A little light culture: What is normal?

Here is a sentence to ponder:

In women, narcissism manifests itself as a greater libido, and in men, a lesser one.

That sentence makes a claim about what abnormal looks like but, far more importantly, it also tells you how you should behave if you want others to regard you as "normal". It's one of those dogmatic assertions that feels like it must be true. Stated starkly like that, it feels counter-intuitive. The Last Psychiatrist, who made the claim, reinforces that sense by immediately going on to say, "You might think this is backwards, but it isn't." Well, now it feels brave to embrace the claim so you do.

But take a step back notice how utterly conventional and repressive the sexual morality behind the statement is.  It tells women who want a lot of sex that they are narcissists.  TLP has taken an old, old stereotype and dressed it up to make it feel like it's a challenging claim but it actually plays to your deepest prejudices on the matter.

Like most stereotypes, it is rooted in some truth. Does anyone think that the woman obsessed with duty and service has a great sex life? And look how it plays out in advertising. If you want to make a woman look like she is the sort who gets a lot of sex, you paint her as bathing in luxury with a look of pure self-indulgence on her face. And that's not crazy. That's what women on the way to orgasm look like and, much more importantly, if she doesn't get that look on her face, she isn't going to come.

But forget about women for a moment and think about men thinking about women. There is a long history of portraying men who pursue women with a strong interest in sex as selfish men who neglect their duties and responsibilities to the community. Think of Paris and Helen of Troy. That narrative isn't meant to discourage women from being beautiful and sexually desirable like Helen of Troy. Quite the opposite. The point of the narrative is keep your hands off the other man's wife. Think about Dido, the queen of Carthage. What is the behaviour that story was meant to reinforce? That a man's duty and destiny were more important than the attractions of young widows. For better or for worse, our society doesn't really worry about sex-starved women but instead worries about about men pursuing them. (Notice, by the way, how bizarre it is that men are encouraged to seek adventure in foreign lands but not women next door. Well, bizarre until you think how damaging the second option is to the local social order. That tells you that it isn't really a moral issue but a political one.)

Let's look at the flipside for a second. Why does TLP insist the narcissistic man has a low libido?

Well, the problem with his libido isn't how hot she is.   He's a narcissist: the problem is [sic, I think he means "with"] his libido is that it depends on how hot he is.

It's what women used to go through.  He looks in the mirror, sees a gut-- he doesn't feel sexy, he can't imagine she would find him sexy, so the libido falls.

The internal logic in that narrative is airtight. But step outside it for a second and you can see the problem. For that is a credible narrative for the paunchy narcissist but what about the narcissist who is slim, muscular, good looking and well-hung? He is hot so ... so no problem. Right?

And flip it around and imagine the guy who isn't limited by his own lack of hotness. He's short, fat and bald but it doesn't bother him because all that matters to him is his enjoyment of his partner. This guy also sounds untroubled. What he doesn't sound like is the opposite of narcissism.

And what's the point of telling men that narcissists have low libido? It's to shame them into not being narcissists because no man wants to admit he has a low libido.  Yeah, that will work.

Gentleman, put your hands together for the sex-starved wife

TLP's claim came up at the start of a discussion about the a book called The Sex Starved Wife. Someone wrote a book about it, Time did a cover story on it and TLP commented on it. The fascinating thing is that neither Time nor TLP questioned the book. They simply took it for granted that the phenomena was real.

And that is the first question to ask: is there a real issue hiding behind this? I'm sure there are sex-starved wives but that isn't the issue. The book is only interesting if this is a new phenomena. Then you can blame men, or porn, or feminism or our work-obsessed culture. If it has always been the case that some women have wanted more sex than their husbands were able or willing to give them, you can't do that. It isn't enough that this book be a useful guide to the small but steady percentage of women who, in every generation since the flood, have had stronger sex drives than the man they married. No, we need a new (and worrisome!) social trend.

That's why TLP needs to insist that narcissistic men have a lower libido. It's a rare slip on his part, he is usually very perceptive about these things.

Let's go back a few steps and we can see how this works out.

1. There is no evidence that there is a growing number of sex-starved wives out there. The book is the excuse for thinking this without evidence.
2. There is lots of evidence that there are sex-starved marriages, particularly couples where the woman works full time. 
3. But it has to be the man's fault. That is a consistent theme with TLP. When sex goes bad, it's because the man is a narcissist. (Someone in the comments to a post a while ago argued that this is proof that TLP is a woman. I'd argue the opposite. TLP is driven by the sorts of sexual stereotypes typical of men not women.)

