Is it? Marcotte's reading looks uncharitable in the extreme to me.
I was thinking about posting this as well. He doesn't fly off the rails at all, as far as I can tell (though I haven't read Marcotte's piece); he seems, basically, appreciative of Savage though uncertain as to whether sexual appetite really is as unbending as Savage makes it out to be. (Hence the anecdote at the end.)
It's pretty easy to understand why (or one possible reason why) Savage would take something like the libido of the boyfriend in the letter at the end as just a fact that he has to come clean about to his girlfriend. Allowing that the strength of his libido is malleable—that if he likes this girl so much he should try to stick it out and see if he can get used to a slower schedule—might seem to make it more plausible (even though the inference wouldn't be legitimate) that the object of a person's libido is also malleable, and specifically that gay people if they really wanted to could come to be attracted to members of the opposite sex.
Pandagon isn't loading for me, but I misread the title (displayed in the url box) as stating that she would take it "over couverture" any day, which sent me back to the Dueholm article, as I had missed the discussion of that particular kink.
Pandagon isn't loading for me
Me either. You killed Pandagon, heebie!
It worked for me to go to the Pandagon home page and scroll down to that post. As often is the case for me with Marcotte, I found it too boring to read her whole response.
I'd read the Dueholm article as well, and while I find Savage terribly entertaining and generally fairly sensible (l listen to the podcast as part of my rotation of subway listening), I thought Dueholm made some good points. This paragraph:
This Aspiring Honest Nonmonogamous Dude (AHND) takes greater pains than most of Savage's correspondents to praise his girlfriend, not only in general but specifically with regard to their sex life. They have already spent several happy years together. He is anxious about his surplus of desire, but apparently nothing else. Yet that consideration trumps all others in Savage's answer. Sexual compatibility--in terms of libido or in terms of tolerating nonexclusivity--is the coin of the realm. Love, emotional compatibility, the possibility of a life together, not to mention irrecoverable years already spent--these must all be staked against the value of a fully deployed libido. But what, exactly, is the upshot of "calmly winding down" a relationship with a high risk of infidelity? Potential romantic partners, unlike firms in the classical free-market model, are not infinite in number, and a life of comparison shopping is not free of cost. If the aspiring HND dissolves this years-long transaction in order to find a partner who is just as lovable but less jealous, or who shares his libido at every point, he will likely have a lonely road ahead of him.
seems to identify a real flaw in Savage's advice, and it's a point he hits a lot.
The Pandagon response seemed sort of reasonable in itself, but not particularly responsive to the Dueholm article.
I read the Dueholm article, and got to the point where he did the pivot from "that Dan Savage is the voice of a generation" to "but is he so sex-obsessed (N.B. I am a Lutheran minister" and immediately assumed bad faith and stopped reading. Since I'm not particularly interested in picking back up on the article or reading the Pandagon response, and since the initial reading on my instinctual bad faith-o-meter might well be off, I... have run out of things to say. The end!
Pandagon's not loading for me either, so instead of responding to the post, I'll just take this opportunity to say that I really dislike Marcotte's writing. And that on at least one specific occasion I have witnessed (in a post and interaction that followed in the comments) her uncharitableness directly leading to disingenuousness.
10: No emoticons with backwards baseball caps.
immediately assumed bad faith
You're no better than a metafilter commenter!
9: It wasn't that bad, largely because he doesn't really draw any conclusions, just picks at the fact that Savage tends to analyze relationships as if perfect or pretty-close-to-perfect sexual compatibility is the one thing that can't flex -- if you can't get there, you should end the relationship. This is an overstatement, Savage isn't absolutely hardline on that point, but it's a direction where I've thought he tends to go off the rails as well.
14: No four-eyed emoticons balancing baseball caps between their eye sets with bouffant haircuts and balancing books on their heads.
11: I used to think of her as a reasonably good and interesting writer, but a couple of years ago I started bouncing off her blog -- it all seemed either superficial or very inside-baseball. I'm not sure if her writing changed or what happened.
15: yeah, Savage really isn't like that, I don't think. And, anyhow, people generally write to him because they can't get past that. If he weren't, you know, a sex advice columnist, maybe he would be primarily concerned with something else.
I also used to like her well enough to read pandagon. The tone isn't my thing, but hey, I hate the patriarchy too! Hate it! I soured on the blog and started skipping her writing when I found it elsewhere because 1) the tone got old, and 2) I read several posts where she was relatively ill-informed on the subject, yet argued with the exact same vehemence and derision.
but is he so sex-obsessed
I don't think this is a fair reading of the Dueholm piece -- Dueholm seems fine with Savage's sex obsession (he started reading Savage Love when it was more straightforwardly a sex-advice column, after all), but is critical of the centrality that Savage has come to place on sex and libido to relationships, sometimes even to the exclusion of emotional attachment. I first started reading Dan Savage in the mid 90s, and although I continue to like him for the most part, this criticism rings very true to me.
I finally read the pandagon article, and agree with essear in (1).
Marcotte's reading looks uncharitable in the extreme to me.
That's what I would assume, but I haven't read anything on her site in a while.
Yeah, it's not just uncharitable, it actually kind of misrepresents the other article.
And, anyhow, people generally write to him because they can't get past that.
That, certainly -- the people coming to him for advice are coming to a sex(and relationships, but mostly sex) advice columnist, so it makes sense to give them advice on that basis.
But look at the paragraph I quoted above. The questioner is in a relationship, he's happy, the sex is good, but there's not enough of it, and he wants variety, but he's pretty sure that asking his girlfriend about having an open relationship will damage the relationship. And Savage's response is that there's no hope of staying in the relationship without cheating if he feels that way, so better to blow it up by asking if they can open the relationship.
And this does seem awfully cavalier about (a) the potential for staying in the relationship and, you know, not cheating (b) the odds that, given the questioner's sense of how the girlfriend feels about open relationships, that anything good will come of raising the issue, and (c) the downsides of screwing up what sounds like a mostly very good relationship.
Amanda Marcotte is annoying. I'd use the word "shrill" to describe her, if it hadn't already been ruined. I think what frequently annoys me (and also is why I stopped reading Pandagon way back when) is that she appears to have one approach to everything, and that is OUTRAGE. Stop cheapening feminist outrage, Marcotte!
Additionally, I get annoyed at the implication that the patriarchy is an evil plot to keep women down. I hate it, too, but I don't think it's helpful to assume all injustice is the result of a conspiracy, because it just makes us sound crazy. Stop making feminism sound crazy. Sometimes patriarchal bullshit is just ignorance, sometimes it's callousness, and sometimes it's truly evil. Not being able to distinguish between flavors of patriarchal bullshit makes you seem either stupid or disingenuous, and neither is really an image you want to be going for if you actually want to change things rather than rant about them.
She wasn't always this way, though, right? Now I'm kind of curious about what changed.
Pure speculation, but I wonder if she reacted badly to negative feedback. Back when I was enjoying her more, I thought she got a lot more anti-feminist hate than she deserved (not that anyone deserves anti-feminist hate but you know what I mean, she was a lightning rod). Maybe she's someone who reacts to bullshit in a counterproductive manner.
23: I think Savage's basic operating thesis is that sexual compatibility is absolutely crucial to long term stability and health in what is supposed to be a sexual relationship, and I think his frequent emphasis both reflects this view and the fact that he thinks (rightly) that traditional advice avoids this topic completely because of the usual social mores, implying that it's not critical. I don't think he thinks it's the only required element of a healthy relationship, but that the other necessary elements are typically given fair treatment. I view his column as a deliberate attempt at cultural compensation for this perceived deficiency.
I'm sympathetic to the connections Duelholm is drawing to the free market. This is nosflow-bait, but Mark Greif put it very well in Afternoon of the Sex Children:
Liberation implies freedom to do what you have already been doing or have meant to do. It unbars what is native to you, free in cost and freely your possession, and removes the iron weight of social interdiction. Even in the great phase of full human liberation which extended from the 1960s to the present day, however, what has passes as liberation has often been liberalization. (Marcuse used this distinction.) Liberalization makes for a free traffic in goods formerly regulated and interdicted, creating markets in what you already possess for free. It has a way of making your possessions no longer native to you at the very moment that they're freed for your enjoyment. Ultimately, you no longer know how to possess them, correctly, unless you are following new rules which emerge to dominate the traffic in these goods.
