Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 808
April 11, 2016
We let the idiots take the wheel: Donald Trump, Fox News and how we let our democracy rot
It is easy in a country dedicated to a megalomaniacal style of self-praise to grow tired of all the parades, hymns, and maudlin speeches about the wisdom of the “founding fathers.” Compounding the frustration is that many of their most valuable insights are now forbidden from entry into public school curriculums and cultural discourse. As the word “elitist” continues to undergo unfair demonization, no one dare utter that the framers of the United States Constitution were, themselves, elitists. They were terrified of what damage the public might inflict upon their invention. Benjamin Franklin even went so far as to predict that “the people shall become so corrupted as to need Despotic Government, being incapable of any other.” Thomas Jefferson, a more democratic thinker, called information the “currency of democracy.” It would appear that large parts of America are all but bankrupt, suffering the consequences of a long liquidation at the hands of a sensationalistic media, but most of all, a broken education system. In the current circus posing as a political campaign, commentators and candidates waste much of their time and energy frothing about insignificant issues and phony crises. Donald Trump, with all the eloquence and brilliance of a barroom belch, has introduced illegal immigration into the political debate, often claiming that it is one of the reasons that America is “going to hell.” Trump has failed to make a deal with reality, as it stubbornly refuses to submit to his paranoia. Illegal immigrants comprise a mere 3.5 percent of the American population, and from 2009 to 2014, more Mexicans left the United States than entered it. If trends continue, Trump’s “big, beautiful wall” will keep more Mexicans in the country than it keeps out. Meanwhile, the cowardly obsession surrounding “Islamic terrorism” continues to play out like a scene of absurdist theater. Tragedies and atrocities, like recent bombings in Brussels and Pakistan, demand sympathy for mourners and vigilance toward the perpetrators, but standard methods of statistical evaluation demonstrate that an American has a one in 4 million chance of dying in a terrorist attack. The average American is more likely to drown in the bathtub. Threatening the American public with greater severity than both ISIS and bathtub death is the disgraceful and disastrous condition of the public school system. Neither the Democrats nor Republicans running for president spend hardly any time discussing educational policy, but the longer that they ignore the real problem facing American society, the likelier they are to welcome the continual catastrophe of functional illiteracy, economic inequality and cultural decay into everyday American life. Former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, far from a radical, co-chaired a task force on education reform in 2010, and in her scathing conclusion, labeled the decline of public schools so calamitous that it constitutes a “long term national security threat.” In a more recent speech at Stanford University, where Rice is now a professor, she stated truths so obvious they would need amplification only in a country routinely neglectful of its educational system: “Failing schools undermine economic growth, social cohesion, and the ability to fill positions in institutions vital to national security.” Rice, breaking away from the anti-intellectual imbecility of her political party, also lamented that great cultures are known for their “architecture and art,” but that America no longer cultivates widespread appreciation for creativity and ingenuity. An advanced degree in sociology is not mandatory for finding evidence confirming Rice’s bleak forecast of America’s ignorant future. Two-thirds of Americans cannot name a single Supreme Court justice, and half are incapable of identifying all three branches of government. Forty-two percent of the public does not believe in evolutionary biology, while 24 percent believe that the sun orbits the earth. Nearly a quarter of Americans read below the fifth-grade level, which helps to explain why only 29 percent read a newspaper, and why 24 percent of Americans do not read even one book a year. To divorce the abysmal state of education from the downward turn of American politics straight into the sewer is to deny the connection between drinking battery acid and vomiting. The philistines and modern-day know-nothings are on the march, and they all seem to show up at the Trump rally. In a recent essay, when I pointed out that Trump’s supporters are delusional to blame Mexicans and Muslims for their problems, and that when searching for suspects responsible for their hardships, they would have more luck with a mirror, many liberals condemned me as a “snobbish” and “heartless.” While the former is possibly true, the latter is not. Compassion does not necessitate lying to people in order to coddle and comfort them in their own self-destructive behavior. Studies showing that Trump’s supporters are the lowest educated of all constituencies, and that they are highly susceptible to laughable conspiracy theories and inane analyses of complex phenomena go together like litter and cat piss. The New York Times revealed that Trump has an unusually large number of high school dropouts among his voters, and polls also demonstrate that 61 percent of Trump supporters do not believe that Barack Obama was born in the United States. Trump voters, given their low income status, would benefit most from the Affordable Care Act, and its Medicaid extension, but in their voting habits and political preferences, they prioritize tribalistic expression of opposition to the Kenyan Muslim over access to medicine. This is not an accident or a coincidence, and it is not because of those magic words that commentators use to explain everything they would rather not acknowledge – “the economy.” Recognition of the rampant ignorance among Trump supporters shatters an odd, American taboo against direct criticism of voters. According to the stock script, Donald Trump is a racist, buffoon and demagogue. If all of those accusations are accurate – and they appear more so every single day – what does that make his voters? If Trump had not won a state, and was currently polling in the single digits, no one would care enough about his candidacy to attack him. It is only because a significant swath of citizens are empowering Trump that he has become the Republican frontrunner, and that he is likely to win the nomination of his party. All indication is that Hillary Clinton will crush him in the general election, offering the hope that the Trump cohort of antisocial and anti-intellectual fanatics is most at home on the margins of politics, right where they belong. Americans still committed to the odd notion of responsible citizenship should treat Trump fever as they would an arthritic ankle. It is not life-threatening, but at the same time, it is nothing to ignore. The swollen joints of the American body politic are symptomatic of the malignancy rotting out its public education system. A recent decline in the dropout rate is good news, but many high school graduates leave their commencement ceremonies, diploma in hand and nothing in mind. According to the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, nearly 60 percent of first-year college students have to take remedial courses in mathematics or English. Clearly, if a high school graduate is earning acceptance into a college, he is not the worst of the worst, yet it is likely he does not read, write, or perform arithmetic at the level of a high school graduate. Since the closing American mind often prefers to understand important ideas in terms of war, imagine an army heading into battle with over half of its soldiers unable to shoot a gun or operate military machinery, and you will have a picture of America marching into the future. The good liberal reaction to ignorance is not defense of it in the name of misplaced social solidarity and misapplied class consciousness. It is disapproval, and commitment to prevent ignorance in future generations. It is a return to the liberal agenda of public school excellence, home tutoring and literacy programs, adult education assistance, and affordable colleges. Intellectual rigor, higher education access, and old-fashioned learning will stop the rise of future authoritarian buffoons, not pathetic excuse-making for the voters who, in the words of Arthur Miller, are “aching for an Ayatollah.” When asked what form of government the founders established at the Constitutional convention, Franklin, in keeping with his dark forecast, shot back, “A Republic – if you can keep it.” Education is what will allow us to keep it.It is easy in a country dedicated to a megalomaniacal style of self-praise to grow tired of all the parades, hymns, and maudlin speeches about the wisdom of the “founding fathers.” Compounding the frustration is that many of their most valuable insights are now forbidden from entry into public school curriculums and cultural discourse. As the word “elitist” continues to undergo unfair demonization, no one dare utter that the framers of the United States Constitution were, themselves, elitists. They were terrified of what damage the public might inflict upon their invention. Benjamin Franklin even went so far as to predict that “the people shall become so corrupted as to need Despotic Government, being incapable of any other.” Thomas Jefferson, a more democratic thinker, called information the “currency of democracy.” It would appear that large parts of America are all but bankrupt, suffering the consequences of a long liquidation at the hands of a sensationalistic media, but most of all, a broken education system. In the current circus posing as a political campaign, commentators and candidates waste much of their time and energy frothing about insignificant issues and phony crises. Donald Trump, with all the eloquence and brilliance of a barroom belch, has introduced illegal immigration into the political debate, often claiming that it is one of the reasons that America is “going to hell.” Trump has failed to make a deal with reality, as it stubbornly refuses to submit to his paranoia. Illegal immigrants comprise a mere 3.5 percent of the American population, and from 2009 to 2014, more Mexicans left the United States than entered it. If trends continue, Trump’s “big, beautiful wall” will keep more Mexicans in the country than it keeps out. Meanwhile, the cowardly obsession surrounding “Islamic terrorism” continues to play out like a scene of absurdist theater. Tragedies and atrocities, like recent bombings in Brussels and Pakistan, demand sympathy for mourners and vigilance toward the perpetrators, but standard methods of statistical evaluation demonstrate that an American has a one in 4 million chance of dying in a terrorist attack. The average American is more likely to drown in the bathtub. Threatening the American public with greater severity than both ISIS and bathtub death is the disgraceful and disastrous condition of the public school system. Neither the Democrats nor Republicans running for president spend hardly any time discussing educational policy, but the longer that they ignore the real problem facing American society, the likelier they are to welcome the continual catastrophe of functional illiteracy, economic inequality and cultural decay into everyday American life. Former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, far from a radical, co-chaired a task force on education reform in 2010, and in her scathing conclusion, labeled the decline of public schools so calamitous that it constitutes a “long term national security threat.” In a more recent speech at Stanford University, where Rice is now a professor, she stated truths so obvious they would need amplification only in a country routinely neglectful of its educational system: “Failing schools undermine economic growth, social cohesion, and the ability to fill positions in institutions vital to national security.” Rice, breaking away from the anti-intellectual imbecility of her political party, also lamented that great cultures are known for their “architecture and art,” but that America no longer cultivates widespread appreciation for creativity and ingenuity. An advanced degree in sociology is not mandatory for finding evidence confirming Rice’s bleak forecast of America’s ignorant future. Two-thirds of Americans cannot name a single Supreme Court justice, and half are incapable of identifying all three branches of government. Forty-two percent of the public does not believe in evolutionary biology, while 24 percent believe that the sun orbits the earth. Nearly a quarter of Americans read below the fifth-grade level, which helps to explain why only 29 percent read a newspaper, and why 24 percent of Americans do not read even one book a year. To divorce the abysmal state of education from the downward turn of American politics straight into the sewer is to deny the connection between drinking battery acid and vomiting. The philistines and modern-day know-nothings are on the march, and they all seem to show up at the Trump rally. In a recent essay, when I pointed out that Trump’s supporters are delusional to blame Mexicans and Muslims for their problems, and that when searching for suspects responsible for their hardships, they would have more luck with a mirror, many liberals condemned me as a “snobbish” and “heartless.” While the former is possibly true, the latter is not. Compassion does not necessitate lying to people in order to coddle and comfort them in their own self-destructive behavior. Studies showing that Trump’s supporters are the lowest educated of all constituencies, and that they are highly susceptible to laughable conspiracy theories and inane analyses of complex phenomena go together like litter and cat piss. The New York Times revealed that Trump has an unusually large number of high school dropouts among his voters, and polls also demonstrate that 61 percent of Trump supporters do not believe that Barack Obama was born in the United States. Trump voters, given their low income status, would benefit most from the Affordable Care Act, and its Medicaid extension, but in their voting habits and political preferences, they prioritize tribalistic expression of opposition to the Kenyan Muslim over access to medicine. This is not an accident or a coincidence, and it is not because of those magic words that commentators use to explain everything they would rather not acknowledge – “the economy.” Recognition of the rampant ignorance among Trump supporters shatters an odd, American taboo against direct criticism of voters. According to the stock script, Donald Trump is a racist, buffoon and demagogue. If all of those accusations are accurate – and they appear more so every single day – what does that make his voters? If Trump had not won a state, and was currently polling in the single digits, no one would care enough about his candidacy to attack him. It is only because a significant swath of citizens are empowering Trump that he has become the Republican frontrunner, and that he is likely to win the nomination of his party. All indication is that Hillary Clinton will crush him in the general election, offering the hope that the Trump cohort of antisocial and anti-intellectual fanatics is most at home on the margins of politics, right where they belong. Americans still committed to the odd notion of responsible citizenship should treat Trump fever as they would an arthritic ankle. It is not life-threatening, but at the same time, it is nothing to ignore. The swollen joints of the American body politic are symptomatic of the malignancy rotting out its public education system. A recent decline in the dropout rate is good news, but many high school graduates leave their commencement ceremonies, diploma in hand and nothing in mind. According to the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, nearly 60 percent of first-year college students have to take remedial courses in mathematics or English. Clearly, if a high school graduate is earning acceptance into a college, he is not the worst of the worst, yet it is likely he does not read, write, or perform arithmetic at the level of a high school graduate. Since the closing American mind often prefers to understand important ideas in terms of war, imagine an army heading into battle with over half of its soldiers unable to shoot a gun or operate military machinery, and you will have a picture of America marching into the future. The good liberal reaction to ignorance is not defense of it in the name of misplaced social solidarity and misapplied class consciousness. It is disapproval, and commitment to prevent ignorance in future generations. It is a return to the liberal agenda of public school excellence, home tutoring and literacy programs, adult education assistance, and affordable colleges. Intellectual rigor, higher education access, and old-fashioned learning will stop the rise of future authoritarian buffoons, not pathetic excuse-making for the voters who, in the words of Arthur Miller, are “aching for an Ayatollah.” When asked what form of government the founders established at the Constitutional convention, Franklin, in keeping with his dark forecast, shot back, “A Republic – if you can keep it.” Education is what will allow us to keep it.
