The Collection: “Grace” and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Date
Also: The pro-life movement, not as popular as it thinks it is, and How Will We Care for Elders Without Funds or Family?
A Long Look Back — Does anyone remember to do those?
By now everyone paying any attention to cultural news knows about “Grace” and her date with Hollywood star Aziz Ansari. He only wanted sex. She didn’t feel comfortable refusing him and a bad sexual encounter followed. Later she published the story, anonymously, in the supposedly ironically titled feminist magazine, Babe. The whole affair has led to a national discussion about the #metoo movement, women’s and men’s responsibilities in sexual encounters, and the ethics of various kiss and tell tactics. (Oh, and a late discussion about youthful professional arrogance.)
Conservative women have been particularly incredulous, with articles from Katrina Trinko, Heather Wilhelm, Mona Charen, Abigail Shrier, Sarah Rumpf, and more, each of which comments on the strange occurrence of young women who lack confidence to say no to a man. I generally agree, save one detail: reading these critiques, one is left with the impression that this unfortunate turn of events for women just happened. In fact, many knew this is exactly what would happen and warning women has been a popular and reliable way to get thrown out of the feminist power structure for a few decades.
Camille Paglia is the most notorious of the outcasts. She claims that her 1991 article for New York Newsday on this subject remains her most controversial article to date, and for Paglia, that is saying something. It opened, “The date-rape controversy shows feminism hitting the wall of its own broken promises.” In many follow up interviews, she explains how feminists were selling young women a sanitized view of sex — an enjoyable biological function between equals in every sense of the word — and how that ridiculously naive view of sex left women vulnerable to being used by men. Without recourse to the old cultural standards, which feminists gleefully swept away, women were turning to parental replacements and the law.
It all proceeded as Paglia foresaw. Instead of societal rules that sought to protect women before assault, feminists sought different rules, legal ones, that gave women recourse after an assault. Because leveling with women about sex and biology were off the table.
Paglia was not alone. In 2000 Danielle Crittenden published What Our Mothers Didn’t Tell Us. The chapters “About Sex” and “About Love” both cover the general point:
Pretending that we are the same as men — with similar needs and desires — has only lead many of us to find out, brutally, how different we really are. In demanding a radical independence — from men, from our families — we also abandoned certain bargains and institutions that didn’t always work perfectly perfectly but until very recently were civilization’s best ways of taming the feckless human heart.
It wasn’t all women noticing, either. Tom Wolfe’s 2000 book of essays, Hooking Up, opens with the essay about hooking up, subtitled “What Life Was Like at the Turn of the Second Millennium: An American World”. It was a man’s world in which men traded in old wives and “From age thirteen, American girls were under pressure to maintain a façade of sexual experience and sophistication.” He continued a little later in the essay:
The continuing in vogue of feminism made sexual life easier, even insouciant for men. Women have been persuaded that they should be just as active as men when it came to sexual advances. And men were only too happy to accede to the new order, since it absolved them of all sense of responsibility, let alone chivalry.
Then there is Caitlin Flanagan’s 2005 essay, which is directly on point. In “Are You There God? It’s Me, Monica.” Flanagan discussed the supposed blow job craze among young girls, first concluding that it was not the epidemic the media hype made it seem (some things don’t change) but that it was a trend. Why were young teen girls of the aughts — the first girls raised by mothers who were raised in the feminist Second Wave — choosing to engage in a sex act that had nothing to do with their own sexual pleasure? Flanagan too arrived at the common conclusion: when feminist revolutionaries threw out the old societal rules that once protected women, they did not prepare a replacement. While activists hastily threw together some laws for college age and working women, young girls were left with no defenses. They went with diversion. I highly recommend reading the whole thing, although it is heartbreaking.
Evidence over time has vindicated Flanagan’s worry. These young, supposedly empowered women, are afraid to say what they want, or don’t want. It’s not just Grace. There’s the woman who didn’t want dirty pictures taken. Or anecdotal stories around casual sex studies. Or entire plot lines in that ‘voice of my generation’ show — so “empowering” even Saturday Night Live got the joke.
Yet Bitch Media awarded Flanagan their first Douchebag All-Star award for, among other things, claiming that women were just going along with boys’ requests for oral gratification. That’s not the worst feminists said of her, but I doubt she is waiting for apologies even as events prove she and the other outcasts weren’t the crazy ones all those years ago.
Though the ages
The New York Times asked a few generations look at the Grace affair, and then asked a few women of varying ages to discuss the findings. The viewpoints were more consistent that I expected, but again, I wonder if anyone remembers that some tried to sound the alarm and were told to shut up.
Kinless Elders
I just finished a frenzy of Sandwich Generation activity. My father and both of my husband’s parents passed away last year after slow declines. The Sandwich Generation isn’t a generation but a term coined in 1981 to describe the stage of caring for children and aging parents. It didn’t become a thing until then because by the time aging parents needed care, children had typically left the household. But as women delayed childbearing, eldercare and childcare started merging, and women were “sandwiched” between the two. It was hard, time-wise and money-wise.
Around that same time, insurance companies started selling Long Term Care Insurance, but they did so without actuary data. Lured by the rise in demand, they guessed at the rates. They guessed wrong. The policies worked for the first wave of buyers, but they bankrupted or forced insurance companies out of the market. Now policies are scarce, limited, and expensive.
