FunctionalAmbivalent

Well, Here's a Bad Idea

President Obama wants something akin to Title IX to boost the participation of women in science and math. While Title IX has been a wonderful success in women's athletics -- making possible, for example, the University of Nebraska's national champion women's bowling team -- the unintended consequence is that some schools have found it easier to cut men's sports than it is to recruit relatively disinterested women to intercollegiate competition.

Unintended, perhaps, but consequential nonetheless: it would be a disaster if something similar happened in the sciences and math.

Using Skills Well Learned While Haggling Over Restaurant Tabs

Mark Lange, who is supposedly a guy, writes a piece in the Christian Science Monitor suggesting that the world would be a better place if women ran it:

What's clear is that, on average, men overestimate their IQ while women underestimate theirs. And that may be a clue, in terms of effectiveness: While decisiveness and risk-taking matter, hubris (too often male) creates problems. Humility and collaboration (more often female) solve them.

Just not quickly.

As Best As I Can Piece the Story Together

According to this, in India there is a tradition of men going to liquor stores to drink in gardens called "ahaataa." Occasionally, however, the men's wives object, leading to incidents like this:

One fine evening they surrounded the liquor shop and the ahaataa, placards in hand demanding its closure. All the men inside were beaten with footwear. In many cases the wife/sister of the man being beaten was cheering the crowd to do a more thorough job. The police watched as spectators, only ensuring that the beating did not cross limits.

OK, so far, so good. Men drink, women get pissed and beat them with shoes, and the beatings are all in good fun. That's pretty much a typical Saturday night around my house. No biggie.

Until, that is, the women -- previously occupied with kitchen and child-rearing tasks -- start going to college and getting engineering degrees. Then, as active members of the rising Indian middle class, they start stopping off at the liquor stores on the way home from the office to knock back a few with the girls.

Seeing women propped up on bar stools, wondering what they're talking about as they whisper, point, and giggle, at least some Indian men started to think that maybe women drinking in public was a serious threat to Indian society. In reaction, upward rose the socially conservative Sri Ram Sene group, which is sort of the Moral Majority of India. Sri Ram Sene, which also objects to Valentine's Day and condemns shopping malls as "havens of hand-holding," started breaking up women's happy hours by, among other things, physically manhandling the women the way Indian women had traditionally manhandled the men.

Whatever the logical merits of Sri Ram Sene's what's-good-for-the-goose-is-good-for-the-gander argument, beating up women on the streets of an increasingly modern India didn't go over. The media coverage was unfriendly and the women, rather than giving up drinking and going home to cook dinner, seemed to get even more belligerent. In fact, they formed an organization to fight for their right (to party), which they called the Consortium of Pubgoing, Loose & Forward Women (CPLFW). Besides being an organization that I, personally, would pay a lot join, the CPLFW has something of a gift for political theatrics. (Here's their FaceBook page.) It called upon it's members and their sympathizers across India to mail pink panties (called chaddis) to Pramod Muthalik, who's kind of the Jerry Falwell of Sri Ram Sene.

In sending chaddis to the Ram Sene, the Consortium of Pubgoing, Loose and Forward Women has found an interesting way to stay within the Gandhian chalk-circle of non-violent protest. It may appear pointless to send women’s chaddis to an obscure obscurantist but then Muthalik is himself leading a pointless campaign.

With a population of over 1 billion, only a tiny percentage of Indians needed to participate in the protest to make a huge impression. Confronted with thousands upon thousands of actual women's underthings, Muthalik and his followers reacted with horror. As the wispy, terrifying chaddis piled-up, Sri Ran Sere sympathizers started to complain that they, rather than the women, were the victims:

Pramod Muthalik, its leader, has gone on record as apologizing for the rough handling of women and has said they never intended to beat up any woman. Muthalik has apologized, while the women of S Farm feel proud of themselves...The public display of panties (as symbols of love) that CPLFW has indulged in is obscene by every cultural standard. It is sad and unfortunate that Indian academic, intellectual and political establishments have not reprimanded them in the most severe terms.

Instead of being outraged, academic, intellectual and political people around the world (for example, me) laughed. And as we laugh, a good many of us (not me) are also sending pretty pink chaddis to Muthalik. It's fun, after all, to poke fun at ridiculous old prigs.

There is, however, a more serious side to all of this. Along with mailing underthings, the CPLFW is calling attention to the increasingly violent and anti-woman culture war in India. And Indian columnist Devangshu Datta reminds us what's really important about that the CPLFW does:

But as with all the other social movements that have been associated with clothes, the clothes are just symbolic. Nor does the CPLFW have much to do with anybody wanting to go to pubs.

This campaign is really about the right of any citizen to do what he or she wants with his or her spare time and money. There is an old Indian saying that translates: “If it’s not your father’s money, who are you to tell me how to spend it?” That is the tradition that the CPLFW embodies. That is really the only tradition that matters in this discourse — don’t miss it for the chaddis.

A lesson, perhaps, for us all.

I Think This Is Some Kind of Psychological Indicator

Above are the various versions of Betty Crocker. Which one are you most attracted to?

I, by the way, like 1986, but I've got to admit there's something about 1965. Maybe it's the pearls...

Some Nudity Required

The audition process for the Opening Ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics was more interesting than one might imagine.