Dear straight Springsteen fans: If you’re shocked that Bruce canceled his North Carolina show, you haven’t been paying attention
It does not require the imagination of a fine novelist to realize that Bruce Springsteen made many of his most fervent fans uncomfortable in the 1980s. A young or middle aged man, ripped right out of the lyric notebook of songs like “Darkness On the Edge of Town” and “Darlington County,” just got off his shift at the mill or dock, washed down his fatigue with domestic beer, and settled into his seat for a three hour performance from his favorite musician. Then, right in the middle of Springsteen’s nut and bolts, blue collar rock ‘n’ roll show, he leads the audience to a climactic moment of ecstasy. He slides across the stage, nearly tearing apart his tight jeans, straight into the arms of Clarence Clemons – his gigantic saxophone player whose horn had a sound even bigger than his biceps – and kisses him on the lips. He holds the kiss for a few seconds. When the triumph of romantic friendship ends, they do not pantomime disgust, or turn their bond into fodder for juvenile humor. They start to dance. The kiss was not only illustrative of the spiritual romance between two enormously talented musicians; such a romance conceived beautiful children like “Spirit in the Night,” “Rosalita (Come Out Tonight),” and “Jungleland.” It was a physical expression of the spirit that energizes all of Springsteen’s music – a spirit of community, harmony, and unity. The music of Springsteen, in its highest moments and even in its lowest, gives aural projection to the faith of human togetherness. It denies category and classification, and it evades all attempts to stratify. Differences of race and sexual orientation are for the petty and puny. The Boss and The Big Man had no time for them. Bruce Springsteen still has not time for them. On April 8, the legendary singer and songwriter released a now viral statement in which he announced the cancellation of his concert in Greensboro, North Carolina in response to the state's passing of the “Public Facilities Privacy and Security Act,” which imposes strict and rigid limits on what bathrooms transgender people are able to use. It also betrays its euphemistic name by expressly stating that workplace protections against employment discrimination do not extend to gay citizens. In North Carolina, an employer can fire a gay worker on the sole basis of his sexuality, leaving the terminated employee with little to no recourse. It also places undue burdens on gay and trans workers seeking to sue for other workplace human rights violations, such as sexual harassment and the creation of a hostile environment. In his statement, Springsteen said of the law, “To my mind, it’s an attempt by people who cannot stand the progress our country has made in recognizing the human rights of all of our citizens to overturn that progress. Right now, there are many groups, businesses, and individuals in North Carolina working to oppose and overcome these negative developments. Taking all of this into account, I feel that this is a time for me and the band to show solidarity for those freedom fighters.” Cultural expressions of political protest have efficacy in any attempt to reform or reverse detestable laws. When Indiana passed a barbarous law authorizing business owners to discriminate against gay customers, the backlash from entrepreneurs, universities, entertainers, and city councils came so harshly and rapidly that governor Mike Pence begrudgingly amended the homophobic Religious Freedom Restoration Act to remove language permitting anti-LGBT discrimination. All “freedom fighters” should join Springsteen in supporting the efforts to write the same ending for North Carolina’s exhibition of bigotry. If Springsteen is able to expedite the delivery of justice, he can add it to his impressively long resume of brave advocacy for gay rights, dating back to earlier days of his career when support for gay causes and people was often an anathema. If the kiss with Clarence was a confrontational announcement of the singer’s comfort with sexual ambiguity, Springsteen’s subtle and little-known support for disco musicians was an investment of his labor in resistance to the cultural superiority straight, white Americans often feel they enjoy by default. To combat what Springsteen labeled the “veiled racism and homophobia of the anti-disco movement,” he wrote “Protection” for Donna Summer. He also played lead guitar and sang backup vocals for the recording session. Considering that there was significant overlap between Springsteen’s fans and adherents to the pro-rock, anti-disco mentality, the small expression of artistic solidarity with the “Queen of Disco” was meaningful in its defiance. In 1987, Springsteen released one of his greatest compositions, “Tougher Than The Rest.” The country-styled love song subverts the prevalent mentality of macho insensitivity in American culture. Rather than placing a premium on physical feats of strength and laconic dullness to human life, Springsteen sings he is “tougher than the rest” because he is willing and able to walk the “thin line” for the object of his affection. He is comfortable making sacrifices for his lover, and prizing her desires equally to his own. The celebration of mutual pleasure and devotion took on even greater power in the music video. Springsteen sings the simultaneously steely and sweet lyrics in his husky voice. Interspersed with the live concert footage are images of couples kissing and holding hands. Many of the couples are gay. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_91hN... Not only does the video assign equal attention and value to heterosexual and homosexual relationships, it appraises the love between gay people according to the same standards as it does Springsteen’s own romance. The live footage is most memorable for the way in which he, and his backup singer and soon-to-be wife, Patti Scialfa, gaze into each others’ eyes. Their sexual fire is hot enough to melt the monitor. The energy and intensity of gay attraction and affection is no different – better or worse – than the lust and love Springsteen shares with his girlfriend. One of the most profound, sad, and beautiful songs of modern American music is the Oscar winning, Grammy winning, “Streets of Philadelphia,” which Springsteen wrote for the Tom Hanks-Denzel Washington film "Philadelphia." The film tells the story of a gay man facing employment discrimination after his diagnosis with HIV. It is this exact form of bigotry and hostility that North Carolina is now giving official seal of approval with their new law. “Streets of Philadelphia” is not political, however, as much as it is purely and powerfully human. A man sings of wasting away in his own skin and clothes, unable to recognize himself when he sees his own skeletal reflection, and suffering the loneliness of familial and communal abandonment. Springsteen’s quiet, but desperate delivery over a soft beat and organ transforms the song into a prayer whispered into the night from a hospice unit. One of the most heartbreaking lines of any song begins the bridge. Springsteen sings, “Ain’t no angel gonna greet me…”, as he acknowledges the private catastrophe and crisis of his own solitary death. His only hope for solace and comfort is in the kiss of his lover – “Receive me brother with your faithless kiss…” The beautiful human gesture of union – the kiss – is exactly how Springsteen displayed the bond of friendship he enjoyed with Clarence Clemons, and he returned to the idea and image of connection in his song, “This Hard Land.” An anthem of hope against the harsh winds of the world as it throws the debris in his face, he ends with a promise of faith for the subject of the song – a man who is just as easily a friend or lover: Well hey Frank, won't you pack your bags and meet me tonight down at Liberty Hall I just want a kiss from you my brother and we'll ride until we fall We'll sleep out in the fields, we'll sleep by the rivers, and in the morning we'll make a plan Well if you can't make it, stay hard, stay hungry, stay alive if you can and meet me in a dream of this hard land One of the songs that has most confused many of Springsteen’s fans is “My Lover Man.” When I conducted research for my book, “Working On a Dream: The Progressive Political Vision of Bruce Springsteen,” I remember finding amusing the great lengths many middle aged, male Springsteen fans would go to avoid recognizing the obvious. “My Lover Man” is a gay love song. “You treated me hard and my heart ache,” Springsteen sings, “I know you’re only human, and men they make mistakes.” Springsteen then invites his bisexual or closeted lover to return home: “Your life with her turned black, and now you want our love back / Well come into my arms and fall, my lover man.” Longtime fans speculated that it was song he wrote for his wife to record, but cannot explain why he then recorded it, and Scialfa never did. The truth seems that just as Springsteen has written songs in the voice of women, he narrates “My Lover Man” as a character – a gay character whose sexuality is not odd or immoral, but entirely normal and worthy of serious emotional treatment. Different does not mean deficient. One senses the joy Springsteen feels when he delights in that reality during a duet with Melissa Etheridge for her mid-‘90s television special. Springsteen grins with the pleasure and mischief of a child when the outspoken lesbian singer delivers all the lascivious lines toward Mary in “Thunder Road.” In a 1996 interview with the Advocate, Springsteen discusses early friendships he enjoyed with gay men after high school, and how he aimed to leverage his “very straight image” and “big guy audience” to make it appear safe for heterosexual men to align with gay rights. Springsteen’s bravery of political and musical friendship with gay Americans had an unquantifiable, but real influence. I can offer only my own life as evidence. Unlike most of my peers, I fell in love with the music of Bruce Springsteen at the age of 13. It was the late 1990s, and many of my friends had not even heard of the legendary songwriter and performer, but I elevated him to the status of hero – a particularly masculine hero. Springsteen’s voice, style, and lyrical content projected an image of masculine strength and cool. I hoped to acquire some of that virile charisma in my own travails with young women. Springsteen, with his combined emphasis and focus on strength and sensitivity, and with his dramatic and epic depiction of sexuality, was a good pop cultural guide for my own sexual awakening in high school. His comfort with gay symbolism informed me, as a straight young man working overtime to impress all the pretty girls, that homophobia was not an indicator of toughness or hipness. It was a pathetic sign of weakness. Springsteen had the confidence in his own sexuality and masculinity to sing in the voice of a gay man, and to kiss his male friend on stage. Those straight men who feel that the stability of their identity requires hatred and harassment of homosexuals must suffer from such severe self-doubt, it almost makes their lives seem more sad than offensive. “Tougher Than The Rest” reinforced the lesson that masculine strength and pride result from personal strength, but also sensitivity toward the desires of women, while songs like “Streets of Philadelphia” and “My Lover Man” instructed that gay people – in their human value and in the legitimacy of their love – are equal to me. Given that they are equal, they are just as deserving as I am of social respect, communal acceptance, and legal protection. When he closes “My Lover Man,” Springsteen offers the hope that he and his lover will “begin to find our beautiful selves again.” America is the only country founded with the explicit promise of equality under the law, and the political guarantee of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It often fails to honor its foundational ethic and oath, but always has the opportunity to find its beautiful self again.
Where the boys are: Richard Linklater’s “Everybody Wants Some!!” and what women’s comedies can learn from the art of the bromance
There’s a scene in Richard Linklater’s latest film, “Everybody Wants Some!!,” where Finnegan, a suave college baseball player, takes an earnest tone with two young women during a raucous party. Regrets are born out of what we don’t do, not what we’ve done, he explains. He cites time’s unavoidable wrinkle—aging—and urges the women to seize the moment. After exchanging coded eye contact with one another, they’ve been convinced. We cut to mud wrestling, a sign of the times. The 1980s of “Everybody Wants Some!!” is the age of moustaches worn without irony, men’s shorts flunking the fingertip-test, Kerouac being read in paperback, and flesh not sexted but groped in hall closets: chasing women is as much sport as throwing a bloop curve. It’s a late 70’s frat-boy comedy scene, like those in “Animal House” that paved the way for the Farrelly Brothers’ and Judd Apatow’s brand of gross-out (b)romances. So mud wrestle the women do, first with one another and then with a game ball player, à la John Candy in “Stripes.” Linklater has called the film “a spiritual sequel” to “Dazed and Confused,” and the film wears its humanist sympathies on its letterman jacket. This spirituality is why I was excited to see “EWS!!”; I craved the camaraderie Linklater famously fosters amongst his actors, a languid familiarity that radiates from the performances in everything from “Before Sunrise” to “School of Rock.” Seduced by this easiness, I watched the mud wrestling. And I was unperturbed when a character joked about sex on waterbeds (like having sex on top of a fat girl), unfazed by a shot of a woman’s toothsome booty clad in black lace underwear (and then—the underwear gingerly removed). In fact, those politically-incorrect guys, with their bird-boned braggadocio, are what I loved about “EWS!!. I loved their hubris and naiveté, their “fuck-withery” and sincerity (as when four team members smoke apocalyptic quantities of marijuana and test their capacities for telepathy). I loved their friendship. Or is it a bromance? (In Salon’s 2013 interview with Paul Rudd and David Gordon Green, Green suggests a pair of characters is necessary to the bromantic structure.) A bro-orgy? A bro-some? Just as much as I loved the film’s ambling non-plot, I loved shelving my feminist critique and joining the bro squad.