I was also glad to see him call out Savage on touting Sex at Dawn. Off the veldt!
26. That makes a lot of sense to me, and it also makes sense that Dueholm would have been sympathetic to Savage's thesis when it was clearly a minority view, but is more critical of it now that Savage is (according to Dueholm) the preeminent advice columnist in America.
I think Savage's basic operating thesis is that sexual compatibility is absolutely crucial to long term stability and health in what is supposed to be a sexual relationship, and I think his frequent emphasis both reflects this view and the fact that he thinks (rightly) that traditional advice avoids this topic completely because of the usual social mores, implying that it's not critical.
Yes, but you have to add to that some supplementary theses about lability and what sexual compatibility can come to. The guy who wants more and more varied sex, for instance, couldn't come to enjoy compatibility with his current partner by working himself over: there's a way he is and that's that. (A tendentious way of putting it: being GGG isn't, here, getting cashed out in terms of being less freaky for the sake of your partner. Reasonable accommodation always takes the form of accommodating the kinkier, or more libidinous, or more whatever, partner, not the other way around.)
This is nosflow-bait
You mean, I assume, because you didn't enclose the name of the article in quotation marks.
The Dueholm piece is about 10x longer than I'm willing to read, although I didn't see anything particularly noteworthy (in a good or bad sense) in the first few paragraphs, and Marcotte is generally unreadable although I admit I haven't even made an attempt with this particular post, but I will note that 15 is so true that I stopped reading Savage entirely roughly 6 or 8 years ago in frustration over exactly this point. If that puts me in Dueholm's camp, so be it.
On the topic of shrill uncharitability, I would just suggest a moratorium on certain phrases being used by people who are claiming to be summarizing their adversary's position. Number one would be ending a statement with ", or whatever" or ", or something", in an effort to make it absolutely clear to the reader that the statement is stupid. Number two would probably be either "brown people" or "sky fairy".
Google is giving me 524 results at pandagon.net for the word "icky", which is basically never used except in uncharitable readings.
Some combination of 15 and 29, I guess is more accurate.
29: Yeah, I suppose the implication is that compatibility is only violated when one partner is chronically sexually frustrated or otherwise unfulfilled, and that this conveniently ignores the fact that sexual fulfillment for the kinkster might mean emotional injury for the less kinky, and that of course there's a value judgment in there: if you're emotionally hurt by what your partner needs to do to get off, it's on you.
Which goes hand in hand with the overall sexual liberation thing he's pushing, but probably deserves to be stated. I'm not sure he even necessarily intends the value judgement, just that, in his view, the relationship I described above is, in the long run, doomed, one way or the other.
Maybe she's someone who reacts to bullshit in a counterproductive manner.
A fairly common and sympathetic failing, I'd say.
I don't understand why all you tools of the patriarchy are trying to discredit Marcotte and keep people away from honest feminist analysis. I think I'm kidding.
I love Marcotte. She is a no quarter given polemicist mostly on my side the side of people I think are allies, and I wish her tone and style were not more common, but universal on the left.
I don't care if she is wrong, goes overboard, doesn't make sense. All those are good things. She makes people angry and aware, and we need that more than facts, reason, arguments.
The only problem I had with Marcotte back when I was reading her and twisty was that Marcotte was too soft and not funny enough.
if you're emotionally hurt by what your partner needs to do to get off, it's on you.
Or at least that you need to get away from each other -- that a situation like that is unfixable, and the relationship should end.
32: 228 on unfogged.com.
I just tried to visit pandagon.com to check if they have comparably long comment threads, and it didn't load (in Chrome or Firefox), just gave a perpetual "Waiting for..." status. That wouldn't be that odd in itself, but I remember having this exact same problem at least four years ago - it was why I didn't follow it for a long time even after I'd encountered and liked it, as I recall (until I added it to Reader later).
Actually, that's at least part of the reason I stopped reading it consistently -- I often have trouble with it not loading.
Ya know, it's when your ally makes an indefensible argument that loyalty is created or strengthened...or abandoned. Solidarity is easy when reason is your guide.
It isn't solidarity at all, but egoism.
Ain't no revolutionaries 'round here yet.
She makes people angry and aware
I think the point is that she doesn't make people aware, because she annoys them and they start tuning her out.
I'm pretty sure the site has been completely redesigned in that span of time. What kind of bug sticks around that long?
41 (and OT): My Lilliput line in the other thread made no sense because I was confusing Mitch Daniels (who's zero feet tall) and Tim Pawlenty (who's apparently tall enough to ride the rides at Disneyland and also to be POTUS). I mean, I knew the difference between Daniels and Pawlenty, but I confused which one is a Lilliputian.
I find Marcotte to be really good at raising my blood pressure if I'm at the Red Cross and the donation is going slowly. I read her regularly. She is uncharitable, but I guess that's sort of the point: she won't let her opponents get away with soft platitudes about family values, monogamy, etc. She pins them down to what she considers the logical conclusion or, actually, the hidden agenda. (E.g. she characterized last year's post-Oscars David Brooks piece as Brooks insinuating Sandra Bullock "should have been at home making a sandwich instead of winning an Oscar" in order to save her marriage. This was pretty far from being stated by Brooks and not really central to Brooks' piece and yet... well, would he ever have referenced a male actor in the same way--I bet not?)
It's pretty unrigorous and it might hurt the discourse, but personally I like to be reminded of the issues she harps on. And I actually find her much more readable than Brooks or Douthat! I don't find much to disagree with in her most recent piece on Douthat.
I read pandagon via Google Reader and it always loads fine like that.
I'm not sure he even necessarily intends the value judgement, just that, in his view, the relationship I described above is, in the long run, doomed, one way or the other.
Thinking about the comment in the "That Guy" thread that, "marriage is different than dating" my sense is that Dan Savage's advice is generally crafted with dating relationships in mind rather than long-term commitment.
I think the Dueholm notes in a smart way that this category was under served prior to the explosion in alt-weeklies, and that Savage fills a valuable niche.
I think it is also fair to note, however, that it isn't an infinately expandable niche (and I don't read Dan Savage regularly so I may be mischaracterising him).
46: Hmmm. I think the point is often that issues that doom a relationship while dating doom a relationship just as much while married, it's just that the sunk costs are so much greater? Either way, Savage has a pretty high standard for compatibility. I'm not confident that the percentage of committed couples that meets it is all that high. Then again, divorce rates, etc.
43: Oh my God, he's travel sized!
45.1: I can recall multiple instances where Savage has advised a person in a long-term, committed relationship with a loving and otherwise-compatible partner to end the relationship because the partner would not indulge a foot fetish or something along those lines.
34/29: It's possible that that is Dan Savage's message, but it's not evident from the AHND story. He's saying end it, and he's saying it to the partner with the kinkier sex drive, but that's just because the partner with the higher sex drive is the one who wrote to him. Telling that person to end it also protects the partner with the less kinky sex drive from emotional hurt like what you're talking about. (It doesn't protect them from the emotional hurt of a break-up, but it does protect them from the emotional hurt of a break-up plus cheating, and if he's taking the cheating part as inevitable, well, that's questionable but it's not necessarily a value judgment.)
FTR, I've read Savage now and then but never regularly, and I used to read Amanda Marcotte and pandagon regularly but stopped both years ago, and I just skimmed Dueholm's thing, and Marcotte's thing seems needlessly hostile but not actually wrong on the facts or its representation of Dueholm.
All I'm saying is, it doesn't look to me like there is a pro-kinky, blame-the-less-libidinous value judgment in Savage's work, but I admit I'm not in a good position to notice.
49: True fetishist? Like, can only get off with feet, etc.? And the partner was like, too bad, it's icky? Yeah, those two people probably shouldn't be together.
50: From a 2009 column:
I am a 23-year-old male who has been in a relationship with a great woman for four years now. She is an amazing person, and we oftentimes talk about marriage. The issue is this: I have a foot fetish and she is fully aware of it. She doesn't like the idea of me kissing her feet or indulging my fetish in any way. We have sex quite often, and I've always let it slide that she doesn't want any part of my fetish.His response? "Your amazing girlfriend is an amazingly selfish lover, and I'm amazed that you've put up with her bullshit for as long as you have."
I have more sympathy for Savage's position when he's talking about the literally kinky, rather than simply the more libidinous partner. If you only get off on feet, and your partner isn't into it or accommodating about it, that seems like a really insoluble problem.
