It can be made to sound high-minded and “independent”, but it can also be made to sound petty and counterproductive. And whichever it was, it was also incomplete. I look back and wish that I had actually participated in extra-curriculars and the like, but even at the time there was some resentment for what it cost me and the knowledge that it was a reactive, rather than proactive, choice. For which I am largely grateful. A proactive rejection would have been very different, and given the circumstances, more destructive.

My fourth novel deals with these sorts of subjects. A narrator who wanted to choose a “different path” than the vapidity he saw around him, but who didn’t really have a roadmap to where he wanted to go. Said character, CB, is not really based on myself other than through some basic biographical detail. A couple other characters, one in the novel and one I am going to insert at the next revision, hit closer to home as far as that goes and as far as the Sweet Valley post goes.

One of them, BC, grew up in what can be described as a “high prole” family. His father was a master machinist. But due to some health problems with his mother, they were always financially struggling, so achieving financial independence became his primary objective. Extremely smart, he was able to get a full-ride to college. But coming from a family where college is not the norm, he didn’t have any solid idea of what do to when he got there except study hard (but not making a particularly good choice in what to study, choosing physics over something more vocational). Lacking Ptero’s sense of direction, even moderately good luck career-wise, and the social training of the “middle class”, he found himself largely out of his element when it came to trying to find someone to settle down with.

The other, RK, grew up in an environment much more similar to my own but made completely different choices than I did. He made the decision to really try to buy in at the high school level and then beyond. Ultimately, though, it didn’t matter because whatever he had, someone else had more. He could do the exact same things and jump through the exact same hoops as others, but he never really measured up with those to whom such superficial and conformist behavior came naturally. He had to read in books what others knew immediately. And his response to every failure was simply to try harder. And there’s nothing the hierarchy scorns as much as someone who reeks of effort.

On the other hand, neither character is particularly upset with the decisions that they made (even if both, twenty years down the line, wonder about the ferocity with which they made them). In a sense, it goes down to who they are. One who believes that the world owes you nothing and that there’s no point in asking. The other who believes that the world is out there for it if you can just figure out how to navigate the harsh terrain. Neither are exactly right and the stories of both involve them coming to terms with this.

Then there’s me, who really chose neither path. Or rather, who couldn’t stick with a choice. I remember a while back reading about a study that those who have a guiding principle, with which they make choices consistently, tend to do better than those who approach each subject as it comes. Professionally, I’m a systems guy and this sort of thing always appealed to me. But like with RK and BC, it seems that every path I deliberately chose failed me one way or another. Since neither path is exactly right or wrong for everybody, I find myself walking some other path. I find myself uncertain of where it will go, sometimes dissatisfied with it, and yet also feeling that it is the only path I can walk. At least for the time being.

This post is not a review and contains no spoilers. It does touch on the abortion issue, for which I ask that commenters tread lightly with respect towards people with differing views.

Last week I listened to the audiobook for Jodi Picoult’s My Sister’s Keeper. Clancy read and highly recommended the book and the plot actually tied into a hypothetical I was thinking may put into a creative project some day. So I took a break from Tom Clancy and detoured to Picoult. Though there’s something about Picoult’s writing I find a little offputting - I can’t put my finger on exactly what - the book itself was excellent, with the plot outstripping any of Picoult’s expressive peculiarities.

The story revolves primarily around the Fitzgerald family and two sisters within it. Older sister Kate was diagnosed with leukemia when she was three or so. Her parents, Brian and Sara, then had another daughter, Anna, by way of science so that they would have a donor to save Kate’s life. It was initially successful, but over time more and more became required of Anna to keep her sister alive. The novel starts with her at age 13 (Kate is 16) with her parents gearing up to volunteer her kidney for a transplant to Kate. For Anna, who has given blood, bone marrow, and more for her entire life, this is the last straw. She hires a lawyer so that she can be medically emancipated and make her own medical decisions.

The novel is more of a problematic than anything. By and large, none of the characters are completely good and none are evil. Most, with the exception of the sisters’ brother Jessy, are decent people. But the story involves complicated decisions. I came to my conclusion as to what should happen pretty early on. As the story progressed, though, my mind moved on to a more fundamental question: how do you determine the tradeoff between the quality of life of the many versus protecting the life of someone that has been dying almost since they were born. Is it better for there to be four satisfying lives or five dissatisfying ones?

