Megan McArdle on Michael Bellesiles’s latest mess:

I found it incredibly hard to believe that Michael Bellesiles had fabricated the story of “Ernesto”, a student whose brother had died in Iraq. And indeed, it turns out he didn’t. As I initially suspected, the student fabricated the story. Why? Who knows? A student at my high school fabricated an entire fake boyfriend who died horribly of cancer, stories she regaled her creative writing class with for months. And then the teacher called her mother to ask if there was anything she could do to help the student through this terrible tragedy . . .

I have nothing to add on Bellesiles, but I do have some insights on this comment.

When I was young, I used to make up stories. All kinds of stories. And I didn’t convey them as fiction. I mean, that’s true of a lot of kids. But it was especially true for me and my stories would be extremely elaborate. The really strange thing is that I still can’t pinpoint an exact motive. I mean sure, I told “the dog ate my homework” lies, but it went beyond that. They weren’t meant to get me out of trouble. They weren’t meant to make me look good (sometimes they made me look kinda bad). Nor were they entirely for attention as I did not particularly desire attention and I always felt kinds bad and on-the-spot when people would talk to me about something I made up. I kinda wanted to tell my story, have people interested in the duration of my story, then have people forget that the story was ever told. There may have been a desire to be interesting tucked in there somewhere, though contradictorily I would want them to forget what I was interesting because of.

Some of it can probably be attributed to my stellar imagination and the need to express it. It’s noteworthy that the lies stopped when the writing began in earnest, though that could have been a function of age as much as anything else. But if I really had to guess, I would guess it was that I would want the stories to be true because I like interesting things to be true. And on the wings of this desire, “wouldn’t it be interesting/neat if…” because “get a load of this…”.

Should I sire a child, this is one of those things that I am going to keep an eye out on. If my kid is a compulsive liar, I am not going to leap to the conclusion that I did something wrong or even that they’re hiding something. Rather, I am going to wonder if I have a little writer on my hands and dutifully explain the difference between “wouldn’t it be interesting if” and “is.”

I once knew a guy that had an allergy to gluten (coeliac disease). He was always sick and even when he wasn’t was gaunt and sickly-looking. Once they determined that he had the coeliac problem, he took on a gluten-free diet and the effects were immediately noticeable. He then came up with the idea that the problem wasn’t that he had coeliac disease. He was unsure such a thing even really existed, believing that it was something the Medical Establishment (which he loathed) made up. It wasn’t a particularly well-formed theory, but nonetheless he decided that gluten was to blame for all that was wrong with the modern diet and most specifically obesity (he was not himself obese). He told this to a couple other people I know (well, he told this to everybody, but a couple people proved receptive). These people weren’t sick like the original guy, but they were overweight and decided that they would try a gluten-free diet. Sure enough, they lost weight!

Now, it’s possible that there is some sort of relationship between gluten and obesity, but I strongly suspect that the weight loss was attributable to the fact that gluten-free diets were at the time (and are now, though less so) really hard. They prevented you from eating out and from eating a lot of really tasty junk food as well as limiting carb-intake by way of fewer options. They took that out of the diet and they lost weight (until it proved more than they could handle and the weight came back). The gluten-free diet proved helpful by helping them do what they could have done by eating more common food in smaller quantities. It’s sort of like how I intentionally buy crackers that I like less because I will eat less of them. The crackers I buy are not, in and of themselves, weight-loss conducive. But they are insofar as they change my habits.

In other words, I think my friend was wrong about gluten, though his advice had the virtue of helping people lose weight (albeit temporarily) for other reasons.

—

Long before I was introduced to a concept called Game, I had created something I called RAIN (or RAN) Theory. RAIN stood for Relationships As Implied Negotiation. It was based on the observation that my failures in the relationship realm mostly revolved around making myself too available to girls too early on. In other words, I was showing my hand before it was time and I was not demanding that she would meet me where I was before I would move to the next place. The theory expanded over time to improving my bookcover to better make women more interested in reading the book. In the end, I noticed that more than anything else, it was about finding ways to be more appealing, and less scary, to the opposite sex.

So when I first heard about Game, a large part of it rang true. The first variation of it I was introduced to was Doc Love and his System. Then Neil Strauss and Game proper, though by then I was less interested in such things. With the exception of some of the weirdness of Strauss, most of what I initially heard seemed true by the most important standard, which is that confirmed my existing biases. I still think that there is something to a lot of it in the most basic sense. Ferdinand Bardamu’s The Fundamentals of Game post, for example, seems extremely commonsensical. He breaks it down into seven components, all of which are important in some fashion or another. Should I ever be in the position of having to teach a son of mine about approaching women, I might use that very post.

The problem with Game, though, is that it often comes with a lot of baggage. And a good portion of its acolytes extrapolate these lessons the same thing that my friend extrapolated from Gluten-reduction. They found something successful (or claim to have, or have heard someone else claim to have), but often come up with reasons for its success that have more to do with confirming their (often very angry) biases rather than simply accepting the formula as something that can work. I am not calling out Bardamu on this. Though I disagree with him on a multitude of issues, his explanation of game is such a productive one I am not interested in hashing out the points of disagreement.

The great part about the system is that it can easily cure a very specific set of ills. Namely, what ailed me for the longest time. There are a lot of smart people that have poor feedback receptors. They obviously don’t know what they’re doing is not working, but don’t know why. I managed to figure out a lot of this stuff on my own because my feedback receptor is better than that of the average geek (I’ve noticed this most recently on job interviews, where I can tell if I am getting off-base really quickly). But a lot of people don’t. And so they can just keep making the same mistakes over and over again and never be able to isolate the problem. Further, these people often have limited exposure to girls and so they don’t get enough repetition to see their mistakes.

A problem with Game, as it is frequently discussed, is that its proponents often tend to fixate on a few aspects of it. Ferdinand, to his credit, manages to address the often (though not always) neglected aspects of it such as Presentability and Sociability. I know some guys that fit the first five to a tee and have no success because they completely and utterly fail on the last two.

So having it outlined is an extremely helpful thing. Perhaps the most important of the seven is Indifference because it’s Indifference that allows you to take the hits that come with asking girls out. When you ask out one girl a year, it’s (a) difficult to learn what you might be doing wrong and (b) inherently a big deal. If you can make it not a big deal, you can extend yourself more often without fear of being shot down. Not that you won’t be shot down, but you’ll be more likely to realize that in the end it is only as big a deal as you allow it to be. Calmness, another of the seven, is also helpful.

Insofar as Game is what Ferdinand describes it to be, I think it’s an extremely helpful thing for guys that have trouble with girls to consider. The main thing is that it seems to so rarely stop there. I think it’s one of those things that seems to commonsensical (when you think about it and have your “Eureka” moment) that people feel the need to extrapolate on it. And those extrapolations can lead to some pretty bad places made all the worse that the people that talk about it the most are often the people that have a history of failure and the bitterness that so often accompanies it. Folks like Roissy exploit this by playing to the dark aspects of the theories and making it so dark that the whole thing turns back on itself and the guy feels better about himself (or at least more Righteous) for not playing. For Roissy and his ilk, this is perfect because it becomes a loop of bitterness and self-righteousness.

In our discussion about mail-order brides, Phi linked to his inaugural post, which involved the subject:

1. The first point is that a man’s sexual market value is perceived relative to those around him. IMBs capitalize on this by taking middle-aged, middle class men with low status in a rich country and marketing them in a poor country where they enjoy relatively high status. This works . . . as long as he stays in the poor country. If he brings his foreign bride back to the U.S., it will matter very little that he rescued her from a life of poverty in Ukraine. She will eventually perceive him to be low status by American standards.

While I think this is true, I think it is a narrow look at a broader concept. One that applies not only to women and status but men and women and options in general. People are as loyal as (a) their commitment and (b) their options. Using mail-order brides is a good example of this for a number of reasons.

First, there is generally a lack of commitment. It’s a marriage of convenience. They sidestepped a good part of the “getting to know you” phase. She’s often looking for material goods and access to the United States and he’s looking for someone with a greater degree of (superficial) devotion (under threat of deportation) and often a more attractive woman than he would be able to get stateside. They’re the best that they can do, but far from perfect. They don’t have much in common. They barely know one another more often than not. Often, if he could find himself an American woman as attractive and attentive as she is, he would not have given her a second look. Likewise, if she had access to a Russian man with his traits and wealth, neither would she. They’re both in a position of need and willing to overlook a lot.

That’s not the foundation of a strong marriage. The same often occurs early on in relationships between unattractive and unpopular people. The main difference, though, is that over time these two are more likely to genuinely bond than are an American and a foreigner. They’re more likely to have more in common, to understand one another better, and so on. And so they’re more likely to reach the point where they would forego “better options” because they’re attached. Maybe I’m being overly skeptical that this is going to happen with people that start off with virtually nothing in common, but I don’t think so.