When the incompatibility issue is purely about mismatched sex drive... not that that should never be sufficient to end a relationship over, but it seems like the sort of thing that's much likelier to be either fixable within a relationship, or where some residual mismatch could be tolerated.
53: what's irritating is that he doesn't generally phrase it in terms of "insoluble problems" or "incompatibilities", though--it's always a value judgment against the nonaccomodating partner. See, e.g., 52.
This is the advice to the foot fetishist and to the Aspiring Honest Nonmonogamous Dude:
http://www.avclub.com/articles/december-9-2009,36053/
I don't see this as being such bad advice in either case.
To be fair, I think Dan Savage objects to the combination of differently kinky or libidinous and also demanding monogamy. You guys read him, so I'm not breaking any news to you, but his preferred alterative to mismatched libido is for the couple to stay together and have discreet side situations. (Or explicit or whatever the couple negotiates.) He doesn't go straight to 'immediately break up!'. He usually counsels 'the good parts seem to be working, check whether monogamy is really a mutual dealbreaker, since most people don't give alternatives any serious thought.'
I think the "only get off on" is a bit off-point -- I used the word "fetish" in 49 because that's how the advice-seeker linked in 52 described himself, but it's very clear that he can get off without the footy thing -- he says that he and his partner have sex "quite often," and that the sex they have is "amazing." (Of course, there may be instances where Savage is dealing with true fetishists, who can only become aroused in the presence of a particular stimulant, but we haven't identified any such instance, so I don't think that's the primary issue here.)
Perhaps this is a recent change, but at least on his podcast a couple of Savage's catchphrases lately have been "Settling with involves settling for" and "the price of admission" (of being in a relationship), both of which are used with respect to having various desires going unfulfilled within a relationship. Even if it's a minor accommodation, like never getting to indulge your foot fetish, I think it's sensible to point out that it is, in fact, a compromise or settling to not get it.
And yes, he does tend to take the side of the more-libidinous or more-kinky partner, often explicitly on the grounds that the existing social structures would disdain actually putting any value on sexual satisfaction.
I got bored about a hundred words into the Pandagon response (also, Marcotte's acute "y'all" problem), but this passage in the original article speaks to what I like to think of as the dregs of poetry remaining in what I have left of a soul:
If Savage's ethical guidelines--disclosure, autonomy, mutual exchange, and minimum standards of performance--seem familiar or intuitive, it's probably because they also govern expectations in the markets for goods and services. No false advertising, no lemons, nothing omitted from the fine print: in the deregulated marketplace of modern intimacy, Dan Savage has become a kind of Better Business Bureau, laying out the rules by which individuals, as rationally optimizing firms, negotiate their wildly diverse transactions.
That said, and I acknowledge breaking my own rule against going meta so early in the discussion, I have the impression that such market ethics have spread (and I suppose the Internet is not a little to blame, but it seems kind of cheap to mimic Andy Rooney here) well beyond sex. Some days it seems like two-thirds of the content on the Internet (excluding pr0n and fantasy sports) is comprised of people telling other people that the only thing to do is to "own up" to, "face up" to, admit, acknowledge and apologize for something -- often, something that they have been "called out on," or "called out for."* E.g., privilege, in one of its many flavors. I am as moralistic as the next repressed New England Protestant (Lent! Catch the fever!), but I've never found my experience of a book, or a movie, or a couture collection improved by an apology for the maker's shortcomings.
* Of course, no apology is good enough for the Internet, but I wonder whether that is part of the same problem or a slightly different one.
There's a version of 23 that makes a lot of sense to me. Dan Savage doesn't really have any idea what it's like to be someone who has difficulty finding dates. First off he's gay, second off he's a magnetic personality. Thus he over-rates the possibilities of finding someone later. It might just be that a lot of people need to suck it up and deal with a relationship that's not so great because objectively their odds of improving the situation are relatively low.
For example, my expected number of "people I meet in a year who I'd have some chance of dating" is pretty close to 1. Hence, if something is likely to only work out with 10% of people, that would mean I'd have to wait 10 years on average to have a relationship work. For someone like Savage that's numbers probably closer to a few months.
You really shouldn't marry someone you are sexually incompatible with. He is basically telling both men that they should explain to their partner their desires even if it risks breaking up the relationship. The theory is that in both cases the sexual incompatibility will lead to an uglier break up later on.
I'm disappointed that the recent flurry of let's-talk-about-Dan-Savage seems to have let slide a) his all-too-frequent "girl bits are gross!" asides and b) his assholishly judgey Iraq War advocacy. I really feel like he's someone I'd want to throttle if I had to make chit-chat with him.
Yeah. I've done better for myself recently, but I do not generally recommend that partnered people break off relationships in search of more sex. A couple would have to be having shockingly little sex (I know that happens) to have less sex than I usually get.
52: But he's *right* that the girlfriend is being selfish and jerkish. Perhaps he's not right that it's worth dumping her over, maybe he can't reasonably expect to find someone he likes and is unselfish in bed. But we're talking about a 23 year old with only one serious relationship here. I think Savage's advice in this case looks pretty good. And maybe the girlfriend will wizen up and realize that a foot fetish is just not that scary. But seriously, what kind of asshole refuses a foot message just because it would turn her partner of 4 years on?
check whether monogamy is really a mutual dealbreaker, since most people don't give alternatives any serious thought.'
This is a nice idea, but in most of the actual situations I've seen him raise that advice in, it seems about as plausible as "Maybe if the two of you spent more time riding your unicorns." While there are happy people in non-monogamous relationships out there, I think for most people I've ever met in initially monogamous relationships, seriously bringing up "So, howzabout we open this sucker up to additional partners" would have been either relationship ending or seriously relationship damaging.
The few people I've known in openly non-monogamous relationships got into them either explicitly or sort of implicitly on those terms.
First off he's gay, second off he's a magnetic personality. Thus he over-rates the possibilities of finding someone later. It might just be that a lot of people need to suck it up and deal with a relationship that's not so great because objectively their odds of improving the situation are relatively low.
This seems very right to me.
Marcotte isn't trying to make earnest and rigorous arguments - she's a polemicist with all the attendant pros and cons. I find her worth reading for style as much as substance, and her audience is people already mostly in agreement with her, so getting all the little details right isn't a big deal.
Her style has changed since I started reading Pandagon, primarily as a result of the John Edwards fiasco during which right wingers didn't just attack her writing but also to destroy her livelihood as well as engaging in active stalking behavior, sending death threats, and all the usual shit that the flying monkeys pull when they sense a juicy target. These things blow over for the media in a few days, but the impact of rightwing shitstorms on the individuals targeted is severe. Her willingness to engage conservatives or simply clueless guys dramatically changed after that point, understandably so. Expecting someone to engage respectfully with a person she suspects of being allied with the people who deliberately put her in fear for her personal safety is a little nutty.
I miss the old style Pandagon, but I still find it worth visiting regularly.
I tend to agree with 44 on Marcotte. I don't think this is the right article for her particular hammer, but the world is otherwise full of nails.
Plus the y'all thing.
63: heartily agreed on "girl bits are gross!" We're all humans here dude, we have parts. How could he even have female friends, with the attitude of "I react to your body like a vegan does to a steak" (paraphrasing but I just read that in his column).
65: Well, he's got no sympathy for people who find other people's kinks disturbing. I mostly agree that anyone who's that disturbed by an otherwise fine sex partner who's also into feet is a bit of a delicate flower, but that doesn't necessarily make her selfish, just easily grossed out.
71: That's not totally true, he does have sympathy when the other person's kink is genuinely disturbing (or as he calls it, a "fetish too far").
Furthermore, he has sympathy for people who have trouble being turned on while their partner is indulging their fetish. Both by telling people that they need to balance out occasional fetish sex with lots of vanilla sex, and by suggesting ways of getting around the squick factor.
But seriously, what kind of asshole refuses a foot message just because it would turn her partner of 4 years on?
I could certainly imagine being disturbed if it seemed my partner was more into feet - not my particular feet, just the fact that they're feet - than he was into me.
Also, unless she's going to puke all over him, it's not the "easily grossed out" that's the problem, it's her not being willing to occasionally be grossed out in order for her partner to be happy.
