Friday, September 30, 2011

This Just In, Men: Don't Be a Pussy

Apparently, regardless of what they say, women secretly hate making all the decisions in a relationship and resent the man for not being.... well... a man! Really shocking news here. It further seems that their sex life also suffers as a result of this backwards relationship.

Feminists the world over are stunned; we don't yet know what the 5 real men left in the world think, as they are deep in a state of confusion around why any vertebrate creature would think being a pussy around women (fyi:those are grown girls) would get men good sex when so far it has only resulted in sneers, disrespect, and very classy finger-down-the-throat gestures. Athletes and movie stars the world over report, pulling a girls hair and slamming her safely against a wall results in much more satisfactory results for both men and women.

JB: Notice it does not say women who wear the pants have 'bad' or 'worse' sex lives. It says they have THE WORST sex lives.

I just LOVE how the author tries to 'spin' the article that women are too 'busy' and 'stressed' for sex. Uh, if I was a woman, I would ELIMINATE THE STRESS AND WORK, NOT THE SEX! WTF?


Women who 'wear the pants' have the worst sex lives

by The_Stir, on Thu Sep 29, 2011 7:18am PDT

True or false: The more household decisions a woman makes, the less sex she has. According to a new study from Johns Hopkins University, that statement is spot-on. More specifically, researchers say that the more decisions a woman reported making on her own, as compared to through joint decision-making, the less likely she was to have sex and the longer it was since she last got it on. In fact, more dominant and assertive women had approximately 100 times less sex. WOW!

You'd think empowered women would be having MORE sex, because they're more confident and in control of their wants and desires. It's important to note, though, that this study was done in African countries, and so, I'm not quite sure the findings from women over there are directly comparable to here in the U.S. However, the research does raise an interesting point.

More from The Stir: Are You Having Enough Sex?

First of all, let's just get this one thing out of the way. I don't think it has anything to do with how hubbies are "turned off" by a woman running the show at home (even though you'd think that was the case from the way studies like these are reported). If these take-charge ladies aren't having sex, it's probably because they don't want to or they're simply not prioritizing it ... which is fine.

More from The Stir: One of the Most Detested Sex Acts is Actually Good for Women

But if they're not having as much sex as they would LIKE to be having, then it's a different story. In those cases, the pants-wearing women are probably so set on and stressed out by being a multitasking Superwoman that they forget to take care of themselves and their intimate relationship with their partner. Women who run the household completely, who don't partake in "joint decision-making" -- whether it's because they feel like they have to do everything themselves or they just don't want to be bothered with hashing things out with their hubby -- probably aren't making joint decisions in the bedroom either. What a mistake!

It's difficult for me to even imagine a household where one partner solely carries the weight of ALL the big decisions. (Really, does that even exist anymore?) I grew up hearing my parents hash most financial, healthcare, family plans, etc. out together. Similarly, my boyfriend and I approach everything from negotiating our rent to dealing with a wonky health insurance claim as a team. That attitude certainly extends to the bedroom.

More from The Stir: No Sex? This May Be Why

So, it actually comes as no surprise women who choose to skip joint decision-making have crappier sex lives. After all, as the cliche goes, it takes two to tango.

JB: I like the summation most of all. I'm sorry honey, but the research doesn't claim couples who "skip joint decision-making have crappier sex lives." So starting with that basis doesn't work here. The article says "the more decisions a woman reported making on her own, as compared to through joint decision-making, the less likely she was to have sex and the longer it was since she last got it on." That means as she makes more sole decisions - without consulting her husband - she has less sex - as the "alpha role" moves from him to her. Nature defines an alpha role; its not my invention. Women love alphas. Please. Its a fact. Want to compare how many women athletes and politicians or CEOs sleep with compared to Joe Sixpack?

In reality, many (mostly non-alpha) men rather hate playing alpha all the time - when you make all the decisions, you also bear ALL the responsibility, especially when you're decisions blow up in your face (a little something the article leaves out).

