Links of the Week

This week, in blogger world I found...a study that shows serious emotional disturbances in children post Katrina...shocker, but at least they are calling attention to it...Interesting equality legislation at work in Switzerland: the law forced the man to pay a percentage of his wealth as a fine...idealism at work! Weird, isn't it?...
Daily show had an amazing piece about nostalgia, really brilliant and also hilarious...For those still wondering if paper books are becoming obsolete..well they are!..First ever gay sex scene on daytime television; we have come so far...Interesting, if a bit long, talk by Rebecca Goldstein about her book "36 Arguments for the Existence of God"...andddd maybe the funniest set of videos I've ever seen about fatness.

Haiti Relief

Every time a huge natural disaster has hit the planet since Katrina, I've done my best to ignore it. I can't even name them, because I didn't pay enough attention. I know there was a Tsunami, but I can't, in all honesty, tell you exactly what countries were effected without looking it up. It was just too overwhelming and painful for me to follow the news about the families torn apart, building collapsed, the phones that keep ringing with no answer, the pictures of children lost in the destruction. One would think that someone from New Orleans who experienced Katrina would have learned not to turn away, but I haven't. I was too wrapped up in my own experiences of disaster to try to do something about the next one.

I know how ridiculous it is to say that it's too painful for me to watch all the pain that these other people are going through. But it's a choice I make all the time, choosing to protect my own blissful ignorance over realizing the actual state of the world.

I know this post should end with something like, well, now I have changed, and I know I will pay close attention and do my best to do whatever I can whenever there is a catastrophic disaster anywhere in the world---and you should too! But I know that's not true. What I do know is, this modern world makes it dramatically easier to do something, just a little something, for other people. The US state department reported: "For those interesting in helping immediately, simply text "HAITI" to "90999" and a donation of $10 will be given automatically to the Red Cross to help with relief efforts, charged to your cell phone bill."

I think that's amazing. It's so easy and convenient! I know it's not enough, that I'm not doing all I possibly could, but luckily, helping those in need isn't an all or nothing game. Sometimes, it's okay to be selfish, to read the comics over the news and spend your money getting your nails done. But at other times, when disaster strikes, it can be best just do a little part. Because if there is one thing I did learn from Katrina, it's that there's nothing as comforting as knowing there are people that don't even know you that care, even a little bit, about you.

So go ahead, send a text message! Or click here to Like a Whisper to get a low down on all the other charities you could donate to.

To A Mayfly, We're a Mountain

Powers of Ten is one of my all time favorite videos. Issues of scale have been interesting to me for a while now. The scale that all human life is on, both in terms of size and time, is so hilariously particular and random. This idea was really brought to light for me when I watched those time release videos from planet earth. Our assumptions about what makes something alive vs. inanimate is so clearly tied to the amount of time we spend on earth. If human life was as long as a mountain's life span, we would have a sense of the enormous amount of movement, growth and change a mountain makes. Then, I think, it would be harder for us to judge so clearly that a mountain was inanimate. And think of what a mayfly, lifespan of about 30 minutes, thinks of us, as we are sitting by the pond, taking an hour long nap in the sun. We're nothing but a mountain to him. Because our size and the amount of time we experience is so essential to us, it's easy to over look how much our scale effects the way we create certainties about the world outside of us.

Terry Eagleton on Atheism & Islamophobia

A while ago when I wrote about atheism vs. theism, I left the question of why these atheists have had such a resurgence of late open. In this video, Terry Eagleton gives a rather interesting answer: 9/11. It's definitely the case with Dawkins, Hitchens and Dennett you could replace the word "religion" with "radical Islam" in all of their books and they would make substantially more sense. I've liked to think that the resurgence of this atheist movement has something to do with science's recognition of its internal subjectivity vs. objectivity crisis, but I have to admit Eagleton's idea makes a lot more sense. What do yall think?

How Not to Write about Africa

Sociological Images, one of my favorite blogs, posted this video. They also posted an awesome TED talk by Chimamanda Adichie called "The Danger of the Single Story". Both point at the dangers of foreigners telling the stories of of people they do not know. I harbored a dream, and still do at times, of going to a country in Africa and really making a difference by telling their story the "right" way. It's a classic fantasy, and one that Yale cultivates almost religiously. In school, I was always feeling inadequate that I hadn't traveled to a third-world country and done even a modicum of volunteer work. I would often assuage these feelings by telling myself that most of the people that do volunteer are as patronizing as the video below makes them out to be. So I really felt quite vindicated when I watched this video. Thank god I never went over there and tried to help anyone, I thought. There was no need for me over there.

I know this vindication is messed up. The point of the video isn't to tell me, foreigners keep out. The real reason I never made it over there is because I'm scared and lazy. Going to Africa would mean I have to face all my ugly fantasies and illusions about what the continent is actually about. This video isn't trying to say, please leave Africa alone, but rather, requesting something a lot more difficult---approach the continent with an open mind and a willingness to embrace and understand its complexity.

New Years Choice

When I started this blog in October, I had the idea that I would write for a month or two and then develop some kind of cohesive-ness, be it reoccurring themes or some overarching structure, to give the blog more traction. So, about a month ago, I decided I had enough ideas to boil things down and make this restructuring a reality. I started writing down my summary, hoping to reveal it in a day or two.

40 pages, littered with wikipedia entries, mantras and all capital pep talks later, I am giving up, for now, on trying to have an overall point. I'm too all over the place to try and simmer things down. And, like everything, this has applications to my life overall.