Here's another narrative for your consideration. Sex reduced sharply in Joe and Teresa's marriage. She even buys herself a copy of The Sex-starved Wife. She keeps the book hidden in her car because she doesn't want Joe to see it and be hurt. Joe, meanwhile, has a substantial collection of porn, most of which is based around lonely, horny wives whose husbands don't or can't satisfy them. He masturbates five times a day to this stuff. He's even heard of The Sex-starved Wife because it comes up a lot in Internet discussion groups where he and like-minded guys share fantasies about lonely, horny wives whose husbands don't or can't satisfy them.

I just made that up but can you see the problem? Joe and Teresa don't have marital problems because they have a lousy sex life. It would be closer to the truth to say they have a lousy sex life because they have lost any real marital connection but that isn't quite right either. Why isn't it quite right? Because sex is the most important way husbands and wives have to connect.

And here I quote my favourite bit of advice from the Iron Duke, "It seems to me that you've gotten yourself into a dashed difficult situation and now you must work dashed hard to get out of it." Joe needs to spend a whole lot more time and effort pursuing Teresa and Teresa needs to put a whole lot more time and effort into sexually enticing Joe*.

Okay, but what's the point? Well, the point is that normal has disappeared as a consideration. Did you notice that? TLP starts with the unspoken assumption that something abnormal is happening and that is what needs to be explained. But the more we think about the problem in terms of individual couples, the more "normal" disappears. It gets replaced with what they want and what they have to do to get it.

And that should have occurred to TLP because to invoke notions of "normal" is to  invoke shame. If you want to manipulate a narcissist, you use shame to get what you want because narcissists don't feel guilt, they only feel shame. If you think we live in a narcissistic culture (and we do) suggesting that something out of normal is happening with the sex lives of married couples is a great way to get Time to do a cover story on your shoddy self-help book. It isn't, however, a very good way to shake people out of narcissistic behaviour patterns. It will have the exact opposite effect.




* Notice, before you condemn me for sexism, that we don't exactly live in a society where women are under less pressure to be sexually enticing than has been the case in the past. If anything, the exact opposite is the case. What has changed is that it is no longer acceptable to suggest that a woman make this effort for a particular man. That is held to be oppressive. If a woman wants to be beautiful and sexually enticing, she is encouraged to do so "for herself"; she is encouraged to do so in order to feel more confident and better about herself. In fact, she actually does so because she is under tremendous competitive forces and peer pressure from other women. (All of which is narcissistic.)

Some gems from the last psychiatrist

He writes even longer than me. And, also like me, he has a tendency to circle an issue rather than going straight at it. And, man, is he good.

Here are some great bits from his latest:

The fraud women now believe is that it is wrong to look good for men only, as an end in itself; the progressive delusion is that looking good for men is synonymous with submissiveness, so while you're allowed to look good to men, it should always be secondary to looking good for yourself. This is madness. You are enhancing your outward appearance, which is great, but then you pretend it's for internal reasons?

And

"Ugh, women are not objects." Then why are you painting them? I'm not saying you have to look good for men, I'm saying that if wearing makeup not for men makes you feel better about yourself, you don't have a strong self, and no, yelling won't change this. Everyone knows you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, now you're saying the cover of the book influences how the book feels about itself?

Feminism has left women in a really weird place. Maybe that's okay. In the long run. But that is what it has done.

Finally, a point I have often made here:

The trick to the makeup debate is that it pretends to want to be free of male pressure, yet the pressure to look a certain way is actually much worse from women.

And he's just warming up. It keeps getting better after that. Read the whole thing.

Manly Thor's Day Special: She can't believe she did that

The Last Psychiatrist has written what may be the longest blog post ever.

I'll get to that in a moment. First I want to tell you about a walk the Serpentine One and I took the other night. We were headed along the side of the parkway and we saw a man and a woman kissing and I noticed that the woman looked a whole lot like a woman I know and the man looked a whole lot unlike her husband. After that it's a complicated story, suffice to say I ended up confirming, without wanting to, that it was her.

And it shook me. It shook me for all sorts of reasons: I expected better of her, I know and like her husband, they have children.

The Serpentine One and I discussed it a fair bit afterwards.

I've known this woman since we were children. My parents were friends of her parents and we later ended up at the same university together and now we live in the same neighbourhood. I know her really well. At one point, I thought, "This is so out of character for her." But no sooner did I have that thought did I suddenly realize that it's not out of character at all. I knew her at university and I drifted back into her ambit a few years later when she was working in a  trendy restaurant downtown. During those years she would semi-regularly do stuff like this.

Anyway, The Last Psychiatrist has this very long but interesting piece inspired by Amy Schumer, who decided to share with the entire world that she'd once gotten into a cab and, after seeing the cab driver (whom she was not attracted to) leer at her, she took his hand and put it up her skirt and ... .

The cab driver was "gross, like the cab driver on MTV."  "This was back when I used to do dangerous things, sexually," and littered throughout the story were exasperated sighs, like, "I can't believe I did those things." 

