Of the married women making more money than their spouses, 71 percent of the husbands are working and they have a median family income of $80,000, according to 2011 numbers.

In 1960, only 4 percent of married moms were making more than their husbands; now it’s 23 percent. That translates into 5.1 million married “breadwinner moms.”

I’m not one of these women and will probably never be for obvious reasons, but good for them! Of course, there could be less unemployed men and even more high-achieving women, but the trend is positive. Now it needs to speed up a little.

In an assignment based on Columbus’s Diaries, a student keeps writing things like, “Columbus is addressing the King and Queen of England,” “Columbus wants to send several of the indigenous people back to England,” Columbus wants people back in England to know. . .”

“Jason,” I write, “what does England have to do with any of this?”

“Isn’t England the country that sent Columbus’s expedition to the Indies?” Jason writes back.

And please don’t ask if I have discussed Spain and the Catholic King and Queen, Ferdinand and Isabel, in the context of a course called HISPANIC CIVILIZATION. Please don’t ask because there has been too much aggravation already.

Why do I have to be aggravated right before I have to visit a doctor and have my blood pressure checked? In a bout of inexplicable industriousness, I decided to visit the course blog before the appointment. Which is where I discovered that a student had left the following comment:

Today we see Muslims as terrorists, so how come Iberian Muslims were so different?

If there is one thing capable of making me rabidly angry, it’s this. And as if the statement itself weren’t enough to make my BP shoot up, the student just had to use the word “we” in the comment. At least, one could have the consideration of not attributing one’s offensive ideas to others.

This is the same student who has already regaled us all with a story of visiting Mexico that contained the following gem:

I visited Mexico once and what I found really annoying were all those Hispanics begging us for money.

I had to have a personal talk with the student after that statement but I’m seeing now that it had no effect. We are starting to talk about the indigenous civilizations of the Americas today, and I cringe in fear of what we might hear from this student in class discussions.

If you are thinking that this is some ignorant kid, you are wrong. The student is at least my age. And she homeschools her two children. At first, I was very happy to have her as a student because it was as if I were educating 3 people for the price of one. But now I’m afraid of reading the course blog because I never know what she might write there.

Yes, I know it’s my job to educate people. But we are all human and we all have things that are difficult for us to process. For me, “all those annoying Hispanics and terrorist Muslims” are such a thing.

Žižek always shares funny little stories about his encounters with the overly PC academics in the US. One of the most memorable anecdotes was about a visit of his to an American university where faculty members sat in a circle and introduced themselves not with their names but with strings of identity labels that scared the poor European philosopher out of his wits. When he heard academics introduce themselves as, “John Smith, cis-gendered heterosexual Irish American male” and “Jenny Smith, cis-gendered lesbian female,” Žižek was terrified that he would also be expected to report to a group of complete strangers on his own sexual practices that, he believed, were none of their business.

In his recent book The Year of Dreaming Dangerously, Žižek tells another hilarious anecdote of this kind. During a recent visit to California, he and a European colleague of his were invited to the house of a local scholar. After dinner, the European politely asked if he could step outside to smoke. The host responded that he couldn’t allow anybody to smoke in close proximity to his house.

The European then suggested that he would walk down the street and smoke there. The Californian got even more scandalized and responded that it would damage his reputation with his neighbors to have smokers emerge from his house.

The European realized that smoking was not on the cards for him in California and resigned himself to a smoke-free evening. After which the Californian took out his marijuana stash and offered everybody a smoke.

The spirited discussion in the dating thread reminded me of the following true story.

Once my colleagues and I ordered some pizza, had some drinks, and were talking about life. Then a male colleague from Peru decided to share his bit of sexual wisdom.

“You have to recognize,” he said, “that women are passive both in sex and in life. So how can you expect any equality in terms of rights? In bed, for instance, women just lie there, they rarely even move at all.”

We all laughed so hard that the walls shook.

At the end of the collective laughing bout, the Peruvian colleague asked in a small, hopeful voice, “So. . . are you saying there are women who are not like that?”

