Where Do These Grants Come From?

Filed under:Church of Liberalism,Priorities,WTF? — posted by Anwyn on October 2, 2011 @ 1:51 pm

And do the grant-granters know how their money is being spent? “Women Who Make More Decisions Have Less Sex:”

“[T]he findings showed more dominant and assertive women had approximately 100 times less sex.”

These results are clearly specific to the area in which the women were surveyed. A Florida State University study also found that in countries with higher gender equality, there is more sex, so it’s no surprise that in poorer African countries, women are withholding it.

The idea that dominant women are having less sex is likely evidence, as reported by the Daily Mail, that women around the world are taking control of their sexual preferences.

What???

There are two parts of the study reported here:
1) The numbers, which say women who make more household decisions have less sex, and
2) The conclusions, which are:
a) These women withhold sex.
b) These women are “taking control of their sexual preferences.”

I stipulate up front that I haven’t come up with any possible conclusions to this study that don’t make women look bad. All the possible conclusions to numbers like this are unpalatable. But one obvious conclusion also makes men look a bit bad as well as fitting traditional intuition: Men don’t want women who make decisions very much. But that conclusion, while making men look bad, tends to work against the goals of feminism. Feminists would not want to let on that men maybe have less desire for a woman who, as the saying used to be, wears the pants, because maybe that would make women think twice about wearing the pants too often. Maybe that’s why it’s discarded in favor of the two that leave women in control–that they’re withholding sex and that they prefer 100 times less sex than their less decision-making counterparts. They prefer it that way. I find it hard to believe that’s possible even by biological norms.

But what gets me the most is how the researchers apparently not only accept this conclusion as biologically possible but also endorse it as a good rather than realizing it makes the women they’re talking about look like punishing, anti-sex shrews. This is the preferred conclusion over “men don’t prefer women who make more decisions.”

Another killer is the closing:

“Understanding how women’s position in the household influences their sexual activity may be an essential piece in protecting the sexual rights of women and helping them to achieve a sexual life that is both safe and pleasurable,” co-author Carie Muntifering told Health24.com.

We’ve gone from basic, obvious rights–i.e. the right to say “no” to any sexual advance–to “reproductive rights” to “sexual rights” and now apparently it is the job of some section of “academia” to “help women achieve” a good sex life. Please, women of academia, no thank you. Please, grant distributors, stop funding these kinds of idiotic, meddlesome studies.

Got the link from Instapundit.

Update: And thanks to Professor Instapundit for the link!

Dancing with the Stars Getting Out of Control

Filed under:Television,WTF? — posted by Anwyn on April 26, 2011 @ 9:56 pm

I just watched Monday’s performances. The elimination is going on right now.

What? It’s less than a week till finals, and I know you don’t prefer to hear about my struggles with the parol evidence rule.

What Dancing god did Ralph Macchio tick off? Why does he get these impossible songs? Who does paso doble to “Everybody Dance Now?” And no, I don’t care that its actual title is “Gonna Make You Sweat.” That’s a horrible title. Who does samba to “Sweet Home Alabama?” These were not good music choices, Music Choosers. Foxtrot to “Yankee Doodle Dandy” was pretty awful too, but on the other hand, I didn’t care what Kendra did until I saw her samba last night. Those were some dance moves. Well done. But back to Ralph: What?

I am a little worried for Ralph. It breaks my heart for both of us that he’s almost fifty years old, and he has these hollow eyes that put me in mind of somebody dying of consumption. But nevermind all that–who is torturing him by making him dance to wildly inappropriate songs? And again with the fog machine, during Romeo’s waltz, and again with the inappropriate lighting, strobes–strobes!–during the inappropriate paso doble.

True, everything the judges said about Ralph and Karina getting back up to finish the dance was right on, they never wavered after that and it was glorious. But the fall cost them, as the judges gave them straight 8s, and I can’t help wondering if the incongruous music contributed too.

We’re not even going to discuss Bruno, Tom, the Elton John video, and Bruno’s choice description of Tom afterwards. The whole show needs to cool its jets.

But speaking of cool, it has to be said: Hanson can out-sing the Jonas Brothers any day of the week and twice on Sundays.

This Passes for “Education?”

Filed under:Jerks,Oh Hell No,Politics,Priorities,WTF? — posted by Anwyn on May 20, 2010 @ 6:55 am

[The teacher] planned to base final exams on the Michael Moore film, “Sicko“.

A single conservative student objected and also says that her teacher called her a “teabagger” earlier in the year, during a different controversy. But what manages, incredibly, to bother me even more than the choice of movie and the public insult of a student by her teacher, is this:

…Blessman distributed to students in her Senior Literature and Composition class…

So for a Literature and Composition class, the final was … a movie.

The teacher should have been fired before anybody discovered she was pushing her odious political bias on her students. She should have been fired when it was discovered she is not a teacher of literature and composition. Good luck getting that done now.

What Are You Talking About?

Filed under:Language Barrier,Priorities,WTF? — posted by Anwyn on June 18, 2009 @ 10:04 pm

Mr. Jonathan V. Last, here, seems very opposed to and disgusted by the idea of men in the delivery room during the births of their children. Other than that, and the fact that I too despise the expression “we’re pregnant,” I don’t know what the hell he’s talking about.

It wasn’t until the late 1960s that men began taking the last step. Urged on by books such as Robert Bradley’s “Husband-Coached Childbirth,” men started going the distance. By 1970, the delivery room had been pried open.

All manner of idiocy followed: tape recorders, cameras, video. Husbands huffing and puffing with the mothers. The expression “we’re pregnant.” Various fads have cajoled fathers into cutting the umbilical cord or playing catcher as the baby exits the birth canal or stripping off their shirts and clutching the newborn “skin-to-skin.” By the late 1970s, a man was considered something of a monster if he didn’t at least stand north of the equator during the delivery of his child.

He spends the first nine paragraphs loathingly reciting the history of how fathers went from off the scene entirely into the delivery room, and then spends the last three chapters wailing about society’s tolerance for absent or deadbeat fathers. While I sympathize on the last score, I wish he would explain to me what the hell one has to do with the other.

Yet today it is socially acceptable to father a child without marrying the mother or to divorce her later on if mother and father actually do bother to get hitched. And at the same time there is zero tolerance for a husband who says: “No thanks, I’ll be in the waiting room with cigars.” Ms. Leavitt’s fascinating history suggests that childbirth is just one more area where our narcissism has swamped our seriousness.

Whose narcissism, exactly? A birthing mother’s narcissism in wanting the person who, theoretically, is her companion and partner in all of life’s big decisions and events, in the room with her when a drastic, potentially uncontrolled event occurs resulting in the birth of his own child? A father’s narcissism in thinking his presence is necessary for this event? Who and what? And who cares? The idea seems to be that social norms now require the father present at the birth but let him off scot-free for the rest of the child’s raising. Does Mr. Last seriously believe that a father who stands ready to abandon his child and the child’s mother is going to feel constrained by customs requiring him to cut the umbilical cord? Does he really think the majority of the country both a) derides a man as less than a man if he fails to be present in the delivery room AND b) thinks it’s okay for him to then step out of his child’s life? Of course not. The bigger question is, just how does he propose “society” control the latter? The former, according to him, was brought about by an influential book that caught on into a trend and evolved into a norm. Great. If that method is so powerful, let’s use it on the deadbeats! Oh … you mean it won’t work on irresponsible trash like them? Huh. I thought Mr. Last said they could be found dutifully at the bedsides during the delivery. Weird.

Via Hot Air headlines.



image: detail of installation by Bronwyn Lace