Later The Last Psychiatrist (He'll be "TLP" from here on in) comments:

I'm not judging Amy, at all, but her story is so representative of what countless women go through, the "I can't believe I did that" repeated 1000 times,  so I hope she won't mind my using her story to make a point about how we frame our experiences for the very specific purpose of NOT changing.

And I have mixed feelings because he is talking about changing or, at least, pretending to want to change and I'm not sure I want women to change. Actually, scratch that, I'm quite sure that I don't want women who have I-can't-believe-I'm-doing-this experiences to ever change.

I know, I write all this after writing about how shocked after finding out that my friend is cheating on her husband. I guess that is the mixed part of the feelings.

TLP acknowledges this. He makes the point rather crudely so  you'll have to go over there to read it. I might put it the same way myself but I won't. In any case, I-can't-believe-I'm-doing-this experiences (ICBIDT experiences from here on in) vary from woman to woman. One woman might feel that way after going out without her panties on and a another may need to do that and then pull then cab drivers hand up her skirt to get the same effect.

TLP talks ICBIDT experiences as something women want to stop and then moves onto addiction and there is something to that. But there is a flip side: you wouldn't want to be the woman who lived her entire life and never had a ICBIDT experience. Which is why, as a man, you'd never want to date or marry a woman who isn't capable of it given the right opportunity.

This is just one of those things about women you need to accommodate yourself to if you don't want to be miserable.


In the video below, you can see Madonna acting the I-can't-believe-I-did-that expression. Madonna is a lousy actor but she can do this. And it's erotic; in fact it's much more erotic than the more blatant attempts to be erotic before that moment. The crucial moment starts at 4:43. Watch it and see if you don't agree. Now imagine you are downtown and you see the woman in your life coming out of an apartment building with that I-can't-believe-I-did-that expression on her face. If you are normal you will feel a sharp pain and get an erection at the thought. 

Womanly virtues: Beauty as a state of being

The Last Psychiatrist had a good catch yesterday. Writing about The Hunger Games he notes that it is a "sexist" fairytale written by a woman.

This is not a criticism about the entertainment value of the story, but about its popularity and the pretense that it has a strong female character. I like the story of Cinderella, but I doubt that anyone would consider Cinderella a strong female character, yet Katniss and Cinderella are identical.

The traditional progressive complaint about fairy tales like Cinderella is that they supposedly teach girls to want to be princesses and want to live happily ever after.  But is that so bad?  The real problem with fairy tales is that the protagonist never actually does anything to become a princess.  

He goes on to make some interesting points and some debatable ones after that. But that point is pure gold. Over and over again, Hollywood tells women that all they need to do in life to succeed is to really want it.

But is this sexist? The Hunger Games was written by women and it is women who are making it such a huge success. I'll grant you there is something not-feminist about it. Again, to quote TLP:

So this is why we have a book about a post-apocalyptic killing game that spends zero pages describing how Katniss kills anyone but spends countless pages on how she is dressed, how everyone is dressed.  What will she wear?  What kind of jewelry?   Hair up?  Will the "sponsors" like her better this way or that?   Her chief weapon isn't a bow, it's her appearance. 

Okay, but this isn't men forcing this on women so it isn't sexist. And it isn't the sort of concern men have about women's appearance. For us, concerns about appearance can be sexual or they can be purely aesthetic. When we think in sexual terms, we are attracted to women whose appearance arouses us sexually. When we think purely aesthetically, it's something more like the famous photographs of Georgia O'Keeffe. Katniss is something else and, again, I think TLP nails it even if he misses the full significance of his own point:

What makes this such an impossible, lose-lose situation for a woman is that this choice isn't about "what to do" but about who she is, what society wants a woman to be: while she must make herself look pretty, if she is observed doing this she is immediately and simultaneously critiqued for being vain.  The decision about whether to be or not to doll herself up is thus somewhat up to her, but the judgment about whether she is vain is entirely out of her hands-- it is a judgment imposed on her for doing exactly what is expected of her.  Her only hope is that she is can make herself look pretty enough that it looks like it was not on purpose, i.e reveal the results but hide the process.

That's close but not quite right.  He is absolutely correct that women's appearance is often a matter of who she is rather than what she can do. I was walking by a lingerie store today and noticed that they were flogging a push up bra they called "perfect me". And that is how you sell women's personal appearance to women.

For men it is much simpler. Women's breasts swell when they are sexually aroused so every man reacts subconsciously when a woman he knows breasts are more noticeable today than they were yesterday. He probably doesn't even know why he is reacting, he is genetically programmed to pay attention to this woman. He doesn't wrap her identity up in it.

The notion that appearance = identity is a trap to be sure but it's a trap that women set for themselves and for other women.

