House of Eratosthenes

Jessica Valenti, owner chief operating officer cook & bottle-washer of feministing.com, got an interview and thirty-nine seconds therein she said something I thought was amazing:

Given her opportunity to pick out “the worst double-standard” between geese and ganders, she chooses “the one on the cover” of her book. And that would be He’s a Stud, She’s a Slut.

WOW.

Not that spellbinding until you think of all the other answers lovely Jessica could’ve provided as the worst double-standard.

There’s the draft. If we do have one, it’ll apply to the guys and not the gals. Jessica could’ve unleashed her righteous fury upon that one.

Family court, by tradition, presumes that children are “better off with the mother” and it takes phenomenal circumstances — you don’t want to ask what — to get those in charge to even consider slacking off on that particular double-standard.

A guy is kind of normal, more-or-less, if he downloads an exciting application and then starts fiddling with it day and night, to the point where his paramour sees very little of him for days at a time apart from the back of his head. We put a tremendous pressure on our gals that they shouldn’t behave that way; they’re encouraged to be precocious little gab-goblins, at all hours of the day, even if they don’t feel like it.

There’s the pay gap. I’m still told, often, that that’s supposed to be important especially to people who call themselves “feminists.” Apparently that’s not quite accurate.

Mothers waltz into doctor’s offices and order up diagnoses for learning disabilities — for their sons. When they don’t understand how the sons are supposed to mature into men. And why should they? They’re women. Fathers, no less confused about how girls become women, don’t do that with their daughters. Huh, there’s a double-standard.

You can easily round up a hundred prime-time television commercials for headache medicine that have little or nothing to do with each other…each one of which involves a married (apparently) couple. The husband will be using — all hundred times out of a hundred — Brand X. The wifey will be using the correct product, and in so doing, be availed of a coveted opportunity to correct him. All hundred times. That looks like a double-standard to me.

How about the television shows that are justified by those advertisements? Family show. Father, mother, kids. She is a gorgeous, albeit weary, central character and he’s just a stupid chuckle-head who lucked out the day he met her. He spends his days making messes and nervously trying to figure out how not to tick her off (worse). She spends hers trying to keep him from burning the house down.

Movies for families, are no better. The Mom’s role is to lend a soft shoulder to the teary-faced sad little moppet, after he kicks the winning goal in the soccer game and glances up into the stands to see — horrors! — Daddy isn’t there! That unreliable Dad broke his promise…it’s a constant father-child predicament that bubbles up…and you know why. Because he spends too much time at his job. No issues with Mommy spending too much time at work. No issues with Mommy breaking promises. There’s a double-standard.

With all that, Jessica’s idea of a truly deplorable double-standard is that the sluts aren’t given props for screwing around. They jump so many bones, end up pregnant and don’t know who the father is…and they can’t get their applause from the rest of us. They aren’t elevated to a pedestal, like us pimps, for creating ruined lives and paternity suits.

Except — they are.

There’s more than enough shared and individual blame to go around. Miranda repeatedly acts like an idiot, catalyzing the catastrophic meltdown of Mr. Big that sets the plot (such as it is) in motion. Charlotte abets Miranda by helping her cover up her misdeed. And even relatively sensible Carrie withholds her disapproval of how Miranda treats her amazing, if imperfect, husband, Steve. This movie makes you wonder whether unconditional love is a good thing. It also makes you wonder what men see in these damaged, egotistical and judgmental dames.

The main characters and actors, so amusing as semi-stylized, semi-real vessels of contradictory urges and appetites on TV, look stranded or, worse, terminally self-absorbed here. You start looking forward to Cattrall’s Samantha, who at least retains her snap. With her id wasting away in Los Angeles while she serves as manager and homemaker to her adoring yet work-occupied beau, she grows obsessed with the stud next door – and brings more comic heat to her throttled desire than the others bring to their Cinderella-like or Murphy Brown-esque fantasies. (Candice Bergen does a disposable cameo as a Vogue editor.)

We’ve got all the slut-worship a twenty-something know-it-all could ever want. Like their male counterparts — the sluts sleep around, in truth and in fiction, breaking hearts, earning the condemnation of some and the sick hero-worship of others. It’s about as symmetrical as a “double-standard” can get.

I do remember about the time Ms. Valenti would have been born, when there was a double standard. I was taught to think of it as elevating women to a higher pedestal, and in hindsight, it seems to me that’s exactly what it was. Girls were thought to be more disciplined and cultured — guardians of our society’s decency. But the previous generation of Jessica Valentis sounded the alarm.

They fought for the “rights” of women to pick up all the worst habits of the dudes. Mission accomplished. Now we have a postmodern culture filled to the brim with sluts. It seems to be the one double-standard we worked the hardest at equalizing, and Jessica Valenti is still unhappy about it because she wants our women to screw around some more.

I don’t see how this helps the feminist movement.

Think about those other double standards. If you wanted to more even-handed treatment of men and women in family court, you could rally for reform in…our family court system. Valenti’s slut-double-standard, on the other hand, can only meet “reform” through some method of policing the thoughts private citizens have in their hearts and minds.

I’ve never understood this about feminism. Throughout my life, some among us have harbored suspicions about it, thinking of it as perhaps unbecoming to a free society in which private citizens have a sacred right to the thoughts and emotions between their own ears. Feminists, throughout that time, have screeched at us that no it’s not about that — it’s about equal pay for equal worth.