We had to reassure him that there are a few women here and there who have been known to move and even make sounds in bed.

The really sad part was that the Peruvian colleague was 43 years old at that time and had an adult son.

For at least a year after that, people greeted this poor guy with an invariable, “So has she moved yet? Make sure she is still alive there, man!”

Žižek (whose recent book I’m enjoying to the point of wanting to bug everybody with it all day long) has some interesting things to say about Israel:

In order to ground its Zionist politics, the State of Israel is here making a catastrophic mistake: it decided to downplay, if not outright ignore, so-called “old” (traditional European) anti-Semitism, focusing instead on the “new” and allegedly “progressive” anti-Semitism masked as critique of the Zionist politics of the State of Israel.

This is happening against the background of growing “old-style” anti-Semitism in Europe. Let’s remember that it was precisely that kind of anti-Semitism that led to the Holocaust not so long ago. Nobody is saying that the Holocaust is about to repeat itself in Europe, but the trend is definitely scary and needs to be addressed. Instead of doing so, however, Israel has identified the greatest enemy of the Jewish people elsewhere:

Zionism itself, in its hatred of those Jews who do not fully identify with the politics of the State of Israel, paradoxically became anti-Semitic, for it has constructed the figure of the Jew who doubts the Zionist project along anti-Semitic lines.

A really disturbing part of this process are Israel’s welcoming gestures towards openly anti-Semitic Christian fundamentalists who support the Zionist project for reasons of their own.

And finally Žižek dares to say what I always wanted to say but never mustered the strength to do:

However, are not the real self-haters those who secretly hate the true greatness of the Jewish nation, precisely the Zionists who have allied themselves with anti-Semites?

The true greatness of the Jewish nation has been reduced, in my opinion, to pursuing the boring nationalistic dream of “one’s own country” as if the Jewish people hadn’t achieved so much without this crutch and haven’t called almost every country in the world our own. Now we are supposed to self-immolate on the altar of claiming ownership to a miserable little piece of land. And those who feel it isn’t worth all these sacrifices are traitors and self-haters.

As everybody who has read this blog for a while knows, I don’t like anything anybody ever has to say about Israel. Žižek’s words, however, make a lot of sense to me. And when he says that

at the end of this road lies an extreme possibility that should in no way be excluded a priori—that of a “historic pact” between Zionists and Muslim fundamentalists,

this possibility does not sound completely unrealistic either. When The Nation (and I don’t mean the magazine) becomes a goal and a value in itself, every other consideration tends to slip away. The Jews who had to pay such an enormous price for Germany’s nationalistic drive should remember this lesson of history.

Here is insightful discussion of Europe’s crisis from Žižek’s The Year of Dreaming Dangerously:

Although the ongoing crisis of the European Union appears as a crisis of the economy and the financial system, it is in its fundamental dimension an ideologico-political crisis: the failure of referenda on the EU constitutional treaty a couple of years ago gave a clear signal that voters perceived the EU as a technocratic economic union, lacking any vision capable of mobilizing people. Until the recent protests, the only ideology capable of rousing people was that premised on the need to “defend Europe” against immigration.

It is very refreshing to see a Marxist who can abandon the need to see economic considerations as the central motivation for everybody’s every action. I agree with the philosopher in general, but the anti-immigrant feelings in Europe are not the only ideology uniting Europeans. Rather, they are part of a shared ultra-conservative turn that has tints of fascism to it. Only today reader Tim shared a link to an article about UK’s war on sexual liberation and individual freedom. Similar campaigns have been raging in formerly enlightened Scandinavian countries.

Žižek hopes that Europe can turn away from this particular unifying vision and start moving in the direction of what used to be Europe’s great positive mission in the world: spreading the ideas of Enlightenment, liberation, intelligence, and freedom. And I couldn’t agree more with him.

Many women say they feel constantly guilty as mothers. Thoughts of not doing enough for their children, of not being exactly what is needed, of not trying hard enough persecute them.