To return to the point above, for women the problem is not vanity but effort. If you buy into the notion that appearance = identity then the only beauty that counts is effortless beauty. If you are visibly working it, then the effects are "not really you". Oddly enough, simple trickery doesn't seem to upset women so long as the trickery in question is common practice. Today, for example, push up bras are common practice so they are considered acceptable. But a woman who resorted to such a thing back in the 1980s, when it wasn't common practice, would have been condemned by other women as "trying too hard".

And the standards here are harshly enforced. By women. Because you think you want to be loved for "who you really are", it is easy for other women to undermine you by insisting on effortless grace. And it is easy for other women to punish you for daring to use some fashion trick that isn't currently acceptable.

This proves a real handicap when it comes to relating to men.  First of all because the tricks work. Go to work for a month wearing bras without any sort of enhancement and then show up wearing "perfect me" and all the guys will comment how good you look today. The merit seems unearned—you don't feel you deserve it—and the guys seem stupid and shallow.

It's even worse once a woman is in a relationship. Now you feel you have moved beyond tricks and seek love "just for who you really are". And your guy, because he loves you, does so, and that vindicates your sense that you don't need to resort to tricks anymore. Meanwhile he is thinking, "Why has she lost interest in enticing me into sex? Does she not love me anymore?"

(Men notice women who have pure aesthetic beauty but we don't see that as an obligation. Notice how little effort we put into that aspect of our own appearance. But sex really matters to us so we really notice when women stop acting like they are interested in sex. If a man's lover stops dressing for sex or stops flirting, the orange alert light starts flashing.)

But if you try the tricks again, they seem more hollow than ever to you and the fact that they still work on him is no consolation. It's not what you want! You think, "This isn't me." So you dig your heels in and refuse or, worse, play along but do so grudgingly. To wrap up with TLP again:

The traditional progressive complaint about fairy tales like Cinderella is that they supposedly teach girls to want to be princesses and want to live happily ever after.  But is that so bad?  The real problem with fairy tales is that the protagonist never actually does anything to become a princess. 

In other words, the morality here is the reverse of what you think it is. A point you can confirm for yourself by walking around and making a checklist of women you see. Put each one into one of three categories*:

• "Royalty". (There is greater and lesser royalty, but that isn't what you look for. The question is, Is she royalty? not "Is she the supreme example of royalty?")
• Lazy slob who thinks she should be a princess but does nothing to earn it.
• Woman who has given up.

Do that and you will quickly see that when you assess other women from the outside, the real issue is not who she really is but how much work she puts into it. The thing that makes any other woman you see royalty is not who she really is but how good she is at being a woman. It's only when you allow yourself to get narcistically wrapped up in yourself that "love me for who I really am" seems to make sense.


* If you want you can also create a fourth category of "brave feminist who has defied social conventions to become truly herself" but you won't find anyone who really fits that category.

Addendum

The most appalling things about that Atlantic article I wrote about earlier today is the fact that Stephen Bloom is a journalism professor. He doesn't just have this diseased, hate-filled mind, he gets paid to teach other people his biases.

Here is an interesting video that suggests that maybe journalists just don't like it that ordinary people have a good time and that they have thought this way for a long time now. The commentator's name is Ben Grauer and boy does it bug him that people are celebrating New Year's Even instead of worrying about all the stuff he wishes they would worry about.



The Last Psychiatrist, courtesy of whom I found this, has transcribed some of the patter:

On the side of the Allied Chemical Tower, you have it spelled out in big letters– didn’t know about that, 1966– So there’s the end of the year which was featured with the escalation of the war in Vietnam, and The Dow Jones hitting a new high, just 30 points shy of 1000 just today; gloom at the homefront; increasing war overseas– maybe this crowd senses that besides the warm weather we’re having, the sense of hope as Harriman and Kohler and Goldberg scurry about the world on the peace offensive…and an increase in social security tax for Medicare.  So take it or leave it, you’ve got the new year of 1966.
And the traditional crowd which had been building to maybe 700000, one of the biggest we’ve seen in years, just like the lemmings of Norway, is scurrying off to their homes and parties.  They may have a transit strike, some of them may be weary, we don’t know the story on that yet, nor does New York’s newest Republican Mayor, first in 20 years, John Lindsay….

Yeah, 'cause the reason they write the year in big letters is because people need to be told. No doubt Ben also thought that the reason people put the birthday boy or girl's name on the cake was in case people didn't know. Cheap cynicism doesn't get any cheaper than "you have it spelled out in big letters– didn’t know about that, 1966". I also like the non sequitur whereby the news that the Dow has set a new record high is followed immediately by our reporter saying "gloom at the homefront". Our reporter doesn't seem to like capitalism much. And then the comparison of the crowd to rodents. This is who we have trusted to give us news for decades!

Female infidelity as Hollywood sees it

One of the many things I am grateful for is that my occasional commenter Gaius put me onto The Last Psychiatrist. Like me, TLP is inconsistent: sometimes you moan, sometimes he hits something really good. Unlike me, sometimes he has insights that really shake us out. Case in point, his polemic against The Descendants.