I'm Gay

My wife and children were out of town this weekend, so I decided to invite a few friends over for what is referred to around my house as a "Gentlemen's Smoker." Provisioning this sort of event used to consist of buying a couple of cases of beer, some cigars and a fresh pack of playing cards. Cleaning up in preparation encompassed nothing more than clearing off the dining room table so we'd have a place to play poker.

I'm older now, however, and my doctor has me off beer and cigars and on healthful red wine -- which I do not object to, by the way -- and my friends are all middle-aged men who are more or less under the same strictures that I am. Plus, we've developed more expensive and refined tastes. So this time, arrangements were a little more complicated.

First, I had to clean the house. It's no longer a viable strategy to lock the door to the filthy bathroom and let my friends piss off the back porch. Alas, even my standards have risen. They're still not as high as my wife's, but I brought out the bucket of bathroom cleaning stuff and tried to figure out how to use it. Which was fine: good, manly chemicals with the potential to do great harm, and it wasn't like I put on rubber gloves to protect my manicure or anything. But there was a moment when I was rooting around the linen closet looking for matching hand towels when I thought, "Wait. This isn't right."

Then there was food. I bypassed the potato chip aisle completely, deciding instead on grilled meat. Yeah, good old, manly grilled meat. The butcher was nearly hidden behind huge mounds of beef slabs. My eyes settle on t-bones the size of home plate, but  I forced myself to consider instead food that would not clog our arteries so much: marinated chicken kabobs and teeny little lamb ribs. "Grilled meat," I said, but I knew it wasn't really. It was art gallery finger food, doubly insulting because it sounded so good to me. And while I was waiting for the butcher, I was concocting marinades in my mind: rosemary and lemon with some Dijon mustard, maybe brush some orange juice on the ribs as they cook. And that's what I was thinking there, in front of all that meat, until an alarm went off in my head, an alarm that started ringing just as I started giving the butcher instructions how to properly French the rib rack so it would grill-up into perfect "lamb lollipops." It was a persistent ringing and a voice, saying:

You're fussing like this for three other guys.

Then, just before my friends arrived, I took out the big wine glasses and made sure there were no water spots on them, since the night's main activity was not cards so much as it was drinking different wines. And as I was holding the glasses up to the light the voice was back, saying:

Look at yourself. Your manhood is over.

My friends arrived, thick-necked guys who go to football games and tell dirty jokes. But they arrived at my little summer party freshly scrubbed and wearing colorful polo shirts, each gently toting an impressive bottle of wine. They loved the arrangement of fresh fruit I had out on the table, and we opened all the wine at once and tasted our way through it a sip at a time, commenting and analyzing as we went.

Then, when the food and wine were gone, we repaired to the living room for dessert: a block of stinky bleu cheese and a middle-aged Sauternes. Everyone was impressed nearly to the point of applause, as we forked off tiny bits of cheese and sipped the sweet wine through it. Yes, it was quite an event, and as it came to an end I sat there in utter horror.

"How am I going to tell my wife?" I asked myself. "How am I going to tell my children?"

This is what age does to a man; it turns us into women. I think I need to go out and get into a bar fight.

Gives Her Credit For One Thing: She Used the Right Bait

A woman stranded in the Bavarian Alps, injured and immobile, takes off her brassiere and ties it to a cable used to pull logs down the mountain. Lumberjacks see the bra, conclude that there must be a woman somewhere up the mountain with free-ranging breasts, and haul-ass up to look for her, maybe buy her a drink. The woman is rescued and the lumberjacks accept that saving a human life is good, but I'm guessing they feel cheated that they didn't get to see any naked breasts.

Which Is Why Bad "Champagne" In Strip Joints Costs $100 a Bottle, DeBeers Is One of the Richest Companies In the World, and I Have $42 in My Savings Account

Scientists -- who have apparently run out of important, complicated things to study -- have discovered that men are rendered stupid in the presence of nearly naked women.

The researchers showed men sexy pictures of women or invited them to handle lingerie, and then asked the men whether they would like 15 Euros immediately or if they would like to negotiate a higher payment a week in the future.

The sexy imagery did not work on all men all the time, but, as a group, men with sex on their brains settled for a less lucrative bargain, suggesting they were more impulsive and valued immediate gratification more than the controls.

The results of this research come as no surprise to anyone who has ever met a man.

I Think We Deserve Credit For Waking Up At All

A survey by the Sleep Council -- whose meetings just have to be boring -- indicates that women wake up grumpier than men.  According to the survey, a quarter of all men claim never to wake up in a bad mood, but only one in seven women make the same claim.

Before claiming some kind of moral superiority, it's worth noting one of the reasons why women wake up grumpy:

Jessica Alexander of the Sleep Council said women's grumpiness may be worsened because they shoulder most of the household chores in the morning.

"Twenty-eight per cent of women as opposed to only 5 per cent of men do any housekeeping before going twork,"o  she said.

"It also tends to be them that prepares the breakfast, spends time with the children, check their emails and attend to their beauty regime. Women far outweigh men in having a busy and packed morning.

"So what do men do? Apparently just get up and go out: 17 per cent of them spend only 10 minutes on their wake up and get out routine."

Speaking strictly for myself, that's an unfair characterization.  I also read the paper.