The second thing is that MOBs draw attention to the quick increase of options on the part of one of the two partners. As Phi points out, the guy who seemed fabulously wealthy to someone living in The Ukraine no longer seems so in the United States. Further, since wealth is by its nature comparative and absolute, she is confronted with more of what she is missing the same way that someone that upgrades neighborhoods suddenly notices what they don’t have that their new neighbors do. In any event, she can now bad herself a man of more comparable attractiveness or that doesn’t have whatever the man had that forced him to resort to MOBs. It’s not quite that simple because she will always be a foreigner (and on something other than her first marriage to any new guy she meets in the US) and that’s a liability, but it’ll be closer. While she might leave the guy for someone wealthier, my guess is that she would probably leave him for someone more attractive if there is a great disparity.

It’s harder to find a place with the sudden increase in options amongst Americans. The most obvious place to look is college. One of the reasons that so few high school relationships survive college is that each partner is suddenly confronted with so many more options. You do the best you can at the high school level, but when you get to college you’re more likely to find someone cute who also shares your weird interests or someone who shares your interest but, unlike your high school sweetheart, is also kinda cute. These relationships also often fall short on the commitment scale since we’re dealing with still-developing senses of attraction.

Another example is when one partner suddenly loses a whole lot of weight and starts getting the idea that they might could do better than their still-fat partner. This is the example where the first factor, commitment, helps a lot because it’s more likely to exist.

Not to get all One To Grow On or anything, but this is one of those areas where being with someone (and having someone together with you) for the right reasons matters so much. In the case of MOBs, both partners are in a way cheating. He’s using leverage he didn’t particularly earn (it was afforded to him by virtue of being born in the United States of America or into a family of citizens) to score a wife with attributes he would have a lot of difficulty getting otherwise. She’s cheating to get into the US and to get access to the comparable wealth by using her attractiveness. Again, this is not the foundation of a successful marriage and it’s not unlikely that either party is going to bolt at a better opportunity (though only one of these two is likely to rapidly see better opportunities). But the same applies to other sorts of relationships. Two unattractive people can fall in love, but if they’re disgruntledly settling for one another (which I’ve seen happen) it’ll usually fall apart even without the option. It’ll merely take the perception of an option with a “real girl” or “real guy.”

So in conclusion, I would just like to say that anyone that says “I wouldn’t sleep with you if you were the last person on earth” is probably lying. They may not have the commitment, but expectations are quickly adjusted based on availability.

-{The next installment from a dormant series}-

While staying in Estacado, I have been the guest of my good friend Kyle. Kyle has been a great host in every respect but one. In The World According to William, when hosting somebody from out of town, it’s best to make accommodations for them to eat where they want to eat. You live there. You can eat wherever you want to whenever you want to. If they’re just in for a couple of days, they may want to eat some specific places. Now, if you really don’t like eating there, maybe you find a compromise.

Kyle has been really hip on showing me some of what he considers the best restaurants in Santomas to be. I appreciate the thought. I really do. But there are already so many great restaurants here that I already know about. Eating at a new great place (and I don’t doubt that the food would be good) just gives me another place to miss and to add to an already long list of restaurants I want to eat at. Fortunately, I managed to convince them not to take me to a place that I knew I wouldn’t like, but even that took effort. I don’t like raisins. No, it doesn’t matter how great or “unnoticeable” they are. I don’t care if I can just overlook it if I don’t think about it. I don’t want to overlook it. I want to eat at a restaurant I haven’t been able to eat at in over two years.

It’s a really hard point to get through. I run into the same problem with my father. We have a tradition of eating breakfast together. I want to eat at Happy Burger, which he likes as well as most other options, but he keeps wanting variety (which come to think of it is kind of odd for Dad). He keeps wanting to take me to Denny’s because he has a coupon. But he, and I, can eat at Denny’s any time (and I’ll pay for Happy Burger!). I don’t get the opportunity to eat at Happy Burger very often. Fortunately, I think after a few rounds of this he’s finally “got it.”

Yeah, I’m whining and grumbling a bit because I had a list of three restaurants I wanted to eat at over five meals and I only got to eat at one of them. Two of them couldn’t be helped just because of my itenerary, but in two cases I was left with the choice of either going somewhere alone instead of enjoying food with my friend (I should add that these are restaurants that I know he likes, he recommended a couple of them to me in the first place!), getting into a dicey standoff with my friend who has otherwise been the perfect host (and whose efforts on my behalf lead to the visit in the first place!), or skipping out on where I want to eat for a new place that I either won’t like or will like and will not be able to eat at again.

Bakadesuyo asks if writing can make someone more forgiving. The study he cites talks about writing more broadly and determines that it can indeed make people more forgiving of personal offenses. I think this makes sense from my own perspective in that when I put down my thoughts about something on paper, it makes me consider interpersonal issues more broadly and more likely to see things from the other perspective. I think this works for me in particular because I have a keen countervoice that argues against a lot that I say. It can make me a more effective and sometimes persuasive writer because, as my wife discovered during her brief stint in sales, whoever gets to the objection first wins.

When I first read the headline and hadn’t read the article, I was thinking more about writing fiction. I think the same applies there, too, much of the time. Sometimes people write fiction with a very specific axe to grind. This writing can be compelling, though it is made moreso when the writer can encapsulate the alternate point of view if only to knock it down. Swiping at strawmen is good at convincing the converted, but usually amounts to little more than a rallying cry. Taking the best opposing arguments and putting them out there with care is essentially getting to the objection first. People that are not already on your side can often latch on to anything that you missed and posit that it undermines your entire argument.

But beyond that, a good story requires three-dimensional characters from differing perspectives. Otherwise, there’s no conflict and no good story.

One of the things I take pride with in regards to my own novels written and unwritten is how well developed my characters are and how they are not simply compelling characters echoing my perspective and buffoons airing the opposite. The main characters in all of my stories do typically come from backgrounds similar to my own insofar as they are WASPy (if not always strictly WASP), but the ways that they see the world can differ greatly. They range in politics from far-right to far-left and everything in between. Most struggle with religion, though a couple (in different novels) are dedicated Baptists while a couple others are committed atheists. A couple characters who are reliable Democrats nonetheless express startlingly conservative viewpoints on particular issues and one politician who is a booster of the Religious Right is privately an atheist. And rather than being portrayed as simple hypocrites, I approach the characters with a great deal of care because I care about them. They’re complicated people. Most people are.

When you’re creating people from scratch and having basically good people holding views that you want to throttle them for, it requires a degree of forgiveness of backwards thought (however defined). It challenges assumptions on who your philosophical opponents are as people. When you have a thoughtful, honorable character with views that differ greatly from your own, it forces you to think about honorable people with very different views from yours. It becomes harder and harder to be smug and self-righteous.

Of course, writers can alternately rely on stereotypes and caricatures. Everybody that disagrees with them can be a knuckle-dragging fundie or a limp-wristed heathen. I certainly see enough movies and read (or listen to) enough books where this is the case. I am reminded of something Roger Ebert said about a movie being only as smart as its dumbest major player (usually the antagonist, but I think in the reference he was making it was someone supposed to be assisting the protagonist but whose job it was to be loudly and arrogantly wrong about everything). That’s something that gets lost along the way.

Irin Carmon at Jezebel argues that shameless (sexual) objectification can be a good thing. She gives five reasons, but it ultimately comes down to the argument that “Well, it’s okay if women do it” as well as arguing that the sexual objectification she’s talking about (regarding World Cup soccer players) is not entirely sexual.

I am actually somewhat sympathetic to arguments that behavior is more tolerable or less so depending on who is doing it. Ultimately, though, I found Carmon’s reasoning unconvincing.

Her first argument is context. It’s okay for women to do it because women are at a social disadvantage and it’s therefore not damaging for them to behave in a way that would be damaging if it were those at a social advantage doing it. I think that this is sometimes true. For instance, Mormons refusing to hire non-Mormons in Delosa is far, far less damaging than Mormons refusing to hire non-Mormons in Deseret. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that the former is okay, but I would definitely place it pretty far down the list of injustices worthy of our collective attention. So does that apply to men and women? Perhaps it makes it less damaging. However, I find the notion that the difference is so substantial that objectification by men can be completely unacceptable while objectification by women is not only acceptable but “a good thing.”

Her second argument for the gender distinction goes a little further in trying to explain why objectification by women is a good thing by arguing that it disrupts the narrative that women a not visually oriented. I actually agree with Carmon that the distinctions between men and women as far as visual-orientedness is vastly overstated and could even be convinced that it’s non-existent if only because I don’t care all that much. However, in point of behavior there is a distinction between the behavior as you see it. It could be because of social conditioning or it could be because genetics. If it’s the former, though, do we want to bring women down to the level of men? From my perspective, I think it would be better if men became less transparently visual in nature. Or, in fact, that we acknowledge that men are less visual than popular culture would have us believe. The best argument that Carmon could be using here is if there is a genetic component to it and we wish to disrupt that because if there is a genetic component then we don’t have to worry nearly as much about women becoming as flawed as the male stereotype.

In short, the last argument is that “it’s okay for women to look, too!” while then proceeding to argue away the “too” by maintaining that it’s not okay for men to.

As an interlude, I will take on the weakest of the five arguments. It doesn’t matter a wit that women are also oogling over foreigners. Believe me, men do it, too.