I'm not knocking these movies for existing or for casting these hairless nymphomaniacs, I'm simply posing the general question: since the audience has learned nothing from their own parents, and they don't read 19th century Russian literature, what is their model for love in the 2nd decade of marriage?  They don't have one.  Which is why when this demo finds themselves in the 2nd decade of marriage they feel unfulfilled, anxious, depressed, is this all there is? They have nothing to guide them except The Discovery Channel and mommy blogs, and they lack the courage to analyze their ennui, so these movies serve the important function of pretending that it's normal.  "Oh, yeah, that's exactly what I'm feeling."  Fine, but don't you also want to know why you feel that way?

And, of the two, the mommy blogs are the bigger problem. Read the whole thing, it's well worth your time. That said, there is a weakness here that you need to grasp to really get it. TLP handles men and women unevenly and that is a flaw he shares with the movie he is discussing.

The set up paragraph from TLP  is below. I'm going to chop it into two. Here is part one:

Here's a bit of human nature for you and you are most certainly not going to like it.  Fat George Clooney discovers his wife has been cheating on him-- and he never suspected.  That's a profound insult, a narcissistic injury, and no, people who complain I talk about it too much but haven't actually learned the lessons, you don't have to be a narcissist to experience a narcissistic injury, it's built into the way we relate to other people.  It's jealousy AND an existential beat down: look at the limits of your power, look at the limits of your reach, she is able to have a whole other existence that had so little to do with you you didn't even notice, nor did she feel any need to tell you.  

Clooney's character discovers all this, by the way, while his wife is dying and in a coma. That's important because it completely closes any possible response from her and, therefore, any moral assessment we might make of her. So how is a guy to respond?

Before we get to that, let me emphasize the formula here: jealousy + an existential beat down = narcissistic injury. Jealousy by itself is a perfectly natural and, more importantly, an absolutely unavoidable emotion. No love is ever so secure that you won't feel twinges of jealousy sometimes. Jealousy can tear your love down or it can build it up depending on how you respond. But there is one sort of situation where you always lose and that is when jealousy is combined with a threat to your sense of who you are. Finding out you have been cheated on will almost always be an existential beat down.

Okay, now for part two:

At least if she had done it to hurt you you'd still suffer the jealousy but your place as main character in your own movie would be secure.  Maybe you're only supporting cast in hers?   "Screw that. I'm changing the script."

This is one of my own favourite points: she didn't cheat to hurt you because she planned to get away with it. Her guilt here is analogous to the person who decides to drive themselves home anyway after a  few drinks. She never thought about the pain she might cause by running you down because she focused on getting away with it. You weren't even on the radar screen when she did this. That hurts much more than even than the thought that another guy got to ... .

So what do you do? Well, assuming you don't go on a destructive rampage or kill yourself, the irresistible temptation is to make it about yourself.

Increase your pain to save your ego.  That's the path the movie chooses: she cheated not because she fell in love, or lust, but because he neglected her, he was a bad husband, he didn't take her on shopping sprees.    "As long as you don't ask me to change, I'm accepting some blame for her cheating on me."  You'll feel right as rain. 

But here TLP, in my opinion, goes astray because he isn't willing to confront the crucial question directly enough. Notice how he seems to contradict himself in the very next paragraph for he immediately turns around and tells us that the audience don't understand Clooney's character's motives:

They are (thanks, VO)  starting from a false premise: that he actually really loved his wife in the first place.  He didn't.  That's why she was cheating.

Uhhhh whattt??? But isn't that the narcissistic defense mechanism? You know, making it about myself by saying that she cheated because I didn't love her well enough? Well, it actually all makes a sort of sense because the movie itself embraces the narcissistic impulse along with its lead character and that is what TLP wants to highlight: if this movie really speaks to you, then there is something wrong with you. But even if we allow that, I think TLP is missing a key detail here.

To understand what is really wrong here you have to turn this scenario around and imagine it the other way. Imagine the husband is in the bed in a coma about to die and the wife dutifully sitting at the bedside holding his hand discovers that he has been having an affair and had planned to divorce her before he got sick. Okay, got that picture? Okay, it's easy to picture part of this playing out the same. You can imagine the wife suffering the narcissistic injury and coping by blaming herself for being a poor wife, boring lover, letting herself go or whatever but any Hollywood movie would ultimately assure us that she was mistakenly blaming herself. It wouldn't be her fault.

When a man is the cheater, our culture blames him.

It would be easy, perhaps too easy, to show us that the husband was, in fact, a selfish jerk in such a movie. That is the real hollow moral core in our culture: it is unwilling to acknowledge that women are just as capable of being selfish jerks as men are. That is the missing step that George Clooney's character needs to make here. He needs to see that his wife behaved like a selfish jerk and now that evil will outlive her.

