Have you noticed how the Republican approach to this year’s presidential elections is the exact copy of the one four years ago?

A presidential candidate who is not much loved by his party and who barely manages to get the nomination chooses as his running mate somebody he has no reason to adore, somebody who is rabidly anti-abortion, has very extreme views and a very schematic understanding of the economy, and who will only appeal to a very small group of population because of how radical s/he is.

We’ve all seen this before. This strategy failed when opposing a young, inexperienced Barack Obama. Now that the “lack of experience”card is gone, replaying the strategy that has already proven to be a losing one makes very little sense. And the last time around, we at least saw a moderately charismatic candidate and a very charismatic running mate. This time, both candidates would be pressed to find an ounce of charisma between the two of them.

I think what we seeing is the classic case of a party being so spoiled by 8 years of being in power and doing whatever it wanted that it still can’t get out of the “why listen to what people want?” mentality. Four years haven’t been enough for the Republicans to recognize that the absolute majority of people in this country wants abortion (albeit with some restrictions), in vitro, Medicare, Medicaid, Pell Grants, Planned Parenthood, and Social Security. Most would prefer to see the Pentagon budget cut than their Medicare taken away (which is a policy that Obama pursued and his opponents denounce). People have been awakened by a major recession and promising them to take away all these entitlements they have been used to because politicians have messed up and the Treasury is empty will not satisfy the voters.

Of course, as long as the Republicans are stuck in this broken record mode, they will keep losing Presidential elections.

I don’t think we need to worry much about the upcoming election. If the President manages to avoid any “Polish death camps” statements, if the economy doesn’t implode for whatever reason, and if Israel avoids hitting Iran, Obama has this election in his pocket.

Everybody who can vote, should still go vote, though.

And what do you think of Paul Ryan and his contribution to the Republican ticket?

I’m watching a Russian TV show. A very young woman says, “Nobody wants to be a housewife these days and men hate them, too. It was fashionable to be a housewife in the fifties, but not any more.”

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you’ll know why this is hilarious. You will also be able to figure out what cultural phenomenon is behind this statement.

Gender norms are much more fiercely policed within each gender than outside of it.

A male friend shared that he never fears that women will condemn him as not being manly enough for being sensitive, crying in the movies, writing poetry, following fashion trends, and enjoying manicures. It’s the men he knows – his father, brother, friends and male colleagues – who make him feel that there is something wrong with his way of being male.

I told him that I feel the same. I never fear that men will condemn me for being insensitive, obsessed with my career, prone to laugh at sentimental movies, bored with fashion magazines, loud, and brash. Every single voice that told me, “Clarissa, you are such a man!” was always female. Men don’t criticize my body and men never ever badgered me for being single (when I was single) and not having children.  I know for a fact, though, that many of those men who have no problem whatsoever with my lack of gender conformity practically bully their male friends for a slightest deviation from the male gender norm.

 

 

I never liked hippies. For a year, I lived in Ithaca, NY, a town that had been built up by the hippies and their presence could be felt in everything. Ithaca is a place where  you can see well-off parents in expensive business suits and dresses walk down the street smoking a joint after dropping their freshman off at the dorms. I would often get high just by walking down the Commons to my apartment building. Every eatery has endless vegan options, there is a big hemp store and a coffee shop that serves different kinds of mate, and the food co-op sells the strangest food I’d ever seen anywhere. The hippies were everywhere. I was quite wary of them. They were all so nice, welcoming, relaxed and good-natured that I knew there had to be something seriously wrong with them.

The American 1960s fascinate me. I obviously wasn’t around either chronologically or geographically but I figured out very soon after emigrating that something really huge happened in the US between 1965 and 1975 and that we were still both enjoying many of that era’s achievements and experiencing an enormous backlash against it. Sigrid Nunez’s brilliant novel The Last of Her Kind helped me understand the sixties in a way I never did before. The novel is very well-written and beautifully crafted (except from one section that is too heavily influenced by Stephen King’s novella “Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption.“)

The novel has two female protagonists: Ann, who symbolizes everything that was good and hopeful about the era (the progressive social movements, the rejection of the bourgeois fallacies, the sensitivity to the world’s injustices), and Georgette, the symbol of the post-sixties backlash (the erosion of the rights of women, the return of women to the practice of housewifery, the loss of interest in politics and social justice.)