I know I will never feel mother’s guilt, though. I won’t feel it for the same reason I don’t drink alcohol, smoke, consume pain-killers and take hot baths while I’m pregnant. I don’t do any of these things because I made the decision to get pregnant and carry the pregnancy to term, and now it is my responsibility not to harm it.

Playing around with guilt is not something I can afford any longer. While an adult can manage this game and derive a lot of enjoyment from it, to a child it is uniformly terrifying to see a guilt-ridden parent. A child can’t understand that this guilt has nothing whatsoever to do with him or her but is, rather, something that existed long before the child’s conception. The child has no idea that s/he is an excuse for, rather than the cause of, the guilt.

So instead of terrorizing the child with the horrifying realization that “My existence hurts Mommy”, if the need ever strikes to experience the joys of self-flagellation with guilt, I will practice it in some other areas of my life. If I feel guilty about my publication record or buying too many books, this at least won’t harm anybody else.

N. and I were discussing why these vodka bottles were only see-through on the top and the very bottom.

“It’s to create an illusion that there is still a lot of vodka left,” N. said.

“No, it’s to help you feel less guilty by concealing how much you drank,” I suggested.

Canada, the land of progress: “The Broadbent Institute has released a new set of polling (PDF) as to Canadians’ values. And it’s particularly worth noting that even on the Cons’ signature issues such as tax cuts, austerity and crime – where millions upon millions of public dollars have been spent in a combined effort at branding and persuasion – 60% or more of respondents (including new immigrants) side with a more progressive option.”

I’m very happy about this revival of interest in Hans Fallada. He is a brilliant writer.

“Not long ago, a colleague discussed with me the recently-concluded faculty search in his department. His department decided to hire a male candidate, and my colleague told me he was relieved. In fact, he said to me, “It’s so good to know that men can still get hired. I thought we could only hire women, so it’s nice to know that men can still get hired.” Gosh, how much I hate these stupid melodrama peddlers! Yes, nobody hires men any longer. They all roam the streets, unemployed and miserable. It’s precisely this tendency to see everything in apocalyptic terms that alienates me from my colleagues.

Polanski is being his usual disgusting self. He can’t make movies because he is signally devoid of talent, so he attracts attention by spouting stupidities. I wonder when he will start talking at empty chairs, which is in vogue among Hollywood wash-outs, as I keep hearing.

It is really cute how stupid losers who insist on whining about the mean, horrible feminists always pretend my blog doesn’t exist. When I rebuked the creepazoid who fantasized about her son growing up to be a rapist, nobody felt it necessary to quote me. Of course, my writing destroy the myth of the man-eating evil feminists. People who criticize other for hypocrisy while being deeply hypocritical disgust me.

“The worst of the pick-up artists insist that men and women want such radically different things that only the cynical mastery of manipulation techniques will lead to happiness. The good news is the emergence of a different model for men and women alike, based on mutuality, kindness and willingness to prioritise other’s boundaries as well as one’s own pleasure.” Exactly.

“Is Preparing for Class Before the Semester Begins “Unpaid Labor”??” For me it’s not an issue at all because I spread out my salary across 12 months and always get paid more in summer than during the rest of the year. Other people seem to care about the subject a lot, though. Why not just do the kind of salary deferral I do and never have to worry about not having money in the summer is a mystery to me.

“Publishers have fought against the “proposed international instrument on limitations and exceptions for persons with print disabilities” for *30* years.”

“The ridiculous proliferation and popularity of TV rape scenes — there’s a sexual assault about every 10 seconds on television — is proof enough of that, as if you needed it. When TV rapes women, if there is ever any underlying high moral purpose serving Truth and Beauty, I have never seen it.”

And the post of the week: “Michelle Obama has been reduced to a fashion icon and promoter of vegetable gardens and healthy eating.  She had better not act angry, ever. She must show some class, at all times. She sends her girls to a private school, and Obama’s friend Rahm Emanuel destroys public education in Chicago.  I admire none of this. Obama has not kept his promises,  except the one to kill Bin Laden, and well we did get out of Iraq and well we are all over the Middle East anyway, and we are supposed to stick it?  Be grateful that he hasn’t messed things up as badly as Bush? Why?“