Know what's gross? Taking care of a partner with a stomach bug. But good partners suck it up and are there for their partners even when it's a little gross.
I do think that before Savage came along the default rule for most couples was that the less libidinous partner's desire trumped -- that is, it was just assumed that the party who didn't want the sexual experience could simply refuse, and that changing that pattern would be somehow violative. The part of Savage's message that I really do like and I think is genuinely helpful is that sometimes extending sex, even if doing so isn't your utmost desire, can be an act of generosity. I think "GGG" is in general good relationship advice.
(But I guess I generally agree with some of the criticisms here. And especially with the weird fake contractualism that seems to be so much a part of Savage's message, and which leads to absurd, unhelpful advice, like, as LB says in 66, trying to encourage a negotiation over nonmonagamy as a way of saving a previously monogamous relationship).
I could certainly imagine being disturbed if it seemed my partner was more into feet - not my particular feet, just the fact that they're feet - than he was into me.
GOOD THING THAT'S NOT THE CASE HEH HEH RIGHT?
68: I did not know that. It does seem to explain a bit, and one sympathizes with her, but I'm no less annoyed. Now it's just kind of tragic.
70, etc: Yes! This. Also he's kind of an asshole to fat people. It's like a residual gay bitchiness.
I also think Savage's perspective on the bounty of sexual partners out there is influenced by his privileged position as a not-physically-deformed, relatively wealthy, gay man on an American coast. But let's not go over board: lesbians don't have it quite so easy. (Personal bitterness: go!)
You want a foot, Sifu? I can get you a foot.
Dude, Tweety, if you want to give me foot massages, I'm all for it.
72: Fair enough. But for kinks that he considers mild, I think he goes to 'selfish' rather than 'squicked in a genuinely serious way' too easily.
77: Sorry, I definitely meant gay man, what I wrote was ambiguous.
Ok, what is this business of Unfoggetarians pausing etc? Is this like dead presidents?
19: I've had a very similar reaction to Marcotte. She had one post a few months ago about how evil Facebook is for policing its trademark and threatening to sue Lamebook. I pointed out in the comments that this behavior is not a big bad company trying to snuff out its competitors and instead is a legal requirement for preventing your trademark from becoming generic. Marcotte refused to consider that TM law works that way. Instead it was a symptom of the patriarchy propagating hegemony. Argh!
Yeah. I've done better for myself recently
Congratulations.
Ok, what is this business of Unfoggetarians pausing etc? Is this like dead presidents?
The pseudonym is a cryptic crossword clue whose answer is "commenter". "Pause endlessly": "comma" minus its last letter for "comm"; "go in" = "enter". So: pause endlessly then go in = "comm" then "enter" = "commenter".
It's just the one individual.
82: It's one person's pseudonym, rather than an identity that gets passed around.
85, 86: I'm so glad you explained this! I always thought it was a similar mechanism to how people use presidential names to reveal deeply personal facts.
...#9?
I kind of like that, actually.
Ok, sorry for the detour, and thanks for the clarification. (Hello commenter with the really long pseud!)
Also, go Megan.
I'm GGG-ish but would have a hard time with a foot fetishist. I could get to the point of "OK you can kiss and fondle my feet" but in the moment I'd feel both awkward and turned off, and I there'd be the danger she'd accidentally hit just the right ticklish spot to trigger a leg jerk. Blam! - kicked in the face. It'd stop the demands to indulge the kink, but it's better to just give her a hall pass for a visit to a professional.
88: Commenter has nine letters
89: what if she's into getting kicked in the face?
89: That all sounds like the sort of thing you could work out in a relationship; awkwardness fades once you're used to something, she'd figure out your ticklish spots, and so on.
leads to absurd, unhelpful advice, like, as LB says in 66, trying to encourage a negotiation over nonmonagamy as a way of saving a previously monogamous relationship
If you believe the premise that a deeply sexually unsatisfied person is going to end the relationship, trying to negotiate non-monogamy first (before the cheating) can't hurt the relationship any worse. It was already doomed. If there are any people in the class of 'willing to be non-monogamous if things are otherwise good but hasn't considered the option because society tells us that the only possibility is a faithful pair or it isn't a real relationship', then he has improved the odds over doomed.
I'm stuck in this Schrodinger's cat like state where I can't decide whether to say:
1) Now I'm really curious to know what my comments have in common that would make people want to pass around the identity.
2) You can pass my identity around all you want, laydeez
3) Since all of unfogged is produced by a 55 year old man in his basement somewhere, it hardly matters whether I'm a "real person" or not, right? Any artist statements about whether I'm intended to be read as real or not should be ignored as outside the text itself.
I think that's his thinking, but I also think that his sense of whether someone's likely to be more sexually satisfied in an imperfect but otherwise okay relationship or not in that relationship is off, along the lines set forth in 61, and that throws off his estimate of the relative chance that an attempt to negotiate non-monogamy will hurt rather than help.
89: Also there's other ways around it. Off the top of my head you could try texting your partner pictures of your feet throughout the day and then just having vanilla sex. Maybe that wouldn't satisfy them, but maybe it would. Or what if you use positions where they can see your feet during sex? Again it might not be enough, but you could try.
Anyway, the point is compromise and talking about it, rather than assuming that the squicked partner always wins.
94.1: I think it's just that the first word of your pseud suggests that you're a generic figure -- not an individual, but a random Unfoggetarian. I doubt it's anything about your comments.
Having experienced negotiated non-monogamy as a final coda to an already-doomed relationship, I would compare it in my case to a spoonful of sugar with a very bitter pill. It certainly didn't hurt the relationship any worse, but it was ridiculous to think it was in any way helpful (which was how it was proposed).
I wrote some great songs, though.
I've seen temporary negotiated non-monogamy work, although not without a lot of pain along the way.
99. Like, "I'm going to go have this affair, and when I'm done I'll be back?"
94.1: Nobody ever refers to you by name, possibly because it's so long, and as LB says, "Unfoggetarian" by itself is generic.
We could refer to you as (9)? If you want to be referred to?
100: more or less, yeah. Except the "when I'm done I'll be back" was "I think I'll be back, but I don't really know".
I call U:"Pe,tgi"9 "U:"Pe,tgi"9", myself.
While it's preferable in terms of honesty to secretive cheating, I dunno that I'd call that negotiated non-monogamy. Sounds less like a negotiation, and more like "This is what I'm doing, do what you like about it."
Up until recently the only people I know who practiced non-monogamy were either 1) objectivists, 2) self-identfied as polyamorous, or 3) both. Also, they were frequently self-identified with every other fringe, counter community they could find. I was left with the general impression that they all really wanted to belong to something, but not something "conformist." Hence a lot of really boring discussion about relationship rules, Ayn Rand, and identity politics.
These people all uniformly sucked, with the exception of one who I lived with, and who, while a pretty terrible person, was at least unintentionally entertaining.
More of a Frank Lewis type in my read.
94.3: Has the man in the basement aged writing all the comments, including this one, really aged so much since I was a regular?
Commenter is fine, but confusing. Judging from UnfoggeDCon II, the easiest thing for people seems to be "pause endlessly." I'm fine with any of the options suggested.
Really I think I did a bad job choosing pseud, but at this point it would also be silly to change it.
104: well, it was negotiated. It was negotiated in the face of circumstances the party (parties) found intolerable, but that seems like a pretty fair match for a lot of the circumstances Dan Savage is responding to. Like I said, there was a hell of a lot of pain involved, and it's not something I could imagine being a part of, but at the end of it they were together, and nobody lied to (or cheated on) anybody.
106: The people who I know who are non-monogamous are mostly either queer or MIT alums.
I've known some freaky, freaky queer MIT alums.
Like I said, there was a hell of a lot of pain involved,
I guess that's what throws me about Savage's advice -- even if it is a situation where the relationship is doomed otherwise, so negotiating non-monogamy is the only alternative to a breakup, he just doesn't seem to realistically describe it as the sort of thing where, even if the relationship makes it through ultimately, it's almost certainly going to be a giant painful deal. It's like "Well, this is what reasonable people would do, so why should it be a problem?"
112: That's not right. You know couples in which one person is cheating, so far undetected. You also know couples who weathered an affair. Both sets are non-monogamous couples. I take Dan Savage to be trying to salvage the otherwise good couples by getting rid of the dishonest part of non-monogamy.