The Fitzgeralds, including Anna, love Kate. There are bouts of resentment from her siblings from time to time, but it’s not like Kate chose her fate nor are the actions of her parents anything less than completely understandable and by and large Jessy and Anna realize this. Brian and Sara, the parents, love their daughter immensely, but there’s no denying the toll that a daughter always one relapse away from death has taken from their lives. Brian comments to one of his fellow firefighters that he stays at work late because, if he didn’t, he would have to go home. The lack of attention that Jessy got helps lead him down a wayward path where misbehavior is the only way he gets attention. And Anna is not allowed so much as to attend hockey camp. Not because of financial reasons, but because something could go wrong with Kate and she would need to stand by with parts to donate to the cause.

It’s hard to look at this situation and not wonder, at least a little bit, how much happier this family might be if Kate had simply rejected the initial transplant and died when she was three. Jessy might have gotten the attention he needed. Anna would have been able to live her own life. Brian and Sara would have been more husband and wife and less disaster management partners, which is what they became. Of course, it would be a raw deal for Kate. She would be dead. It’s tempting to dismiss this as a question of whether her life, lived in constant acceptance of the inevitability of coming death, is worth living. But when it’s your life, it’s different than merely speculating from afar. Studies have demonstrated that being crippled, for example, ultimately does not have much bearing on levels of happiness.

My friend Rick is staunchly pro-life when it comes to abortion and euthanasia. That I even ask these questions would render me, in his view, a card-carrying member of the Culture of Death. On the other hand, during the Terri Schiavo debate there really seemed to be a number of people that believe that the plug should be pulled not out of a sense of autonomy, but because they had simply decided that her life was not worth living. Even if there were a health care family and even if Terri and Michael Schiavo had been divorced, their view would have been the same. Though I came down on the side of the plug being pulled, it was on a somewhat different basis. If it weren’t for the fact that she was legally married to the man who legally decides what she wants, and if it weren’t for the fact that such care costs an already expensive health care system even more money, I would be perfectly content for her to live her life as a vegetable. But given the givens, and given her state at the time, I believe that the right conclusion was reached.

Easy for me to say, I know. And I had to remind myself of this over and over again when it came to Kate Fitzgerald. I had to fight off the belief that “Look, she had 13 more years of life than anyone ever expected. It’s time for everyone to move on.” Easy for me because I am not Kate and I do not love Kate. The fighting off of that belief was not, however, fully successful. While the Kate/Anna situation may be uniquely derived for the sake of an engaging novel, it’s something that we’re confronted with on an institutional level every day. How much do we spend to extend an old person’s life for a few months? Every dime spent there is a dime that could be spent on someone whose death is not imminent. Even for those of us opposed to abortion, what kind of exceptions (if any) should be made with conditions either incompatible with life or, if not that, incompatible with what we would consider a worthwhile life? While the Fitzgeralds’ oldest daughter’s condition lead to an additional family member, most of the time it’s going to be the other way. A family bankrupted by the health complications of a first child can’t afford to have another (and even if they aren’t bankrupted, the time and devotion required alone could preclude it).

As someone of (relatively) sound mind and body, these remain easy thoughts for me to think. And on a personal level, this is particularly true since I owe my life to a miscarriage my mother had. Yet knowing my innate biases does not seem to prevent me from forming my beliefs based on them. It is enough, though, for me to see this as an immeasurably complicated issue. And one that, when some procedure can extend my life by a “mere” six months, is definitely subject to change.

Mark Gimein writes about The Eligible-Bachelor Paradox. It’s essentially the female equivalent to The Woman Shortage. Both of which are often nooks and crannies that our psyches hide behind in explaining Why I Can’t Find Someone That Seems To Meet My Entirely Reasonable Standards. Gimein attempts to explain this using Game Theory (as in the real kind, not the Neil Straussian version we more typically talk about):

You can think of this traditional concept of the search for marriage partners as a kind of an auction. In this auction, some women will be more confident of their prospects, others less so. In game-theory terms, you would call the first group “strong bidders” and the second “weak bidders.” Your first thought might be that the “strong bidders”—women who (whether because of looks, social ability, or any other reason) are conventionally deemed more of a catch—would consistently win this kind of auction.

