Posts Tagged ‘women’
Women have a unique, all purpose ad hominem redirect that most women choose not to use, and yet one we see all too often — “You’re sexist,” or, more specifically, “You attack me because I’m a woman, you sexist.” We saw this in all varieties earlier this year. To name two: we saw it covertly, from the Hillary Clinton campaign; overtly, from her supporters.
Former Bush administration rouge Monica Goodling brought another spin on the same formula. She implied that she was attacked because she was a woman, yet did it without saying a word. All she had to do was start acting in the manner of an attacked woman, or at least act like the exact stereotype of an attacked woman.
Stephen Colbert took it at face value. From the same excellent episode of The Colbert Report that brought us the Three-Card Monte game that explained high oil prices, we have also this very funny segment that sums up the incident nicely:
For television, this is a remarkably deep look at what isn’t even the most recent scandal at the highest levels of our incumbent administration. Naturally, there have been deeper analyses of Monica Goodling’s testimony, but Colbert is, as always, going for the laugh. If he makes his viewers thoughtful, all the better.
I was pretty thoughtful for a good five minutes. I think that throwing Monica Goodling to the wolves was meant as all-purpose damage control.
She wasn’t blamed for the improper hiring and firing of federal attorneys just because she’s an expendable woman, but more precisely because the blamers that be knew she could use her femininity to her advantage. As Slate notes, she was in full damsel in distress mode during the hearing, and most of the panel fell for it, hook, line and sinker.
Party-line Democrats who weren’t watching closely had already joined her side because she had appeared to be yet another woman scapegoated in the tradition of Eve. Note that the “You can’t blame me because I’m a woman” defense is only credible if we already believe that women are frequently scapegoated.
It’s a bitter irony that we’re all the more susceptible to Goodling’s innocent girl performance only because we rightly acknowledge that witch hunts still exist.
Just when I was about to regain faith in humanity and my gender. If The Sacramento Bee is to be believed, a UC Davis researcher has found that, when on dates, men are explicitly susceptible to wishful thinking, thinking that’s measured in degrees of getting some.
Nearly every woman Motley questioned answered that when she tells a partner “it’s getting late” during intimate situations, she means she is putting up a stop sign. But most men interpreted “it’s getting late” to mean either that she wanted him to “skip the preliminaries” or that she wanted him to go forward and was politely informing him about the late hour.
The vast majority of women questioned by Motley told him that when they tell a man during an intimate moment that “I am seeing someone else,” they mean that they want to stop “making out,” he said. The vast majority of men interpret the comment to mean, “Keep going, but let’s be discreet,” or “Keep going, but I want you to know that I’m not making a commitment.”
Here I was thinking that “It’s getting late” meant that my date was tired. Most men, apparently, disagree, seeming to translate what women say into more pleasing constructions.
I’d think it would get confusing after a while. After all, if “It’s getting late” meant “Get your lips off me, greaseball,” then what does it mean when your date says, “Get your lips off me, greaseball?”
Not that I need to know.
Sometimes, however, men and women do speak in code, when “It’s getting late” actually does mean “let’s skip the preliminaries.” It happens enough that men delude themselves into making it a stereotype, as measured by this survey. Confusion reigns, and all because of codetalking.
Therefore, I am no codetalker. I try to be perfectly honest when so many others skirt around the truth or embellish. Whether I’m faced with a first date or a second interview, it hasn’t yet hurt me any.
Trust the word of an unemployed bachelor: No harm at all.
A Valentine’s Day anecdote for y’all.
I’m just a big fan of post-mass pastries, as I had been for the past four Sundays.
This particular Sunday, I had finished my crumb glaze and cup of water. A mother I barely knew came up to me.
“Joseph, right?”
That isn’t my name. It’s an honest mistake, I guess. It isn’t like she did it on purpose, or like she’s a moron or anything.
“I thought I’d remember it. My husband’s name is Joseph, and I remember saying to myself that your name was something I couldn’t forget. Oh, I remember. Your name was also in ‘Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.’ That’s it.”
“I haven’t seen it.”
“Oh, you should. The music’s just great. It’s by Andrew Lloyd Webber.” Maybe she is a moron.
Chit-chat continued, and it isn’t worth transcribing. At least until she added a stinger.
“I’d like you to meet my daughter, Naomi. She was actually in ‘Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.’”
“Really? The first run?”
She didn’t hear me and so she left just out of earshot, leaving me with an awkward-looking Naomi. Naomi didn’t seem to want to break the ice, so I did.
“I just came for the donuts,” I said.
“True dat,” she said.
That was the end of that. I excused myself politely with my warmest “Have a nice day” and my quickest pace out of the room.
I’m sure she’s a perfectly nice young lady, and I’ll probably see her once a week whether I’d like to or not. The context, however, was so very wrong.
Moral of the story? There are plenty of places to meet your next significant other and church is one of them, provided you’d like an Andrew-Lloyd-Webber-loving amateur actress with a penchant for gangsta slang.
For the record, of that I only mind the Andrew Lloyd Webber bit.