***
“EWSS!!” has been well-received (Metacritic cites a “Metascore” of 85, a Üser Rating of 8.4). It’s the story, mostly, of a quiet bro, Jake Bradford (Blake Jenner), a shaggy-haired freshman pitcher who arrives at Texas Southern University blasting “My Sharona.” At the off-campus sprawler that houses the baseball team, bro by bro Jake meets his team. The first-day of class is days (and hours) away, an on-screen countdown announces, suggesting these moments before summer ends and the semester begins are limited—and crucial. From that point on, “EWS!!” keeps the fun fun, at least for the bros. “The girls can be just as slutty as the guys,” one character exclaims, gesturing toward a gender equality on which the movie doesn’t elaborate. Its concerns are bro-ly: Is the womanizing really so flagrant when, by the end of the weekend, Jake establishes a touching relationship with a performing arts major named Beverly (Zooey Deutch)? When, as A.O. Scott writes in his review of the film, “the guys … are as vain as any gossip girls, primping endlessly before heading out to a club and admiring the curve-hugging tightness of their own jeans?” As a feminist—okay, maybe a bad feminist—I felt conflicted: casual sexism aside, was I supposed to looked past Jake’s earlier backseat-bang sesh with a curly-haired coed when he wooed the complicated Beverly? To forget that Linklater shows a sensitive bro gets to have his cake and eat it, too? In other words, is it possible for a feminist to enjoy a movie that celebrates, with fuzzy, nostalgia-lit fireworks, this bro-centric ideology? Sure is. The truth is, I’ve always been drawn to movies that show groups of men broing-down. When my mother took me to Blockbuster, I gravitated toward Bill Murray. I loved “Ghostbusters” and “City Slickers” and “Three Men and a Baby,” “Meatballs” and “Spaceballs” and anything with Chevy Chase, who I wanted to be my father and husband. I watched “Saturday Night Live” for Phil Hartman, Tim Meadows, Dana Carvey, Mike Meyers, David Spade. When I felt serious, I loved “Diner.” When I felt thuggish, “Reservoir Dogs.” But more than anything, I loved “Stripes,” which I discovered via Betamax and memorized by VHS. There’s something comforting about the world of schlubby men. They carry pizzas that look better than any pizza in the history of real life; they date babes. And, no matter how pock-marked their cheeks or how Brillo-pad-ish their hair, they have friends. “Everybody Wants Some!!” may culminate in romance, but the friend movie’s appeal has never been about a single moment or shot—it’s about montages of debauchery (or fun), fun at which you, the viewer, can take a swing. So why are there not more movies that let me participate in this fun from a female point-of-view? (Please don’t recommend “Thelma and Louise,” where I get to have all the fun in the world with a young Brad Pitt and then drive off a cliff.) Despite the success of films like “Bridesmaids,” there’s still a dearth of non-cliquey depictions of female friendship, which Seventeen’s listicle, “10 Best BFF Movies Ever!!” confirms. In “Mean Girls,” “Heathers,” and “Clueless,” subscription to a group’s prevailing codes smacks of conformity. Sheepishness. A problem to be overcome. In the bro squad, sameness is part of the fun. So I worry. Does this preference for the bro squad make me, as Roxane Gay puts it in her eponymous 2014 essay, a "bad feminist?" In that essay—manifesto?—Gay proclaims, “I am just trying … trying to make some noise with my writing while also being myself: a woman who loves pink and likes to get freaky and sometimes dances her ass off to music she knows, she knows, is terrible for women.” But maybe the onus is partially on filmmakers. In his Salon review of “The Boss,” Nico Lang writes, “The Boss’ is more fun to recap than it is to actually watch … like an old pair of mom jeans, the movie around [Melissa McCarthy] never does her any favors.” While I found Lang’s simile cringe-worthy, it points to a larger issue with female-driven comedies. “Bridesmaids” may capture the bond between besties Annie and Lillian (Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph), but in-fighting amongst 2.5-dimensional personality types like Pretty-Snobby Girl (Rose Byrne) and Audacious-Outsider (McCarthy) can’t erase the story’s conservative, connubial conclusion. Until female friendships stop being portrayed as clique-mongering, wardrobe-swaps that, no matter how razor-sharp the dialogue (“Obvious Child”) nor how outré the gags (“Trainwreck”), exist within the confines of a girl-gets-guy plot structure, what is a feminist viewer hungry for depictions of unforced camaraderie to do? In this feminist’s case, she’ll turn to Richard Linklater.***
I don’t believe there’s anything inherently antifeminist about bromances and I don’t believe Linklater’s latest is terrible for women, but I’m conflicted. And maybe so is “EWS!!” Despite being littered with what Dr. Dustin R. Iler, who teaches at Washington University in St. Louis, calls “masculine narrative tropes,” like the on-screen countdown to the first day of class, “EWS!!” subverts the traditional plot-driven story. The ping-pong and baseball and knuckles and kegstands, even his frisson with Beverly leaves Jake beginning class with little cemented in his future but bro-ness. This kind of ambiguity, Iler notes, may represent, “some kind of marriage between a ‘feminine’ narrative and the content of a ‘masculine’ action movie [where] ‘your heroes have this much time to complete the mission.’” Friendship, too, is inconclusive and meandering, an epic of gags and rituals that accumulate significance not because of mission but repetition. For films about female friendships to succeed, they need to take a cue from bromances, to go beyond the marriage plot and celebrate aspirations outside of coupling. Maybe that’s a sufficient narrative structure for a movie, as it is in “EWS!!.” Consider one of the great, unlikely bromances of the 2000s: “Lost In Translation.” In Sofia Coppola’s 2003 sulky May-December comedy, depressed Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson) finds herself alone in Tokyo where she meets equally-depressed, Bob Harris (Bill Murray). As actors must in any good bromance, Charlotte and Bob cavort and share intimacies, get drunk and act the fools. And, like Linklater’s latest, Coppola’s film ends inconclusively: What does Bob whisper to Charlotte before his avuncular kiss? Is that—something no audience can truly hear—real friendship? And, if so, why does Coppola’s movie need Murray, granddaddy of bros, to succeed in capturing this mystique of kith? What, pray tell, would have happened if Charlotte had befriended an older gal? A better bromance for women, then, might “Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion,” where the friends’ entrepreneurial prowess, even at first fictional (Post-Its), constitutes as success more than the attainment of any man. There’s also the terrific 1999 satire, “Dick.” Like “EWS!!,” “Dick” depicts an era-past; it stars Michelle Williams and Kirsten Dunst as two teenagers who find themselves embroiled in the Watergate scandal (and crushing on Richard Nixon). In his review of the film, Roger Ebert wrote, “the girls … blunder onto one incriminating secret after another. Their motivation seems to stem from ordinary teenage attributes, such as curiosity, idealism and romance.” Along the way, little comes between the girls. Their story is in those “ordinary” attributes. And it's when Linklater lets those very “ordinary” moments tick by that the brosquad in “Everybody Wants Some!!” is at its most winning.There’s a scene in Richard Linklater’s latest film, “Everybody Wants Some!!,” where Finnegan, a suave college baseball player, takes an earnest tone with two young women during a raucous party. Regrets are born out of what we don’t do, not what we’ve done, he explains. He cites time’s unavoidable wrinkle—aging—and urges the women to seize the moment. After exchanging coded eye contact with one another, they’ve been convinced. We cut to mud wrestling, a sign of the times. The 1980s of “Everybody Wants Some!!” is the age of moustaches worn without irony, men’s shorts flunking the fingertip-test, Kerouac being read in paperback, and flesh not sexted but groped in hall closets: chasing women is as much sport as throwing a bloop curve. It’s a late 70’s frat-boy comedy scene, like those in “Animal House” that paved the way for the Farrelly Brothers’ and Judd Apatow’s brand of gross-out (b)romances. So mud wrestle the women do, first with one another and then with a game ball player, à la John Candy in “Stripes.” Linklater has called the film “a spiritual sequel” to “Dazed and Confused,” and the film wears its humanist sympathies on its letterman jacket. This spirituality is why I was excited to see “EWS!!”; I craved the camaraderie Linklater famously fosters amongst his actors, a languid familiarity that radiates from the performances in everything from “Before Sunrise” to “School of Rock.” Seduced by this easiness, I watched the mud wrestling. And I was unperturbed when a character joked about sex on waterbeds (like having sex on top of a fat girl), unfazed by a shot of a woman’s toothsome booty clad in black lace underwear (and then—the underwear gingerly removed). In fact, those politically-incorrect guys, with their bird-boned braggadocio, are what I loved about “EWS!!. I loved their hubris and naiveté, their “fuck-withery” and sincerity (as when four team members smoke apocalyptic quantities of marijuana and test their capacities for telepathy). I loved their friendship. Or is it a bromance? (In Salon’s 2013 interview with Paul Rudd and David Gordon Green, Green suggests a pair of characters is necessary to the bromantic structure.) A bro-orgy? A bro-some? Just as much as I loved the film’s ambling non-plot, I loved shelving my feminist critique and joining the bro squad.***
“EWSS!!” has been well-received (Metacritic cites a “Metascore” of 85, a Üser Rating of 8.4). It’s the story, mostly, of a quiet bro, Jake Bradford (Blake Jenner), a shaggy-haired freshman pitcher who arrives at Texas Southern University blasting “My Sharona.” At the off-campus sprawler that houses the baseball team, bro by bro Jake meets his team. The first-day of class is days (and hours) away, an on-screen countdown announces, suggesting these moments before summer ends and the semester begins are limited—and crucial. From that point on, “EWS!!” keeps the fun fun, at least for the bros. “The girls can be just as slutty as the guys,” one character exclaims, gesturing toward a gender equality on which the movie doesn’t elaborate. Its concerns are bro-ly: Is the womanizing really so flagrant when, by the end of the weekend, Jake establishes a touching relationship with a performing arts major named Beverly (Zooey Deutch)? When, as A.O. Scott writes in his review of the film, “the guys … are as vain as any gossip girls, primping endlessly before heading out to a club and admiring the curve-hugging tightness of their own jeans?” As a feminist—okay, maybe a bad feminist—I felt conflicted: casual sexism aside, was I supposed to looked past Jake’s earlier backseat-bang sesh with a curly-haired coed when he wooed the complicated Beverly? To forget that Linklater shows a sensitive bro gets to have his cake and eat it, too? In other words, is it possible for a feminist to enjoy a movie that celebrates, with fuzzy, nostalgia-lit fireworks, this bro-centric ideology? Sure is. The truth is, I’ve always been drawn to movies that show groups of men broing-down. When my mother took me to Blockbuster, I gravitated toward Bill Murray. I loved “Ghostbusters” and “City Slickers” and “Three Men and a Baby,” “Meatballs” and “Spaceballs” and anything with Chevy Chase, who I wanted to be my father and husband. I watched “Saturday Night Live” for Phil Hartman, Tim Meadows, Dana Carvey, Mike Meyers, David Spade. When I felt serious, I loved “Diner.” When I felt thuggish, “Reservoir Dogs.” But more than anything, I loved “Stripes,” which I discovered via Betamax and memorized by VHS. There’s something comforting about the world of schlubby men. They carry pizzas that look better than any pizza in the history of real life; they date babes. And, no matter how pock-marked their cheeks or how Brillo-pad-ish their hair, they have friends. “Everybody Wants Some!!” may culminate in romance, but the friend movie’s appeal has never been about a single moment or shot—it’s about montages of debauchery (or fun), fun at which you, the viewer, can take a swing. So why are there not more movies that let me participate in this fun from a female point-of-view? (Please don’t recommend “Thelma and Louise,” where I get to have all the fun in the world with a young Brad Pitt and then drive off a cliff.) Despite the success of films like “Bridesmaids,” there’s still a dearth of non-cliquey depictions of female friendship, which Seventeen’s listicle, “10 Best BFF Movies Ever!!” confirms. In “Mean Girls,” “Heathers,” and “Clueless,” subscription to a group’s prevailing codes smacks of conformity. Sheepishness. A problem to be overcome. In the bro squad, sameness is part of the fun. So I worry. Does this preference for the bro squad make me, as Roxane Gay puts it in her eponymous 2014 essay, a "bad feminist?" In that essay—manifesto?—Gay proclaims, “I am just trying … trying to make some noise with my writing while also being myself: a woman who loves pink and likes to get freaky and sometimes dances her ass off to music she knows, she knows, is terrible for women.” But maybe the onus is partially on filmmakers. In his Salon review of “The Boss,” Nico Lang writes, “The Boss’ is more fun to recap than it is to actually watch … like an old pair of mom jeans, the movie around [Melissa McCarthy] never does her any favors.” While I found Lang’s simile cringe-worthy, it points to a larger issue with female-driven comedies. “Bridesmaids” may capture the bond between besties Annie and Lillian (Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph), but in-fighting amongst 2.5-dimensional personality types like Pretty-Snobby Girl (Rose Byrne) and Audacious-Outsider (McCarthy) can’t erase the story’s conservative, connubial conclusion. Until female friendships stop being portrayed as clique-mongering, wardrobe-swaps that, no matter how razor-sharp the dialogue (“Obvious Child”) nor how outré the gags (“Trainwreck”), exist within the confines of a girl-gets-guy plot structure, what is a feminist viewer hungry for depictions of unforced camaraderie to do? In this feminist’s case, she’ll turn to Richard Linklater.***
I don’t believe there’s anything inherently antifeminist about bromances and I don’t believe Linklater’s latest is terrible for women, but I’m conflicted. And maybe so is “EWS!!” Despite being littered with what Dr. Dustin R. Iler, who teaches at Washington University in St. Louis, calls “masculine narrative tropes,” like the on-screen countdown to the first day of class, “EWS!!” subverts the traditional plot-driven story. The ping-pong and baseball and knuckles and kegstands, even his frisson with Beverly leaves Jake beginning class with little cemented in his future but bro-ness. This kind of ambiguity, Iler notes, may represent, “some kind of marriage between a ‘feminine’ narrative and the content of a ‘masculine’ action movie [where] ‘your heroes have this much time to complete the mission.’” Friendship, too, is inconclusive and meandering, an epic of gags and rituals that accumulate significance not because of mission but repetition. For films about female friendships to succeed, they need to take a cue from bromances, to go beyond the marriage plot and celebrate aspirations outside of coupling. Maybe that’s a sufficient narrative structure for a movie, as it is in “EWS!!.” Consider one of the great, unlikely bromances of the 2000s: “Lost In Translation.” In Sofia Coppola’s 2003 sulky May-December comedy, depressed Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson) finds herself alone in Tokyo where she meets equally-depressed, Bob Harris (Bill Murray). As actors must in any good bromance, Charlotte and Bob cavort and share intimacies, get drunk and act the fools. And, like Linklater’s latest, Coppola’s film ends inconclusively: What does Bob whisper to Charlotte before his avuncular kiss? Is that—something no audience can truly hear—real friendship? And, if so, why does Coppola’s movie need Murray, granddaddy of bros, to succeed in capturing this mystique of kith? What, pray tell, would have happened if Charlotte had befriended an older gal? A better bromance for women, then, might “Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion,” where the friends’ entrepreneurial prowess, even at first fictional (Post-Its), constitutes as success more than the attainment of any man. There’s also the terrific 1999 satire, “Dick.” Like “EWS!!,” “Dick” depicts an era-past; it stars Michelle Williams and Kirsten Dunst as two teenagers who find themselves embroiled in the Watergate scandal (and crushing on Richard Nixon). In his review of the film, Roger Ebert wrote, “the girls … blunder onto one incriminating secret after another. Their motivation seems to stem from ordinary teenage attributes, such as curiosity, idealism and romance.” Along the way, little comes between the girls. Their story is in those “ordinary” attributes. And it's when Linklater lets those very “ordinary” moments tick by that the brosquad in “Everybody Wants Some!!” is at its most winning.