The remaining two arguments involve the context in which the men are being displayed. Female “objects” are “sexyface, no corpse-like poses” while the male objects are doing what they love. The thing is that men don’t need pornographic poses to objectify in an objectionable manner. Women can simply be crossing a construction site on the street! That doesn’t make it okay, does it? In fact, the counterargument could be true. The women who are taking on sexual poses volunteered for objectification. The men are just playing soccer and may just want to be left alone unless one is of the mindset that men are more sexual beings and thus are inherently more receptive to the attention of random women. I don’t think that’s the argument that Carmon wants to make.

Flawed, too, is the notion that it’s okay to objectify soccer players because they are in good physical condition. Anyone remember that UCLA track team girl that had an inappropriate website dedicated to her? She was in fantastic physical condition and those doing the oogling could easily make this argument. How likely would that fly with the Jezebel crew? Pretty poorly, I would imagine. There’s nothing wrong with appreciating a beautiful body in a non-sexual context. Clancy has been known to look at physically fit individuals and comment that they would make an excellent medical school cadaver (it’s awesome that I married someone that makes observations like these). But that only really works if you’re looking at individuals that you internally consider to be sexually appropriate. If you’re not appreciating female athletes, too, or athletes that you would consider too young to otherwise unavailable, there is a strong sexual component to it. This is true even if you’re not actually aching to rip their clothes off and make mad love to them.

So what are my thoughts on objectification? I agree with Carmon that context matters. I would just argue that it’s not an “okay for one gender but not the other” sort of way. Any objectification that would make the other person uncomfortable is inappropriate. That means that while your thoughts are your own, a website you put up for a UCLA track star is not. Appreciating a woman walking down the street is one thing. Disrupting her thoughts by whistling at her is not. Appreciating the beauty of the opposite sex (assuming heterosexuality) is fine, though talking about it in the company of people of the opposite sex that it would make insecure is not. I think the big thing is to be unobtrusive about it.

Bakadesuyo points to a study I’d heard about a while back that fell into the “no duh” category:

In all three data sets people in self-assessed poor marriages are fairly miserable, and much less happy than unmarried people, and people in self-assessed good marriages are even more happy than the literature reports. We also find that the results differ importantly between women and men, with members of the former sex showing a greater range of responses to marriage quality than do men. A final set of results is that, when marriage quality is controlled for, the apparent marriage effects on other outcome variables, such as self reported health and trust, change significantly.

This is a great argument to those who say “Better to be in a miserable marriage than single!”

Except that I don’t really hear people saying that. The closest I hear is along the lines of The Case for Settling. Whether that qualifies as the same argument is dependent largely on what that statement means. It can mean anything from “Find someone! Anyone!” to “Don’t expect a partner to be absolutely perfect or meet every criteria.”

It’s worth pointing out a couple of things, though. The first is that this is sort of at odds with some studies I’ve read about the effects of divorce on happiness. Namely, those in unhappy marriages that get divorced are unlikely to be any happier than those in unhappy marriages that stick it out. I say it’s “at odds” but it’s a contradiction that can be explained. First, the reason that the divorce studies say what they do is that when it comes to divorce to have loved and lost is not better than to have loved at all. Divorce disrupts one’s life far more than never having married (whose life is, by definition, un-disrupted). Compounding this is that there are often kids involved and dealing with kids between two parents is stressful. The other factor is that marriages that are unhappy in one stage become happier later on. In this vein, it’s quite possible that some of the unhappy people in poor marriages will be happier people in better marriages down the line. Or not in many other cases.

Another factor is self-selection of single people and people in unhappy marriages. The general studies that find that married people are generally happier than unmarried people can be at least partially accounted for that married people are, in general, more likely to be more functional on the whole than unmarried people. People that are highly disfunctional are unlikely to get married. So that’s going to skew the data somewhat. But this also applies to people in poor marriages. They are, generally speaking, more likely to suffer from depression and be generally dysfinctional than people in happier marriages. You would think that they would be a better group than those that were never able to marry at all, but a lot of people these days choose not to marry for reasons other than not being able to find a mate. Really, though, even if you account for that there is simply no denying that being in an unhappy marriage is a very, very stressful thing.

It’s important to note, though, that the original points made by the general studies of marriage and happiness (that do not differentiate between happy and unhappy marriages) stand insofar as enough people fall outside of the “poor marriage” category that one is, statistically speaking, probably more likely to be happy in a marriage than not. If they end up in a poor marriage, they are likely to be unhappy, but this is a subset that few enough people fall into that it doesn’t affect the overall data.

The thing about marriage is that it is a personal and highly variable thing. One marriage is not like the other. Nor is one individual like others. Someone that is generally unhappy is unlikely to be made happy by marriage as they are more likely to end up in the “poor marriage” category. Similarly, someone temperamentally unsuited for marriage should not get married just cause because they too are more likely to end up in the “poor marriage category.”

I think the same general thing is true when it comes to parenthood. A lot of people cite studies that parents tend to be happier than non-parents and that, in the aggregate, having children decreases happiness. Unless there is some flaw with the methodology of which I am unaware, you go with the information you have. However, some people look at this the same way they might look at marriage data and assume that all parents are created equal, that a happy parent would be even happier without children and an unhappy childless person would be even unhappier with children.

This could be true, but we don’t know it to be. Tell a couple that tries and fails to conceive for years that they are really happier for it is not only a crummy thing to do but probably wrong. If you look at the subset of parents that really, really want children and have them, they are likely a happier lot than those that want them equally much and don’t have them. And then of course you have those with children that never particularly wanted them. Those are likely to be a pretty unhappy lot as well.

You could, in fact, look at the data and suggest that a number of people that have kids do so to fill a void in their life and the children do not do so. Really, though, I think this is something of a cop-out.

I do, however, think that the data is skewed by people that did not realize until it was too late that having children was not a bad idea for them. If you’re married and do not have them, you get badgered about it. There also comes a point where the social scene around you changes and suddenly you’re somewhat socially penalized for not being a part of the parenthood club. If, despite this, you are still adament about not wanting children, there is a really good chance that you are making the right decision. They made a more conscious choice. They have a better idea of what they want.

The thing about having children is that it is the social default. People that don’t have a firm idea of whether or not they really want to be parents are more than otherwise going to go with that default decision. People who don’t have strong ideas are particularly susceptible to social pressure. And when a husband and wife have different desires on whether or not to have children, it’s the partner that wants to do what everyone else is doing that is likely to wind. They have society on their side. That’s why, I think, more people make the mistake of becoming parents when they shouldn’t than make the mistake of not having children when they really should. And I think it’s people in the former category, across all sorts of social and economic lines, that drag the averages for parents down on the happiness scale.

So what does that mean? It means those that want to have children should not look at the statistics and think that their urges and desires are wrong and/or the path to unhappiness. But as importantly or more importantly, it means that when a couple talks about how they do not want children, their desires should be respected. The tendency of people to tell them that they are wrong or that they will change their minds are more likely to be wrong than right and are basically inviting people to drag down the happiness statistics on parents. And it means that the man or woman that really wants kids, when confronted with a partner that doesn’t, probably ought to be the ones to give in or move on.

It partially pains me to say all of this because my wife and I have a bunch of siblings that do not want children but who we are sure could make good parents. In the case of my brother Mitch, he does want children but married a woman that does not. Of course, we want her to change her mind. But when she says that she would not be happy being a parent, she’s probably right.

The following contains spoilers on the eighth and final season of 24.

In some ways, the 8th Season of 24 was the most interesting. A weakness of the show, in my opinion, is that the presidents on 24 tended to fall distinctly into two categories: Good and honest presidents (Presidents Palmer, President Taylor) and terrible and dishonest presidents (President Logan, Acting President Daniels). In that sense, President Keeler struck me as the only realistic president. That’s a topic for another time, but what Season 8 did was present a real fall from grace from an erstwhile good president.

One of the things that struck me about President Taylor throughout the course of the season was that, being such a good and wholesome person, she simply didn’t know how to be dishonest. Or rather, because she was so unaccustomed to bending, she couldn’t do it without breaking. I was actually with her at first. I thought that sidelining Jack Bauer, while obviously tactically a bad move (nobody sidelines Jack Bauer), to be a reasonable move under the circumstances. He threatened a peace process that far bigger than the crimes that he wanted to expose. I really thought it was Jack Bauer that was the unreasonable one.

The problem really began not just when Bauer escaped, but when she kept trying to cover everything up afterward. One can forgive her for her misjudgment on Bauer because she doesn’t know that he’s the star of a show in which he is a force of nature. But there came a point where it was obvious that she lost control. Nevermind the morality of the situation, the threat of even an unlikely exposure by Bauer represented a far greater threat than a temporarily derailed peace process. Where the situation became entirely unsustainable was when she had the reporter jailed. At that point, it was nearly impossible to imagine that she could get away with it. Even having her killed would have resulted in too many questions being asked (Bauer’s death would have been easier to cover up).