112: As it happens, that is an equally accurate description of the people I was talking about. Weird!
115: You're completely right. I realized after I hit post that I misphrased that.
Yeah, you mean avowedly monogamous. I realized that as I hit Post.
You know couples in which one person is cheating, so far undetected. You also know couples who weathered an affair.
I don't know that I know any couples that fit these categories, but I wouldn't know if I know anyone in the first category.
115: I'm not saying this is a consistent position, and honesty is a good thing. But I'd bet that there's a really sizable percentage of the population that would rather forgive an illicit affair than either agree on non-monogamy or decide to separate for failure to agree. To the extent that preference exists, I'd think it comes out of bad social norms, but if it does exist, insisting on honesty isn't going to serve people's real preferences.
119: I suppose you might know someone who was cheating undetected by their spouse, although known to you.
120 seems right to me, and part of what bothers me about the Savage advice is the presumption that honesty or negotiation are actually an effective in the real world means of handling nonmonogamy. Just disclose and you'll be fine! It's like securities law! Uh, no.
I suppose you might know someone who was cheating undetected by their spouse, although known to you
It is certainly possible, but if they are cheating so badly that I would know I don't think it is going to stay secret from their spouse very long.
Yeah, 120 gets it right. You may "take Dan Savage to be trying to salvage the otherwise good couples by getting rid of the dishonest part of non-monogamy." I take Dan Savage as trying to salvage the otherwise good couples by telling them to replace their social and ethical norms with his own.
People's real preference are complex.
1. Good thing only two people have to agree on them with each other. (Usually, and I have long polyamory is only for people with extremely advanced skills. Which is not almost all people.)
2. Yet, I still like Dan Savage's project of daylighting other potential preferences. Could be that lots of people rank their preferences the way you describe in 120. But lots have also probably never thought about alternatives to perfect monogamy or break up. Dan Savage is a humane voice giving them more options. They may not take them, but I still think it gives people more ways to make a lifelong partnership work than conventional wisdom did before he got popular.
if they are cheating so badly that I would know I don't think it is going to stay secret from their spouse very long
People are very good at avoiding truths they don't want to know.
I do kind of think that Savage's mores are better, on this point, than the ones reflected in 120 -- given the amount of cheating people do, and that honesty is a good thing, it would be better if it were socially easier to negotiate non-monogamy. But that still doesn't make Savage's advice realistic for most couples today.
124 is really strange. First of all, it's not like "you should be non-monogamous!" is his advice to everybody; if there was a theme, it's "if you really feel like you can't get what you need, then something's going to give somewhere." It's also not like "you should be honest about your non-monogamy" is his advice to everybody. Dude counsels people to have illicit affairs (in lieu of another good option) semi-regularly.
I mean, I don't want to defend him too strongly. He's weirdly conservative, often wrong, and should fundamentally be read as a hilariously judgmental jerk. But picking apart a small subset of his advice as if it were an ethos is a puzzling and seemingly unproductive way of thinking about this.
I take Dan Savage as trying to salvage the otherwise good couples by telling them to replace their social and ethical norms with his own.
Those might match the struggling pair's unvoiced norms! Dan isn't proposing inherently cruel norms, because he generally insists on decency throughout even negotiations like this. His norms, for some people, could be more humane than lifelong monogamy (especially to a partner that refuses sex or a kink, or for whom indulging a kink would be hurtful) or breaking up. If there are any of those people, Dan Savage has made the world better.
I agree with 122 (relationships and their negotiations are not like contracts, dishonesty and hurtfulness are different things, though often hand-in-hand). There's a lot of hidden knowledge in relationships, I know about a lot of cheating among people close to me that's not widely known.
If DS stops writing about sex, his audience will leave. Insisting on honesty and openness is perfectly reasonable for a columnist who has a few-paragraphs window to learn and to respond. It's a persona, like Dr Phil's except less disgusting.
I would also like to point out that I called Dan Savage an American moral authority a full year ago. Why are Lutheran pastors always biting my style?
more ways to make a lifelong partnership work.
I guess that I have a hard time imagining someone uptight until the words of an advice column help them to open up. Maybe a teenager. He's writing collaborative reality TV or something like that. Lots of useful styles of advice don't fit that format.
Another thing Dan Savage has pointed out is that -- because of, among other things, the lead times -- advice columns are not actually written for the benefit of the people writing in to the column. Insofar as they're for the benefit of anybody, they're for readers who might see echoes of their own situation in the conundrums of the correspondents. From that perspective, taking positions which are fair, humane, but outside of what is normally considered workable is a way to increase the landscape of possibility people consider when faced with their own dilemmas.
112: MIT alums, yes! I dated an MIT alum and half his friends at their parties were non-monogamous. They were very, um, affectionate towards everyone at the parties.
It's like some of you just don't really grok "If you really love something set it free. If it comes back it's yours, if not it never was."
So, for instance, it would not surprise me one bit if there were people who dismissed the importance of a good sex life to a relationship -- or considered the idea of finding it important distasteful or possibly even immoral -- until they started reading Savage Love, and everything else besides that's a real benefit.
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Hello, Mineshaft! I've got a job interview coming up in the very near future for a non-profit organizer/assistant position. I'm a little nervous because it turns out that one of the people I'm interviewing with is a fairly big deal in the national philanthropic community. Any tips or thoughts on specific ways to present myself or things to avoid in that context? I've never really interviewed for a non-profit job before, certainly not with this degree of formality.
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Honestly, I think I'd be fine with Dan Savage if he'd just include more caveats about the awfulness of existence and the futility of desire.
137: masturbate in the office's bathroom before the interview, so you won't be all stressed out.
136: Kind of like shifting the Overton Window of Love, huh Tweety?
But he's all charismatic and famous and has a pretty family and he and his hot husband have the occasional threesome. How could he speak authentically to the awfulness of existence?
141: Despite all the happiness performativity, I choose to believe that deep inside he's crying.
OT: I added AC/DC to my pandora station, only knowing a few of their songs, but liking them.
And now I want to suggest completely unhelpfully that William Howard Taft perform "I Want To Cover You in Oil" for his interview with the philanthropically minded. Bring a stereo.
Similarly, I am genuinely surprised this song hasn't been featured in a CNN segment on oil prices. Or Libya.
The Overton window gets it exactly right. Not just in terms of widening what's considered acceptable in society in general, but also in terms of getting the advisee to move their window of what they consider reasonable. You don't actually expect people to listen to your advice, only for it to move their views in one direction or the other.
I'd bet that there's a really sizable percentage of the population that would rather forgive an illicit affair than either agree on non-monogamy or decide to separate for failure to agree. To the extent that preference exists, I'd think it comes out of bad social norms
To me, it makes an awful lot of sense -- the cheater you can accept is someone who had a hurtful lapse and wants forgiveness, not someone who wants you to agree to a state of affairs that is perpetually hurtful to you.
Shorter 145: "Better to ask for forgiveness than permission."
I'm semi-serious about the "futility of desire" point. Sex is great, but it isn't all that great. Laydeez. Even if Savage's advice about sex is usually pretty good, and a lot better than whatever else was out there before him.
only knowing a few of their songs
This is nearly as odd to me as being unfamiliar with Gilligan's Island. Are you under 25?
Speaking as an incorrigible optimist, I endorse Halford's sustained note of gentle pessimism in this thread.
Sex is great, but it isn't all that great.
It's nothing on a good shit.
148: They only have the one song, rereleased numerous times with altered lyrics and titles.
138 is awesome
I wonder if the word "polyamory" was invented by MIT alums or what. (Too lazy to google.) That jibes with my experience too, anyway, and I find I have deepset aversion to the word; to a lesser extent, the practice.
Personally when I once achieved the zenlike state of "wow, I would totally be ok with it if my partner wanted to sleep with someone else" it was because I was done with the relationship. But I don't know. I can see non-monogamy as a way to add excitement to a well-practiced sex life. Although who needs the excitement of potential STDs??
I am not judgmental toward my several non-monogamous couple friends as long as they do not use the word "polyamory" (but are also honest with each other). But I am curious to see how it develops in their relationships.
On preview: 147 is great too
148: Almost! I'm 28. And holding.
148: I surely know many more, but I only have a few that I know to associate with them*. To me they were mostly just part of the background noise of the late '70s and early '80s.