But this is not true. In fact, game theory predicts, and empirical studies of auctions bear out, that auctions will often be won by “weak” bidders, who know that they can be outbid and so bid more aggressively, while the “strong” bidders will hold out for a really great deal. You can find a technical discussion of this here. (Be warned: “Bidding Behavior in Asymmetric Auctions” is not for everyone, and I certainly won’t claim to have a handle on all the math.) But you can also see how this works intuitively if you just consider that with a lot at stake in getting it right in one shot, it’s the women who are confident that they are holding a strong hand who are likely to hold out and wait for the perfect prospect.

Susan Walsh interprets it through the prism of what she calls The Carol Syndrome:

The Eligible Bachelor Paradox dovetails nicely with another game theory concept that’s been applied to dating – dubbed The Carol Syndrome, named for the author’s beautiful friend Carol. Carol doesn’t get asked out much, and she believes that she frightens men away, but she doesn’t understand why. Surely some men are willing to approach her! It turns out that game theory can explain, at least theoretically why no men do.

Let’s say that Carol is sitting in Starbucks. Cute Guy sees her and feels attraction – he would love to get her number. He figures there are three potential outcomes, listed in order of preference:

1. Approach Carol and get her number. Win!

2. Forget it and go back to texting. Meh.

3. Approach Carol and get rejected. Loser!

While Cute Guy is deciding what to do, he notices other guys in Starbucks, several of whom also have noticed Carol and are also stealing glances at her. He is a STEM guy, so he calculates his odds of success with each approach. Obviously, his chance of success with option 2 is zero. Option 1 is much more likely if he’s the only guy who approaches Carol, and Option 3 is probable if several guys approach Carol. He’d really rather not deal with the rejection. But she is gorgeous! How to know what other guys will do?

Game theory says that the better looking Carol is, the more guys will want to approach her, and the more likely that any one of them will be rejected. Since all the guys act independently, the odds are highest that each of them will conclude that it is not a good idea to approach Carol. The more admiring men there are in Starbucks, the lower Carol’s chances of getting approached at all.

Phi relates thusly:

If this analysis is true, it supports my favorite hypothesis about why pleasantness of personality is overrepresented among both the low and high ends of the attractiveness spectrum: that neither group is much bothered by excessive male pestering, in the latter case because the cost of failure times its probability is prohibitive for the majority of men.

My college tech classes were, unsurprisingly, dominated by men. Those women that were somewhat disproportionately likely to be second-career types or foreign. Out of nowhere in one class was a gorgeous blond bombshell* of appropriate age. One of the amazing things was that nobody - and I mean nobody - talked to her. At all. Women who were foreign, fat, or wore shorts with unshaved legs, got more attention. Maybe not of the romantic kind (I really don’t know), but none were so avoided and (if only for their novelty) tended to attract more attention. But you would have thought that this girl had a stink-bomb in her pocket by the way that she was treated. By (young, available, attracted-as-hell) me, included. By the end of the class, her only friend was an Asian guy who barely spoke English.

I’ve heard some attractive women say that they actually get more attention when they dress down than when they dress up. I have a friend that made an absolute science out of finding flaws with women (”If you look at her closely, her eyes are slightly too close together and the eyebrow waxing is slightly asymmetrical.”) because such things were necessary for him to believe that he had any sort of chance. The term we used was “attainably attractive,” which was something of a joke because they were not remotely attainable by the likes of us. But it gave us just enough wiggle room to think it might be so. Not enough to ever really follow up. It also brings to mind some of the complaints of Sheila. Less so for any physical shortcoming on her part, but rather a vulnerability due to class and social standing that gave guys that had no shot the illusion that they did. All of this is to say that guys very frequently look for a reason for their to be an opening. Even if it’s illusory, some will go for it. But if they can’t even get that, cause they’re looking at all the other guys eyeing her at Starbucks, they may well be more likely to move on.

So what about the weak/strong bidder distinction? Do some women succeed by putting themselves out there? Some guys argue that this is the case, that women should be more forward. Others (guys and girls) say the opposite. If they do the legwork, the guy will just use her for sex and toss her aside. I know that in the past I have said that the guy should at least be willing to meet you half way. If there is any truth to this article, that may not be the case. And I can think of a few anecdotes to where someone that ordinarily would not have been on my radar getting there through some rather aggressive bidding.