And now comes data, explained by Anna Sutherland, that the rising elderly will have fewer kin as well. This will be a problem. Having just done elder care with supportive, extended family in the same city and decent to excellent long term care options, Anna’s study explainer is the gloomiest thing I’ve read all week.
Women for Life
If readers noticed the surge of pro-life pieces, the annual March for Life was Friday. Despite being an adoptee and stridently pro-life, I have not been a movement participant since my teens because I, like many, see that the political movement has been disconnected from the ideas, particularly at the the federal level. Federal office hopefuls make statements about abortion to raise funds and then do little else, except over complicate the issue for state and local advocates. The entrenched pro-life advocates resist this take. At their best, they are a tight social network, at their worst, a money racket — both of which feel insulted and threatened by any criticism. But considering the US is the world’s libertine when it comes to abortion, how can they claim the movement of the last 30 years has been anything but a failure?
A few pro-lifers do see this dynamic. I love almost all of this piece by Gracy Olmstead, except the introduction. It is too optimistic. Most pro-life advocates are unaware of how negatively the movement is viewed outside of its own ranks, and contra Gracy it is not a new thing. The new things have made a bad situation worse, but the situation was already bad. Otherwise, excellent assessment of what the pro-life movement needs to do going forward. The other piece of note is Mary Eberstadt with another Eminem analysis. I love her Eminem pieces. She actually listens and allows herself to hear the angst under his anger instead of simply dismissing the anger as trash. In this case, it gives her an opportunity to highlight the lost distinction: popularity of the political cause is distinct from popularity of the ideas. The two are not tied together, and if one looks to public opinion, then the future is pro-life. “You don’t have to wear a cassock, or follow around people who do, to get that the “blob of tissue” narrative is a problem — and emanations from popular music are just one example of that wider truth.”
Which brings me to the best piece on abortion I’ve read in years. Frederica Mathewes-Green wrote this one for the 2016 March for Life. If you only click one link in this email. make it that one.
(The rest of this topic continues in “Action Items,” below. Gracy sees the distinction and the way forward, Eberstadt illustrates it, but Destiny is working it.)
#DigitalDiet
As expected there has been much more talk on kids and screens. One piece by Abigail Shrier describes a pet-peeve of mine: tablets and tech in preschools. Yes, while we parents are being told to limit kids screen time, preschools and primary schools are wooing us with their high tech class rooms and toys. Personally, my husband and I went with the school whose headmistress incredulously snapped to an inquisitive parent, “Why would we teach children how to use a tablet before they could write?” But tech is the school version of keeping up with the Joneses. The problem got worse as the children aged and we moved back to the US. I found it difficult to limit screen time when my 3rd grader has math drills on the computer, textbooks from 5th are in the cloud, and papers are written on Google Docs.
Now Playing
Paranormal has never been my thing. I wasn’t even into X-Files back in the day, so Black Mirror, which sounded like a Twilight Zone remake did not make my list on Netflix. But this piece by Julie Kelly will at least get me to watch the episode on the dangers of helicopter parenting. I stand in the Art Imitates Life camp and think they are on to something with this, especially since we are in the paranormal ‘art exaggerates life’ genre.
I regret that I have not seen Ladybird yet. I want to, but I also want to see it with my eldest daughter. That presents scheduling challenges, so we’ve not managed it yet. Some mothers and daughters at Verily have, however. Their observations are here.
And post send addition (my oversight): Georgi Boorman was not impressed with Bright, the new Will Smith movie produced by Netflix. My husband and I watched it over the holidays as well, and while our take is not as negative as Georgi’s, well, let’s just say the cranberry, vodka, ginger ale concoction she was drinking might have helped me. It was one of those movies that wanted to be good, and almost managed it — but not quite.
Action Items
This past weekend saw the March for Life and the Women’s March. As mentioned above with Gracy’s piece, the pro-life issue needs some bridge work between advocates and the public. Actually, much of politics needs bridge work. Not enough people recognize this, fewer do it, and a tiny few have any success with it. One of those tiny few is a woman named Destiny De La Rosa of New Wave Feminism, which is a pro-life feminist group. I will let her explain the bridge issue. In real life she is a recruiter in Dallas. It is not her highest and best use for her country. Friends and supporters have convinced her to seek support to be a full time activist. If you feel so inclined, I encourage you to donate.
Here at Iron Ladies, we’ve started The Virtual Articles Club, like a book club, only for articles, and not in a living room but in a private Facebook group. So far we’ve done two discussions: Margaret Atwood’s Globe and Mail op-ed on being a bad feminist, the history of the free love Oneida colony (yeah, the silverware company), and the Black Mirror episode on helicopter parenting.
From the magazine
The Right To Parenthood by Rachel Darnall
With Government, Less is More by Rory Riley Topping
Want to Support Iranian Women, Let Your Hair Down by EdgeOfTheSandbox
This Sunday collection of works by conservative women is usually curated by Leslie Loftis. If someone forwarded this newsletter to you, you may sign up here.
On social media, we may be found on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook: @IronLadiesUS.
Come look around. Forward this to a friend.
Otherwise, until next week,
Leslie