And that is what women need to see if they are going to be really liberated. Moral freedom comes from confronting the truth that you yourself are a sinner. And that will never happen so long as our culture keeps honouring movies like this. For in this movie, as TLP nicely draws out, the narcissistic response is made to look like moral maturity and love. What he misses is that the reason it does this is because it cannot bring itself to treat women as moral adults.

Note: I used to write about women and womanly virtues on Friday but I'm moving that to Wednesday with this post.

Are you serious?

Womanly virtues Friday
Let's take on the weird Time cover controversy. These covers all came out for the same week:

This issue has a lot of people asking, Does Time think Americans are stupider than Europeans? And  The Last Psychiatrist writing at Partial Objects points out something else:

The truth is slightly more complicated and simultaneously a lot scarier.

The problem is that the American audience for Time is 50/50 male/female, but for the European version it’s 66/34 male/female; and the Asian Time is 80/20. In other words, Time doesn’t think Americans are dumber than Europeans, it thinks American women are dumber than European men.

 Except, as he acknowledges, not really. The cover is intended to attract newsstand buyers so what Time really thinks is that potential newsstand buyers are more likely to be somewhat less wealthy and more female in the US than other markets and therefore less likely to be interested in hard news.

Only, lets take the "thinks" out of that analysis. Time magazine knows this to be true. And the issue is not intelligence but seriousness. Time knows that there is a large audience of magazine buyers in North America who are not terribly serious people and it knows that a lot of these people are women.

Note that I am not saying that there are no North American women interested in a serious news magazine. Of course there are. You can spot them because they read The Economist.

But anyone who has bought groceries will know that there is a large market for magazines for silly and frivolous people and will further know that this market is made up mainly of women. At Time Inc. they know this better than anyone because they created this market with People magazine. And People made even more money than Time because nobody ever went broke underestimating etc.

And that is a problem. There is a significant subset of women who read tripe like Time and watch tripe like The View because they aren't serious people and they aren't interested in becoming serious people.

The temptation is to blame the supply side of the equation. So long as magazines and shows aimed at women are shallow and unserious, women won't change. But the problem really flows the other way. So long as a lot women keep buying this stuff, they will remain shallow and unserious.

two links

I've gotten to be quite a fan of The Last Psychiatrist since learning about him from Gaius. This post is a particularly good example of him at his best: How Tolerant Are You?

And here is a fortune cookie Yeats* would have hated: Platitude Cookie Alert.


* The best lack all conviction, while the worst
    Are full of passionate intensity.

(Although I must admit I've always hated that poem.)

A Mad Men post

I've been meaning to post something new about Mad Men for a while now. I don't promote or advertise this site in any way but I am vain enough to watch the statistics on the site and my posts about the show remain the most popular I've ever written. For example, two or three people have come by to read this post every single day since it went up.

And these always-popular posts have been even more so lately. So I've been casting around for something to build a series of posts around. I haven't found it yet.

What I did find was The Last Psychiatrist writing about the relative importance of characters in the Star Wars movies and he passes along the following:

Lucas said that the movies are driven by the character R2D2; not that he is the most important, and not because he saves everyone at various points, but because he provides the impetus for everyone’s actions. This makes R2D2 the perfect Macguffin; inexplicable but desirable, pushing and pulling all the characters. 

And so I ask you a question, is there anything in that description of R2D2 that isn't also true of Don Draper?

Okay, not new: I have been saying that Don Draper and his secret past are a Macguffin for a long time now. But think about it: "inexplicable but desirable, pushing and pulling all the characters" is what the man is.

If you want to understand the show, don't look for the explanation in him. Look at Peter and Peggy, they are the keys to the show.

Intentional story telling

I am preparing tomorrow's movie post and the movie I have picked is not a neo noir whereas every film I've discussed on Thursday all summer has been neo noir. It has a lot in common with them and a big commonality is the lying. The narrator of this story is so deeply embroiled in his lies that it may as well be a neo noir.

Anyway, that got me thinking about one of the points The Last Psychiatrist is so good at: intentionality in story telling. We often tell stories that, on their face, seem to make one kind of point but actually betray a completely different purpose.

And we almost always do this when we tell a story intentionally. That is the story that is told not to divert or titillate but a told with a purpose. A doctor who specialized in alcoholism gave a great example of this sort of lie and how it gets revealed once. A guy made an appointment to see him and when he sat down he told the doctor that he'd had a recent drinking experience that had really bothered him. And then he said this,

Doctor, I'm not an alcoholic. I hadn't had a drink in seventeen years before this happened.

And the doctor said, "I knew he was an alcoholic as soon as he said that. Only an alcoholic would remember exactly how long it had been since his last drink."