I remember Maya, my friend Kyle’s former roommate. They’d recently moved in together (platonically) and I was in town visiting him. She was kind of chubby and not remarkably impressive. But boy, she could talk. And she talked to me all night long. In a way, I was grateful because we went to a party and it saved me from having to meet anyone knew. But she told me nearly everything about herself and asked question after question after question about me. At one point (I think I was in a sour mood more generally, that night) I wanted to ask “What’s wrong with you?!” do to all of the attention she was giving me. Whether she was actually interested in me I do not know, but trickle-trickle it came out that what she was looking for in a guy (tall, thickly built, young**, intelligent) were attributes I had. Anyway, though part of me found it obnoxious at the time (in part because I think I was in a sour mood, in part because I just didn’t know what to do with this person that would not leave my side), by the next day I was really wanting to talk to her some more. A week later, I was kind of in to her. The next time I saw her, there was no “kind of” about it. Long and uninteresting story about what followed, but nothing ever came of it.

Then there was the Story of Libby. That one did not have a happy ending. At all. But her force of will made it so that if there was any chance of it working out, it probably would have. She didn’t get the marriage that she perhaps wanted, but she made something out of what - for lack of that will - would never have been anything. She’s not alone in this regard. I’ve largely attributed it to an attraction to strong-minded (or, absent that, outgoing) women, but maybe there is something more to it. Not that aggressive bidding will get them what they want, but that maybe I’ve historically been to skeptical of the possibility that it can get them something that they otherwise wouldn’t have gotten?

Some of this rests, though, on the notion of a Quality Man Shortage. Which I do think exists in some contexts (such as the third quartile of functionality), but I really think is more often fueled by the same thing that fuels men to carp about The Woman Shortage. But the strong/weak bidder concept is interesting. It also makes me wonder to what extent there is a strong-weak bidder in the other direction. The general view is that persistence isn’t worth much of anything, as a guy. My experience backs this up 100%. So if there is a difference, why? Is it because men are not socialized/trained to tell women to buzz off when they are not interested, thus providing women more leeway? Are men less put off by the sense of desperation?

* - I mentioned her to a friend of mine. He, like all good friends, said “Go for it!” He asked to see a picture, which I could provide because the class involved making a website. Upon seeing the picture, he suggested that perhaps I ought to move to California and try to land an actress, instead, as that was more likely to happen.

** - Younger than her, to be precise. I was older than her, but she was shocked to find that out. So during the night in question, she thought I was younger.

eHarmony has a list, The NYT Well has the rundown:

When eHarmony members begin to communicate with a prospective date, both sides are required to exchange a list of “must haves” and “can’t stands.” These are the positive and negative qualities that are nonnegotiable and help the couple decide if they want to pursue a dating relationship.

Now eHarmony has analyzed the “must have” and “can’t stand” responses of nearly 720,000 members, identifying the top 10 relationship deal breakers for men and women.

Men and women agree on many of the “must haves.” They want a sense of humor, someone who is affectionate and kind, chemistry, good communication and loyalty. Not surprisingly, both sexes want someone who is emotionally healthy, and who is honest and has strong character.

Yeah. Shocker.

Since this prospective list goes out to people they are interested in dating, its utility is somewhat limited. In a sense, you’re saying what you want someone that you might be interested to hear. If it turns out that the other person is a whale or something, you can figure that out in due course. But if you put down that being overweight is a big factor, you might chase off someone that looks fine to you but is concerned about her weight or just thinks that you are superficial. So you stick to the unobjectionable stuff.

That’s one way of looking at it. Another way of looking at it is that “can’t stand a conservative” were pulled off the list by equal numbers saying “can’t stand a liberal.” whereas “can’t stand infidelity” is pretty universal. It really is interesting that, out of 50 traits, men and women agreed on 8 or 9 in each category. It makes me wonder what the other 38 and 39 in each category were. I am less surprised that more guys than girls put weight concerns on the list, both because it is likely true but also because it’s culturally easier for guys to admit it. The fact that guys put “patience” on the list (women did not) doesn’t surprise me much at all. Maybe it’s just me, but I read that as “does not expect me to be a mindreader” which is a common complaint among guys. The description for “Emotionally healthy” and “Family Life” make me wonder if the genders were looking at the same thing just a little differently. I’m a little more surprised that guys put “hygiene” as a bigger deal than the ladies. Not because I think we care less, but because I generally consider it one of those things that we don’t think about caring about all that much. I would have expected “lazy” to be higher up there.

According to one study, divorce hits sons harder than daughters:

A new study reports that men whose parents divorced before they were 18 are two to three times as likely to seriously consider taking their own lives as men whose parents were not divorced by that age.