“The Virgin Mary was actually a prostitute”: Cartoonist Chester Brown wants to open a debate about sex work, Jesus and the Bible
For ages there has been speculation, scholarly and otherwise, about the place of prostitution in the Bible. The world’s oldest profession shows up in both the Old and New Testaments, and enough ambiguity surrounds its treatment that many see the issue as more complicated than the way Christian churches describe it today. One of these questioners is Chester Brown, a veteran cartoonist who has used scholarly research to come up with “Mary Wept Over the Feet of Jesus: Prostitution and religious obedience in the Bible.” The book, published by Drawn & Quarterly, it not a work of scholarship, but an interpretation, both serious and funny. It includes stories about Ruth, Bathsheba, Tamar, Job, and, of course, Mary of Bethany. Brown doesn’t tell these stories to demean the women involved: he advocates for the legalization of sex work and respect for its practitioners. (He describes the roots of his thinking at length in notes for the book.) “Mary Wept” is in some ways an extension of Brown’s last book, “Paying For it,” about his many adventures as a john. We spoke to Brown – whom Jonathan Lethem has called “one of our greatest cartoonists ever” – from his home in Toronto. The interview has been lightly edited for clarity. Where did you first get a sense of prostitution in the Bible and how widespread it was? It’s no secret -- there are quite a few Biblical characters who are prostitutes. The significant thing for me was when I first had that sense that perhaps the Virgin Mary was a prostitute. The book that prompted that thinking was called “The Illegitimacy of Jesus,” by a Biblical scholar named Jane Schaberg. Her theory was that Mary – the mother of Jesus – was a rape victim, and she pointed to the existence of these women in the genealogy for Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew – the odd fact that Tamar, Rahab, Bathsheba and Ruth are all mentioned in there even though women are nearly never mentioned in ancient genealogies. There are several other women who could have been mentioned, but Matthew, or whoever wrote that gospel, seemed to be focusing on women who were involved in some kind of sexual impropriety. And that indicated to me, once I rethought the theory, not that Mary had been raped, but that she had been involved in some sexual impropriety. Since at least two of those women, Rahab and Tamar, had been prostitutes, I think that’s what Matthew is saying – that the Virgin Mary was actually a prostitute. That’s what got me thinking in a different way about prostitution in the Bible. How is prostitution typically depicted in the Bible? In a disapproving and moralistic way? It’s disapproved of in a sense that we get the sense that women aren’t supposed to engage in it. But men who pay for sex are not necessarily disapproved of. I have the story of Judah and Tamar in there, and you don’t really get a sense that Judah is doing anything wrong. There’s a later story involving the famous strong man Sampson, who visits a prostitute, and you don’t get a sense that he’s breaking the rules here and should be punished. I don’t recall a Biblical law against paying for sex. But it’s not like prostitution is viewed as a good thing. It’s frowned upon in the Bible. How long have you been interested in the Bible and ancient civilizations? I guess I’ve always had a general interest in history. I grew up in a Christian household. In my early 20s, I started to have my doubts, and wasn’t going to church regularly. And then I met a young woman who was interested in me romantically. And early on she told me she was a Christian, and asked me if I was a Christian too, and I said, “Oh yes, of course I’m a Christian.” But despite growing up in a go-to-church-every-Sunday-family, I didn’t have much sense of what it meant. So I decided to read a few books on the subject. I read one book of Biblical scholarship, and found myself completely fascinated… And that fascination really has never waned… Your previous book, “Paying for It,” is also about sex work and your own relationship to it. Can you describe the book a little bit for people who’ve not read it? In the late ‘90s, when I would have been in my late 30s, I was involved with another woman, and she broke up with me, and I decided, “I don’t think I like being in boyfriend-girlfriend relationships. I don’t think I want to look for another girlfriend.” But of course I still wanted sex. So I decided to start paying for it. That started in the late ‘90s and continues until today. I still pay for sex on a regular basis, Although in 2003 I met a particular sex worker and started seeing her regularly. I guess it’s been 13 years now, I’m actually going to seeing her tonight. I’m very happy paying for sex. I don’t know: I seem to like this better than being in romantic relationships. How do you want people to come away from your latest book? Do you want them to look back at the history of sex work in a different way? Mostly, the book is Biblical interpretation, and I’m pushing certain ideas. My contention is that Jesus had a different relationship with prostitution than we think he did. I think his mother was a prostitute, and I think he had women around him who were also prostitutes. And that there was some sort of religious association there, involved with religious prostitution and goddess worship and that sort of thing. So yeah, I guess I’m trying to stimulate a debate about the subject and get people thinking that it was perhaps a possibility. Have you discussed your ideas with mainstream Christians and gotten a sense of how it strikes them? Have people gotten angry as you’ve talked about it? I’ve really only talked about it with friends of mine, and most of my friends are not that religious. I do have one very good friend who is a Christian, who is obsessed with the subject, as I am too… When I told her about the idea of the book, she was very offended, which is not surprising. When I was done the book, before it was published, I gave it to her… She was very offended, and found it blasphemous. But for some reason we’re still friends anyway. That was an extreme reaction, but I would expect that from a lot of Christians. A lot of Christians are not gonna be happy with this book.For ages there has been speculation, scholarly and otherwise, about the place of prostitution in the Bible. The world’s oldest profession shows up in both the Old and New Testaments, and enough ambiguity surrounds its treatment that many see the issue as more complicated than the way Christian churches describe it today. One of these questioners is Chester Brown, a veteran cartoonist who has used scholarly research to come up with “Mary Wept Over the Feet of Jesus: Prostitution and religious obedience in the Bible.” The book, published by Drawn & Quarterly, it not a work of scholarship, but an interpretation, both serious and funny. It includes stories about Ruth, Bathsheba, Tamar, Job, and, of course, Mary of Bethany. Brown doesn’t tell these stories to demean the women involved: he advocates for the legalization of sex work and respect for its practitioners. (He describes the roots of his thinking at length in notes for the book.) “Mary Wept” is in some ways an extension of Brown’s last book, “Paying For it,” about his many adventures as a john. We spoke to Brown – whom Jonathan Lethem has called “one of our greatest cartoonists ever” – from his home in Toronto. The interview has been lightly edited for clarity. Where did you first get a sense of prostitution in the Bible and how widespread it was? It’s no secret -- there are quite a few Biblical characters who are prostitutes. The significant thing for me was when I first had that sense that perhaps the Virgin Mary was a prostitute. The book that prompted that thinking was called “The Illegitimacy of Jesus,” by a Biblical scholar named Jane Schaberg. Her theory was that Mary – the mother of Jesus – was a rape victim, and she pointed to the existence of these women in the genealogy for Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew – the odd fact that Tamar, Rahab, Bathsheba and Ruth are all mentioned in there even though women are nearly never mentioned in ancient genealogies. There are several other women who could have been mentioned, but Matthew, or whoever wrote that gospel, seemed to be focusing on women who were involved in some kind of sexual impropriety. And that indicated to me, once I rethought the theory, not that Mary had been raped, but that she had been involved in some sexual impropriety. Since at least two of those women, Rahab and Tamar, had been prostitutes, I think that’s what Matthew is saying – that the Virgin Mary was actually a prostitute. That’s what got me thinking in a different way about prostitution in the Bible. How is prostitution typically depicted in the Bible? In a disapproving and moralistic way? It’s disapproved of in a sense that we get the sense that women aren’t supposed to engage in it. But men who pay for sex are not necessarily disapproved of. I have the story of Judah and Tamar in there, and you don’t really get a sense that Judah is doing anything wrong. There’s a later story involving the famous strong man Sampson, who visits a prostitute, and you don’t get a sense that he’s breaking the rules here and should be punished. I don’t recall a Biblical law against paying for sex. But it’s not like prostitution is viewed as a good thing. It’s frowned upon in the Bible. How long have you been interested in the Bible and ancient civilizations? I guess I’ve always had a general interest in history. I grew up in a Christian household. In my early 20s, I started to have my doubts, and wasn’t going to church regularly. And then I met a young woman who was interested in me romantically. And early on she told me she was a Christian, and asked me if I was a Christian too, and I said, “Oh yes, of course I’m a Christian.” But despite growing up in a go-to-church-every-Sunday-family, I didn’t have much sense of what it meant. So I decided to read a few books on the subject. I read one book of Biblical scholarship, and found myself completely fascinated… And that fascination really has never waned… Your previous book, “Paying for It,” is also about sex work and your own relationship to it. Can you describe the book a little bit for people who’ve not read it? In the late ‘90s, when I would have been in my late 30s, I was involved with another woman, and she broke up with me, and I decided, “I don’t think I like being in boyfriend-girlfriend relationships. I don’t think I want to look for another girlfriend.” But of course I still wanted sex. So I decided to start paying for it. That started in the late ‘90s and continues until today. I still pay for sex on a regular basis, Although in 2003 I met a particular sex worker and started seeing her regularly. I guess it’s been 13 years now, I’m actually going to seeing her tonight. I’m very happy paying for sex. I don’t know: I seem to like this better than being in romantic relationships. How do you want people to come away from your latest book? Do you want them to look back at the history of sex work in a different way? Mostly, the book is Biblical interpretation, and I’m pushing certain ideas. My contention is that Jesus had a different relationship with prostitution than we think he did. I think his mother was a prostitute, and I think he had women around him who were also prostitutes. And that there was some sort of religious association there, involved with religious prostitution and goddess worship and that sort of thing. So yeah, I guess I’m trying to stimulate a debate about the subject and get people thinking that it was perhaps a possibility. Have you discussed your ideas with mainstream Christians and gotten a sense of how it strikes them? Have people gotten angry as you’ve talked about it? I’ve really only talked about it with friends of mine, and most of my friends are not that religious. I do have one very good friend who is a Christian, who is obsessed with the subject, as I am too… When I told her about the idea of the book, she was very offended, which is not surprising. When I was done the book, before it was published, I gave it to her… She was very offended, and found it blasphemous. But for some reason we’re still friends anyway. That was an extreme reaction, but I would expect that from a lot of Christians. A lot of Christians are not gonna be happy with this book.For ages there has been speculation, scholarly and otherwise, about the place of prostitution in the Bible. The world’s oldest profession shows up in both the Old and New Testaments, and enough ambiguity surrounds its treatment that many see the issue as more complicated than the way Christian churches describe it today. One of these questioners is Chester Brown, a veteran cartoonist who has used scholarly research to come up with “Mary Wept Over the Feet of Jesus: Prostitution and religious obedience in the Bible.” The book, published by Drawn & Quarterly, it not a work of scholarship, but an interpretation, both serious and funny. It includes stories about Ruth, Bathsheba, Tamar, Job, and, of course, Mary of Bethany. Brown doesn’t tell these stories to demean the women involved: he advocates for the legalization of sex work and respect for its practitioners. (He describes the roots of his thinking at length in notes for the book.) “Mary Wept” is in some ways an extension of Brown’s last book, “Paying For it,” about his many adventures as a john. We spoke to Brown – whom Jonathan Lethem has called “one of our greatest cartoonists ever” – from his home in Toronto. The interview has been lightly edited for clarity. Where did you first get a sense of prostitution in the Bible and how widespread it was? It’s no secret -- there are quite a few Biblical characters who are prostitutes. The significant thing for me was when I first had that sense that perhaps the Virgin Mary was a prostitute. The book that prompted that thinking was called “The Illegitimacy of Jesus,” by a Biblical scholar named Jane Schaberg. Her theory was that Mary – the mother of Jesus – was a rape victim, and she pointed to the existence of these women in the genealogy for Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew – the odd fact that Tamar, Rahab, Bathsheba and Ruth are all mentioned in there even though women are nearly never mentioned in ancient genealogies. There are several other women who could have been mentioned, but Matthew, or whoever wrote that gospel, seemed to be focusing on women who were involved in some kind of sexual impropriety. And that indicated to me, once I rethought the theory, not that Mary had been raped, but that she had been involved in some sexual impropriety. Since at least two of those women, Rahab and Tamar, had been prostitutes, I think that’s what Matthew is saying – that the Virgin Mary was actually a prostitute. That’s what got me thinking in a different way about prostitution in the Bible. How is prostitution typically depicted in the Bible? In a disapproving and moralistic way? It’s disapproved of in a sense that we get the sense that women aren’t supposed to engage in it. But men who pay for sex are not necessarily disapproved of. I have the story of Judah and Tamar in there, and you don’t really get a sense that Judah is doing anything wrong. There’s a later story involving the famous strong man Sampson, who visits a prostitute, and you don’t get a sense that he’s breaking the rules here and should be punished. I don’t recall a Biblical law against paying for sex. But it’s not like prostitution is viewed as a good thing. It’s frowned upon in the Bible. How long have you been interested in the Bible and ancient civilizations? I guess I’ve always had a general interest in history. I grew up in a Christian household. In my early 20s, I started to have my doubts, and wasn’t going to church regularly. And then I met a young woman who was interested in me romantically. And early on she told me she was a Christian, and asked me if I was a Christian too, and I said, “Oh yes, of course I’m a Christian.” But despite growing up in a go-to-church-every-Sunday-family, I didn’t have much sense of what it meant. So I decided to read a few books on the subject. I read one book of Biblical scholarship, and found myself completely fascinated… And that fascination really has never waned… Your previous book, “Paying for It,” is also about sex work and your own relationship to it. Can you describe the book a little bit for people who’ve not read it? In the late ‘90s, when I would have been in my late 30s, I was involved with another woman, and she broke up with me, and I decided, “I don’t think I like being in boyfriend-girlfriend relationships. I don’t think I want to look for another girlfriend.” But of course I still wanted sex. So I decided to start paying for it. That started in the late ‘90s and continues until today. I still pay for sex on a regular basis, Although in 2003 I met a particular sex worker and started seeing her regularly. I guess it’s been 13 years now, I’m actually going to seeing her tonight. I’m very happy paying for sex. I don’t know: I seem to like this better than being in romantic relationships. How do you want people to come away from your latest book? Do you want them to look back at the history of sex work in a different way? Mostly, the book is Biblical interpretation, and I’m pushing certain ideas. My contention is that Jesus had a different relationship with prostitution than we think he did. I think his mother was a prostitute, and I think he had women around him who were also prostitutes. And that there was some sort of religious association there, involved with religious prostitution and goddess worship and that sort of thing. So yeah, I guess I’m trying to stimulate a debate about the subject and get people thinking that it was perhaps a possibility. Have you discussed your ideas with mainstream Christians and gotten a sense of how it strikes them? Have people gotten angry as you’ve talked about it? I’ve really only talked about it with friends of mine, and most of my friends are not that religious. I do have one very good friend who is a Christian, who is obsessed with the subject, as I am too… When I told her about the idea of the book, she was very offended, which is not surprising. When I was done the book, before it was published, I gave it to her… She was very offended, and found it blasphemous. But for some reason we’re still friends anyway. That was an extreme reaction, but I would expect that from a lot of Christians. A lot of Christians are not gonna be happy with this book.
Revelations from politicians’ Spotify playlists: Paul Ryan digs Darius Rucker, Darrell Issa thinks Shaq is a good rapper
Have you ever wondered what Paul Ryan listens to while he pumps iron? Me neither, but thanks to Spotify, we now know that the House speaker is the only person on Earth who still looks forward to hearing Metallica's "Enter Sandman," one of the most overplayed song of all time. On Sunday, the music streaming service released "Capital Tunes" playlists containing the favorite songs of 20 senators and house members. Below are some highlights and lowlights of the congressional playlists. Predictably, some of the choices are highly questionable.
Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI)
: Oh, Paul Ryan. You can't blame him for playing it safe with his list. After the New York Times reported on Ryan's love of the leftist rock band Rage Against the Machine in 2012, Rage guitarist Tom Morello responded with a scathing Rolling Stone op-ed in which he called Ryan "the embodiment of the machine that our music has been raging against for two decades." Ryan later meekly walked back his position on the band, claiming, "I hate the lyrics, but I like the sound." It should come as no surprise, then, that Rage Against the Machine is nowhere to be found on Ryan's Spotify playlist, which reads like the diary of someone who doesn't really listen to music. Every single song on the list is a single or radio staple. Rush and solo Paul McCartney tracks back up Ryan's dorky image, and Darius Rucker's "Wagon Wheel" owns the distinction of being the most annoying song on any politician's playlist — no small task.
Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ)
: Booker's 101(!) song playlist tries to please everybody, which probably makes sense for a politician that many suspect of having presidential ambitions. Unfortunately, the former Newark mayor's choices cross the line from eclectic to schizophrenic, with a bizarre range of entries including 2PAC, John Denver, Alicia Keys, Barbra Streisand, Katy Perry, Eminem, Billy Joel and Bone Thugs-N-Harmony (along with the mandatory-for-Jersey-politicians prostration before the altar of Bruce Springsteen). It's OK to take a stand for something, senator.
Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT)
: OK, some of this list — Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Tony Bennett — sounds like stuff an 82-year-old senator would actually like listening to. Unfortunately, Hatch's list is spiced up with choices that scream, "A 40-year-old aide put this here because he (incorrectly) thought that it sounded hip." Is Hatch really listening to Imagine Dragons and Neon Trees? Doubtful, but that's less embarassing than the idea that someone thought those bands would make Hatch seem cool.
Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA)
: Cantwell's Washington-themed playlist is among the strongest entries on the board. Evergreen State natives make up the bulk of the decades-spanning list, with highlights including The Sonics, Jimi Hendrix, Heart, Pearl Jam, Sleater-Kinney, Modest Mouse and Fleet Foxes. Rep. John Conyers (D-MI): The Michigan native makes a strong bid for the coolest musical tastes in Congress with his jazz- and R&B-heavy playlist. Conyers pays tribute to jazz greats John Coltrane, Dizzy Gillespie and Duke Ellington, and earns bonus points for his inclusion of Miles Davis' "Kind of Blue" LP in its near-entirety and Weather Report's fusion classic "Birdland." Conyers also makes sure his Detroit congressional district is well-represented, with tracks from Motown legends Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder and The Four Tops.
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA)
: Issa earns street cred among Bob Dylan aficionados for listing fan-favorites "Idiot Wind" and "Changing of the Guards," but all of that goodwill is undone with the baffling inclusion of "What's Up Doc? (Can We Rock)," a rap track from Fu-Schnickens and noted lyricist Shaquille O'Neal. This man is unfit to serve.
The Bryan Adams factor: One singer canceling a show won’t stop a hate bill, but these actions add up
In the wake of the passage Mississippi’s horrifying anti-LGBT “religious liberty” law, House Bill 1523, some commentators have argued that boycotts against the state are unlikely to effect how they govern. Here at Salon, Nico Lang noted that no upcoming films are slated to shoot in the state, nor do any Fortune 500 companies have headquarters there. Caitlin MacNeal at Talking Points Memo (TPM) emphasized that due to Mississippi’s economic, political and cultural makeup, it’s unlikely to be swayed by corporate boycotts until citizens’ minds become more accepting of LGBT rights. Yet entertainers and companies are rushing to make it clear that they don't in any way condone the horrifying implications of this law, which basically gives carte blanche to a wide variety of professionals to discriminate against LGBT people in the course of their jobs, as long as they are doing so based on “a sincerely held religious belief or moral conviction.” Singer Bryan Adams announced Sunday that he had canceled his upcoming show in Biloxi, writing on Facebook, “I find it incomprehensible that LGBT citizens are being discriminated against in the state of Mississippi. I cannot in good conscience perform in a State where certain people are being denied their civil rights due to their sexual orientation. Therefore i’m cancelling my 14 April show at the Mississippi Coast Coliseum. Using my voice I stand in solidarity with all my LGBT friends to repeal this extremely discriminatory bill.” He’s among a chorus of voices speaking out recently. As highlighted by LGBT rights organization Unity Mississippi on Twitter, smartphone accessory company Nomad Goods didn’t mince words when it revealed on Instagram it will no longer ship products to Mississippi, complete with prominent use of the #fuckmississippi hashtag. Numerous mayors of major cities including New York, Philadelphia, Seattle, Portland, Oregon, Honolulu and Santa Fe have formed the group Mayors Against Discrimination, and as part of their efforts have banned official travel to Mississippi and North Carolina, which also recently passed its own discriminatory law intended to roll back the rights of transgender people. Prominent cultural leaders from Mississippi have also voiced opposition. Out lesbian “Good Morning America” co-anchor Robin Roberts, who appears on the cover of a current Mississippi tourism guide, shot prior to the passage of HB 1523, told The Advocate, “My longtime partner, Amber, and I have always felt welcomed in my home state, and it hurts my soul to think of anyone not feeling welcome.” 85 Mississippi writers, including John Grisham, Donna Tartt and Jesmyn Ward, signed a public statement outlining their opposition, which reads in part, “It is deeply disturbing to so many of us to see the rhetoric of hate, thinly veiled, once more poison our political discourse. But Governor Phil Bryant and the Mississippi legislators who voted for this bill are not the sole voices of our state. There have always been people here battling injustice. That's the version of Mississippi we believe in, and that's the Mississippi we won't stop fighting for.” Each celebrity, business owner and politician who speaks out about this bill is helping to create awareness and change. Is that going to happen overnight? Of course not, but in the process of speaking up about this particular law, they are also sending a message to other states considering passing such laws that they too would likely be next in line for a boycott. That’s precisely why LGBT media advocacy group GLAAD held a press conference today in Nashville to urge musicians to speak out about a pair of discriminatory Tennessee bills being considered by the state legislature; one bill would allow mental health counselors to refuse to treat LGBT youth while the other is an anti-transgender “bathroom bill.” According to The Hollywood Reporter, GLAAD president and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis said, “Nashville is America’s music capital, and the companies, artists, and allied businesses here alone contribute more than $9.7 billion dollars to this state’s economy. I am here today to call on the music industry to stand with us, alongside television networks and film studios who stood with us in Georgia, in a united front against discrimination.” “Nashville” actor Chris Carmack also spoke at the press conference, saying, “This kind of unnecessary discrimination has no place in this city or the state of Tennessee. It’s important for those who can make a difference in my industry to stand up. Let their words be heard. Let their actions be seen. Please join me in making sure these laws doesn’t become a reality in our state.” Nashville Mayor Megan Barry spoke out against this legislation and specifically cited the negative economic repercussions that could ensue, including a loss of over $10 million in state and local tax revenue and $58 million in “direct visitor spending. She concluded that the results would be devastating for Tennessee, saying, “Our future ability to attract film and television production will also be impacted, and we could expect to see other industry sectors impacted, as well. That’s quite a price to pay for legislation that would seem to hurt people — including some of our youngest and our most vulnerable — without actually benefitting anyone in the process.” In addition to dollars and cents, this is a battle over ideology, over making it clear exactly what the consequences of these laws will mean for those who will bear the brunt of the discrimination. Megan Robertson, an Indiana GOP operative who helped fight against a proposed ban on same sex marriage in Indiana, told TPM that it wasn’t just corporate pressure that mattered, but how the citizens viewed the issue. She concluded that corporate pressure wasn’t enough “until we were culturally ready as well.” That’s where cultural arbiters can come into play. When Bruce Springsteen cancelled his North Carolina show in protest of their discriminatory “bathroom bill,” prompting a North Carolina congressman to call him a “bully,” his actions were broadcast far and wide, including media coverage in other countries. By the nature of his fame and his outspoken statement against the law, he reached those who might not have given the bills a second thought. At the very least, for those concertgoers who’d planned to attend the axed Springsteen and Adams shows, the stars’ decisions will be dinner table conversations. Their actions will likely give artists set to play those states an opportunity to reconsider their decision, and, if they do proceed, possibly speak out on the issue. Already, Adams and Springsteen are being mentioned alongside each other; if other boldface names similarly cancel shows, the impact of their actions will be amplified—and un-ignorable. Plus, social media posts give users a chance to hash out the issues in a public forum. Granted, that means there are plenty of ignorant, hateful comments like “Bryan Adams, you are an idiot. Really? It is outrageous to you that cross-dressing men can't pee in girl's bathrooms? How stupid. It is scary all the backward, ignorant people applauding you for this stunt,” but there are many supporters who are applauding his stance. Maybe it will even inspire those want to know about the Mississippi law’s particulars to read it themselves and find out just how far-reaching this law actually is. Boycotting North Carolina and Mississippi is not, of course, the only way to create social change; it’s one way, amongst many others. Mississippi restaurant owners are being encouraged by the Mississippi Hospitality & Restaurant Association to hang “Everyone’s Welcome Here” signs in their doorways. Until that statement is actually true across the state, we can only hope that more celebrities, companies and politicians are inspired to make their stances on LGBT rights loud and clear.
“There is Kryptonite for Donald Trump”: Rachel Maddow dishes on the ideal way to handle the GOP front-runner
Rachel Maddow recently sat down for an interview with Slate contributor Isaac Chotiner in which she outlined, among other things, the ideal way to handle a candidate like Republican front-runner Donald Trump. "I think that it is much more valuable to show and explain what he is doing than to host people responding to him or reacting to him," she said. "I feel like there’s a lot of useless media ink and airtime being wasted on people expressing themselves about Donald Trump, which is essentially just creating more of a cultural dynamic around him rather than helping people understand what he’s doing and see what’s important about it." Maddow told Chotiner that, ideally, he would be covered using "a documentary approach" instead of a commentary one. That said, she added, "I absolutely hear it when people complain that Trump gets too much time on television, but I do think it can at least be explained, if not excused." "It’s part of his campaign style to be unpredictable, to not always say the same thing. Yeah, he does have a stump speech. That’s true of any candidate, but in addition to the stump speech repetition and that sort of discipline, his indiscipline, or at least his willingness to say unexpected things and go unexpectedly shocking places at unpredictable times, means that it’s worth it to have a camera there whenever he’s talking." Chotiner noted that "certainly on CNN, certainly on Fox News shows not hosted by Megyn Kelly, certainly on Morning Joe, it just feels like [Trump]’s not been held to account for some of his more grotesque statements." Maddow replied that it's difficult to ask a candidate as evasive as Trump difficult questions, which is why she enjoyed his town-hall with her MSNBC colleague Chris Matthews. "He’s a guy who is completely willing to jump in not just at a time when other people might hold back, but jump in repeatedly as a way of turning the conversation into a constructive place when it has stalled or when he can predict where you’re going," she said. "That impatience on his part makes him seem like this kinetic guy who’s very different than everybody else on TV, but that apparently is the Kryptonite for interviewing Trump." "Pathological liars should all go to Chris Matthews for interviews," Chotiner replied.
Read the rest of Chotiner's interview with Maddow at Slate...
Gen X needs to forget about Hillary Clinton: My generation is far too cynical about Bernie Sanders’ message
I’m beginning to dread weekends. Not because I hate sleeping in, going to yoga class, and hanging out with the people I love, but because idle hours tempt me to check Facebook. You see, we’ve got a little primary coming up here in New York, and all my friends are posting opinions and circulating articles. When I venture outside into my Brooklyn neighborhood, evidence of Bernie-mania is everywhere: signs, t-shirts, buttons. If Hillary Clinton is running for office this spring, Park Slope doesn’t know about it. Yet, many of my friends, people my own age, plan to vote for her even though as a candidate she leaves much to be desired (to put it lightly). My friends are even willing to admit as much, but it doesn't change their decision on the matter. That’s not to say that the Sanders supporters have no presence in my social media world. I’m a member of multiple Bernie-for-president groups. But when I engage with the senator’s passionate supporters online, I get the feeling that they are older than I am (references to the 1960s and the Grateful Dead abound) or they’re younger than I am (in their photos I see full heads of hair, none of it gray). "Where is Gen X?" I wonder. And I think I know: Bernie Sanders is promising a future to believe in, but my generation doesn’t feel comfortable believing anything—especially promises from politicians. I know what the statistics say: The older you are, the more likely you are to support Clinton. It’s somewhere around age 45 that you see Democratic voters drifting into the Clinton camp. At 47, I feel the tectonic plates of this generational shift happening right underneath my feet. The older women in my neighborhood sporting Bernie buttons are aberrations, I suppose. But what strikes me about these Baby Boomers is that they’re proud of their politics and they want to persuade others. They’re optimistic that a slogan on a t-shirt can spark a conversatio. They're confident that minds can be changed. Perhaps its because theirs is a generation that changed the world: Boomers were part of the civil rights movement, the women’s rights movement, the gay rights movement; they ended the war in Vietnam. Perhaps there are a good number of well-heeled members of that group who are voting for Clinton because they don’t want their retirement investments disturbed by the guy who has promised to shake up Wall Street. But from what I see, hippies who kept the faith want to continue to engage politically. They haven’t given up. Millennials aren’t giving up either. They’re the first generation in a long time to place their faith in protests and demonstrations. And it’s working: They ousted a university president, and have many more such people fearing for their jobs. Black Lives Matter has turned into a movement of real consequence. This is different from my generation’s experience. I realized this about a decade ago when I heard Congressman John Conyers speak as part of a panel on the possibility of impeaching George W. Bush. I had already futilely protested Bush twice: first, when the Supreme Court handed him the presidency, and again when he became intent on starting a pointless war in Iraq. My friends and I protested and protested and it seemed to change nothing. It felt as if the will of the people didn’t matter, and as if demonstrations didn’t work. It had been the same thing in the 1980s: College students built shantytowns, but universities continued to invest in South Africa's Apartheid regime. The American president of our youth, Ronald Reagan, had defied Berkeley student protesters as well as Cesar Chavez and his supporters. As Governor of California, Reagan imposed fees on college students to put them in their place, and he munched on grapes in open mockery of a United Farm Workers boycott. My friends and I wanted to combat evil, but evil just kept prevailing. This jerk went from being governor to becoming president -- and many of us had parents who voted for him. When we helped to elect a Democrat in 1992, we thought that the era of Reagan had, at last, come to an end. Instead, Bill Clinton carried Reagan’s legacy forward with harsh welfare “reform” and a celebrated trade deal that eviscerated the working class. He enraged liberals with his triangulation, and he took African-American voters for granted during his Sister Souljah moment. All the while, he bragged that he and his wife were two peas in a pod, a package deal. She did nothing to contradict this impression. What Conyers said as a panelist that night made me re-think all my beliefs about political activism. He said that he had lived through the civil rights movement and he knew that ordinary people could change the world. How odd: I had never thought that I or anyone like me could change the world. At that moment I realized that I had just had the bad luck to come of age during a fallow period. That didn’t mean that the political ferment of the 1960s couldn’t happen again. In fact, it became clear to me that night that, if anything, it was more likely than not to happen again. That’s how history works: It's cyclical. When I read articles like this one or this one, I appreciate the sense of resignation and frustration, but I think that Gen Xers may have some trouble seeing the big picture. I’ve experienced plenty of petty sexism in my life, and I wish Clinton’s critics would stop mocking her hair, her clothes, and her voice, and start examining her record on, say, Syria or Libya or Honduras. It’s not sexist to criticize her deeply troubling foreign-policy record, after all. Bernie Sanders took a lot of heat recently for saying she wasn’t “qualified” to be president. What I think he meant to say—and should have said—is that her vote on Iraq “disqualified" her. Because it has, at least for me. During the run-up to the war in Iraq, it was widely understood among ordinary New Yorkers that the case for going to war was complete bullshit. If I knew that Bush was lying, why wasn’t my senator smart enough to realize it? In fact, she was smart enough and she did realize it; she just didn’t want a “no” vote to come back to haunt her as she sought the presidency. (What a delicious irony that her calculation was so off-base and has been so damaging to her credibility.) You may say that this is all ancient history and that it feels very abstract. But it’s very current and very real if you live in, say, Baghdad rather than Brooklyn. Those of us living in relative safety here in the U.S. would do well to remember that. A lot of women