And conversely, when a man is making good decisions, then his partner is relieved from making them - she feels relaxed and cared for; he feels his testosterone throb; turns out this is good for sex (who would've thought!)

I'm not saying the couple needs an emperor or dictator and it should be the man. Its simply a biological fact that women who want kids (you're probably not there yet dear), are attracted to powerful men who take charge and provide. No one need be offended; its just mother nature's way. As I said above, its not a blessing for most men. Men don't make every decision correctly and everyone's happy to blame him when things go wrong; further most men I know are happy to let their wives decide what to do at least some of the time: they're relieved.

Here's another fact for you: when men insist a woman make ALL the decisions? That's a recipe for a PISSED OFF WOMAN. Women resent having all the responsibility. They feel its unfair (but not when the man has it - he's supposed to bear it). And a pissed off woman doesn't sleep with a man she resents. AT ALL. Period.

No one is saying women don't, or shouldn't, have a voice in decisions (that's obviously asnine). But if you're claiming everything should be 50/50, you are #1: all alone on that one and #2: out of touch with most young women these days. Young women didn't grow up being told they were inept and therefore they didn't develop some need to prove themselves, unlike many of their mothers who were raised in the 60s, at the height of the women's liberation movement (your mom picked or else wanted to pick an alpha-male anyway - just ask her). No, these young women have accomplished plenty and they're happy to sit back and play wife when they hit 28-35. They have nothing to prove. But throw them a moping, unsure, indecisive man who's begging to cooperate because he's not confident about his own decision-making ability. That is sure to piss them off (and also ruin their sex life, now according to science).

Also, get out of the house a bit more, madame.
Written by Maressa Brown on CafeMom's blog, The Stir.

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Bitter, Old Feminist Mad at Women for not Being Bitter, Old Feminsts

Linda Hirshman Maligns ‘Opt-Out Mothers’
September 22nd, 2011 by Robert Franklin, Esq.
http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
Just when I thought it was safe to come out from under the bed, I run across this (Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, 9/20/11).

It’s an article about Linda Hirshman in which the old-guard feminist reprises a lot of the claims, concepts and attitudes that have put the movement in such bad odor over the years. Hirshman’s older but no wiser; she still just doesn’t get it.

The “it” she doesn’t get is respect for her own sex, i.e. women. As a feminist, you’d think she’d at least take a stab at honoring the choices made by women as long as they’re legal and at least arguably constructive in some way. But no, for Hirshman, any life choice a woman makes that’s not working for a living, all day every day, just isn’t legitimate. (That she’s arguing for women to behave more like men seems to never occur to Hirshman.) Her real beef is with mothers who opt out of paid work in favor of doing childcare.

Hirshman, it seems, interviewed women for a book she was writing and didn’t like what they told her.

And while most of the affluent well-educated women she interviewed had worked full time after college, they left high-powered jobs to stay at home full-time when they began having children, a choice she calls self-destructive and self-defeating.

True. Those women would be like the ones in the numerous studies of highly educated women who do just that. Studies I’m aware of include those of graduates of the University of Michigan Law School, the University of Chicago MBA program and three of graduates in S.T.E.M. (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) curricula. Like Hirshman’s interviewees, they started out working full time and then dropped out in whole or in part when children came along.

Of course those women are among the most intelligent, highly educated ones anywhere in the country. So it’s remarkable the disdain Hirshman has for them. Face it, if she can’t muster a bit of respect for women like that, what must she think of the rest of womankind?

“Self-destructive and self-defeating?” I wonder what those women said when Hirshman mentioned her low opinion of them. Of course she did no such thing; she reserved that for her book. But I suspect Hirshman’s not just being tactful; cowardly is more like it. She didn’t want to confront these women for fear of being contradicted with intelligent, well thought out responses. That approach makes it easier to maintain opinions that one cherishes but are less well-reasoned. Such in any case is my guess.