Taylor’s ultimate problem is that by being an honest person, she couldn’t bend without breaking. She didn’t know where the line was between cutthroat politics and myopathy. Someone with more experience skirting the line would have known when it was time to cut their losses.

Of course, in the end Charles Logan didn’t pull it off, either. Sort of for the opposite problem. Unlike Taylor, Logan would have been willing to do whatever it took to keep it quiet. But without any sort of moral compass beyond expediency, Logan simply didn’t know where to draw the line for practicality’s sake. In his own warped sense of morality, he too was doing the right thing. He had his own myopathy that pushed him to do some pretty bad things not only without regard to basic morality but without a complete understanding of how perceived immorality - even if what he was doing was completely right in his own eyes - could undermine his cause.

Back to Taylor for a moment, the idea struck me somewhere after Bauer escaped and prior to Merideth Reed being jailed that there was a compromise to be struck between Taylor and Bauer. Taylor wanted her peace process and Bauer wanted his justice. Had Taylor simply been willing to look the other way while Bauer extracted justice, they both could have been satisfied. President Suvarov could not have made too many waves for fear of being exposed. Of course, when Suvarov himself was discovered to be behind it all, that would have complicated things. At that point, Taylor could have offered Bauer a plane ticket to Russia and requested that he wait until then and that he cover his tracks.

In the end, neither Taylor nor Bauer would have probably consented to The Truman Plan. It was too far outside of Taylor’s character to be so aggressively amoral for the greater good even if the alternative was to back into something worse. It’s sorta like the young couple that can rationalize having unprotected sex as spur-of-the-moment but believe bringing a condom is a sign of sin because it meant that you had planned it all along and were therefore more morally culpable. She had to be pushed into it one step at a time. And Bauer’s sense of morality would likely have made allowing Suvarov to go down in history as a respectable figure of peace (having signed both Logan’s accords as well as Taylor’s) would have been too much for him to accept. Or maybe not. The guy was a former black ops operative, so he must have had some understanding that some things are best left unexposed. That’s a harder sell when his girlfriend’s body is not yet cold, however.

A while back, Stan (OneSTDV) wrote a post about odd and unusual baby names and what they mean:

But as with most SWPL phenomenon, this younger cohort is mirroring black behavior in a parallel opposition to mainstream white culture. Extreme Hollywood examples such as “Apple”, “Suri”, and “Pilot Inspektor” reflect a growing trend amongst the SWPL class. These effete urbanites eschew mainstream/traditional choices in favor of “unique” and “special” names like Aiden, Elijah, Jayden, Nevaeh, Makayla, and Hannah. Are these choices outrageous? Not really, but they represent a conscious effort to individualize their children by opposing “boring” names that harbor historical sentiment.

I think that there is something to what he’s saying, but I think that he over-universalizes it. Frequently the names are not attempts at individuality at all but are simply following the pack. They heard a name, they like it, they apply it to their child. At least, I believe that’s the case for a lot of the names that he mentions. Elijah and Hannah are in the Bible and names don’t go back much further than that. The fact that they have a sudden resurgence has a lot more to do with herd behavior than an individuality banner.

I think for some of the really original names, that goes under the individuality banner. I don’t know how much of that is actual hostility towards middle America and what is not. When it comes to African-Americans, it obviously plays a role. That they would be unenthusiastic about perpetuating names from a culture with whom they have had a historically contentious relationship is no surprise. With swipples, I think it’s more of a mixed thing. I think some do want to distance themselves from middle America, though I have to say that it has always been thus. Names work their way down the SES-chain. In some cases, it’s less about differentiating from Middle America as it is differentiating from People Poorer Than You. The ultimate rebellion against middle America would be to adopt names that are a poke in the eye of their perceived enemy. If they really wanted to state their opposition to American culture, they’d adopt black names. Few, however, do. That’s why I think it has more to do with basic class dynamics than it does a desire to differentiate themselves from one particular group (”Middle America”). Even though it would not be inappropriate, I would be surprised if we have a whole lot of white Baracks graduating high school 20 years from now. And that guy is not only hated by the people they are supposed t0 be hating, he’s the President of the United States.

And another puncture in the theory is that it’s not just poor blacks and rich white swipples that are adopting these names. The first time I was introduced to a lot of outlandish names, it was in… Deseret. Not rich. Very white. Not hostile to middle America. 70% Republican. And no, they weren’t specifically Mormon names. Indeed, it wasn’t just the Mormons doing it.

Heather Horn from The Atlantic has another interesting post on “original baby names” in which it points out… they’re not that original. Not just insofar as they’re copying others by trying to break the baby norm, but the names follow certain patterns:

You end up with those six names that rhyme with Aidan in the top 100 names of the 2000s, and 38 of them, from Aaden to Zayden, in the top 1,000. The irony is that classic English names such as George and Edward, Margaret and Alice — the names that used to be standard-bearers — all have distinctive sounds. They aren’t prisoners to phonetic fashion; each of them sounds instantly recognizable. Contemporary names, by contrast, travel in phonetic packs. More than a third of American boys now receive a name ending in the letter N. (In decades past, the most popular boys’ names were more evenly split between a number of endings, including D, L, S and Y.)

This strikes at the one reason that I am ambivalent to unique names. Basically, there is value in throwing more names into the mix. As someone whose had name(s) shared with classmates throughout school, I can appreciate the diminished confusion by adding a Laetwyn in with a Lenny. Of course, it’s never worked out that way and the result is that you get classes with 27 Jennifers (a name that was not all that common before) and 15 Jasons. But I thought that the names that were punched up at least offered an alternative to that. Even they, though, have become entirely contrived.

One of the attendees of my church growing up, Humboldt Ford was something of a local big to-do. He was a black man that had to overcome a lot to get where he got. Raised in the South, in order to get an appointment to a military academy he had to get an endorsement from a congressperson from the midwest. He made an interesting point about his experiences in the South and in the North. He said that being in the North made him a lot more nervous when he was younger. Why? Because in the South, as unacceptable as the rules were, he knew what they were. With gritted teeth, he could follow them. He knew what restrooms to use. He knew what he could and could not say. In the North, a lot of people had a lot more liberal attitudes and he could do a lot more. The problem was that the rules would be unevenly applied and what was acceptable in one place would get him hurled epithets and threats in another. So he ended up following the rules of the South wherever he was.

The above story should not be considered an apology for the South. On the whole, we had to reach the inconsistency of the North as a middle ground to minorities being able to do everything they’re rightfully allowed to do today.

Rather, it reminds me of some of the values of social norms. The most obvious value is when they encourage good behavior. Few would contest that there is value in that except to the extent to which we can agree what “good behavior” consists of. Norms also hold great value in those with the influence to be able to set them. I mean, you get to tell people to do what you want! But sometimes the norms are pretty neutral. Or they can be extremely negative, grossly unfair validating behavior that should be unacceptable. But when that’s the case, the problems are with the norms themselves instead of their existence.

Seems pretty straightforward, doesn’t it? What about those norms, however, that are either completely arbitrary or difficult to really justify on an objective basis? Those kinds of these where we look at the people trying to enforce them and want to say “Oh, come on, just deal.”

When Mom was raised, it was common for young ladies to go to finishing school where they would learn how properly to be a lady. A good portion of the instruction there involves teaching things that are, in the end, of pretty minimal importance. The objective rationale for never putting your elbows on the table or holding your fork just so are pretty weak.

Fashion norms are themselves are often completely arbitrary. How should you dress? Well it changes from one decade (or shorter) to the next. We judge one another on how we dress not by any objective criteria but rather by how it fits in to a bunch of arbitrary norms. Middle-aged conservative folks see a kid with a dog collar and role their eyes even though a collar is objectively not much different from a necklace. And the kid wears the collar precisely because she wants to be seen that way (whether she admits it or not). All of these communications take place because of shared norms. Arbitrary ones.

In the last half-century or so, there has been a gradual shift away from respecting cultural norms and considering their arbitrariness to be a reason to ignore them. Society obviously has not succeeded in this venture, as the collar demonstrates, but significant headway has been made.

This benefits the individual insofar as they can look, dress, and act as they prefer with far less harassment than they might have seen in yesteryear. This is the upside. The downside, however, is that with loosened cultural norms, it becomes much more difficult for people to know how to behave in the most socially acceptable way. It creates a sort of chaotic landscape.

Dressing and acting however you want, even when you’re not hurting anyone else, will never be entirely okay. There will always be a segment of the population that wants its norms. There will always be a segment of the population that considers what they and those around them do - whatever they and those around them do - to be normal. These are variations as to what has always been the case.

But one thing that is done is that in a void of shared, arbitrary norms of acceptable behavior, acceptable behavior can be conveniently defined and redefined and enforced in an even more arbitrary manner. So in the old way of thinking, wearing a hat indoors was impolite. In the new way of thinking, it’s polite. Until someone you don’t like does it, then you can suddenly decide to enforce that norm as you talk about him behind his back with a bunch of friends that can’t really remember or don’t care that they have done the same. And even if it’s pointed out to them, they can draw whatever arbitrary distinctions that they want.