my age don’t see things the way I do. I feel as if they’ve all forgotten how much British feminists despaired over Margaret Thatcher, another female leader who used militarism to demonstrate that she was tougher than most men, to somehow prove that she deserved to be in charge. It’s been a long time since Hillary wanted to embrace the feminist ideals of peace and equality; I think decades ago she decided that doing so would make her seem weak. Still, to my mind, Elizabeth Warren is an exemplary tough-as-nails female leader. Take on the banks and the entrenched power in this country and see what happens! It’s a much more authentic way of being brave and formidable than Hillary’s hawkishness, which after all relies mostly on the courage of others. We could have Bernie now and Warren or another Democratic woman in 4 or 8 years, but a lot of my friends have thrown up their hands and decided to settle for Hillary in 2016 because they think this is the only time we’ll ever have a chance to vote for a female president. We’re only at mid-life and yet we’ve given up on seeing another female candidate with Hillary’s level of name recognition. Throwing in the towel prematurely — that feels very Gen X to me. Thirty years ago, we raged against CIA-backed coups in Latin America, but now we feel resigned to imperialism when Secretary of State Clinton is in charge. We’ve apparently decided that’s just what governments do. The fact, is our protests back then did matter. We may think that our generation’s anti-Apartheid protests had little effect because South Africans threw off their own shackles. But even if they were the ones making sacrifices and courting danger, it did matter that they knew that the world was with them. I remember hearing an interview with Desmond Tutu years ago in which he said that he always felt confident that Apartheid would be defeated because he knew people in places as far away as California were praying for it to end. I may have to avoid Facebook for a while. The truth is, back in the 1980s I was the cynic among idealists. I don’t think I ever attended marches. At age 18, they seemed futile to me. People protested throughout the 1960s and 1970s. I took their many successes for granted and focused on the one big failure: the rise of Reagan. Bernie lived through the 1960s, got himself arrested at an anti-segregation protest, and eventually found himself by some miracle in the U.S. Congress I’m not cynical about his message because it is as Conyers said: Boomers know that peaceful revolution can happen in this country, even if it doesn’t generally happen overnight and without some struggle. This country desperately needs change and I’m not ready to give up and retreat back into my reflexive generational cynicism. We skeptical Gen Xers know better than any American generation that the emperor has no clothes. The question remains: What are we going to do about it?I’m beginning to dread weekends. Not because I hate sleeping in, going to yoga class, and hanging out with the people I love, but because idle hours tempt me to check Facebook. You see, we’ve got a little primary coming up here in New York, and all my friends are posting opinions and circulating articles. When I venture outside into my Brooklyn neighborhood, evidence of Bernie-mania is everywhere: signs, t-shirts, buttons. If Hillary Clinton is running for office this spring, Park Slope doesn’t know about it. Yet, many of my friends, people my own age, plan to vote for her even though as a candidate she leaves much to be desired (to put it lightly). My friends are even willing to admit as much, but it doesn't change their decision on the matter. That’s not to say that the Sanders supporters have no presence in my social media world. I’m a member of multiple Bernie-for-president groups. But when I engage with the senator’s passionate supporters online, I get the feeling that they are older than I am (references to the 1960s and the Grateful Dead abound) or they’re younger than I am (in their photos I see full heads of hair, none of it gray). "Where is Gen X?" I wonder. And I think I know: Bernie Sanders is promising a future to believe in, but my generation doesn’t feel comfortable believing anything—especially promises from politicians. I know what the statistics say: The older you are, the more likely you are to support Clinton. It’s somewhere around age 45 that you see Democratic voters drifting into the Clinton camp. At 47, I feel the tectonic plates of this generational shift happening right underneath my feet. The older women in my neighborhood sporting Bernie buttons are aberrations, I suppose. But what strikes me about these Baby Boomers is that they’re proud of their politics and they want to persuade others. They’re optimistic that a slogan on a t-shirt can spark a conversatio. They're confident that minds can be changed. Perhaps its because theirs is a generation that changed the world: Boomers were part of the civil rights movement, the women’s rights movement, the gay rights movement; they ended the war in Vietnam. Perhaps there are a good number of well-heeled members of that group who are voting for Clinton because they don’t want their retirement investments disturbed by the guy who has promised to shake up Wall Street. But from what I see, hippies who kept the faith want to continue to engage politically. They haven’t given up. Millennials aren’t giving up either. They’re the first generation in a long time to place their faith in protests and demonstrations. And it’s working: They ousted a university president, and have many more such people fearing for their jobs. Black Lives Matter has turned into a movement of real consequence. This is different from my generation’s experience. I realized this about a decade ago when I heard Congressman John Conyers speak as part of a panel on the possibility of impeaching George W. Bush. I had already futilely protested Bush twice: first, when the Supreme Court handed him the presidency, and again when he became intent on starting a pointless war in Iraq. My friends and I protested and protested and it seemed to change nothing. It felt as if the will of the people didn’t matter, and as if demonstrations didn’t work. It had been the same thing in the 1980s: College students built shantytowns, but universities continued to invest in South Africa's Apartheid regime. The American president of our youth, Ronald Reagan, had defied Berkeley student protesters as well as Cesar Chavez and his supporters. As Governor of California, Reagan imposed fees on college students to put them in their place, and he munched on grapes in open mockery of a United Farm Workers boycott. My friends and I wanted to combat evil, but evil just kept prevailing. This jerk went from being governor to becoming president -- and many of us had parents who voted for him. When we helped to elect a Democrat in 1992, we thought that the era of Reagan had, at last, come to an end. Instead, Bill Clinton carried Reagan’s legacy forward with harsh welfare “reform” and a celebrated trade deal that eviscerated the working class. He enraged liberals with his triangulation, and he took African-American voters for granted during his Sister Souljah moment. All the while, he bragged that he and his wife were two peas in a pod, a package deal. She did nothing to contradict this impression. What Conyers said as a panelist that night made me re-think all my beliefs about political activism. He said that he had lived through the civil rights movement and he knew that ordinary people could change the world. How odd: I had never thought that I or anyone like me could change the world. At that moment I realized that I had just had the bad luck to come of age during a fallow period. That didn’t mean that the political ferment of the 1960s couldn’t happen again. In fact, it became clear to me that night that, if anything, it was more likely than not to happen again. That’s how history works: It's cyclical. When I read articles like this one or this one, I appreciate the sense of resignation and frustration, but I think that Gen Xers may have some trouble seeing the big picture. I’ve experienced plenty of petty sexism in my life, and I wish Clinton’s critics would stop mocking her hair, her clothes, and her voice, and start examining her record on, say, Syria or Libya or Honduras. It’s not sexist to criticize her deeply troubling foreign-policy record, after all. Bernie Sanders took a lot of heat recently for saying she wasn’t “qualified” to be president. What I think he meant to say—and should have said—is that her vote on Iraq “disqualified" her. Because it has, at least for me. During the run-up to the war in Iraq, it was widely understood among ordinary New Yorkers that the case for going to war was complete bullshit. If I knew that Bush was lying, why wasn’t my senator smart enough to realize it? In fact, she was smart enough and she did realize it; she just didn’t want a “no” vote to come back to haunt her as she sought the presidency. (What a delicious irony that her calculation was so off-base and has been so damaging to her credibility.) You may say that this is all ancient history and that it feels very abstract. But it’s very current and very real if you live in, say, Baghdad rather than Brooklyn. Those of us living in relative safety here in the U.S. would do well to remember that. A lot of women my age don’t see things the way I do. I feel as if they’ve all forgotten how much British feminists despaired over Margaret Thatcher, another female leader who used militarism to demonstrate that she was tougher than most men, to somehow prove that she deserved to be in charge. It’s been a long time since Hillary wanted to embrace the feminist ideals of peace and equality; I think decades ago she decided that doing so would make her seem weak. Still, to my mind, Elizabeth Warren is an exemplary tough-as-nails female leader. Take on the banks and the entrenched power in this country and see what happens! It’s a much more authentic way of being brave and formidable than Hillary’s hawkishness, which after all relies mostly on the courage of others. We could have Bernie now and Warren or another Democratic woman in 4 or 8 years, but a lot of my friends have thrown up their hands and decided to settle for Hillary in 2016 because they think this is the only time we’ll ever have a chance to vote for a female president. We’re only at mid-life and yet we’ve given up on seeing another female candidate with Hillary’s level of name recognition. Throwing in the towel prematurely — that feels very Gen X to me. Thirty years ago, we raged against CIA-backed coups in Latin America, but now we feel resigned to imperialism when Secretary of State Clinton is in charge. We’ve apparently decided that’s just what governments do. The fact, is our protests back then did matter. We may think that our generation’s anti-Apartheid protests had little effect because South Africans threw off their own shackles. But even if they were the ones making sacrifices and courting danger, it did matter that they knew that the world was with them. I remember hearing an interview with Desmond Tutu years ago in which he said that he always felt confident that Apartheid would be defeated because he knew people in places as far away as California were praying for it to end. I may have to avoid Facebook for a while. The truth is, back in the 1980s I was the cynic among idealists. I don’t think I ever attended marches. At age 18, they seemed futile to me. People protested throughout the 1960s and 1970s. I took their many successes for granted and focused on the one big failure: the rise of Reagan. Bernie lived through the 1960s, got himself arrested at an anti-segregation protest, and eventually found himself by some miracle in the U.S. Congress I’m not cynical about his message because it is as Conyers said: Boomers know that peaceful revolution can happen in this country, even if it doesn’t generally happen overnight and without some struggle. This country desperately needs change and I’m not ready to give up and retreat back into my reflexive generational cynicism. We skeptical Gen Xers know better than any American generation that the emperor has no clothes. The question remains: What are we going to do about it?
April 10, 2016
“It felt like the entire world was coming out of my d*ck”: For purveyors of “guybrators,” fleshlights, and other male masturbators, business is booming
My husband is a hapless victim of my sex writing career. For the first few years we were together—before I shifted my focus to the science of sexual health, collaborating with counselors and researchers and educators—I dragged him to launch parties for porn flicks and erotic art gallery openings and, every time he merely wanted to enjoy a simple roll in the hay, I produced a new sex toy with a flourish, a product I was reviewing for this or that publication.
One time, we even did a photo shoot with Women's Health after testing out and reporting upon a particular couples' toy. I couldn't help but feel guilty when a coworker of his discovered the published article while flipping through the magazine at work. By the end of the day, it had circulated around the entire office.
I felt doubly guilty because he didn't even want all of those bells and whistles. He just wanted me. The toys I brought into the bedroom for research purposes didn't do anything for him. "It just feels weird," he said when I pressed him for details. I was disappointed. The very first time I had used a clitoral vibrator, it had been a revelation.
The past 15 years have seen the evolution of the vibrator from novelty sex toy to "personal massager" to well-designed piece of high-end gadgetry—gadgetry that has become especially proficient at bringing women to orgasm. And it makes sense. Sometimes, women need a little extra help during partner play to experience arousal. Sometimes, a toy can do a better job than a finger during a round of solo sex. And after all, we have that pesky orgasm gap to bridge. According to the National Survey of Sexual Health and Behavior, conducted back in 2009, 91 percent of men said they climaxed during their last sexual encounter while only 64 percent of women could report the same. Don't we deserve a little extra help?
Still, much more recently, we have seen the rise of the "guybrator" and other male masturbators, toys for men that go far beyond the minimalism of products such as the Fleshlight. To be honest, I've found this trend perplexing. Do guys need extra help achieving orgasm? Also, with my guy, toys haven't enhanced sex for anyone but me. So what gives?
A Man's First Sex Toy
It seems that, for many men, the gateway to solo sex toy use is partner play. In a 2009 paper published in The Journal of Sexual Medicine, researchers found that, of the men they surveyed—about half of whom had used a vibrator—most had used them with their partners during foreplay and/or intercourse. (Only 16.6 percent had used them during solo masturbation.) When men were asked what led them to incorporate vibrators into their intimate lives in the first place, the most common reasons were wanting to please one's partner, or wanting to aid them in achieving orgasm.
Such is the case for Paolo William, a 51-year-old straight male who has used vibrators and other toys with his partners for at least 25 years. Though he's tried the Fleshlight, in addition to several prostate stimulators, most of his toy usage is within the context of partner play. "I am a pleaser, so I like toys that she likes," says William. When asked whether toys enhance his own sexual experience, or if they are primarily used in the service of his partner's pleasure, he says that both are true. "I get off watching her get off," he says.
And William certainly isn't an anomaly. "In terms of men's attitudes toward vibrators," says Tristan Weedmark, We-Vibe's Global Passion Ambassador, "in actuality, more men than women buy vibrators. And so the notion that men are intimidated by them is a myth." In fact, in looking more closely at the JSM survey, while 24.2 percent of men reported having used a vibrator in the past year, a whopping 44.8 percent had tried them at some point over the entire course of their lives.
So Where Has the Rise of Male-Specific Sex Toys Come From?
"Over the last decade," says Weedmark, "there has been an increase in sexual education, which has prompted higher acceptance and comfort around the subject of sexual pleasure and toys. Women and men alike have become more at ease talking about what they want, and they are more open to conversations around ways they can enhance their sexual experience."
And with this ease has come a greater understanding of what has the potential to feel good. "My clients who use vibrators are often surprised by the way they change the sexual experience," says Dr. Jess, Astroglide's Resident Sexologist. "It's not just about enhancement, but about learning to derive and experience sexual pleasure from parts of their bodies aside from their penises. They use them on their perineums (behind the balls) and they report that their orgasms become more intense; rather than simply feeling concentrated pleasure in their groin, they find that they feel orgasmic sensations in other parts of their bodies, from their nipples to their fingertips."
This dawning realization of sexual possibility was also evident in a study conducted by researchers in Canada. For the purposes of this study, participants were given a couples' vibrator that they were asked to incorporate into their sex play over the course of six weeks. In the end, 71.4 percent of men reported enjoying the vibrator, saying it enhanced sexual pleasure, while 87.8 percent said they planned to keep using the vibrator after the study was over.
And these accounts are confirmed when I speak to Billy Procida, stand-up comedian and host of "The Manwhore Podcast." Procida has used toys during partner play, but usually prefers to enjoy them on his own. "If I stimulate myself underneath the frenulum for long enough," says Procida, "it definitely draws out the process. The sensations build. I do it when I feel I have the patience for it. And then, maybe 15 to 25 minutes later, I have the most eruptive orgasm."