After all, those women might have the type of well-formed ideas you’d expect of anyone with their education. They might think that working for a living is fine and necessary but one-dimensional. They might have told Hirshman that they were powerfully motivated to bear and rear children and that personal fulfillment for them was hard or impossible without that. They might have said that bearing a child and then turning it over to daycare at the earliest possible time thwarts one of the greatest reasons for having it in the first place - the caring for an infant of your own flesh and blood. But Hirshman didn’t want to hear it.

Since Hirshman is coming at the whole work/life balance debate from an exclusively ideological standpoint, it’s no surprise that she gets a lot of things wrong.

Hirshman, who’s married with three children and seven grandchildren, argues that opting out makes a woman completely financially dependent on her husband and reduces her lifetime earning potential if she returns to work [JB: SO WHAT? IF SHE'S HAPPY, LEAVE HER ALONE!]. It prevents her from sharing her knowledge, skills and talents with the world, and from gaining more workplace experience.

No and no. Actually, opting out is almost always temporary. SAHMs tend to stay home when the kids are of pre-school age and, once they’re out of the house, the mothers start opting back into paid work. Yes, they’ve cut their lifetime earnings which means their retirement savings may not be as much. But the notion that they’re “completely financially dependent” on their husbands is absurd. And since these women are unquestionably smart and educated, my guess is that they understand the financial consequences of their actions.

Equally absurd is the idea that a mother’s opting out of paid work to raise her kids “prevents her from sharing her knowledge, skills and talents with the world…” Actually, that’s precisely what parenting is. Admittedly, parents don’t do that “with the world,” but next to no one else does either, so they’re not exactly unique.

One of the main claims of Women’s Studies is the great value of listening to the personal stories (actually “herstories”) of women and honoring their understanding of them. As Daphne Patai and Noretta Koertge point out in Professing Feminism, for feminists in Women’s Studies, women’s narratives of their own experiences take precedence over virtually all else. Not for Hirshman they don’t. For her, any woman with an opinion on work and motherhood different from hers is a dupe of the patriarchy.


Not surprisingly, many readers disagreed and blew up the blogosphere, defending their choices.

“I think that women did not like being told that they had chosen lesser lives. It’s understandable,” Hirshman says.

It is indeed. That’s partly because Hirshman takes it upon herself to judge the legitimate behavior of other women. It’s also because, by any stretch of the imagination, taking a balanced approach to paid work and childcare is imminently reasonable.

As the Families and Work Institute reported not long ago, men much more than women suffer the stress of trying to balance the two. And it’s not just that men suffer more, the FWI analysis shows why they do. It turns out that it is precisely work that’s the culprit. Women balance work and family in ways that are far more agreeable to them than do men. They work less and parent more. The none too subtle message seems to be that if men behaved more like women, they’d be less stressed.

But Hirshman, if she’s even aware of the data on the subject, isn’t having any of it. She wants women working. Period. If it means they’re more stressed and less happy, that’s their tough luck. Big Sister has spoken.

Now, the article doesn’t mention it, but there’s a great irony in a feminist like Hirshman excoriating women for failing to behave as she thinks they should. Actually there are so many ironies I can’t count them, but here’s one: Feminist Hirshman wants women to “opt out” of childcare, but every feminist organization I know of has consistently opposed even the slightest improvement in fathers’ rights in family courts.

Feminists don’t want women to care for children and they don’t want men to do it either. I’m not sure who that leaves other than the state, but no one believes we’re going there, so it’s beginning to look like something in feminist ideology has to give.

I’ve argued long and hard that what needs to go is their almost universal opposition to equal rights and equal treatment of fathers by laws and family courts. That would help dads, it would help children and it would help women to take greater part in paid work. It would also help feminism to be seen as less misandric than it has been for so many years.

So where’s the downside for feminists? It’s hard to see, but if Linda Hirshman’s any indication, I won’t expect good sense or rationality any time soon.