At least when society draws its arbitrary norms and distinctions, it’s something collectively agreed upon by a group of (granted, wholly unrepresentative) people. People can write a book about it. People that want to know what to do in “polite company” can read that book. It can be taught in finishing school. While these norms were typically written by the privileged, it gave the outsiders an opportunity to learn and abide by them. They probably wouldn’t get it right, but they could try.

In a world where arbitrary norms are derided, they rules can be written and rewritten as often as is convenient for the keep the walls as erected as possible between acceptable people doing acceptable things and unacceptable people doing unacceptable things. Dressing correctly shifts away from standards that can be adhered to and be defined entirely by who is and is not engaging in them. By the time people far down the social pole get word, you can change it all over again. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that as communication has increased, fashion not-quite-norms shift faster and faster to the point that it’s impossible to keep up.

By and large, chaos benefits the powerful. Kids in black and red shirts saying “ANARCHY RULEZ!” are often the very losers who would fare the worst in a more anarchic environment. Rather than creating an environment where the norms of the least among us would be regarded as just as legitimate as those among the most powerful, it creates a system where acceptable behavior is defined precisely around who is doing what. Even if there are no right and wrong things, people will make darn sure there are right and wrong people.

We can’t bring down barriers and norms until and unless we can actually get people on board. When being considered too judgmental (even and especially on arbitrary things) is a bad thing, you get people that quietly judge (which is unfair to the judged because they don’t even know how they are falling short) and you get those that make a big point of judging to be disagreeable and to register their protest at their preferred state of affairs being challenged. The latter folks are often asshats by nature, thus further silencing the first group.

Of course, when a social norm is affirmatively wrong and needs to be challenged, you have to plow forward. It’s hard to argue that a period in time where Humboldt Ford doesn’t entirely know how to act isn’t worth it for Hum Ford to accept a high-level appointment in the administration of the first black president. When a social norm is affirmatively right, it should be defended. In the in between, though? Sometimes having arbitrary-but-harmless rules is better than not.

It’s one of the notable things in popular entertainment and advertising that while variations are allowed in the attractiveness of men, the same is not true of women. With the exception of character for whom fatness is integral to the part (and even then they are sometimes played by future anorexics that were never fat to begin with). But the rest of the time, unattractive means “hot but with braces and kooky glasses” or in other cases “hot but referred to as ugly.”

From which is born the term Liz Lemon Ugly. Liz Lemon is the main character on 30 Rock played by Tina Fey. According to Chloe Angyal, Liz Lemon is an archetype for the character that is deemed ugly by the characters on the show so that the audience knows that the character is supposed to be ugly because there is no way of knowing that by looking at their beautiful faces.

I sort of take objection to the characterization of Lemon. I have been watching a lot of 30 Rock during the move and few negative comments are made about physical non-beauty. Her lackluster romantic life is mostly attributed to her social ineptitude. Be that as it may, Angyal’s point still stands. Indeed, Fey was indeed used as the “ugly woman” in the movie The Invention of Lies. And the crucial difference between popular and attractive characters and characters cut from a more inconspicuous cloth has far less to do with the attractiveness of the actress in question (few are anything but beautiful) and more to do with what the characters say and context.

Angyal wants to see this change. I agree. There’s no reason why television can have room for men across the spectrum but not women. The problem is that Angyal and I are in the minority. This is an area where I would argue that men are not really the culprits here. Guys not only appreciate women in more size and shapes than we’re given credit for, but we seem to appreciate them in more size and shapes than women themselves do.

There’s been a push lately towards showing real-size women and plus-size women in advertising aimed at women. The idea is that ordinary women will relate better to more ordinary women in advertisements. I think it’s fair to say that men are more broadly represented not only because women are alleged to have much more tolerance for different kinds of men (an allegation I’m not sure is true in scope) but also because men are more likely to bond with guys as flawed as they are. We see a guy like Rob Riggle and see a little bit of ourselves and relate. Meanwhile, we often become excessively critical of guys that become heart-throbs. Bruce Willis up, Tom Cruise down.

Women… don’t seem to work that way. With the exception of a fascination for certain actresses (Angelina Jolie comes to mind), they seem to line up behind whomever it is that men are supposed to line up behind. Indeed, it seems at times that they flock to Kate Moss and then get upset at men for being fixated on waifs. Not that there aren’t men that consider anybody above a size two to be fat, but there seems to be far more women. The patriarchy is so successful in this regard that it no longer requires further male involvement.

Well. Further straight male involvement.

Back when it was a more topical thing to discuss, Ordinary Gentleman Matthew Schmitz made the following observation about St. Patrick’s Day:

Being half Irish myself, I think there are many good reasons to celebrate St. Patty’s, not least Ireland’s impressive religious and literary heritage. But I think it is weird that one of the reasons the holiday exists is to give the privileged a chance to dress up in the drag of historical oppression.

There are a couple of issues here. The first, pertaining to St. Patrick’s Day itself, is handled in the comment section. Actually, it really is about the beer, for the most part. Whites are also known to celebrate Cinco De Mayo and non-Christians celebrate Mardi Gras. There’s a party! Why pass it up?

But I think Schmitz brings up another interesting point. There really is the tendency of Americans to celebrate the closest non-British ethnicity that they can. A lot of people claim Irish heritage when it’s really pretty minimal. My friend Silke Modaber, white as white can be on 7/8 of her family, embraced the other 1/8 Lebanese*. Could it be that, though Schmitz is wrong about St. Paddy’s Day that he is right about the need for whites to find some sort of ethnic identity so that they can claim victimhood (or perhaps disclaim oppressorship)?

I’m actually skeptical of that, too. As many point out in the League’s comment section, a number of people that play up their Irish heritage couldn’t even tell you the ways that they were done wrong. I rarely hear anything about Those Bastard Brits or anything of the like. Silke never said anything about the Lebanese done wrong and only very briefly, right in the aftermath of 9/11, expressed any concern that she would have a target on her back because of her indistinguishable, Anglicized last name. No, she liked her Lebanese branch because it was where she got the ability to get a great tan. Beyond that, though, it made her interesting.

That’s something I missed out on. My last name is English. My mother’s last name is German. My grandmothers’ last names are English and English. In this country, there is nothing more dull than that. The only thing I get out of it is a joke (always made when someone points out their Polish or Portuguese or whatever heritage) is a reference to my “oppressing ancestors” or (in more comfortable company) a quip about how my ancestors probably oppressed their ancestors (somewhat unlikely, given that my roots are not particularly high-class). And really, all that is to me is a way to say that when it comes to interesting family history, I got nuthin’. I’m not (insofar as I know) even the cool kind of Anglo-American whose great-times-x grandparents came over on the mayflower.

If I had Irish ancestry, you bet I would play that up. The closest I come is some Scottish in there somewhere. And the German, of course. Germans are not quite as constrained as the English, but they’re not that far behind. German immigration occurred pretty early in the Republic. Besides which, Germany as we now know it is a relatively young country. There’s a lot of interesting there with the Saxons and whatnot, but it’s not something that most people, unless burdened with a very German name or in a heavily German part of the country, as translatable. They were Germanic People and Prussians and Saxons. At least Scandanavians have the Viking imagery. Germans have sausage. And the thing that the German-Germans are best known historically is recent history and is not something people choose to be associated with.

And the Brits. What can you say about the Brits. We’re proud British-Americans, except that of course the afterhyphen people had to go war against the pre-hyphen people a couple times before we got settled and if you embrace the pre-hyphen too much, well, you’re just identifying with the enemy (not that it bothers some southerners in the case of a different war, but I digress). And it wasn’t even an age-old grudge or a grudge we could really hold.

That’s not to say the Brits don’t have an interesting history. They do… but not in a grand sort of way. They were once an awesome power, but they declined to be sufficiently interesting or dramatic to have a real tragic downfall the same way that, say, Rome did. The Brits went, they saw, they conquered, they got beat a few times, and they gave up a few times without even fighting. I guess if I had to choose an old country with which I identify other than the US it’s the Brits. I have an aunt that’s an Anglophile, but I pretty much fail to see the point. We’re not different enough for it to be interesting and if we’re looking at like countries to identify with, I identify with Australia. England is the Dad, Ireland the nutty uncle, and Australia and Canada the siblings. It’s against the rules for Dads to be interesting.

So people gravitate towards those parts of their history that are most interesting. The Irish are, if nothing else, interesting. And the things we identify with Ireland are silly (little men and their rainbow-gold!), goofy (Superstition! Luck!) and fun (Beer!). Few really care about the potatoes.

* - In her defense, the 1/8 is where she got her last name from. Be that as it may, nobody would know it was a Lebanese name unless they were told.

When it comes to social traditions, I am generally a fan of upholding them wherever I can. By “wherever I can” I mean that whenever it doesn’t make considerably more sense not to. The idea being that I am an odd fellow in so many ways that I can’t help that in the ways that I can help I should try to meet society half-way. My wife, despite being the most traditional of the Himmelreich girls, has a little more of a non-traditional outlook.