The alcoholic does not actually know he is an alcoholic in the same sense that he knows he owns a blue shirt. But the fascinating thing is the way the story betrays conflicting intentions. He says he isn't but he is obviously worried that he might be and is trying to deflect the narrative from the conclusion he doesn't want it to run to. That intention is right in the telling of the story and in who he chose to tell it to.

Anyway, the movie for tomorrow is A River Runs Through It, and it is that kind of story. The things Norman Maclean tries to hide are more interesting than what he reveals.

Role models

Left over from my earlier post, I think it is interesting that The Last Psychiatrist says this:

But a closer reading reveals something else.  This is how he begins his article, the very first line:

When considering an occupation, most people look for a role model.

Not only is that not true of most people, it’s an odd thing for a 44 year old to look for.  But that’s the problem.  Unsure of himself, unsure of what kind of a person he wants to be, he tries to define himself by linking himself to others:  “pirate philosophers” and “intellectual swashbuckling.”  Swift and Voltaire, not Marcuse and Adorno.  And sci-fi writers, both book and TV.

Why is this odd? I would think that most people are aware of who they want to be and that they are aware of the gap between them and that person. And the best way to bridge the gap is just what Doug Texter suggests: find a role model. And 44 is as good an age as any other to do this. You might regret that you didn't do this earlier but only long to realize that it's pointless.

Manly Thor's Day Special

LA Confidential: The Manliness Lesson
Well, there isn't one, really, this being a woman's movie in disguise. But it sort of touches on something.

This image is a good way to introduce it:

Through a stupid and clumsy plot device, Russell Crowe's character Officer Bud White has just been made aware of the existence of photos of the woman he loves having sex with another man. So he rushes out in the rain and flips through them. This is a tribute, of course, to a famous scene in Chinatown. There are other homages to the scene in Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Blood Simple.

It works because we all know the feeling. The minute you discover that a woman you are in love with has had sex with another man, you start picturing it. You know it's a crazy thing to do but you can't help it. I've been there myself.

The thing, of course, is that the sex you picture has to perform a key psychological function and that is maintaining the vaguely narcissistic fantasy that this woman's love for you proves something about you. So the sex you imagine has to be animalistic and, oddly enough, erotically perfect in a way that the sex you have had with the same woman is not. It's torture of an exquisitely awful sort but, as the Last Psychiatrist notes, it's better than jumping off a bridge.

That loss of self is what you're trying to recapture with the masochistic fantasies:  she's hot enough to have any guy she wants (and she picked you); she is in total control of her sex, wielding it for pleasure or for profit however she wants; so when she had sex with you, and liked it-- it signifies your own value.  When some faceless stud undoes her bikini top in front of everyone, and she confidently flaunts her body-- that's your self-confidence she's flaunting.

The post that comes from is worth reading all the way through by the way. If any of this is sounding familiar, if you have ever entertained masochistic fantasies after being cheated on, read the whole thing.

I'd like to note something interesting though. In real life, the woman who cheated on you when you were twenty-five and having what you thought of as the greatest romance in the history of romance didn't actually have the greatest sex of her life with a  super-well-endowed hunk when she cheated. She actually had a seedy little affair drenched in all the self-deception and vanity that affairs always are. But in Hollywood—where it is fantasy all the way down—the woman does have the fantasy sex when she cheats. (And the guy she picks is the perfect threat; in the case she cheats on Bud white, who worries that he is stupid, with the super intelligent Edmund Exley.) Hollywood gives us all the things that would usually be in our imagination played out in high quality Technicolor®.

Here is some more from The Last Psychiatrist

 Look closely at these fantasies, at your own cuckold fantasies.  Inevitably in these fantasies there is a fetish object, something that existed in your relationship.  It's seems incidental to the fantasy but it is highly energized, eroticized: a piece of jewelry, clothing/bathing suit, or a location (car, bar, beach, etc).  The sex is the visual focus, but the eroticized negligee that they bought when they were together is the true main character of the fantasy.

Men make the sex the focus, while women make the fetishized object more explicit: they obsess over the ex taking his new woman to the same places; or buying her "the same kind of scarf he got me"; or saying the same phrases ("that's what he used to call me.")

It seems masochistic, driving yourself crazy thinking about what you've lost, making the loss even worse by finding the specific ways that it hurts you.

In the movie the fetish object is the white dress that Kim Basinger is wearing. In real life, Bud White would imagine these things but here we actually get it.

A bit of trivia
Not really related to the above, but interesting nevertheless, one of the subplots involves a character named Tammy Jordan as played by Shawnee Free Jones. Poor Tammy is a poor girl trying to break into Hollywood but ends up getting exploited for the titillation of others.

Well, guess how poor Shawnee Free Jones is used by the makers of LA Confidential?