Every minute, we're choosing one specific thing over the infinite. Most of the time, our choices are basically unconscious. Sitting on the couch, not the chair. But even our conscious decisions, most of the time, seem on some level to be out of our control, be they comforts, habits, addictions, or just the myriad of things that we repeat enough times to then consider them a part of our personality, something definite and tangible that we can hold on to as ourselves. But all they are, all they ever are, are choices.

Choices are unbearable to me. Whenever I feel conscious of a decision, it's like two halves of myself split, and I see these two people I could be in my mind's eye. And then, somehow, I'm suppose to pick the person I'm suppose to be? I think the hardest choices are the ones that are the contours of our contradictions, that force us to come to terms with the parts of ourselves that are more easily made separate. As soon as I begin to lean towards someone, the other side of the choice pulls me back, reminding me of these parts of myself I'm cutting off.

This unbearable weight of choice almost always leaves me static. But I think my biggest confusion is that this stasis, too, is a choice. Time doesn't allow us the luxury of decision making, every moment is us making our decision. I wish I knew right now what this blog was meant to be about. I wish I had some definite way to sum it all up, but right now that's too hard. Instead, all I have is the choice to write at all, and the resolve to do it. Even when choices seem impossible, the choice between action or inaction is simple. Not to say it's easy. It's always easier to do nothing, but I at least know that at the end of the day, I want to be someone who chose something. Here's the first post in honor of that choice, of the new year. And to my prayer that everyone can chose that something they've been putting off---no matter how long!

Married Sex--Overcoming Bias

This is an answer to a blog post that got me very heated this morning. If you click that link you can see the whole discussion I got into with him. Sorry I have been lagging in blog posts--I'm developing a new construction/structure for my blog, which should be rolling out by the end of the week!


I have just been lurking at this blog for about 3 months now, and am truly shocked by this article. It SO poorly argued and presented, it strikes one as a complete joke. Overcoming Bias? Are you kidding me? And are you serious with saying “people express strikingly little sympathy for sex-starved men.”? Basically, as I understand it, Robin is trying to argue that the reason most marriages are sexless is because women withhold sex in order to gain power over men. He argues this by stating that women are “allowed to be confused” about sex, but this really just masks the fact that they withhold sex to gain power over men in marriage.

“This complexity allows women to be honestly confused about what they want, but it can also hide motivated differences between what women say or think they want, and what really drives their choices.
THUS: For example, reduced sex might come from wives respecting husbands less than before, from seeing overly willing wives as lower in status, or from withholding sex to gain bargaining power on other issues.”

He then takes selected comments from Weil’s deeply nuanced story and extremely long chronicle of marriage improvement to demonstrate the power dynamic he outlines. I have read this entire article, and his interpretation of their overall dynamic is strained at best, completely irresponsible at worst.

I’ll start my critique of this argument with it’s first premise—women are ‘confused’ about sex, but this is just a cover for the fact that they use sex to gain power in relationships. Is it possible that women are “confused” about what they want when it comes to sex because they are told by their culture from a very young age that they are not to desire sex? When sex is constantly being forced upon them as their only value and worth in society, their only bargaining chip, instead of an act that will bring them pleasure or strengthen their love relationships? Models for girls who desire to have a healthy sexual relationship are basically non existent.

It is a huge taboo in our culture to allow any images of women pleasuring themselves, while boys and men masturbate constantly and without much societal rebuke. Only women who are exceptionally beautiful engage in the sex they want in our television shows, movies, magazines and novels, while average and even ugly men (RE:Knocked Up) engage in all kinds of sexual escapades without anyone batting an eye.

Could this possibly be contributing to the fact that most women are not sexually satisfied–that upwards of 10% of women report never experiencing an orgasm, and anywhere from 33%-50% have trouble experiencing one when they want to? Are you really going to say “people express strikingly little sympathy for sex-starved men.“? Do you have any clue how ridiculous that sounds? You can masturbate for god sake! A lot of women can’t even find this sort of pleasure on their own, let alone with a partner. Are you really still buying into the idea that these 50% of women don’t have orgasms when they want to because they physically can’t? How rational does that sound, could there be any biases involved in that?

Sure, there are biological differences between men and women’s sexual desire. But these biological differences do not need to be “recognized” as Eric puts it. Eric’s insistence that “For example, that it will never work, speaking in general, for women to be chasers and be sexually pressing/forward, its just not sexy for people on average. And that men have to be able to stand up to and deal with other people very assertively, and be self-confident, in order to be attractive, whereas this is significantly less true for women,” as if this is some forgone biological conclusion, is so utterly ridiculous. It is just one man’s insecure hope, as he feels intimidated by women who are willing to take a stand and say what they want when the want it. Why don’t we try to increase women’s sexual education and make it okay for women to want and enjoy sex from a young age? Perhaps then men can stop feeling insecure about this and instead understand the pleasures of being chased and captured, as women have for many years now. Sure, there are traditional tropes and reasons that they existed. But if the gay/transgender/bi movement has had any effect on culture in general, it has been to soften the stark contours of what it means to be a MAN or a WOMAN and instead blur the lines, increasing equality for both.

I’m very young–22. I know that I am idealistic and extremely naive when it comes to the amorphous pending blob that is marriage. But I don’t see how ensuring men get the amount of sex they want when they want is even a slightly interesting or enlightening way to approach the myriad of issues that surround gender, sex and marriage in 2009.