As a case and point, when we married, she chose to keep her maiden name. I was very unenthusiastic about it at the time, to say the least. There was no point at which it posed a threat to our coming nuptuals, but it was still something of a sore point. The reason behind this was not so much that I needed her to become a Truman or that I wanted to treat her like property or anything like that. It mostly came down to a desire to conform. I find it far more likely than not that I would have changed my last name to hers if I lived in a society where that was common.

Of course, that’s easy for guys to say. I hear guys say that when I am actually very skeptical that they would. It’s easy to talk about what you would do when you know you don’t have to. Most would, I suspect, in the same way that most women change their names. But a lot wouldn’t. The question a lot of guys ask is “What’s the difference between having the name one man (her father) gave her and the name another man (her husband) gave her?” This suggests to me that they don’t understand the issue or at least only understand part of it. It’s not just that she’s taking a man’s name, but it’s that she’s taking a new name after 20-30 years with the previous one.

I don’t think that I appreciated that myself until I got married and my friends started getting married. The logistical problems with changing your name are not very severe but can still be a pain. However, the name change formalizes a change in identity that guys are not asked to undergo. In my wife’s career, there is a formal aspect to this in that all of her licensure is under her previous name. But for others, they’ve built a name for themselves in their careers and communities and amongst their friends and all of those people now have to be informed of who you are.

With all of this in mind, I can understand why a lot of women object to it.

The response to all of this from a lot of guys is, “Yeah, well, I guess I can sort of see how that’s inconvenient, but there’s no obvious solution. A woman keeping her name means that they have no common name between them. Hyphenation is a temporary solution at best. So, since there are no alternatives, we might as well go with the status quo. The problem is that by choosing not to conform, you’re making a statement against conformity. And you’re using our marriage to do it.”

Honestly, this was one of the two biggest humps for me to get over. When she told me that she intended to keep her name, I just had visions of getting caught in the middle. Correcting people that assumed that her last name was the same as mine. Lending my ear to her frustration at people that just assumed that our names were the same or forgot that they weren’t. I expected it to be a serious inconvenience. Incidentally, I expected this not because traditionalists were warning me to try to get me to go the traditional route, but rather by listening to more than a few complaints from women that kept their names about how people are not expecting or accepting their decision. This was just one front of the culture war I wanted no part of.

The second hump was there being no common family name. This was where some concessions were requested and others made, though unfortunately not the same concessions. Clancy volunteered to hyphenate her name because that was where she could meet me halfway. Unfortunately, for me, that’s sort of like my wanting a beard and she wanting me clean shaven* and us agreeing on a moustache as a compromise. Between hyphenation and two names, I am completely and utterly indifferent. Even if her last name incorporates mine, it’s still a different last name and makes a similar “statement” that I am not enthusiastic about making.** My proposed solution was that she go my Himmelreich professionally and Truman personally. From her perspective, though, even if she were being called Himmelreich, not having that last name was not something she was going to be happy about. So I decided to propose the alternative: her legal name and professional name remain Himmelreich (or incorporate it into hyphenation if she wants), but socially she be willing to go by Truman. In other words, no big deal about correction. Likewise, I would not object to being called Will Himmelreich as that would be an alternate name for me.

That was enough to get us by until I discovered that having two different last names actually isn’t that big of a deal. That may change when we have kids, but given the number of times I’m expressly asked if we have the last name, I am thinking not. While a house of two names is not the norm, it’s at least common enough. Particularly amongst doctors. And the whole question about answering machines turned out not to be an issue, either, because we don’t want her last name on our answering machine anyway. Nor do we want her name plastered visible from the sidewalk. We don’t want to invite needy patients calling our family line or visiting our family house. And I’m at the point where I wouldn’t care if our phone messages said Himmelreich-Truman anyway. The whole different-last-names thing has become sufficiently uncontroversial that I remain glad that I did not make it a bigger issue than I did or stand my ground or risk losing the wonderful woman who is among the best things ever to happen to me.

It has become slightly a bigger deal since moving to Arapaho. I have been referred to as a Himmelreich on a couple of occasions and our auto insurance company wasn’t able to handle the two-last-names thing. In the case of Callie, though, it’s a small enough town that it’ll get around. And though it’s not what people out here are expecting (in comparison to Cascadia), nobody has looked at me like I’m one of those kind of people.

I was hoping to eloquently work this last part in to the above prose, but it just didn’t quite fit. So bear with me. The notion that this is a problem without a solution and therefore there are no answers and so somebody loses their name so it might as well be the woman actually isn’t right. There really is a good solution to this: everybody gets a male and female last name. The name we mostly use and carry to the next generation is the name of our gender. The way that this would work is that if Clancy and I have a daughter, she would formally be Lain Lindsey Himmelreich-Truman, but go by the name Lain Himmelreich most of the time. If we had a son named William Edward Himmelreich-Truman, he would go by Eddie Truman. If my daughter married some guy named John Smith, she would lose the Truman, add the Smith, and her children would be Truman-Smith. If Ted married a girl named Jones, he would change his full name Jones-Truman. And this would continue from generation to generation.

The advantage of this situation is that it would allow for legacy names for women. I am the fourth William ______ Truman in my line. But women can’t do that as easily because their names are always subject to change and even if they don’t change their name the daughters will take their father’s name. Unlike common hyphenation, this is sustainable over generations. Each have their name but there is also a collective, family name. It may sound a bit confusing at first, but it’s something that I would expect people to get used to pretty quickly.

So is that something that Clancy and I are going to do? Well no, because it’s one of those things that only works when everybody else does it. I have no desire to be a domestic trailblazer. Further, since nobody else does it, it would invariably lead to assumptions that any daughters I have are stepchildren because while mothers having different last names as their children is not unheard of (due to not changing their name or divorce and remarriage), the same is not true of fathers. Mostly, though, it’s the trailblazer thing and a desire not to use my family to express my dissent from tradition. If I have a daughter that makes the decision to trailblaze by taking her mother’s name (when she turns 18), I won’t object.

* - Actually, she likes me having facial hair more than I do. She doesn’t like it when I shave. The point being, though, that a moustache is not a compromise because it’s more different from clean-shaven than it is from bearded and besideswhich nobody likes moustaches and they look particularly retarded on me.

** - Oh, and our actual last names do not, shall we say, roll off the tongue. Even less so than Himmelreich-Truman.

Obsidian argues that men are generally more expected to “settle” than are women:

Because of evolutionary realities, Women are and have always been the choosier sex. This is understandable-Women only have a limited amount of eggs, a limited amount of time to “make good” on them, and human childbirth is perhaps the most difficult of all the mammals on the planet to pull off successfully. All of this makes sex, even in our time of vastly improved medical science, quite risky for the Female; if she makes the wrong choice of mate and has his kid(s), it can prove disastrous in a whole host of ways. I personally know scores of Men who, upon merely finding out that a Woman has a kid or two, immediately drops her from contention, not only as a date, but even as a pump and dump. They don’t want to be bothered, and in our age of “Maury Baby Mama/Baby Daddy” high drama, I can’t say that I blame them. Of course, there are also scores of Men out there who can and will screw just about everything in sight, and that’s kind of the point of this post today.

It’s an interesting theory, but one that I believe has two major vulnerabilities.

First, it’s easy and understandable for men to talk about how choosy women are because we are the ones that get rejected by them. They do the rejecting. We ask out. We seek to mate while they spend a good portion of their time shooting down men that seek to mate. Or that’s one way of looking at it, anyway. But men don’t spend much time rejecting women because we almost never have to. If we’re not attracted to a woman, all we have to do is refrain from asking her out! We ask out a very small percentage of the women that we know, so in a way we’re defacto rejecting the vast majority of women out there.

I’m not saying that it’s fair that we are expected to ask women out or that women must to some degree rely on men asking women out, but it’s still the most common practice. One of the upshots for men is that it allows us to reject women without rejecting them. It allows us to evade our own standards. It’s easier to believe that you have an extremely open mind when girls you’re uninterested in are background furniture.

The second problem is that we’re choosy when it comes to… what, precisely? Sex? As Obsidian points out, we’re notoriously unchoosy in that department. But when it comes to a monogamous relationship, marriage, and other forms of commitment, guys have something of a different reputation. When guys angle for sex but put off any sort of commitment, we are being choosy in our own way. We are being selective about who we give our monogamous devotion to. A guy that’s sleeping with a girl on a regular basis but refuses to commit to them is not necessarily being any less choosy. Can a woman who hedges on sex or romantic commitment even while she’s getting exactly what she wants from the guy (emotional validation, bug-smashing willingness, etc) make the claim that she’s not being choosy because she’s spending time and giving attention to a guy that is not exactly her ideal? It’s the same sort of thing.

Whether men are more picky than women or vice-versa is extremely difficult to gauge. Not coincidentally, both sides believe that it’s the other side gumming up with works with their unrealistic standards. As is often the case, the truth falls somewhere in between. It’s unlikely that each side is exactly the same degree of choosy in the aggregate, but it’s also the case that there is such wide variation within each gender that it’s problematic to paint with a very wide brush at all.