Women whose parents divorced by age 18 were not affected as significantly. They, too, thought about suicide more often than other women, but the thoughts were explained by other traumatic experiences they’d had, like childhood abuse. {…}

Earlier studies that looked at the impact of divorce on suicidal tendencies have yielded somewhat conflicting results. One 2006 study found that men of divorced parents were 10 times as likely to attempt suicide compared with men whose parents were not divorced, and that women were not at elevated risk at all. Other studies have found an increased risk only for women.

But Dr. Fuller-Thomson, who studies how early childhood factors influence health, said it’s important to isolate the effects of divorce from the effects of other problems that children may experience at the same time. Such stressors include abuse, a parent’s unemployment or drug use, poor physical or mental health, and difficulties in school that can lead to lower earning potential in adulthood. Children of divorce also tend to have lower rates of marriage and higher divorce rates as adults than others, which could also play a role.

There are a few reasons as to why this might be. The study’s author suggests that it may be a product of the lack of a male figure. That could be, but you would need to see if the same holds true of children whose father died. Some in the comment section are playing the reverse-causation card. The kids are depressed because of whatever was happening in the marriage and not because of the divorce. There could be something to this to, but the fact that it seems to apply to sons and not daughters suggests that there is something else at play, here. The two possibilities that come to mind are that troubled sons cause divorce in a way that troubled daughters do not or that daughters deal with turbulent parental marriages (whether they end in divorce or not) better.

The first argument is belied by the fact that sons prevent divorce:

Economists Gordon Dahl (at the University of Rochester) and Enrico Moretti (at UCLA) discovered the following facts in 2003: In the United States, the parents of a girl are nearly 5 percent more likely to divorce than the parents of a boy. The parents of three girls are close to 10 percent more likely to divorce than the parents of three boys.

Not only do parents of daughters divorce more, but divorced women with daughters are substantially less likely to remarry than divorced women with sons. Landsburg suggested that “daughters are a liability in the market for a husband. Not only do daughters lower the probability of remarriage; they also lower the probability that a second marriage, if it does occur, will succeed.”

The author that article proceeds to bend over backwards to explain that this is because girls are strong and awesome and boys are… well, a pain. Her theory is that women with daughters are more likely to have the confidence to leave and that mothers of sons don’t remarry because boys are so much harder to parent. Truth be told, there may be something to this insofar as her source is correct that boys add to the workload and girls (over time) lessen it. I would add to that, though, it’s also more likely than not that single women parenting girls have an easier time of it because they know how to parent girls. I know that I would have a much, much, much easier time raising a son by myself than raising a daughter. The prospect of such being less daunting, may convince women on the fence that she can make it on her own. I also think there is a case to be made, though, that whether it’s true or not women are much more likely to believe that their sons need a father.

Provided by Jaybird from The League:

Well, once upon a time, marriage was, in theory, a bargain.

The man would trade some amount of food and shelter in exchange for sex and reasonable assumptions of paternity of any children born. Love wasn’t really that much of an issue to the point where marriages were as likely as not to be arranged by parents (see, for example, Fiddler on the Roof for the dynamic that existed between Tzeitel, Motel, and Lazar Wolf… we, being modern folks post 60?s know that Tzeitel and Motel ought to get married!!! *dUh*). Divorce was damn near unheard of… only the French got divorced. There was a *HUGE* stigma to divorce. Huge. Like, you got divorced? You have to move because you’d be otherwise shunned. If you were lucky, you could move somewhere and claim to be a widow and MAYBE accepted by the new community. Maybe. The stigma was just that great.

Well, the personhood of women happened and that screwed everything up. Well, as society evolved and absorbed the lessons of feminism, marriage stopped being *PURELY* an economic bargain made by parents pimping out daughters to the best available John (will she be fed? housed? rarely beaten? Listen to the matchmaker song!) but an economic bargain made by the women themselves in response to the most skilled suitors. Divorce still carried a *HUGE* stigma… but folks got married, had children, and discovered that, for better or worse, parents were somewhat more dispassionate when it came to making these economic decisions…

Which brings us to 99.44% effective birth control.

Once children were no longer certain to happen when a woman married a man, the economic bargain became exceptionally moot for *HUGE* swathes of the “respectable” community. Hell, even if you *HAD* kids, you no longer had seven. You had two if you were Protestant and three if you were Catholic. This changed the dynamic and potential costs of divorce enormously and once we reached a tipping point where everybody knew someone who got divorced (and was better off for doing so), the stigma pretty much evaporated entirely.