Yup, she is in the movie so we can all see a brief shot of her breasts, her bouncing breasts, and then she is done for. And her Hollywood career is not much more than that. She was in a number of other moves, almost always for her breasts, and then dispensed with. Her career was over by 2002.

But spell it out for yourself: The movie makes a moral point about how young hopeful actresses were exploited back in the 1950s by exploiting a a young hopeful actress today. And we all participate because we really want to see her breasts.

Voyeurism is a deeply interesting psychological phenomena.

In closing, Shawnee Free Jones is weird name no? That's because her father was a spirituality huckster.

The thought for the day

I'm not blaming the victim, I am observing a universal rule: the common denominator in all of your failed relationships is you.
                                                         The Last Psychiatrist

It seems to me that that is a really good place to start thinking about virtue. You can easily lie to yourself about any other measure but counting is just counting. How many failed relationships do you have? Not teen romances, as I've said before, they are supposed to end. But since you were twenty, how many?

Of course, we could do it with anything. How many times have you handed your assignments in late? But relationships seem more important.

Here's a question, "What if there is no better measure of your worth as a human being than your ability to make a successful marriage?"

This is staggering

The Last Psychiatrist spotted this, I never would have noticed. You can read his post about it here.

This is from a  story about Alec Baldwin's possible run for mayor of New York. Here is the paragraph with the stunning thing in it:

But experts say Baldwin’s name recognition and fame may not be enough.

“The rule is you have to have done something executive-like to be considered a candidate for office,” said David Epstein, a political-science professor at Columbia University.

Last September, David Epstein was charged with incest regarding an alleged three-year relationship with a close female relative.

And today he is an expert again.

Update: Many thanks to The Fourth Checkraise for linking to this post as well as another recently.

Personal identity

The Last Psychiatrist has a very good post up at the Partial Objects site.

Here is the point of departure:

 David Eagleman is a neuroscientist.  If you’ve never heard of him, then let me simply say he’s been on/in: Fresh Air, Wired, The New Yorker, and Slate.

Which is to say: he may be an excellent neuroscientist, but the media wants him to be a moral philosopher.

And why do they want him to be a moral philosopher you ask:

To get into The New Yorker, you have to advance a pseudo-philosophical but distinctly atheist explanation of human nature, and dress it up in science even when that science isn’t relevant to the question.

And what Eagleman believes about human beings is this:

1. That there is no self. With the passage of time and experiences, you change. So you are not the person you were ten years ago, not only metaphorically, but literally.
2. But he’s not Sartre: you don’t have the freedom you think you have. The choices you make are affected by the physical design specs of your body– genes, anatomy, etc– which in turn affect qualities like impulse control and empathy. These decisions and behaviors aren’t you (see above) nor do they represent any free will, as defined as the freedom to make any choices.

Now there is a lot I could say here but the thing I really want to note (besides saying again that you really should read what TLP has to say) is that the first move here is a familiar one in philosophy going back to David Hume.

And it is an utterly pointless move too. What would it take to convince yourself that there was no prolonged personal identity—which is to say that the person with your name and driver's license five years ago was as different from you as someone you see across the street from you now—or that your feeling of making free choices was just an illusion? When I see people making this move it always smells of desperation to me. They know they have no legitimate way to reach the conclusions they want so they they pull this one.

Greek manners and Gothic morals

A politically incorrect follow up
The Last Psychiatrist is a guy who never fails to bash males. If you read through his archives you will find that he connects masculinity with narcissism with a regularity that would suggest that the two words are really synonyms for him.

So watching him squirm and twist and do everything he can to avoid reaching "incorrect" conclusions about women is quite funny. For example, he has a post in which he deals with the rather touchy issue that some women who have encountered male psychopaths sometimes report that they found these men charming. Well, we can see why he wouldn't want to go there.

I can see the easy explanation: these women are more easily manipulated, especially because the charm carries a sexual connotation.  There's a power differential—some of the fear is processed sexually, etc. Summary: the women don't see what's really in the psychopath.

Anytime someone tells you that an explanation is the easy one ....

Manly Thor's Day Special

The second-best case against Don Draper in which I rant
A while ago in the comments, Gaius put me onto a fascinating site called The Last Psychiatrist. It strikes me as a little like this site but only with even less restraint. He cuts loose and says stuff that you might think but would think better than to actually say. And he has devoted two long, rambling posts to trashing Don Draper.
That's odd—meaning unusual—because most people who think so little of something wouldn't bother arguing the point. They'd consider it beneath their dignity to waste all that time on a mere fictional character that only a small segment of the population watches. The longer someone spends trying to diminish something, the more they succeed in making it appear significant.


Anyway, he has come up with the second-best argument against Don Draper and I think that is worth some comment. Now he would insist that he has made a case against wanting to be like Don Draper but that is redundant. Draper is a hero and the whole (only) point of a hero is to inspire emulation.