-{Link from In Mala Fide}-

The CDC released a report entitled Marriage and Cohabitation in the United States that takes a look at marriage and cohabitation in the US. This has been an area of interest to yours truly since I take a position relatively unpopular among those that I consort with: namely, that premarital cohabitation is generally not a good idea.

The report frustratingly stops just short of being useful by failing to take the information from Table A and Table B and putting it together. The statistics show that, generally speaking, married couples that did not cohabitate prior to marriage enjoy higher marriage success rates than those that don’t. The flaw with this data is that it fails to control for demographic differences between the two groups. This report obviously looked at demographic differences that would be relevant (namely race and education) and it looks at marriage success rates among those who cohabitated and those that did not, but it fails to combine the data into a more useful (for my purposes) picture.

I did a rough-and-dirty analysis to see if race or education level accounted for the difference. The answer is that it likely accounts for some but not all. Basically, if you look at what the cohab/nocohab marriage success rates should be based on the education/racial demographics, you get a difference less than half of the overall difference. I couldn’t control for income based on the information provided, so that could account for some of the difference, though (a) income correlates with education and race and (b) what appears to happen in regards to race and education is that blacks and lower-income folks are removed from the equation because while they’re more likely to cohabitate, they’re also less likely to marry at all and so are less likely to affect marriage success/failure rates. Even so, I will cop to the imperfection of the data.

That being said, I do consider flawed data to typically be more instructive than rank speculation as to what each of us thinks is the case. And on a subject as complicated as this, it is simply impossible to control for every data point that someone would consider relevant. Even if the data does not “prove” that premarital cohabitation diminishes the odds of a successful marriage, it does at least eat into the widely held belief among many of my peers that getting married without living together first is somehow risky or even reckless.

There are a number of ways to look at premarital cohabitation and marriage and the success and failure of it. In some ways, I am doubtful that it really matters. I certainly know people that lived together for long periods of time, got married, and live happily ever after. I don’t consider these people to be exceptionally lucky or bizarre exceptions.

To look at this most effectively, I think that we need to look at different situations. We’ll name them John and Jane. Looking at a specific John and a specific Jane under two scenarios, one in which they live together before marriage and one in which they do not, I would expect the likelihood of marital success to be nearly identical. I believe firmly that the success or failure of marriage depends most strongly on the preparedness, maturity, and compatibility of its participants. Circumstance also matters, but not the circumstances surrounding when the couple got that piece of paper (except insofar as a couple with that piece of paper are less likely to split up than a couple without that piece of paper, but that’s the answer to a different question).

Where premarital cohabitation makes a difference is not the success of failure between two specific mates, but rather in mate selection. Many supporters of premarital cohabitation consider it self-evident that cohabitation provides a useful filter because you have a better idea of marital compatibility if you live with them beforehand. Logically, this makes a fair amount of sense even if there is no real data to support it.

I would suggest, however, that the “weeding out” phenomenon and the advantages it provides is undone by a number of other phenomena.

Most particularly, it leads to circumstances in which a couple “backs into” marriage. The Sunk Cost Fallacy starts playing a role where John or Jane have accumulated significant opportunity costs by staying together in an arrangement that is harder to break free from than if you’re living separately. When staying together is the path of lease resistance and the difference in resistance-level is as great as it is between cohabitationing couples and couples that don’t have a lease and shared possessions to worry about if they split up, you can expect some sub-par couplings to stick together out of inertia and eventually marry for the wrong reasons.

Secondly, it “unbundles” decisions and makes each increased level of commitment easier to do even if you’re unsure of how committed you really are. Rather than taking one large step that includes both the piece of paper and the cohabitation and the grand contemplation that occurs on the eve of such commitment, it breaks down the commitment to provides an easier avenue for the uncommitted to take the next minor step without contemplating the severity of the move. Indeed, if a couple is already living together, marriage itself becomes less important in itself. Drawing the line at cohabitation instead of, say, premarital sex or spending the night or vacationing together can seem arbitrary. It is. But it’s also all that’s left. It might abstractly be worthwhile to revisit some of the other things we’ve unbundled from marriage, but that cat has left that bag, if it was ever really in the bag to begin with. Of course, it’s increasingly too late for cohabitation, too, which is why I would consider advising someone to surrender to a cohabitation ultimatum if their partner is worth it.

Jumping back, the question is, with regards to an incompatible John and Jane, are they more likely to discover their incompatibility through trial cohabitation or through contemplating marriage and cohabitation and marriage without having lived together first? I would argue the latter.

There is an interesting statistical nugget in the report that I believe supports this view. Roughly 61% of couples that live together before marriage have successful marriages ten years out. Let’s divide that into two categories In the first category, you have couples that are living together and engaged. In the second category, you have couples that are living together and not engaged (but become engaged and married later). The success rate in the first category, which already contemplated marriage and decided in the affirmative prior to moving in together, is nearly identical to those that contemplated marriage and waited to move in together until after they were married (65% to 66% for noncohabitators). The second category, which moved in on a more provisional or trial basis, reported considerably worse marriage success rates (55%).

This coincides with my belief that the potential threat that premarital cohabitation presents can be mitigated if the cohabitation is more logistical in nature rather than simply sticking the toe in the water. In other words, moving in together with someone that you are confident about because someone’s lease is up does not present the same sort of problems as does moving in with someone because you want to see how it will go.

Of course, this has caveats among caveats. The difference in marriage success and failure are relatively minor (5-6%), though as mentioned it increases if you look at non-engaged cohabitators. Also, my position on this is more defensive rather than moralizing. I don’t really condemn those that took a different path than Clancy and I did so much as I want to dispel the myth that getting married without a trial run is particular risky. What Clancy and I did worked out for us, but what my friend Dave and his now-wife did made absolute sense for them. While I believe that no cohabitation is the better solution for more people, I am nowhere near willing to make a universal statement on the matter. Merely to encourage exercising caution and not to move in under the false belief that it will improve your chances of determining whether your significant other is the right person for you.

And, of course, this all leads aside one of my bigger concerns with premarital cohabitation, which doesn’t show up in marriage success or failure rates because it includes couples that never get married. Nearly half of those living together for three years and over a third of those living together for five years still are not married. Now, it’s sometimes going to be the case that both partners simply don’t want to get married at all. I suspect, though, that a fair amount of time it’s one party or the other declining to make decisions that need to be made.

And on one last note, even if the statistics are skewed to some extent because those of education and means make one set of decisions and those that lack education and means make another set, if I were advising each group on what to do… I would not be advising the former to emulate the behavior of the latter.

A while back I wrote on the subject of height differences and the effect that has on romantic success. The long and short of it is that tall women believe that they are discriminated against because guys are intimidated. Guys argue that tall women are disadvantaged because they cull their dating pool to only include guys that are taller than they. I took the position that there is probably some merit to both, but that the bigger issue is that women want guys taller than they are (or at least roughly the same height) and therefore the fewer guys taller than they are, the fewer options they will consider.

The discussion was launched on an article from The Frisky. Well, another article from The Frisky and a poll suggest that the guys are more right than wrong. They took a poll and nearly three out of four respondents said that they would only date a guy taller, the same height, or only slightly shorter than they are.

The only caveat to this is that if you polled only tall women, you might get different results. It’s easy for 5′5″ women to say that they will only date taller guys than them because they’re only excluding pretty short guys. I don’t know how long a 6′1″ woman has to go lonely before deciding that there are more important factors in height, but I doubt it’s an indefinite drought. On the other hand, a 6′1″ woman is more likely to be self-conscious about her height than a 5′5″ woman and so height may be a bigger deal.

Either way, three out of four is a much higher number than I would have expected on a self-reporting survey. At the least, I would have guessed that more women did it either subconsciously or would deny it even in an anonymous poll. We have to accept the poll, though, because Internet polls are always accurate.

A while back, Rob made a comment about dating fat girls. It was his perspective that it was a dangerous proposition because if they lose their weight, they would dump you flat.

Back when I was working at Mindstorm, there was a young woman that was a receptionist for a time. She was a bit pudgy, but she knew what to do with the pudge to minimize its impact and make it work for her in her own way. The consensus among the single guys I knew there was that she was cool and cute but they didn’t know if they would actually date her.

It was apparent that she put more than a little effort in her appearance. It was no accident that she found clothes that minimized her weight and she found a style that very much worked for her. It was probably not lost on her that she was a receptionist in a building 85% staffed by guys, some of whom made pretty good money and who were members of a group known for being less particular.

I think of the receptionist because she was what struck me as a romantic marketeer. She was out there to get the absolute best guy that she could get by whatever criteria she used.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. We all do that in our own way. If Clancy had met someone with all of my strengths but minus a few weaknesses who was just as into her as I was, there’s a good chance that she would have picked him. And vice-versa. I say “a good chance” because at some point I do think that chemistry takes a role.

But there is a group of people that takes it to the next level in a particularly cutthroat sort of way. The kind of person that, if they lost weight, would not hesitate in the slightest going for an upgrade.

Sheila talked of guys that are like this. Whereas guys that can’t afford to be too particular like to say that they would make better boyfriends to attractive girls because they will be more grateful to have an attractive girl, sometimes that’s just not true. Once they achieve one level, the next level up seems within grasp.