*"It's a Long Way to the Top" with the bagpipe is the one I recall standing out. Plus a few "Hell" ones**.
**And a trip to Wikipedia confirms that I know many more of their songs, but never really had the group identified.
washerdreyer, I had a similar question.
Me, I am glad that he is now 55. A few years ago, as I got closer to 47, I got nervous. When I passed 47, I was afraid I'd vanish. But 55 kicks it down the road. I do wonder if he has gone from balding to bald.
106: The people who I know who are non-monogamous are mostly either queer or MIT alums.
Do they juggle?
153, 154: I'd suggest there is an age window of interest. Also specific gender.
I can't think of any AC/DC songs offhand. I'm sure I would know some if I heard them.
Chicago wasn't free of polyamorous people, though the ones I knew seemed to be miserable a fair fraction of the time. (But hey, it was UChicago! Who wasn't?) They were also more into drugs (or into more drugs) than anyone else I knew. And I kind of resented that they occasionally clearly refrained from discussing things just because I was around; just because I wasn't really interested in participating didn't mean I didn't want to hear about all the crazy times they were having....
Honestly, I think I'd be fine with Dan Savage if he'd just include more caveats about the awfulness of existence and the futility of desire.
I can see why you had difficulty teaching Sunday School.
Actually, I agree with k-sky, I appreciate the note of pessimism.
They only have the one song, rereleased numerous times with altered lyrics and titles.
So it's like a Scottish ballad.
Do they juggle?
Yeah, what is up with that? It's like you people have all been to East Campus.
Ooh, circles within circles! I thought, "All these people unfamiliar with AC/DC is like Ogged reaching adulthood without having heard of Family Circus." So I went searching for that comment of his, and the google hit I landed on first was:
washerdreyer: The fact that comment 12 isn't either "Great, start'em young" or "You've never heard of Family Circus? Golly" is a travesty. A travesty, I tell you.
And what was comment 12 in that thread?
eb: Does anyone have experience with universal AC/DC adapters? I need to buy one. Actually, I might not be able to read this thread until after I buy one.
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Republicans strip anti-union provisions into separate bill, for which they don't need a quorum, and pass it without the Democrats, are evil.
Seriously, WTF?
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Well, they'd already given up trying to pretend that busting the unions had anything to do with the budget. Once that fig leaf was no longer covering anything, there wasn't any reason not to push it through this way. On to the recalls, I guess.
Recalls will take at least 10 months or so, right? I'm wondering about a general strike.
Third Report from Madison ...has information and analysis. h/t jodi at I cite
To President Taft (damn right!): I have had several job interview-esque conversations lately and I cannot overemphasize the relative importance of pretending that you know what you are talking about - not to bluster, but just to breathe slowly and bear in mind that very few people are as confident as they may seem, so there is no reason you can't be one of the confident ones.
And David Dayen ...of FDL, but not an evil monster who talks with Grover, has been in Wisconsin for a while, blogs the State Senate Live, and runs down the forthcoming battles.
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I put up one of my periodic this-is-what-I've-been-listening-to mixes. An embarrassingly large chunk came from the good people over The Great Whatsit.
Statue Song - Stew
Let Loose The Horses - Rescues
Swim Until You Can't See Land - Frightened Rabbit
Lewis Takes Off His Shirt - Owen Pallett
Odessa - Caribou
Rope And Summit - Junip
Whirring - The Joy Formidable
Mr Blue (New Version) - Catherine Feeny
I And Love And You - The Avett Brothers
Spit On A Stranger (Pavement cover) - Kathryn Williams
Simon Smith and the Amazing Dancing Bear (Randy Newman cover) - Okkervil River
The Solitude is a Gift - scene from Rubicon episode 4
The Statue Thief - Bikeride
Gunfight Epiphany (Theme from Terriers) - Robert Duncan
Bag Of Hammers - Thao & The Get Down, Stay Down
I Heart California - Admiral Radley
Dan - Grovesnor
So It Goes - Nick Lowe
Life Is Long - David Byrne & Brian Eno
Rill Rill - Sleigh Bells
Psychic City - YACHT
How You Like Me Now - Heavy
Legend - EZ Tiger
Call Your Girlfriend - Robyn
Marathon - Tennis
Enjoy! Props to Jimmy Pongo for Bag of Hammers -- otherwise I think this is not reconstituted from previously on Unfogged mixes.
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What's incredible about the Wisconsin maneuver (and a number of other moves in other states) is how deadly serious Republicans apparently are about disempowering the Democratic base for the foreseeable future.
There's been a fair amount of complaint recently about Republicans concerning themselves only with the short term, but they're playing a long game here.
otherwise I think this is not reconstituted from previously on Unfogged mixes
I put "How You Like Me Now" on my Beats mix, but then again it's also been in a car commercial so I think you get a pass on that one.
No, that's an oversight -- I got it from you.
So It Goes - Nick Lowe
Weird.
That's a song that I like, that I included on my "Rock" mix, and isn't one that I've seen other people mention very often.
Now I've run into it twice in last couple of months. It was on a CD in the Christmas mix swap that I participated in and now your mix.
Did it just get used in a commercial or something? It's just an odd coincidence.
Anybody know whether the Republican recall effort is still on? Because this is pure shit, and I should throw $20 their way.
I think dailykos is still raising money.
http://www.actblue.com/page/orangetoblue2012?refcode=3_09_Recallj
and first draft has a thing where you can donate to a teachers union
BG, the link in 164 indicates that the recall effort is still on. This link from a post on this very blog:
http://www.unfogged.com/archives/week_2011_02_27.html#011133
brings you to ActBlue:
http://www.actblue.com/page/wiscrecall
I just kicked in again. Recall these bastards.
The recalls won't take 10 months. After the signatures are collected (which was going quite quickly before this happened) there's some period for signature verification (not sure how long), then it's six weeks to the election after the signatures are verified. But there may very well be a general strike called at least in Madison sometime very soon. Apparently the labor organizations had been in contact with UW leaders about it before this happened, and UW was working on impact-minimizing strategies, particularly for undergrads, since the dorms would be closed with no custodial staff. Maybe the same thing is going on at all the UWs. I just heard about it at UW-Madison.
175: I heard it blasting out my neighbor's window and downloaded the album on emusic.com. It fits neatly in my "songs that resemble The Boys Are Back In Town" playlist.
Now I hate to ask a stupid question, but if they're recalled, does that just mean that they're stripped of their legislative stations -- that is, fired -- or does it mean that everything they've voted in is also invalidated?
there's some period for signature verification (not sure how long)
I imagine that, with a well funded army of election lawyers challenging every signature, this could take a while.
Goddammit they are evil.
If the signature gathering is successful, it triggers the recall election. If they lose the election, it's the same as any change of office as far as I know.
It's a good point that without the Assembly flipping Dem at the same time there's not much way to undo what's been done until/unless the whole legislature goes Dem the next election cycle. (Which I think would happen, but what do I know.)
25
Pure speculation, but I wonder if she reacted badly to negative feedback ...
I know nothing about Marcotte but some people also react badly to positive feedback.
This, if I'm interpreting it correctly, suggests a 31 day time limit to declare the signatures sufficient or insufficient. Somewhere I was reading a plainer English description of the procedure, but I don't remember where now.
187, 188.2: Okay. Fired only, and aside from the necessary efforts involved in establishing a recall election, there's a secondary effort needed to determine how to overturn this recently passed withdrawal of collective bargaining rights.
TPM notes that there's an argument to be made that the Wisconsin bill just passed is unconstitutional to the extent that it has fiscal implications, and so required a quorum, so there's that.
How many bills don't have fiscal implications?
So, I think strikes are likely. And Walker is already fundraising in DC. He's about to become the golden boy for the national GOP, as they try this elsewhere. If the GOP is going to mobilize on a national scale, I don't really see how Obama can stay out of it. Especially considering he'll need the unions in 2012.
So. This should be...dramatic.
194: I'm sure you could find something silly, but Walker just spent 3 weeks arguing that stripping collective bargaining rights was essential to the budget as a fiscal measure. Presumably they'll be citing his public statements in court? It's not really a win either way.
194: I think that's a technical, legal question, as these things go. Who knows what the WI constitution and the state's legal precedent has to say about it. Federally, you'd say stuff about the interstate commerce clause. In-state? I dunno.