Which brings us to the 80?s when it seemed like everybody’s parents were getting divorced. (I was in Middle and High school… it felt like every freakin’ month someone would come in absolutely wrecked.)

Marriage stopped being an economic bargain and became something that two people who loved each other and wanted to have children did and that became something that two people who loved each other and if kids happened, great!, did and *THAT* became something that two people who loved each other did.

And seeing soooooo many marriages end in screaming fights taught a lot of kids a lot of lessons about being a lot wiser about making the devil’s bargain of marriage. Ubiquitous birth control (and abortion) gave an out for a huge number of folks when, in the past, they’d have had a hasty elopement followed by the first baby being born two or three months “premature” (but still full weight! It’s a miracle!) and people who once would have gotten married at 19 were allowed to be people who just broke up at 20. No kids, no foul. Hell, there are even “starter marriages” now. People get married, figure out that 20 year-olds aren’t very good at making long-term predictions, get divorced, no kids, no foul… and, from what I’ve seen, a lot less acrimony than we saw in the 70?s and 80?s. (Seriously, hearing the grown-ups talk about their exes was like listening to New Atheists talk about Christianity.)

And now that marriage is pretty much a “no kids, no foul” kind of relationship, it only makes sense to extend it to homosexuals and, having done so, it *STRENGTHENS* the idea of marriage as a “no kids, no foul” long-term commitment. Indeed, even as the kids of divorce from the 70?s and 80?s are getting married, many are making different mistakes than their parents… and, when it comes to marriage, they’re better at getting out before they wreck the lives of their kids.

Or something like that.

I visited with two sets of kids during my trip to Colosse. The first was my college roommate Hubert’s twins. The second was the three kids of my other college friend, Al Cavanaugh. Hugh (re-)introduced me to his daughters as “Will” while Al went with “Mr Truman.” I’m not at all offended with the former, but the traditionalist in me prefers the latter. It was how I was raised to refer to people my parent’s age. But these days, even if a parent wants to go that route it can be problematic because a lot of adults insist on being called by their first name with children. So it might not be a tide worth fighting.

I am getting older and more and more of my friends have kids. We were all raised with Mr and Mrs, but their kids haven’t been. So an age-peer will refer to my mother and father as Mr or Mrs Truman, but their toddler kids go with Bill or Susan.

I’m too lazy to look it up, but a couple of blog posts have been written on the subject. James Joyner (or one of his professorial co-bloggers at Outside The Beltway) spoke disapprovingly of the trend of college professors either wanting to or being encouraged to go by their first names with their students. The idea behind this trend being that you don’t want hierarchial relationships and it should be considered a relationship among equals. Joyner, a former professor, pushes back against this because teachers and students are not equals and it does nobody any justice to assume otherwise. Heebie-Geebie from Unfogged, a mathematics professor, expressed appreciation that a former student referred to her as doctor rather than shifting towards a first-name reference.

In the student-teacher relationship, I am more of the same mind of Joyner and Geebie. One of the irritating things about college was when students would challenge professors as presumptive equals. My friend Karl was - until the professor finally lost patience and put him in his place - so bad about this he almost ruined the class we took together. That’s not to say that what professors say should go completely unchallenged, and questions should definitely be asked (”Have you considered this?”), but by and large they are there to teach and you are there to learn. Any questions and challenges ought to be in an effort to better understand what they are trying to say. Not to prove that you, and undergraduate student, know more than they do. First-name bases - to the extent that they make a difference - seem to encourage the latter behavior.

Yesterday I went to orientation to be a substitute teacher. This was for the Redstone elementary schools. One of the things they kept harping on was dress code (which essentially boiled down to “no t-shirts or jeans”) and the insistence that, whether you prefer it or not, you are to be addressed as Mr or Mrs. The point being to establish authority. I’m not entirely sure how necessary this is with elementary school kids, though. Don’t get me wrong, I approve of both (preferring the Mr and Mrs and being a fan of non-casual dress codes generally), but it strikes me as the area where it makes the least amount of difference.

There is no orientation for the secondary schools, but it came up that (while presumably the Mr and Mrs honorifics are still required) they are much less worried about dress codes. That struck me as odd since that’s the place (in K-12 at any rate) where kids are most likely to challenge the adult-kid nature of the relationship. That strikes me as where it would be most important to draw every distinction you can.