The relationship between Ann and Georgette is too complex to be addressed in one short review, of course, so I will just mention that it offers a very important insight into why the progressive social and political movements so often fail to connect with the very people for whose benefit they are militating. Ann comes from a rich family but she hates her race and class origins and wants to champion the rights of the downtrodden. Georgette, Ann’s college roommate, is precisely  one of these downtrodden but the gulf of misunderstanding that separates the two women can never be bridged.

Continue reading “The Last of Her Kind by Sigrid Nunez: A Review” →

First of all, let’s support these nice people who decided to promote our favorite blog (meaning, my blog, of course) and give them some well-deserved hits.

How you can make good use of those smaller blocks of time.

And this is a great way to lose an election: ““I want to make sure every new computer sold in this country, after I’m president, has installed on it a filter to block all pornography.”” Hello, Nanny State and its presidential candidate who wants to police our morals. Hey, Libertarians, how come there is not a peep out of you on this subject?

“National MS advocates are appreciative of Ann Romney’s efforts to help boost the profile of the disease and raise money for the cause, but they are opposing her husband’s campaign health care policy proposals, many of which are mirrors of GOP legislation currently pending in Congress. MS advocates believe many of the proposals would be extremely harmful to most people with multiple sclerosis.” Talk is cheap. It’s the actions that count. Rather than “boosting the profile of the disease” (???), these hypocrites could try to avoid victimizing people with the disease.

“Amazon.com is offering to pay up to $2,000 per year towards educational costs for its warehouse employees if they pursue Associate’s degrees in certain high-demand fields, including fields like aircraft mechanics that have no obvious value within the company. ” I have no doubt that Amazon was pushed towards this decision by the relentless exposure of the horrific working conditions at its warehouses. This is yet another instance of bloggers effectuating positive change by their writing.

A beautiful tribute to Robert Hughes.

Missouri is stupid and is about to get even stupider. Don’t believe me? Read this article.

Canada vs the US. Very visual and filled with useful information for online discussions.

The Butovo massacre.

Are you following the show trials in China? I am because they are an eerie reminder of the history of my own country in the 1930s. Here are post 1 and post 2 on the subject.

Let’s feed the trolls! I agree.

“Science Education Standards: Can New Recommendations Help ‘Mediocre To Awful’ States?”

“In the corner of the world where I grew up, keeping kids from seeing sex always seemed to be more important than keeping them from seeing violence. Today, and in my own parenting, I feel the opposite.” I adore this blogger.

Why men should take women’s studies courses. Very insightful.

It isn’t often that I find a feminist blog I really like but Nerdy Feminist is a brilliant blogger who runs just such a blog. Here is a great post from her on last name changes.

The latest environmental disaster caused by an oil company.

A phenomenal post on the fundamentalist hypocrisies on the subject of love.

“Long before I had heard of Prager I subjected my bride-to-be to such a test. . . Dear one took the rigors of that  trip 30 years ago like a trouper, and passed the test with flying colors.  We got married the following summer and remain happily married 29 summers later. When I told the story to a feminazi some years back she gave me a hard and disapproving look.  She didn’t like that I imposed a marital compatibility test upon my lady love.  Bitch!” You refer to her as a Nazi and a bitch and you think she disapproves of you because of your pathetic personal life? Maybe this poor excuse for a philosopher needs to take an elementary course in formal logic.

How fundamentalist women reduce stress. It’s hilarious, people.

How to show Twitter bullies their place.

And for my Russian-speaking readers (who, as I now realize, are a lot more than 3), here is a beautiful post IN RUSSIAN. Special thanks go to reader el who introduced me to this talented blogger.

On Romney’s choice of Ryan as a running mate: “The good news is that this really is a sign of desperation on the part of Team Romney.  Romney’s basically thrown out his entire game plan, and has gone with a veep choice who effectively upstages him the way Sarah Palin upstaged John McCain.  He hadn’t really wanted a campaign about issues; he’d just wanted to be the businessman who would come in and set things right with his business know-how.  Now that his time at Bain’s been gleefully shredded by the good guys, he really had to shake the Etch-A-Sketch and get a reset.” I wanted to say the same thing but this blogger said it much better than I ever could. How do you feel about Romney’s choice of Ryan as a VP?