The first time Procida experimented with this type of stimulation, he used his finger. "It feels like you're exploding," he says. "It felt like the entire world was coming out of my dick." Later on, he even tried using a small, bullet vibrator, which enhanced the sensations, but which was difficult to keep in place. But when Hot Octopuss, the creators of the Pulse, sponsored his podcast and sent him a free unit, he says it took things to the next level.
And other sex toy purveyors are following suit. "Male sex toys, which have always been as abundant as female sex toys, were left somewhat behind," says Steve Thomson, CMO of LELO, a designer of luxury pleasure objects. "The women's luxury market improved drastically. The male luxury market stagnated. 2014, though, saw a kind of critical mass occur, in which men began demanding the same kind of quality and design from their pleasure products as women."
So in 2015, LELO released a series of vibrating prostate massagers, which immediately became among their bestselling products.
"There has been a rise in men experimenting with all types of sex toys," confirms Leo Debois, co-founder of adamstoybox.com, which opened at the end of 2013. "Specifically, we see men are attracted more to experiencing the prostate—it's like they just found out about it! Aside from gay men, who already know how it feels to stimulate the prostate, straight men are actively seeking out ways to get more out of sex, and they are doing this by opening up to the use of sex toys with their partners. It's kind of like a sexual liberalization for men."
And even smaller operations are getting in on the action. "My entry into the male masturbation product market was primarily a business one, but also one supported by an acute interest in and knowledge of human sexuality," says Brian Sloan, the creator of the Autoblow 2, which he funded via Indiegogo back in 2014. "The female toy market even in 2008 had many innovative products, but the male side mostly consisted of hand-held artificial vaginas. I knew that robotics were changing other industries and thought that, if I applied similar principles to male masturbators, I'd have a product men would buy and enjoy."
So he created something that was similar in design to other sleeve-based products, but which users did not have to move up and down themselves. "I set out to create a product that not only felt better than the existing handheld products but, most importantly, operated automatically," says Sloan, "so the guy could have the experience of something happening to him, without him doing it himself. Both psychologically and physiologically, the sensation of something being done to you is, I think, in most men's minds, superior to doing something to yourself."
Across this vast breadth of male sex toys, it seems toy developers are onto something. Business has been booming for guybrators, prostate massagers, and even sleeves. LELO in particular reports that, in 2015, sales of male anal pleasure objects increased by close to 200 percent.
"What drives this market?" asks Sloan. "That is the simplest question to answer: men's natural urge to ejaculate."
What Are the Far-Reaching Implications for Male Sex Play?
So should every guy out there rush over to his local sex shop and pick up something that will poke, prod and buzz him toward orgasm? Should I buy my husband a male masturbator for our wedding anniversary? Should I push him to explore this form of solo sex when it seems he'd much prefer to keep things simple? Is he totally missing out?
"With particular reference to male masturbators, or 'sleeves,'" says Thomson, "or whatever name they might go by, they may well feel 'weird' to one man, realistic to another, and better than the real thing to yet another. What's more, 'weird' doesn’t necessarily imply 'bad.' … But male masturbators represent only one segment of the men's sex toy market. There are countless other ways for men to express their sexualities, and any number of pleasure products to do it with."
And that means they may choose not to use any product at all.
Take that, monogamy! We’re actually hard-wired for polygamy, which helps explain why so many cheat
Infants have their infancy, and adults? Adultery. Even though monogamy is mandated throughout the Western world, infidelity is universal. Revelations of marital infidelity occur regularly, often among the most prominent individuals—most of them men—who have the most to lose: Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich, Jesse Jackson, Mark Sanford, Elliot Spitzer, Tiger Woods. The list is enormous and is “updated” almost daily. In this chapter, I will examine the somewhat divergent motivations of men and women when it comes to infidelity—pointing out that in both cases, the underlying causes derive from internal whisperings of fitness maximization, underpinned by the fundamental biology expressed in our polygamous heritage. In short, when adultery happens—and it happens quite often—what’s going on is that people are behaving as polygynists (if men) or polyandrists (if women), in a culturally defined context of ostensible monogamy. Adultery, infidelity, or “cheating” are only meaningful given a relationship that is otherwise supposed to be monogamous. A polygynously married man—in any of the numerous cultures that permit such an arrangement—wasn’t an adulterer when he had sex with more than one of his wives. (As candidate Barack Obama explained in a somewhat different context, “That was the point.”) By the same token, a polyandrously married Tre-ba woman from Tibet isn’t an adulteress when she has sex with her multiple husbands. Another way of looking at this: when people of either gender act on their polygamous inclinations while living in a monogamous tradition, they are being unfaithful to their sociocultural commitment, but not to their biology. “Variability,” wrote Christian apologist G. K. Chesterton, “is one of the virtues of a woman. It avoids the crude requirement of polygamy. So long as you have one good wife you are sure to have a spiritual harem.” The problem—for Chesterton and others—is that many (perhaps most) men want a secular one. When describing the basic biology of male–female differences, we considered the Coolidge Effect. There is a large body of literature commenting on it, and on the tendency for men in particular to equate monogamy with monotony. Lord Byron wondered “how the devil is it that fresh features/Have such a charm for us poor human creatures?” Speaking more delicately, W. S. Gilbert, in "Trial by Jury," alluded to the flip side of the male fondness for variety with the knowing line, “Love unchanged will cloy.” Three hundred years earlier, Shakespeare had described Cleopatra as follows: “Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety.” But then, Cleopatra was supposed to have been remarkable precisely because by contrast, “other women cloy the appetites they feed.” Once more, the ultimate mechanism of all this “cloying” is likely to be found in the adaptive advantage gained by turning some proportion of male sexual energy toward new exploits and thus, more potential evolutionary success. As to its proximate mechanism, we can only guess. At the level of brain cells and neurochemicals, we do know that repeated stimulation can result in a degree of insensitivity—the flip side of attachment. It is therefore possible that something happens with respect to sexual enthusiasm analogous to the habituation that occurs with, say, the constant hum of a refrigerator motor: after a time, people habituate to the noise and only notice it when it stops! Thus, perhaps after a prolonged sexual association (perhaps weeks, months, even years) brain cells—and male brain cells in particular—might simply become habituated: that is, saturated with neurotransmitters, or refractory to them. Here is yet another—and, I announce with regret, the last—extended quotation from the estimable and curmudgeonly Mr. Mencken, this time elaborating on the boredom that can accompany monogamy, and how it might be assuaged:
Monogamous marriage, by its very conditions . . . forces the two contracting parties into an intimacy that is too persistent and unmitigated; they are in contact at too many points, and too steadily. By and by all the mystery of the relation is gone, and they stand in the unsexed position of brother and sister.
. . . A husband begins by kissing a pretty girl, his wife; it is pleasant to have her so handy and so willing. He ends by making Machiavellian efforts to avoid kissing the every day sharer of his meals, books, bath towels, pocketbook, relatives, ambitions, secrets, malaises and business: a proceeding about as romantic as having his boots blacked. The thing is too horribly dismal for words. Not all the native sentimentalism of man can overcome the distaste and boredom that get into it. Not all the histrionic capacity of woman can attach any appearance of gusto and spontaneity to it.
[O]nce the adventurous descends to the habitual, it takes on an offensive and degrading character. The intimate approach, to give genuine joy, must be a concession, a feat of persuasion, a victory; once it loses that character it loses everything. Such a destructive conversion is effected by the average monogamous marriage. It breaks down all mystery and reserve, for how can mystery and reserve survive the use of the same hot water bag and a joint concern about butter and egg bills? What remains, at least on the husband’s side, is esteem—the feeling one has for an amiable aunt. And confidence—the emotion evoked by a lawyer, a dentist or a fortune-teller. And habit—the thing which makes it possible to eat the same breakfast every day, and to windup one’s watch regularly, and to earn a living.
[One might] prevent this stodgy dephlogistication of marriage by interrupting its course—that is, by separating the parties now and then, so that neither will become too familiar and commonplace to the other. By this means, . . . curiosity will be periodically revived, and there will be a chance for personality to expand a cappella, and so each reunion will have in it something of the surprise, the adventure and the virtuous satanry of the honeymoon. The husband will not come back to precisely the same wife that he parted from, and the wife will not welcome precisely the same husband. Even supposing them to have gone on substantially as if together, they will have gone on out of sight and hearing of each other. Thus each will find the other, to some extent at least, a stranger, and hence a bit challenging, and hence a bit charming. The scheme . . . has been tried often, and with success. It is, indeed, a familiar observation that the happiest couples are those who are occasionally separated, and the fact has been embalmed in the trite maxim that absence makes the heart grow fonder. Perhaps not actually fonder, but at any rate more tolerant, more curious, more eager. Two difficulties, however, stand in the way of the widespread adoption of the remedy. One lies in its costliness: the average couple cannot afford a double establishment, even temporarily. The other lies in the fact that it inevitably arouses the envy and ill-nature of those who cannot adopt it, and so causes a gabbling of scandal. The world invariably suspects the worst. Let man and wife separate to save their happiness from suffocation in the kitchen, the dining room and the connubial chamber, and it will immediately conclude that the corpse is already laid out in the drawing-room.
Obviously, a fondness for sexual variety can lead to adultery. Just as obviously, however, it doesn’t have to. But as the famous team of sex researchers led by Dr. Alfred Kinsey pointed outMost males can immediately understand why most males want extramarital coitus. Although many of them refrain from engaging in such activity because they consider it morally unacceptable or socially undesirable, even such abstinent individuals can usually understand that sexual variety, new situations, and new partners might provide satisfactions which are no longer found in coitus which has been confined for some period of years to a single sexual partner. . . . On the other hand, many females find it difficult to understand why any male who is happily married should want to have coitus with any female other than his wife.
Recall the comical dialog between Anna and the King of Siam. This man–woman disparity is not simply because society has typically sought to repress female sexual desire (although it has, and for reasons that are also consistent with biology) but because most women do not experience heightened lust simply upon being presented with a new, anonymous partner. Again, at the ultimate, evolutionary level this is almost certainly because a new partner as such is unlikely to enhance a woman’s reproductive success; and so, women have not been outfitted with a comparable “Mrs. Coolidge effect.” Certainly, a woman is capable of sexual intercourse with new and different men—sometimes, as in the case of prostitutes, many different men in succession—but this is quite different from being inspired to do so by the very newness of the partner. Indeed, the fact of sexual variety is itself cited by prostitutes as one of the emotionally deadening aspects of their work. Nevertheless, men have not cornered the market on infidelity. If nothing else, for every adulterous man there must be at least one sexually willing woman—although this individual need not be married herself. We know that women’s sexual inclinations are not simply the converse of men’s, with utter monogamous fidelity the opposed mirror image of randy male infidelity. But we also know that because of the greater physical size, strength, and potential violence of men, women are inclined to be especially secretive when it comes to their philandering. Biologists have long known that monogamy is rare in the animal world, especially among our fellow mammals. But we didn’t have any idea how truly rare it is until DNA fingerprinting arrived on the scene and was applied to animals in the mid-1990s. Previously there had been hints, but these were largely ignored. For example, in an attempt during the 1970s to reduce excessive numbers of blackbirds without killing them, a substantial number of territorial males were surgically sterilized. To the surprise of the researchers, many female blackbirds—mated to these vasectomized males—produced perfectly normal offspring. Evidently, there was hanky-panky going on within seemingly sedate blackbird society. Nonetheless, for decades it has been the received wisdom among ornithologists that 92% of bird species were monogamous. Over time, however, a new realization dawned: social monogamy—in which a male and a female court, spend time together, and set up joint housekeeping—is not the same as sexual monogamy, that is, limiting copulation to one’s social partner. Not that members of a socially monogamous pair don’t have intercourse with each other, it’s just that often they also do so with others. Hence the term Extra-Pair Copulations (EPCs) was born, now a standard concept in animal behavior research, as studies employing DNA fingerprinting have revealed, time and again, that even those species that seemed devotedly monogamous were only socially so, and sexually? Not so much. Depending on the species, it is common to find that from 10% to 60% of avian offspring are not fathered by the mother’s social partner. Biologists were not surprised to find evidence that males are prone to sexual gallivanting. After all, even though the basic biology of sperm makers doesn’t quite mandate searching for and when possible indulging in multiple sexual partners, it clearly inclines males of most species in that direction. What was perplexing, however, was the finding that females—even those in apparently stable domestic unions—were similarly disposed. It’s just that they are more secretive about it. As a result, biologists (such as me) would spend hundreds of hours carefully watching the behavior of a mated pair of birds without seeing any indication of sexual infidelity by the female— not necessarily because she was sexually faithful to her mate but because she was hiding her EPCs: not from researchers, but from her social partner. Why was she doing this? It was for reasons not dissimilar from why socially monogamous human beings are comparably secretive when it comes to their own EPCs. Evidence has accumulated from a variety of animal species that if and when the male finds evidence that “his” female has been associating with other males, he is prone to do the animal equivalent of refusing to provide child support: no longer provisioning or defending the offspring, presumably because they might not be genetically his. We have already considered male–male violence, especially in the context of a man encountering his wife’s paramour. Although male–male violence is also found in animals, it is rare for nonhuman males to attack their mate upon discovering her infidelity. Most commonly, he punishes her—biologically, he defends his own fitness—by abandoning the “bastard” offspring, a response that can be devastating for the success of those offspring, and hence, for the “unfaithful spouse.” This pattern has been found in mammals as well as birds. And although there do not seem to be any data dealing explicitly with the effect of suspected adultery on divorce and disputed child support in human beings, common sense suggests a close connection. Not all organisms are equally prone to EPCs, if only because some species don’t form pair bonds in the first place. Others, such as the flatworm parasite, Diplozoon paradoxum, found in freshwater fish, are strictly monogamous: male and female encounter each other while adolescents, after which their bodies literally fuse together, until death do they not part. (Hence the genus name, Diplozoon, indicating two animals, while paradoxum is self-explanatory.) Other animals are only sexually receptive for very brief intervals, greatly reducing the opportunity for sexual exploration; female giant pandas, for example, are only in estrus for two to three days per year. Human beings, on the other hand—women no less than men—are endowed with 24/7/365 sexual potential, providing immense opportunities: for fitness enhancement or diminution, exciting adventure as well as miserable heartbreak. There are remarkably few reliable DNA data on the actual frequency of human extrapair paternity, despite the fact that such testing is now widely available. Maybe this paucity shouldn’t be surprising because of possible reluctance on the part of most men to question their wife’s fidelity. As a result, the available information tends to be biased toward circumstances in which there is liable to be higher than average extrapair paternity, such as divorce proceedings, when child support is in dispute. In any event, the frequency of human marriages in which the husband is not the genetic father of the mother’s children range from as low as 0.03 to 11.8%. * It is one thing