Except it doesn't. Walker and the Senate Republicans essentially said, "Yeah, you caught us there. It isn't a budgetary bill." I'm not remotely a lawyer, and know nothing about Wisconsin law, but best it looks to me like the only law they may have violated was not allowing 24 hours for public debate, which I suppose they could just schedule another vote in 24 hours.
don't really see how Obama can stay out of it.
I keep thinking things like this, and keep getting disappointed. Maybe this time will be different.
199: I thought that, too. I would be completely fatalistic, except that I can't imagine a Democrat - even an incumbent - seriously running for President without the support of the unions.
Imagine a hand pulling away a football... forever.
Call it a gut feeling, but I think Obama should stay out of it.
198: I know what you mean, but in all honesty, it doesn't matter whether the argument adheres to the truth; it only matters whether it can overturn the new law in accordance with existing jurisprudence in Wisconsin. Sorry. The law is pretty much a tool, not an approximater to truth.
I'm trying not to think about women for a little while, Stormcrow.
202.last: we aren't disagreeing.
Hello, Mineshaft! I've got a job interview coming up in the very near future for a non-profit organizer/assistant position. I'm a little nervous because it turns out that one of the people I'm interviewing with is a fairly big deal in the national philanthropic community. Any tips or thoughts on specific ways to present myself or things to avoid in that context? I've never really interviewed for a non-profit job before, certainly not with this degree of formality.
Hi, President Taft. I can tell you're new to the nonprofit world because you're conflating a few things. In general, although private foundations are technically nonprofits, going to work as an an assistant for someone who is a "big deal in the national philanthropic community" is not what most people would characterize as nonprofit work. That's neither here nor there with regard to your question, but I thought I'd clarify since there is a real difference in personality/skill set for people who are going to work in nonprofit service delivery, research, or even arts and culture jobs vs. those going to work in philanthropy.
It's not clear to me whether this "big deal" person is just a funder/board member of the organization where you're interviewing, or whether you would actually be working directly for him/her. If the former, I wouldn't worry too much about him or her. I'd focus on reading up on the organization where you're interviewing, so you can ask intelligent questions at the interview. I don't mean "Pretend you're well-grounded in nonprofit-sector issues," I just mean "show that you took 20 minutes to read their website, look at their IRS Form 990 using GuideStar, see who is on their board, and come up with some decent questions."
If the latter, the most helpful thing I can think of to say to you is this: The people I know who have had the best and happiest fits in the philanthropic world are those who are fundamentally conservative. I don't mean in their politics -- in fact, most of them are generic NPR-ish centralist-liberals. I mean in their fundamental orientation toward the world. They're comfortable working incrementally, and imposing many more strictures on themselves than actually are required. (Example: Use the federal requirement of 5% of assets given away in grants each year+ as a *ceiling,* not a floor.) They are emphatically *not* people with a strong desire for autonomy or entrepreneurial experimentation in their work-lives.
+I'm glossing over details here, if anybody is wondering.
Hope that helps. Feel free to e-mail me at the above address if there are specifics that you don't want to post publicly. I try to be very upfront about my biases so you can take them into account.
Below, I mean. Below address. It shows up differently in the comment box.
They only have the one song, rereleased numerous times with altered lyrics and titles.
This. AC/DC uses the same goddamn drumbeat every single time.
I've read the majority of the thread and then to be sure searched it for "AIDS" and "HIV". Nothing.
To me, this is the backdrop that clarifies all of Savage's ethics. I enjoyed reading Dueholm's article and Marcotte's rebuttal to it, but the whole point of Savage's transactional ethos is that partners must disclose his or her desires and history so that the other party can rationally gauge his or her risk and then consent or not to the activity, based, in part, on the realistic assessment of risk.
That's the abstract, brutal version of it, but of course there are lots of ethical follow-ons. Still, the first principle of disclosure, preferably avant la lettre, seems to have everything to do with the possibility of deadly consequences of sex.
I've read only the Dueholm, but somewhere along the line in it -- to whatever extent it's accurate in its recounting of Savage, who I haven't read in years -- I did think, "Oh, yes, HIV/AIDS."
Of course, you can come of age in the HIV/AIDS era, as I did, without taking a transactional view of intimate relationships such that the transactional is narrowly construed as contractual and (as Dueholm puts it) consumerist. You might just suppose that it calls for transparency, to the extent that that's possible.
But I haven't read Savage for quite a while now, and I can't speak to whether the Dueholm is an accurate assessment.
re: 209
That may be true, but they do have Malcolm Young, who is unto a God of rhythm guitar.
212: Oh? I'm willing to entertain that proposition and moderate my probably overly harsh AC/DC views. Examples?
Also: Urban Dictionary has "AC/DC" as British slang for "bisexual". I remember that same usage from 5th grade in suburban Chicago. Did anyone else use it that way?
If we're back to the OP, I got the sense that Marcotte, like Sifu in 9, saw "Lutheran Pastor" and immediately assumed bad faith. But I have trouble reading real disagreement between many of her points and Dueholm's.
Marcotte: (This is even where I think Savage isn't radical enough. Feminists take the principles he espouses and add in enthusiastic consent, which is implied by his ideas of generosity and autonomy, but needs to be spelled out even further.) It assumes that people aren't cogs that can be plugged into pre-established roles. It assumes that relationships need emotional tending, and that people should take the time to see each other as people, instead of just perform pre-written behaviors and expect that to do the trick.
Isn't this what Dueholm was getting at as well? And she ends with noting how Savage's ethics promote stability, which I'd read Dueholm as conceding:
Who knows how many good relationships have been saved--and how many disastrous marriages have been averted--by heeding a Savage insistence on disclosing the unmet need, tolerating the within-reason quirk, or forgiving the endurable lapse? In ways that his frequent interlocutors on the Christian right wouldn't expect, Savage has probably done more to uphold conventional families than many counselors who are unwilling to engage so frankly with modern sexual mores.
re: 212
More or less any of their late 70s and early 80s tunes, I think. I just find the groove and simplicity of what he plays really great.
Back in Black is the famous AC/DC riff and everyone associates it with Angus Young, but it's a Malcolm Young composition.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h44LIiaZhHE
Don't have time to search for live vids right now, but his basic chordal playing always sort of 'swings' for a rock guitarist.
214- In my youth, I sort of shocked, or at least surprised, my father when mentioning the band to him. He explained to me that that was what it meant. I'd assumed from then on that this was common knowledge, and was always curious that it never seemed to be acknowledged among their fans.
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Just listened to both mixes. Very nice stuff and I knew less than half a dozen of the songs already. I particularly liked the pavement cover.
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215 seems about right. I haven't read Marcotte on this, but Dueholm seems reasonably fair-minded about it all (for a Lutheran minister). I think he goes a bit too far on the consumerist/transactional front, but the exercise is instructive and interesting.
214, 217: AC/DC means bisexual??!? OMG! Says every 15-year-old I knew at the time. They sure didn't sound like David Bowie, that's all I can say.
216: Huh. I hadn't noticed but his playing reminds me of a solid but sparse piano player in a jazz group, filling in the gaps of the rhythm section, effortlessly.
217 was roughly my experience, although I learned about both the band and the entendre from my dad.
According to the church my grandmother attended, it stood for "Anti Christ Devil's Children." She then tried to enlist my parents to throw out all of my LPs. (My dad, who didn't believe that sort of thing and anyway wasn't religious, was glad for an excuse to bar my music from the house.) But they were just Bon Jovi.
161: Two years later and the Radio Shack-bought adapter is still working for that laptop. So it all worked out.
Wait, that's not what this thread is about.
On the Wisconsin thread, I think a general strike is actually quite risky in terms of public opinion. It's unfortunate, but many people who would otherwise side with unions probably are not strong enough supporters that a bit of inconvenience to their daily lives won't lead them to rethink their support.
219- Certainly "consumerist" would be unfair, but doesn't "transactional" describe how many people see dating and marriage, even pre-Savage and throughout history?
I do think there's a trade-off between discarding a lot of traditional sentimentality and role-playing that obscured uncomfortable realities in relationships, and being very upfront and contractual about feelings which are perhaps a little more nebulous than language or rationalization might always permit.
Me and my mate like ac/dc,
Hot and sweaty, loud and greasy -
My mum says we're a pair of perverts.
Got any badges, posters, stickers or t shirts?
President Taft, you should probably read this.