Monday, September 26, 2011

But She Looks So SWEEEEEET!

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2011/09/26/amanda-knox-is-a-she-devil-who-loves-wild-sex-115875-23447972/

Amanda Knox, convicted of killing British student Meredith Kercher, has been described as a 'lying, sex-loving she-devil' by the man she falsely accused of the murder.

Knox is currently awaiting the outcome of an appeal against her conviction in Italy, but a lawyer for Patrick Lumumba told the hearing she was not to be believed.

Early in the investigation into the killing, Knox accused Mr Lumumba of killing Miss Kercher, who shared an apartment with Knox in Perugia. He was briefly jailed, but later cleared.

Mr Lumumba's lawyer Carlo Pacelli told the appeals court that Knox had a double soul - the clean-faced woman sitting before judges, and the she-devil who loves "wild sex."

Knox maintains police pressure led her to accuse Mr Lumumba.

Mr Lumumba is a civil plaintiff in the case, and in Italy civil portions of cases are heard at the same time as the criminal matter.

His lawyer asked the court: "Who is Amanda Knox? Is she the mild-looking, fresh-faced person you see here, or the one devoted to lust, drugs and alcohol that emerges from the court documents?"

He maintained that a double soul co-existed in the 24-year-old American.

"Both a (saint) and a demonic, satanic, diabolical she-devil, which leads her toward borderline behaviour. This was the Amanda of November 1, 2007," the night of the murder.

He insists that, at the time of the crime, "she was an explosive mix of drugs, sex and alcohol."

Miss Kercher was stabbed to death in the apartment she shared with Knox. The American student at one point told investigators she was home during the killing and had to cover her ears to drown out Miss Kercher's screams while Mr Lumumba was murdering her, according to court documents.

Knox maintains police pressure led her to accuse Mr Lumumba, a Congolese national who owned a bar in Perugia where the American occasionally worked.

While Mr Lumumba is a civil plaintiff in the case, he is also seeking damages from Knox in a separate procedure because her claim led him to be unjustly detained.

Knox's co-defendant in the appeals trial is her former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito. He was convicted of the same charges and sentenced to 25 years. He, too, denies wrongdoing.

A verdict in their appeals case is expected by next week. Knox and Sollecito hope to be freed after four years in jail; prosecutors have asked the court to increase the sentences of both to life in prison, Italy's stiffest sentence.

Also convicted in separate proceedings was Rudy Hermann Guede from Ivory Coast. Italy's highest criminal court has upheld Guede's conviction and his 16-year prison sentence.

Knox had been sentenced to 26 years in prison for the murder of 21-year-old British student Meredith Kercher. American Knox had shared a house with Kercher, who was found in her room semi-naked with her throat slashed.

Knox and her then-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito have maintained their innocence throughout the entire trial.

Now key DNA evidence from the original trial is being questioned. Here are some details of the allegations from two court appointed DNA experts (via the BBC):

A knife that was suspected of being the murder weapon had too little DNA evidence on it to reliable. Originally it had been argued that Knox's DNA was on the handle and Kercher's on the blade.
The DNA was inadequately stored in plastic bags that would degrade the DNA.
Investigators likely contaminated Kercher's bra clasp at the scene, which was said to contain Sollecito's DNA.

The police have hit back against the claims, saying that the DNA techniques they used were world class, reports ABC News.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/amanda-knox-appeal-dna-2011-9#ixzz1Z5ZGtGdB

THE TRUTH SHALL SET YOU FREE

Friday, September 16, 2011

Life for Some is a Horror Movie

Family court is a war. Good dads - and most are - are like the victim in a horror movie who is constantly on the run from the killer. He run and runs and runs, tripping over garbage pails and into dead ends. There comes a point when the man realized he is wasting valuable energy, running from the killer and decides to make a stand and fight to the death.

That's what it is. Life and death. Winner take all.