There is no limit to how stupid and insensitive people can be about certain topics: “It’s a little like a doctor having permission to do things to your body that no other person (maybe a lover) would EVER be permitted to do.  Is there a more explicit and invasive rape than a colonoscopy?” If you say yourself that the doctor has a permission, what possesses you to use the word “rape” in this context? I would hope that in bloody 2012 people were capable of remembering that the difference between rape and not rape is free, uncoerced consent.

The most idiotic post of the week: this poorly written confusing rant suggesting that in order to “afford” art programs, universities need to drill for oil. Or have somebody else drill for oil. Or whatever. Why is it that every ignoramus seems entitled to offer opinions about academia?

And the feel-good post of the week: a mother uses her Kindle to help her with breastfeeding. I warn you, though, the amount of cuteness (in the best sense of the word) in this post is overwhelming. If you don’t feel like letting go of your bad mood at this point, don’t read this post. It is destined to make you start smiling goofily.

Two Russian nouveau riches are talking.

“Did you manage to get tickets to Putin’s presidential inauguration?” one asks.

“I have a lifelong subscription,” his friend responds.

I just found this boring rant on last-name changes that I don’t want to address because the subject has been discussed at length on this blog. I just want to draw your attention to the following statement that I find quite scary:

Not only is it a testament to honor and tradition that modern women are adopting husbands’ surnames, it is also a wink and a nod to the notion that a woman’s identity inevitably becomes entangled with her husband’s.

When your identity becomes “entangled” with that of your husband (child, parent, sibling, friend, etc.), it’s time to seek urgent psychological help. You are heading not only for a collapse of the relationship but for a host of psychological problems and abusive behaviors.

The idea that your identity can be entangled with that of another human being makes it impossible for love to exist between the two of you. If you need to see another human being as some sort of your own body part, this means that you are incapable of granting them the right to be a valid individual in their own right. As Ayn Rand said, “In order to say “I love you” you first need to be able to say “I”.”

This “entanglement of identities” is nothing but an illusion, of course. It’s an illusion born of disrespect for both oneself and the other. It is based on the idea that a human being cannot be whole without supplementing one’s identity with that of one’s perfect complement, one’s “media naranja”, one’s “other half.” Incomplete people don’t have the capacity to love. They experience a neurotic need to use other people to prop themselves up instead of developing personally, psychologically and intellectually until these feelings of incompleteness subside.

If you are incapable of seeing your spouse (child, parent, sibling, friend, etc.) as a separate human being with his or her own desires, preferences, wishes, needs, goals and dreams, you will inevitably start pushing them to service your wishes, needs and goals at the expense of their own. This is where the abusive behaviors begin to appear. A spouse can always counteract the abuse by heading directly to a divorce lawyer. But an “entangled” child will find it much harder to get rid of an invasive parent.

P.S. I ask everybody to avoid discussing last-name changes in this thread. If you have a burning need to discuss the subject, you can always take it to the relevant thread.

Since I’m on the subject of autism anyways, let me address one more topic. I was asked a while ago to blog about the difficulties that might arise between autistics and non-autistics in terms of processing emotions. Contrary to what many pseudo-specialists claim, autistics do have a very rich emotional range. However, we might come off as unemotional and distant because we process and express emotions in a different way from the NT (neurotypical) people.

Again, I want to repeat that everybody manifests differently and my experience might not resonate with many autistics.

Whenever I think about the emotional expressions of NT people, the word “manipulative” is the first that comes to mind. As an autistic, I tend to be very logical, reasonable and organized about everything, including my emotions. My husband knows that the best way to drive me to distraction (and into a huge panic attack) is by having unexplained mood swings. I do not believe in mood swings, to tell you the truth. I don’t think that anybody just becomes sad or happy or anything else for no discernible reason. It only seems like that happens because sometimes one is too lazy to analyze what put one in this particular mood. It’s this emotional sloppiness that I dislike about non-autistics. If you feel whatever it is you feel, you better have a good explanation of why you feel it and what you expect me to do in response.

And believe me, after I taught N. how to identify the sources of one’s moods, he became really good at it. This is why I don’t trust anybody who is “just moody” or “just hormonal.” I know that this is a manipulative strategy aimed at provoking a sense of vague guilt in me. And the perennially guilty people are the easiest to dominate.