But then when it’s time for feminists to assign priorities, their hunger is to encroach on the private thoughts. Reforming articles in the public domain, such as public statutes, public jurisprudence, draft policies, and the like…that doesn’t seem to fascinate them much, even if such articles show demonstrable, destructive, gender-based bias. Every time I see the movement crusading for change, it’s crusading for that change in a private dominion — transgressing on thoughts and value systems that rightfully belong to individuals.

So it’s interesting to me that Ms. Valenti is given the opportunity to name one especially odious double-standard, and she names that one — the one that has traditionally looked on women, and seen some shred of nobility that the more primitive dudes might not have. This is the one she’d like to eradicate before all others.

With apologies to Arsenio…that’s a real Thing That Makes You Go Hmmm, right there.

Update 6/18/08: Without rushing out to buy the book, it seems one of the most complete summary listings of double standards listed therein, that may be acquired, would be this preamble posted at Google Books:

Double standards are nothing new. Women deal with them every day. Take the common truism that women who sleep around are sluts while men are studs. Why is it that men grow distinguished and sexily gray as they age while women just get saggy and haggard? Have you ever wondered how a young woman is supposed to both virginal and provocatively enticing at the same time? Isn’t it unfair that working moms are labeled “bad” for focusing on their careers while we shake our heads in disbelief when we hear about the occasional stay-at-home dad? In 50 Double Standards Every Woman Should Know, Jessica Valenti, author of Full Frontal Feminism, calls out the double standards that affect every woman. Whether Jessica is pointing out the wage earning discrepancies between men and women or revealing all of the places that women still aren’t equal to their male counterparts—be it in the workplace, courtroom, bedroom, or home—she maintains her signature wittily sarcastic tone. With sass, humor, and in-your-face facts, this book informs and equips women with the tools they need to combat sexist comments, topple ridiculous stereotypes (girls aren’t good at math?), and end the promotion of lame double standards. [emphasis mine]

I have to admit my curiosity is aroused; I suppose you could scold people into replicating your feminist beliefs about women deserving equality in the workplace, courtroom, bedroom or home, but I have no idea how you’d force people to grow into middle age the way you want them to.

Waitaminnit — courtroom??? Women don’t have enough equality in the courtroom yet?

What inequality do women suffer in the courtroom? Really. Too much eagerness to keep ’em “in the lifestyle and manner to which they have become accustomed”? Too easy to gain custody of the kids?

Are they being denied justice somehow? And if that’s the case, how is that less important than the double-standard that confers a stigma for sleeping around indiscriminately, on oversexed little tarts who sleep around indiscriminately?

Ah…I’m going to have to zip on out and pick this puppy up. It takes some real balls for feminists to insist women are suffering inequality in the courtroom. I gotta see this.

Update: Thing I Know #52 was scribbled down, in haste, in a coffee shop early in the morning a couple years ago, on my Treo smart phone, along with about five or six other things I know. It has turned out to be a prominent and important Thing I Know that describes much of what goes on in the sphere of human endeavor today…and a great deal, out of that, that fails.

I have never been pleased with the way it’s been worded…

Thing I Know #52. When angry people make demands, the ensuing fulfillment never seems to bring a stop to their anger.

Just the way the nouns, verbs and adverbs stack up against each other, which ones are strong, which ones are weak. “Ensuing” is wrong. As a single sentence, it’s hard to read. That would be alright if it was conveying an idea of great complexity. But it isn’t.

And so in honor of Ms. Valenti I am re-wording a Thing I Know, for the first time — Thing I Know #52, the Valenti Thing I Know. This Thing I Know deserves another polishing, another sanding, another cleaning and another coat o’paint. It is critically important. It has had it’s own category here. Something that becomes pertinent to our discourse so often, should be polished down a whole lot better.

As Yul Brynner would say — thus it shall be written; thus it shall be done.

Thing I Know #52. Angry people who demand things, don’t stop being angry when their demands are met.

I always wondered what happens to those “Valley Girls” when high school ends. Miss Valenti assures us they never leave the valley.
- Mr. Hatchetman | 06/17/2008 @ 20:08
I’d say then that since this is her biggest complaint then everything else has been solved. No need for feminism anymore. The argument, albeit unintentional, has been made not by “us” but rather someone who seems to be respected in that community. I mean, if that her biggest complaint what is let to discuss?

Cool.
- tim | 06/18/2008 @ 08:28
Well, according to this blogger a sampling of the others would be…

1. Men get angry, women get PMS;
2. Single men are bachelors, single women are spinsters;
3. “Jess McCabe wonders how Jessica Valenti limited herself to 49 examples of the double standard” implies to me that Jess McCabe has some others examples in mind beyond the 49.

I didn’t realize when I scribbled down my observations how valid they were. Maybe I should run out and buy this thing and see if it holds true: “Valenti’s slut-double-standard, on the other hand, can only meet ‘reform’ through some method of policing the thoughts private citizens have in their hearts and minds.” It’s certainly worth the price of a book, to me, to find out what Valenti wants to do about these things she doesn’t like, that are being carried around in individuals’ hearts & minds.

I don’t know if she explains that part in her book. My intuition says, what we have here, is an extremely young person who is just learning that she lives in a great big world filled with people who think differently than she does and has different values than she has, and she isn’t happy about that. But that’s true of a lot of the “feminists” I’ve met, even the older ones.
- mkfreeberg | 06/18/2008 @ 08:52

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The Worst Double-StandardTuesday, June 17th, 2008

The Worst Double-Standard
Tuesday, June 17th, 2008