to understand why females—of pretty much all species—hide their EPCs from their social partners, especially if biparental cooperation is expected when it comes to rearing offspring. More mysterious is this: given the potential costs of being caught, why do females engage in any EPCs at all? Bear in mind that because eggs are produced in very small numbers, whereas sperm are astoundingly abundant, females very rarely need to copulate with more than one male to be fertilized. It turns out that biologists have identified a number of potential benefits accruing to a “cheating” female, with the specifics varying with the species and sometimes with individual circumstances. Here are a few of the major fitness payoffs thus far recognized: Increase the genetic variety of their offspring Obtain more desirable (i.e., fitness-enhancing) genes for their offspring than can be provided by their social mate Obtain additional resources, notably food, from their “lovers” Enhance their social status by affiliating with a male who is more dominant than their current partner Purchase “infanticide insurance” by inducing other males to behave parentally toward the females’ offspring Explore the potential of switching from a less desirable to a more desirable partner One of the enduring mysteries of animal behavior and evolution has been why some species show considerable sexual dimorphism even though their primary mating system is socially monogamous. For example, a neotropical bird known as the resplendent quetzal is truly resplendent, so much so that it is the national bird of Guatemala, with its image on that country’s flag and coat of arms. But only the male is endowed with resplendently shimmering feathers and a dramatically elongated tail; female quetzals are relatively drab. Now that even social monogamy is revealed to be rife with polygynous and polyandrous departures, we can speculate as to the basis of such dimorphism, which might well owe its existence to the fact that the male quetzal’s resplendence, for example, likely enables him, at least on occasion, to achieve additional matings outside his seemingly monogamous union. There is no reason why similar considerations (obtaining additional resources, better genes, etc.) couldn’t motivate human females, too, although in the case of women, other factors could be involved as well—which typically are not assumed to operate among animals. It is worth noting that these causes are all “proximate,” although they each have straightforward ultimate underpinnings. Moreover, although biologists have had less reason to seek explanations for EPCs by men than by women (because the biology of sperm making provides more than enough evolutionary rationale), the following considerations could apply to both sexes: Retaliating for infidelity by one’s partner Responding to other sources of anger with one’s partner Short- or long-term fascination or interest in a particular lover Seeking sexual or social gratification not otherwise available in the primary relationship A bottom-line, take-home message is that when sexual infidelity occurs among human beings—and whether the “infidel” is a woman or man—it is because a fundamental, biologically generated, polygamous inclination (polygyny in the case of men, polyandry in the case of women) has broken through the existing monogamous social structure. Not surprisingly, men consistently report higher levels of sexual infidelity in marriage than do women. This, in turn, conforms to the biology of maleness versus femaleness discussed earlier, and with such findings as a study that encompassed 52 different countries and about 16,000 respondents, and found that men consistently expressed interest in having more sexual partners than did women. But a male–female difference in adultery could also be due, at least in part, to the near-universal double standard in which men are socially encouraged to be more sexually adventurous and to seek multiple partners so as to be seen as “real men,” whereas women who are acknowledged to be similarly inclined are often denigrated as “loose,” “easy,” or “sluts.” Some men, as well, may be liable to exaggerate their number of infidelities, just as some women may be inclined to understate theirs. It is pretty much a cross-cultural universal that men intimidate their spouses to refrain from extramarital sex, punishing them—often severely and not uncommonly, lethally—should they do so. Aside from their internal motivations, women may be most prone to “cheating” under the following circumstances: When they have the support of their own relatives, which is especially likely in societies that are “matrilocal”—that is, when women live near their extended families—as opposed to “patrilocal” societies in which following marriage, the bride moves in with her husband’s family. Most human societies are patrilocal, which means that a wife is surrounded by her husband’s kin. This makes it easier for a man to keep tabs on her, and itself facilitates a double standard. It is quite possible that patrilocality became the most common marital living arrangement precisely because it serves to discourage a wife’s infidelity, thereby reassuring husbands. When wives don’t rely very heavily on their husbands for material support, protection, and assistance in childrearing. Cross-cultural studies have found that among societies in which women get most of their sustenance from relatives, rather than from their husbands, they are more likely to have extramarital affairs and are also more prone to divorce. When their husband is less “desirable” than others who are sexually available, with “desirability” assessed either biologically or socioeconomically. Interestingly, something comparable occurs in at least one bird species. Research on EPCs in black-capped chickadees found that females were more likely to “cheat” with males who are socially dominant, and especially when their current mate is relatively subordinate. Where females have the opportunity to learn the relative rank of all neighboring males with respect to her own mate, females regularly pursue the strategy of seeking out EPCs with superior partners. Although lower-ranked males may suffer temporary losses through the EPCs of their mates, each male has some chance of attaining alpha rank if he lives long enough. Once at alpha rank, a male will likely engage in more EPCs himself, while having a mate that will no longer seek EPCs elsewhere. Not just chickadees cheat: a study of sexual behavior in modern China found that women whose husbands’ income was lower than the median were more likely to engage in extramarital sex. Even in societies that explicitly permit extramarital sex (and there are a few), infidelity is nearly always carefully circumscribed and is not simply permitted willy-nilly. A now-classic review of human sexuality from a cross-cultural perspective concluded thatWith few exceptions . . . every society that approves extra-mateship liaisons specifies and delimits them in one way or another. There are some peoples, for example, who generally forbid extra-mateship liaisons except in the case of siblings-in-law. This is true among the Siriono, where a man may have liaisons with his mate’s sisters and with his brother’s wives and their sisters. Similarly, a woman has sexual access to her husband’s brothers and the husbands of her sisters. . . . In some societies extra-mateship liaisons take the form of “wife lending” or wife exchange. Generally, the situation is one in which a man is granted sexual access to the mate of another man only on special occasions.
. . . Another type of permission in respect to extra-mateship liaisons appears in some societies in the form of ceremonial or festive license . . . [ranging] from harvest festivals to mortuary feasts.
Human sexual practices are notably diverse, but mostly with regard to rules about which partners are suitable, permissible, desirable, recommended, or prohibited, sometimes including details as to frequency of coitus and potential physical positions. But hopes, or—in some cases—fears that the primordial human condition is one of bonobo-like sexual promiscuity are simply not justified by anything ever theorized by biologists or found by anthropologists. On the other hand, there is a growing body of experimental evidence to suggest that women partake of a “dual-mating strategy,” consisting of both long-term and short-term tactics. The former involves establishing a bonded relationship with a consistent partner, typically someone able to invest sufficiently in offspring and also predisposed to do so, whereas the latter calls for responding positively—especially when ovulating—to men who are literally perceived as “sexy,” which is to say, possessing good genes. Evidence for this dual strategy comes largely from a diversity of studies showing that when they are most fertile, women are especially predisposed to prefer images, sounds, even smells arising from men who are higher in testosterone, who possess greater body symmetry—in short, who are likely to offer “good genes.” At the same time, it must be emphasized that many of these findings involve laboratory assessments, and their highly artificial conditions may or may not reflect what people really do. Technical questions about the details of these studies go beyond the scope of this book; suffice it to say that they appear to be effectively resolved. To put it baldly and admittedly with some oversimplification, there appears to be at least a faint female predisposition to marry the more androgynous, “good father” type but dally with the bad boy stud. It is nonetheless possible that human physiology gives a positive payoff to couples remaining together, not just long enough to produce a child, but to have achieved a level of physical intimacy along the way, which would predispose against the short-term mating strategy just described. Preeclampsia, a form of hypertension, results from immunological disparity between mother and fetus; it can be a serious complication of pregnancy and occurs roughly 10% of the time. The risk of preeclampsia decreases with increased duration of a woman’s sexual relationship with a given partner, evidently because the woman’s immune system becomes increasingly habituated to the seminal products of a given man and therefore less liable to a potentially dangerous immune response when she is carrying an embryo that contains 50% of his genes. If this scenario is valid, then mating with a new, short-term partner and promptly producing a child would increase the risk of this complication. This, in turn, would tend to mitigate against the adaptiveness of a “dual mating strategy.” As already described, among some Amazonian peoples in particular, polyandry is facilitated by a belief in “partible paternity,” the biologically inaccurate but superficially logical notion that a child can have multiple fathers, consisting of the men who had intercourse with the mother during her pregnancy. It is probably significant that the majority of these societies are matrilocal (husbands reside with the wife’s relatives), so the women have social support. This is important because even when paternity is thought to be partible, human sexual jealousy is such that the woman’s designated husband is typically unenthusiastic about sharing his paternity as well as his wife. When it comes to the Seven Deadly Sins, cavorting along with anger, greed, sloth, pride, lust, and gluttony, we find “envy” (in Latin, invidia). Not “ jealousy,” although in fact jealousy is a whole lot more deadly than envy. Jealousy is also a whole lot more biologically motivated. Jealousy and envy are close, but not identical. A useful distinction is that “Envy concerns what you would like to have but don’t possess, whereas jealousy concerns what you have and do not want to lose.” You might be envious of someone who has a rich, attractive spouse, but jealous if your own partner seems to be interested in her or him. You could envy the person who “has” this spouse, but at the same time, you don’t want to lose the partner you currently have, and would be jealous if he or she were unfaithful. An evolutionary perspective shows that this anxiety about possible loss is, at balance, worry about losing fitness, something that is particularly acute if it involves loss of an otherwise reproductively enhancing relationship. It doesn’t matter, by the way, if you and your partner have firmly decided not to have children, or if secure birth control measures were followed during any EPCs; just as people are to some degree biologically inclined toward polygamy—for themselves—they are equally predisposed against similar inclinations by their partners. Our biology operates largely independent of our cognitive intent, just as women ovulate and men produce sperm, whether or not they intend to become parents. Sinful or not, sexual jealousy is certainly real, and is particularly evoked in the aftermath of real or imagined adultery. It is also found in women no less than men, although for perfectly “good” biological reason, the male version tends to be more cross-culturally prevalent as well as more violent. In his recent book, Jealousy, classicist Peter Toohey has unearthed a number of ancient imprecations reflecting male jealousy, including this one from second-century Egypt in which a betrayed husband begs the gods to “let burning heat consume the sexual parts of [his wife], including her vulva, her members until she leaves the household.” We can be quite confident that Homo sapiens did not evolve in a social environment like that of chimpanzees or bonobos in which lots of sperm competition took place. For one thing, our testis size isn’t anything like that of chimps or bonobos. In addition, the anatomical structure of human sperm argues strongly against our species having a multimale, multifemale sexual heritage. On the other hand, however, we are provided with substantial amounts of sexual jealousy, not just in the Judeo-Christian West, but cross-culturally, a behavioral adaptation that presumably wouldn’t exist if it weren’t called for. The Ten Commandments are clear when it comes to not coveting your neighbor’s wife; and although it is intriguing that no comparable warning proscribes coveting your neighbor’s husband, there is little doubt that sexual covetousness—by either sex—is more risky than the simple material kind. Coveting your neighbor’s lawn mower may be bad, but in the annals of covetousness and its consequences, it could be worse. In the Draconian precepts of Islamic sharia law, an adulterer can readily lose his or her life, whereas a thief will lose only his hand. There are some—albeit rare—human societies in which married women are granted social permission to engage in extramarital sex, mostly with a sibling of their spouse. However, I don’t know of any human groups in which women are granted more sexual freedom than are men. For much of human history, adultery was defined by a pronounced double standard: sexual relations between a married woman and a man other than her husband. Such cases have been—and still are—widely seen as offenses against the woman’s husband. By contrast, if a husband has sexual relations with an unattached woman or with a prostitute, the majority of cultures do not consider this adultery … so long as the woman in question isn’t married to another man. There is a genetic factor—actually, an array of them—that predispose toward marital infidelity in human beings. A version of the dopamine receptor gene (DRD4), occurs on chromosome 11 and is found in all people, although individuals vary in how many times this gene is repeated: from 2 to 11. People with 7 or more repeats of DRD4 turn out to be represented in greater proportion than would be expected due to chance alone among those engaging in extramarital sex. However, this isn’t an “infidelity gene” but rather a genetic predisposition toward greater sensation seeking. One might expect that individuals with multiple repeats of DRD4 would also be more likely to go skydiving, or to enjoy roller coasters. Nor is it that they necessarily have a higher sex drive, or a genetic proclivity to extramarital sexual exploits as such; rather, they crave novelty. It is one thing to insist on something new for dinner every night, quite another to insist on a new lover. One way of conceptualizing the problem—without explicitly invoking biology—is that such behavior violates what in the Western tradition is known as “social contract theory.” The idea is fundamental to much political philosophy, including the work of Hugo Grotius, Thomas Hobbes, and especially John Locke, whose Second Treatise of Government (1698) laid out the proposition that people agree to live convivially in a social unit—as large as a nation-state or as small as a domestic family—by forgoing certain individualistic options to gain other benefits, based on cooperation and shared responsibilities. Just as government “derives its just powers from the consent of the governed” (a basic principle employed a century and a half later by the framers of the US Constitution), marriages derive their legitimacy and stability from the consent of the participants. And one of the most important such consensual necessities is sexual fidelity. The husband–wife sociosexual contract is thus the governmental social contract writ small. Under its terms, and taking a hard-eyed look at its contractual aspects, women provide men with a guarantee of their sexual fidelity as well as a partner for regular intercourse along with other shared domestic payoffs, while men provide women with resources, protection, and assistance in childrearing. Along with a mutual sharing of genes. Although this traditional contract was—and still is—unfair in its implied asymmetry with regard to sexual fidelity, it was in many ways an excellent one. There is an additional problem, however, which is the substance of this book: both men and women carry with them an evolutionarily generated inclination to violate the contract and to consort with other partners—that is, for polyandry as well as polygyny. Biologists have if anything been late to the party when it comes to appreciating the potential of both polygyny and polyandry to assert themselves despite a sociocultural commitment to monogamy. This recognition is part of a new and important realization on the part of evolutionary biologists: men and women often have distinctly different evolutionary interests. This is true despite the fact that human beings are if anything unusual among living things in that their interests are likely to be shared when it comes to caring for their needy offspring. We are stuck with, on one hand, a biological basis for a biparental social contract, and, on the other, a no less biological basis for polygamous yearnings. Reprinted from "Out of Eden" by David P. Barash with permission from Oxford University Press USA. Copyright © 2016 Oxford University Press and published by Oxford University Press USA. (www.oup.com/us). All rights reserved.