And the same is true of many women, including the receptionist. It was hard not to notice the extraordinary attention that she would lavish on what could easily be perceived as higher-status guys. Guys that were pretty much out of her league. But she would still entertain guys that were less desirable. I couldn’t escape the sense, though, that if she were ever with the latter and got an opportunity for the former, that she’d jump ship at the opportunity.

I could be wrong, though. It’s possible that she was just indulging the guys that I would put in her station and would never go out with them because she has what I would consider to be excessively high standards.

It’s hard to pick the marketeers out from the rest. Because people don’t let their own insufficiencies in the romantic marketplace keep them out of the game. Even ugly people would prefer not date ugly people. It’s something that ideally people move beyond. But a lot don’t. And when it comes to people that were in the lower circles of 6-12, there is a certain void in their self-esteem to fill. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the worst marketeers I know are people that were late entrants into the dating arena.

According Amanda Hess, it seems as though the pot legalization movement is somewhat less than respectful of women.

I think that this is part and parcel of what I might call The Barry Cooper Problem. On the subject of Age of Consent Laws, it might be called The Gannon Problem. That is to say that the people that are often most enthusiastic about pushing back the government to grant us more freedom want it not out of some ideological conviction but rather because the government is just standing between them and what they want. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this except that people that actually want to smoke copious amounts of pot or sleep with young women are not the most appealing advocates for their cause. Or rather, people that want to do these sorts of things and feel the need to make it a part of their public identity are often people that are disrespectful of a wider array of cultural and social expectations. In other words, they can be as annoying as hell and they can make people want to take the opposite position just to spite them.

As Udolpho put it:

I used to be in favor of legalizing marijuana, but the persistent stupidity of marijuana zealots has beaten that position out of me, and now I am against legalization just to spite them. Experience shows that even occasional marijuana smokers are not terribly bright, and it is my belief that stupid people need to suffer. Taking away their pharmaceutical pacifiers is a good start.

On my Barry Cooper post, Last Home Barry commented that a lot of the legalizers are mostly just anti-authority and pot is an expression of that. Take it a step further, and a whole lot of it comes down to a deal of resentment of being told what to do and frustration that society sometimes requests that they check their id at the door. Smoking pot and objectifying women are both expressions of society telling people to behave. Those that object most loudly to corrupt authority, unjust laws, and regressive customs also tend to object to earnest authority, just laws, and reasonable customs when it suits them.

I ran across this image attached to a rather vitriolic post (the thrust of which was, in essence, “only stupid inbred hicks oppose gay marriage and this map proves it”), but it struck something of a thought process. Here goes.

First of all, the map’s not entirely accurate with respect to what the author was trying to say. Five states, at least, shouldn’t be listed as “allowing” cousin marriage, since their restrictions make it so that an impossibly small portion of their population will realistically participate. There’s a considerable overlap with gay and cousin marriage allowability in the northeastern section of the US. And of course the Granola State on the west coast, a place which carries almost entirely the opposite of the “inbred hick” stereotype, allows cousin marriage and has gone back and forth on the issue of gay marriage for a few years now.

Secondly, the science against cousin marriage is muddled. The usual argument put against it is that it encourages genetic diseases. In certain populations, specifically populations where cousin marriage is encouraged and founder effects come into play, this is true. Small, isolated rural villages of current/past ages, the inbred lines of European royalty, and the lines of fundamentalist Mormonism come to mind here. Another example is the Dutch settlers to South Africa (the “Afrikaners”), who carry magnified risk of Huntington’s Disease because an abnormal percentage of the original settlers were carriers.

On the other hand, research into larger, more diverse genetic populations indicates that “once in a while” cousin marriage carries relatively small risk - about the same risk as a woman having kids at the age of 40 rather than 30. The further argument is that laws against it in the US were motivated not by risk of genetic disease, but by a desire to force immigrants to intermarry into the population (and thus assimilate) in a quicker manner.

Oddly enough, the argument about “inbred hicks” falls apart when comparing the map of European gay marriage laws. I’d put a map up comparing it to European laws about cousin marriage, but there’s no real point to it: cousin marriage is legal in 100% of Europe. Two countries have recently begun discussing the option of banning it, and oddly enough, it’s not even the condition of their oddly buckteethed/colorblind/hemophiliac (that last being the origin of the term “blue-blood” as a reference to royalty) royal lines that did it, but rather the high rate of genetic diseases in recent immigrant populations from the rural sectors of Islamic countries, who perpetuate societal cousin marriage rates of 55% or above in a population where it’s not uncommon to be the child of a chain of 8-10 cousin marriages (including “double cousin” marriages, wherein the kids are not simply cousins but where mother/aunt and father/uncle, or mother/uncle and father/aunt, constitute sibling pairs as well making the kids almost genetic siblings) in a row.

The trouble with this is discussion that it’s a perfect example of a “where do we draw the line” sort of argument. On the one hand, in a (mostly healthy) genetic population where cousin marriage would be rare and genetic diversity a given, arguers against cousin marriage would quickly expire upon the line of “well why do we let 40-year-old women have kids then?” On the other hand, we have definitive proof of the genetic risks of allowing multigenerational cousin marriage. There even comes the risk that at some point, society could start stopping non-sibling people from marrying because they both carried a recessive gene for some debilitating genetic disease like Huntington’s or Tay-Sachs, or even something as merely inconvenient as Celiac. It’s not that farfetched; some states to this day still require a blood test, a holdover from times when they were screening for sexually transmitted diseases such as syphilis. Another justification (now that the technology exists) for genetic testing as a marriage requirement could be to ensure that they aren’t unknowingly marrying their half-sibling or even full sibling, due to the high percentage of absentee/unknown fathers or potential for siblings to be separated too early in life to remember each other in certain populations.

Slate’s advice columnist, Dear (p)Rudence, has been doing “web chats” for a while along with the regular letters column. I have yet to actually bother to connect to one in real time, but the transcripts provided are usually pretty entertaining, and evidence that Ol’ Rudie (at least the current one) doesn’t quite have a good handle on what’s rude or not when it comes to politeness advice.

My bone of contention comes in with her advice regarding someone who continually gives the “gift” to someone of a donation to charity in their name.

D.C. Metro: I have a family member who sends a gift of some animal to the Heifer fund as a Christmas present to us every year. Every year I get more and more offended, as this is not a “gift” to anyone except themselves, as they get a tax deduction. My kids understand about giving to charity, but I cannot explain how this is a “gift” to us. I would like to tell this person to please stop sending these donations as “gifts” and only a card is fine.

[Ol’ Rudie]: What a good lesson for the kids! A family member makes a contribution in your family’s name to a wonderful cause, and you want your children to understand this isn’t really a gift but a tax deduction, and you want to demand a refund from the giver…

When challenged, Rudence responds with an even snarkier attack:

[Ol’ Rudie]: Clarksville, I hope everyone on your list knows you’d rather get a puce scarf from the sale rack than a donation to a worthy cause in your name.

The larger problem I have with this idea is that “giving to charity in someone’s name” is a rather smug, self-serving gift. When done unbidden, the social message it sends could well be that the “giftee” is a person who wouldn’t think to give to charity on their own and thus, the “gift” from the “giver” is making up for their moral shortfall. Or the social message, depending on choice of charity, is “I gave to them, you should be giving too.”

The little cards saying “Hey, I gave $XX to Charity Y in your name” have all the social tact of a card saying “Merry Christmas! By the way, if you didn’t donate to Charity Y you’re a terrible person, but don’t worry, I got you covered.”

Now this isn’t always the case. If there is an adult who has a specific connection to a charity, or has requested that people give in their name for instance, it’s probably fine. For example, a monetary donation to a local soup kitchen where your friend or family member regularly volunteers would probably be a wonderful thing, or a donation to an animal shelter or Humane Society/SPCA for an animal lover who has expressed a desire to support those organizations (and might not have financial wherewithal to make a donation of their own), would probably be taken as a truly thoughtful gift.

On the other hand, to do it to a kid? First of all, most children (the younger, the worse in this regard) do not have the mental ability to make that kind of connection. The abstract “I gave to someone in your name”, in a kid’s mind, is going to degenerate into “I gave your gift to somebody else.” Second of all, making the choice of which charity to give to yourself, rather than giving the “giftee” that option, adds the pressure of socially trying to force the person into some public acknowledgement of the “goodness” of the charity. While the charity in question may indeed be noble, people have a tendency to rebel against such a pressure.

Especially in the case of a kid, there are many better ways to handle such a thing. You want it to be as direct as possible. If you’re going to give to an animal shelter, take the kid to an animal shelter, have them make the donation in person, and maybe volunteer some of your time helping to clean up or exercise/feed the animals. If you’re going to give to a childrens’ hospital, have the kid visit some of the sick kids there (like in the cancer ward) and make some new friends to write letters or email to. If you’re giving long-range? Well, bite the bullet and send a real gift, at least until the kid’s reached the age of 10, and then ask them what kind of a charity they’d like to give to.