So my suggestion is: let’s stop treating emotions as a tool of beating each other into submission. Let’s analyze and verbalize as much as possible.

Whenever I bring an emotion of mine to another person, I always accompany it with an explanation of what exactly it is I need from them. “I’m very sad because of this meeting at work. Please sit with me while I tell you once again what happened.” “I’m terrified about my class observation tomorrow. I need you to tell me that I’m a brilliant teacher for the next ten minutes.”

Reader Benoni left the following questions:

I hope you don’t a mind a very personal question about autism, but could you give some advice about coping with the negative aspects of asperger’s syndrome? I’m a very recent diagnosis, was told by my psychologist two weeks ago. From most of what I’ve read about asperger’s syndrome, aspies in general object to the idea of an “autism cure” because they feel autism is part of what makes them who they are. But I feel like if I had the option of “curing” my autism, I’d go for it.

I’ve had people difficulties my entire life, and I know I feel isolated socially but can’t open new social boundaries because I cope those kinds of situations at all, which utterly ruins my confidence. I feel trapped by it. Now that I have a name for my problems, I feel especially anxious to get rid of them. Is this normal for newly diagnosed aspies? Will I naturally learn to accept it, or is it something I’ll have to work towards? I hope none of this offends you, but I’m kinda desperate for advice.

First of all, I wanted to address the issue of the diagnosis. I believe that the diagnosis only makes sense if you feel that it enhances your life in a positive way. I know several people who were diagnosed with autism but they decided to forget they ever were because they didn’t feel it helped them to refer to their way of being with this term. I support them completely because it’s their business how to refer to their way of being. For me, the diagnosis was a very happy event because it came quite late in life (I was 30) and I’d been convinced for all those years that something was deeply wrong with me and I had to conceal what I was really like from everybody. The realization that there were many people who experienced reality in a similar way, people who I could talk to and share my experiences, and that there was a scientifically recognized term for who I am was an enormous relief.

I’m one of those people who’d never want to be “cured”, but I completely understand those who do. We only have one life, and it’s nobody’s business what we find helpful or unhelpful in that one life. People are different and if you perceive this as something negative, something you want to get rid of, that’s completely normal and there is no reason to beat yourself up about this.

Now, the really good news about Asperger’s is that it gets better with time. When you are in your teens, it’s a curse. When you are in your twenties, it’s a burden. But as you get older, it becomes something that starts to work to your advantage.

The not so good news is that you will have to find a way to manage the negative aspects of Asperger’s and then continue to manage them constantly. This is not as bad as it sounds because once you get into the habit, it gets easier. I suggest making a list of the negative aspects (don’t you dig making lists?) and then look at them and see how you can manage them. Everybody manifests differently, so I won’t try to guess what your negative aspects are. I’ll just provide my own list and how I managed the points on it.

Since this isn’t necessarily of interest to everybody, I will place the rest of the post under the break.

Continue reading “How to Deal With the Negative Aspects of Asperger’s?” →

Seriously, folks, who comes up with this shit?

Men under stress find overweight and obese women to be more attractive than do guys in a relaxed state of mind, new research finds.

The findings complement previous studies that have shown when resources are scarce, people prefer heavier partners, presumably because fatness is a sign that the person has access to food and is healthy. In women, for example, being underweight can make it more difficult to get and stay pregnant.

I don’t mind accepting that all these men who pester me for dates do it only because they are hugely stressed but the article makes no sense on any level. Even a child knows, I believe, that being underweight and being overweight are equally problematic for conception and pregnancy. And do people really associate being fat with being healthy? If so, it must be their utter stupidity that leads them to experience all this stress.

This kind of inane “research” annoys me more than words can express. There is so much that is wrong with this “study” that I wonder who employs these pseudo-scientists and why it even makes sense to keep them on the payroll. The entire premise behind it is obviously based on the researchers’ unhealthy bias. “Why on Earth would anybody want to have anything to do with these disgusting fatties?” they probably asked themselves. “There must be something deeply wrong with such people. Now let’s go and prove that they must be psychologically damaged in some way.”

It’s mind-boggling how often people sell their own intellectual limitations as some sort of a scientific breakthrough.