Also, you could usefully lose a little weight and not turn up to the interview on a buffalo.
199: I heard that Organizing for America sort of was involved, but of course, as President, Obama hasn't yet done and is highly unlikely to do shit.
To follow up on what fake accent said in 225, my BF's family was like that. They're always talking about how the doctors and nurses' unions in Ontario hold the prvoince for ransom. (When I called them on their use of language, his Mom got all flummoxed and said that it was just the way people talk and not everybody was all precise the way that I am. (Former teacher, who didn't like her own union much.)
Anyway, she equated the sanitation workers' strike in Toronto to a fire fighter refusing to put out a burning building. That strike was extremely unpleasant, but it wasn't deadly.
Anyway, his new thing is that workers have a lot of freedom--the freedom to leave a job. I had previously got him to agree that maybe working conditions in Tyson chicken plants aren't so hot and they deserved a union, but his true colors have since shown through.
Re: 222
Yeah. It's simple but the timing is perfect.
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Stuck in Milan as plane on route to Pisa had a windscreen fail.
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I am no longer pissed at the Wisconsin GOP. All my rage is now directed at this vile scam. Healthcare costs are what they are because of sociopathic greed, and the ACA utterly failed to deal with that.
232: What I don't understand is the legal theory under which K-V Pharmaceutical can bar compounding pharmacies from selling the shots the way they were beforehand. It can't be a straightforward patent issue, or at least if it is I don't understand it. Is LizSpigot around?
Okay, this seems to be the FDA policy, stating that a compounding pharmacy may not compound a commercially available drug. But the drug couldn't have been under patent if it were being sold beforehand, could it? Why wouldn't another drug company (say, one of the compounding pharmacies) slap a label on what they make and sell it 'commercially'?
I don't know what I'm talking about here -- does getting FDA approval for a drug confer patent-like rights, so no one can commercially compete with K-V? It's got to be something like that.
231: Have some liver and onions. Isn't that what's supposed to be good in Milan? Assuming you get out of the airport, of course.
It all comes down to the Orphan Drug Act, which it isn't clear to me why it even applies in this case. Orphan status is supposed to go to drugs for conditions affecting fewer than 200K people in the US (I don't know what the rate of preemie births is off the top of my head, but surely the potential is well above that?). Anyhow, developing a drug that has been given orphan status gives the developing company 7 years of exclusive marketing rights.
CDC says half a million (1 in 8) premature births a year in the US.
the ACA utterly failed to deal with that
The ACA was a product of closed-door negotiations between the Obama administration and PhRMA. Whatever sociopathic greed was going to get addressed, it certainly wasn't that exercised by the pharmaceutical industry.
Yep, they got approval to 'exclusively' sell the drug. For a drug that isn't patented, I don't understand at all why the FDA is handing out monopolies. Is this time-limited, or is it a monopoly until the FDA says different? There must be a rationale for the FDA having that power, but I don't know what it is.
Ah, crossed with 236. That makes sense, sort of.
CDC says half a million (1 in 8) premature births a year in the US.
Sounds startlingly high. Does this define 'premature' so that all those people would actively benefit from the drug, or does it include '10 days before the estimated birth date which was calculated on the basis of last menstruation and therefore has a huge built in margin of error'?
I don't understand at all why the FDA is handing out monopolies.
They probably think they're King James VI and I. Everybody else in US politics seems to.
The Orphan Drug Act is worthy legislation overall, and has led to lots of treatments for rare diseases that simply wouldn't get made otherwise. But 1) this condition shouldn't even qualify based on the size of the patient population, and 2) progesterone is already used in an oral formulation for hormone replacement therapy, so the only thing novel here is putting it into an injectable formulation.
I'll need to read more to understand the FDA's decision here, but on a surface reading, it's mystifying.
Sounds startlingly high.
Allow me to introduce America's shitty health care system. I think the definition of premature birth is >=3 weeks before the due date.
I'd be depressed and angry from reading that, but I was depressed and angry anyway.
What keeps the insurance companies from saying "Fuck that shit, at that price it's not covered. You want to get paid, charge us $30/shot." There may be something in the structure of insurance regulation that makes this impossible, but I'd think their incentive would be to haggle the price down.
243: Yeah, it's anything before 37 weeks.
Yes, the FDA does normally confer market exclusivity for new chemical entities (orphan drugs get more years of it), and there's big bucks in working out strategies to maximize patent term plus market exclusivity term. I think this stems from Hatch-Waxman (1984), to placate the brand manufacturers as it helped out the generics. (Clan politics, gotta love it.)
What kind of drug must one take to hatch a waxman? And how many waxmen does one need to open a profitable museum?
I am 37 and can't with any certainty name an AC/DC song. I might recognize some of them.
I had stuff to say about the Dan Savage thread but it seems like I got to it a day late.
Oh and: I don't understand much about unions (I'm in one but the people invovled in it that I've dealt with are largely some combination of crazy and dumb, so I haven't really engaged) but if they don't do a general strike now, aren't they basically acknowledging that unions have become powerless? This seems like exactly when you should have a general strike, from my (again) limited understanding of unions.
Say the stuff about Dan Savage; a thread's not dead if it's still on the first page.
It isn't that nobody's reading the tread anymore; it's that you scroll through 250 comments and lose track of what you meant to say.
I thought about this more and realized that the reason I like Dan Savage is that he often takes the man's side in these disputes.
I'd like to report that "Back in Black" has been in my head, like, all friggin' day. Or, more accurately, the opening scene to Iron Man keeps replaying, including that song.
I've had "The Ballad of the Green Berets" stuck in my head ever since that thread a few days ago. Get it out of there! "Silver wings, upon their chests. . . These are men, America's best"
249: 37 and can't name a single AC/DC song?
Wow, Smearcase! Have you been living in a gay cocoon?
256: Dorky Child of Academics Cocoon more like, but yeah. I feel like I say this about myself all the time and have become a bore about it, but for a big chunk of my life, I listened to fairly little other than classical music. I mean I had a few pet indie bands in college but for the most part I blew my teens and 20s on opera. Misspent youth, man.
I missed most of the thread above, too, and have only read most of it, so forgive if this is a repeat, but:
I think a lot of Savage's responses are rhetorical. Someone writes in and says, "This is something that is a big deal to me that I can't talk to my wonderful, beautiful, perfect partner about"--all the letters feature a wonderful, beautiful, perfect partner, even (especially?) the domestic abuse ones--"so what should I do?" And he says, (1) get what you need from your partner, (2) get what you need from someone else with the knowledge of your partner, or (3) dump your partner and get what you need from someone else. He's taking for granted that when someone says they have a need, that it's a need, and that there's something deeply wrong with your so-perfect relationship if you can't talk to your partner about your needs. This response is potentially rhetorical if the reader's response is, "Oh my goodness, those options seem so extreme and unwarranted! Maybe this is not a need after all."
That is, I think Savage is good about getting people to recognize that if they're going to say a sex thing is a big deal and write into a sex column about it, you either ante up and have an adult conversation or it's not a need. The option a lot of people take is to say, I could never ask my beautiful wonderful perfect partner to, e.g., let me touch her feet while I have an erection, so I'll get that from someone else and never harm my beautiful wonderful perfect partner's tranquility. I like that Savage makes it clear that this is not the ethical way to treat your beautiful wonderful perfect partner.
232, etc.
When Fleur was dealing with the prospect of miscarriage or premature birth, her OB/GYN prescribed her weekly injections of progesterone as well as daily oral doses. He made clear at the time that this was an off-label use of the drug, and that it wasn't necessarily blessed by orthodox medicine, but that it worked. I was ever so mildly sceptical at the time, but whattayaknow, seems he was right.
I think it is important to treat letter-writers as if they are adults. Sure, there are probably lots of college kids who write in on the basis of having seen a kinky video and saying "Poor me! My girlfriend says she doesn't want to try [whatever]!! I am trapped in a hell of lies!" because they enjoy bitching more than they actually need to do [whatever]. Bitching about relationship issues that you're not mature enough to discuss with your partner is practically a national pastime. But when you want to hear "You're right; your husband is a slob!" or "You're right; your girlfriend is frigid!" you go to your worst-advice-giving friends. When you want a plan for moving forward, you go to someone you know is going to give you a plan for moving forward.
Or, if you'd like to be told that your needs are stupid, you write to Dear Prudence.