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Kicked When Down

Now imagine, into this horrible labor market, after you're laid off and working a service job, someone can claim you "could make more" and therefore should pay 50, 60, 70% of your income in "child support" or else you're a worthless "deadbeat" and should not be allowed to see your own children - now you know what many fathers in this country go through.


Wednesday, September 07, 2011

The Onion: Men... and Love... Prevail

From The Onion, one of the best tongue-in-cheek articles I've read.

Ladies, men have remained faithful, despite all the women out there and all of the instincts telling a man to have sex with other women, men - lots and lots of men, remain faithful to their wives. Believe it.

Love conquers all.

Husband Still Faithful After 42 Years Of Trying To Cheat

October 3, 2009 | ISSUE 46•27 ISSUE 45•40

Schneider and the woman who would have almost certainly left him had he not failed at infidelity.

SARASOTA, FL—Through the ups and downs of raising four children, years of financial hardship, and all the stresses and turmoil of daily life, claims adjuster Arnold Schneider has stayed true to his wife of 42 years, despite his most determined efforts to engage in sexual intercourse outside of wedlock.

"I could never be unfaithful to Helen," said the 63-year-old Schneider, who over the past four decades has unsuccessfully attempted extramarital relations with dozens of friends, acquaintances, work colleagues, and random strangers. "Sure, there have been some tough times, and we all have moments of doubt, but Helen is the woman I love."

Added the man who has attempted to trade his wife in for the first willing female participant hundreds of times over, "Even I'm amazed by that sometimes."

According to sources close to the couple, Schneider has remained grudgingly loyal and devoted to his wife from the very beginning, failing time and again to cheat on his unsuspecting bride during their honeymoon together in Acapulco.

"I'll never forget Mexico—the beaches, the stars, the amazing food and people," said Schneider, who, as his new wife lay sound asleep in bed, would routinely sneak out of their hotel room and try in vain to hit on the young cocktail waitress tending bar downstairs. "It was perfect. Pretty much almost perfect."

Over the next decade, Schneider remained faithful to his wife by default, repeatedly coming up short during his regular jaunts to singles clubs, at neighborhood key parties, and through the general freewheeling sexual bacchanalia of the 1970s.

"It was a crazy time and a lot of my friends didn't think twice when it came to breaking the sacred bonds of marriage," said Schneider, who despite throwing himself at any available woman in his presence, completely failed to capitalize on his adulterous tendencies. "But not me. No sir."

"Not even once," Schneider added with a heavy sigh.

Despite being left with no choice but to stay committed to his marriage, the reluctant husband and father admitted that being loyal wasn't always so easy. With a growing family and increased tension at work, Schneider said there were times when he could have taken comfort in the arms of another.

"Yes, there were moments when I found myself on the verge of the unthinkable," said Schneider, who once drove 300 miles to meet an old girlfriend from high school, only to be flatly rejected by the woman and have coffee thrown in his face. "Still, for one reason or another, I just couldn't go through with it. And when it was all over, I could look myself in the mirror and say, 'Forty-two years, and you've never been with anyone besides your wife.' Forty-two goddamn years."

Schneider acknowledged that even in less troubling times he occasionally felt restless after four decades with the same partner. But whether he was being stood up by the woman who answered his personal ad, or unsuccessfully attempting to persuade his wife's more attractive sister to visit a clothing-optional spa, Schneider said that what mattered most was that he never once wavered.

"Heck, I've got eyes, and I'll notice a pretty face just like anyone else," said Schneider, who at press time was still hoping to hear from a pancake house waitress he had given his business card to three weeks earlier. "But what can I say? There's an ultimate line Arnold Schneider just can't cross. I'm not even sure I'd know how, to tell you the truth."

For her part, Helen Schneider said she had no doubt that, through it all, her husband has always been faithful.

"Maybe I'm naïve," Helen said, "but I've known this man most of my life, and I just can't imagine him cheating on me. Honestly, Arnie's my little saint."