Human Behavior

Why Feminists Hate Sarah Palin

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(UPDATE [h/t Alan Henderson]: plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose)

Via the usual source … well, if Cathy Young can diagnose it, so can I. Or rather, so can Spider Robinson:

I think one could perhaps make an excellent case for Heinlein as a female chauvinist. He has repeatedly insisted that women average smarter, more practical and more courageous than men. He consistently underscores their biological and emotional superiority. He married a woman he proudly described to me as “smarter, better educated and more sensible than I am.” In his latest book, Expanded Universe—the immediate occasion for this article—he suggests without the slightest visible trace of irony that the franchise be taken away from men and given exclusively to women. He consistently created strong, intelligent, capable, independent, sexually aggressive women characters for a quarter of a century before it was made a requirement, right down to his supporting casts.

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Going to the Dogs

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I form very strong emotional attachments to my own dogs. They are all rescues that I collect starving and injured off the street. (Three at a time is my limit, so don’t get the impression that I’m like one of those crazy cat ladies.)

But speaking as someone who has actually worked in law enforcement, I can say that dogs are merely chattel. Property. My own dogs might be very dear to me in a personal sense but they are all mixed breed strays, which means that they are particularly worthless property at that.

This post alerted me to a news story where a police officer in Texas pulled a car over. It seems that the driver was rushing his choking dog to the pet clinic, and he managed to reach a speed that was close to 100 MPH (160 KPH).

The officer was uncaring and flippant, and he kept the motorist by the side of the road for 15 minutes. Both the journalists who report the story, as well as the comments at the blog post that discuss it, seem to think that an egregious breach was committed by the cop. The facts of the matter are that the officer might well have shown more tact, but he was essentially correct in his actions because he was doing his job and safeguarding lives. Human lives.

This is an example of something I’ve been noticing a lot more recently. People seem to be quicker to complain about whether or not they feel insulted when they interact with the police.

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The Country Mouse and the City Mouse

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In an earlier post, Jonathan sums up Palin as a “frontierswoman.”   This seems to me to be true, but she also represents an old tension – between the city and the country.   The distinction between Moscow and pretty much all the rest of Russia seems to be awfully important to the few Russians I know; a similar tension exists between Paris and rural France, Prague and (especially) Moravia.   One of the commuting families at U.T. in the seventies split because, the husband explained, his wife could not imagine not living on one of the coasts.  (Not surprisingly, similar commutes began happening here:   if Austin’s the sticks, how much more are the hinterlands.)     Some people identify with a city and some with the city.   I can hardly complain about such self-definitions, since I’ve always felt the powerful pull of place; it’s a key part to the identity of many of my family and friends.     Those of us from  flyover country   speak of it with some irony, but also with  pride:   all  intensified and sometimes defensive because we feel others say it with disdain.  

If, as one wit put it, McCain/Palin gets all the votes of  brides  pregnant on  their wedding days (maybe add in the grooms), then  if we can add the votes of those with strongly felt  country roots,  the favored Obama/Biden ticket will  need to resurrect all  those  dead voters Acorn was finding.   How well this  plays out  depends on how  many understand  these two and, on the other hand, how  many can’t.   They are hardly typical of “Jesusland” but in important ways they represent it.   Plain talking, for instance,  arises from  the Puritan plain style,  echoed in the American middle west & west.   (And embodied in the Laura Ingalls Wilder  books my mother gave every grandchild.)    We speak with a tough wit,  but,  aren’t ironic about duty, loyalty, resilience, perseverance, active engagement, hard work.   We  don’t consider them ambiguous; we assume  they just are, in themselves, good.  

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Foreign Export

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(There have been a lot of posts here lately concerning some serious subjects, such as the pending US election or the Russian invasion of Georgia. I thought we could use some lighter fare.)

It must have been twenty years since I first heard about it. A wife would wonder if her husband was cheating on her, but hiring a detective agency to follow him around can cost a great deal of money. What happens if he is in between affairs? It could be years before he strays again.

So a few detective agencies here in the United States employed attractive young women who would carefully strike up a seemingly chance friendship with the suspected husband. The idea was to never actually suggest anything illicit, but to see if the subject of the investigation would pursue this particular honey pot. If he mentioned right off that he was married and wanted to talk about his family in a positive way, then the investigation would end. If he suggested a weekend getaway with his attractive new buddy, then that would also mean the end of the caper.

The idea here is to see if the husband was wise in the ways of philandery. If he knew what he was doing and moved in for the kill, then at least the wife would know that he was unhappy with the marriage enough to stray when opportunity came a’knockin’.

Is this still something that happens now, or was it a minor fad that ran its course decades ago? I have no idea, but I am having trouble finding any mention of this sort of thing online. Even if there are still detective agencies that offer this service, it must be a very narrow niche market that isn’t very well known.

Our fellow Chicago Boy Steven has written a post concerning a similar service that is available in Japan. They have certainly put their own cultural stamp on things. For one thing, the female lure seems to be willing to allow things to get physical in order to get the goods on the target. For another, the agencies also offer similar services, this time employing a male lure, for husbands that want to dig up some dirt on their wives. They even offer to conduct some rather elaborate operations to manipulate lost loves into giving a client a second chance.


Go ahead and read the newspaper article which discusses the practice. Seems like an awful lot of money is being spent in Japan by people who need help in ordering their love lives.

I can see why this sort of thing isn’t very popular over here in the States. It rarely makes a difference during a divorce if one of the spouses is sleeping around, so there isn’t a financial reason to find out for sure. A divorce can also be sought by either party without the other granting consent, while in Japan it seems that infidelity is grounds for an annulment whether or not everyone agrees.

The sting operations described in the article are pretty elaborate, real James Bond kind of stuff. There really isn’t any financial motive to seek out services like that here in the US, but I can see why it would be worth the expense to someone who lives in a culture that will take such evidence into account when the family assets are carved up by the divorce judge. The article makes it clear that there are a variety of detective agencies that offer these services, and some of them are flush enough to maintain fleets of expensive cars to be used in the sting operations. That doesn’t happen unless a lot of people are willing to spend a lot of money for your services.

It also seems to me that the rigid social structure in Japan creates an almost unique environment for companies that offer these services. People make a big deal about how individuals will go to great lengths to try and avoid shame in that country, but they rarely mention that it also effects the bottom line. In Western societies, it is generally accepted that having trouble in your personal life usually doesn’t have anything to do with your performance or fitness in business. It seems to me that this doesn’t apply in Japan, where even the appearance of impropriety can damage your career prospects.

Stories like these, where people can be manipulated so easily if they are born into a shame based culture, makes me appreciate my own even more. Sure there are problems with a society that is individual-centric, but I think that it is still better than the alternative.

(Hat tip to The Volokh Conspiracy, who first brought the article to Steven’s attention.)

The Gut: Tribalism’s Home and Not Always a Bad Thing

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Thanks, Shannon for your blogging, which has  provided a  smorgasbord.  

 

In the comments to his “Identity-Politics Insanity” post, Helen’s observation reminds us of a truth about American politics but more importantly about human nature.   For instance, a balanced ticket is attractive, because we assume more ideas are in play and more people feel an identity with their leaders.   On the other hand, Shannon is right:    identity politics encourages a tribalism whose restraint has been the great triumph of western civilization and a prerequisite for a diverse nation ruled by predictable, equitable laws.   We rightly fear identities that trump law & duty, but we also fear ideologies which encourage children to betray their parents and wives their husbands.   We ignore such passions natural to our species at our own peril: unacknowledged they threaten chaos; diminished, we lack a glue that holds communities and even identities together.

 

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