Predatory Women Teachers
Monday, March 9th, 2009So, last week Drudge puts up a link to a story about two different women teachers having sex with a 13 year old boy student unbeknown to one another. Nice. Why can’t crazy women just be strippers and prostitutes? Now, they’re foisting their antisocial behavior on children.
A couple thoughts:
1. Yes, society is degrading. What used to be unthinkable has become rather common place.
2. Critics of home schooling, due to the fact that the kids may be in a “dangerous environment”, need to put a cork in it.
3. Critics of the Catholic Church need to be morally consistent. Where is the outrage over this abuse? All indicators point to a systemic failure for the education system to keep children safe. This is a little addendum at the end of the article:
Recent cases
Since 2007, at least 10 other Utah teachers or school employees have been charged with engaging in sexual acts with students. Among recent cases:
In November 2007, Frank Laine Hall, 37, was sentenced to prison for molesting 11 of his first-grade students at Rosamond Elementary School in Riverton.
Also in 2007, former West High School guidance counselor Marco R. Herrera, 53, received three consecutive one-to-15 year prison terms for engaging in sexual acts with a 14-year-old girl at least 10 times. An honors teacher at the same school was charged in 2008 with multiple counts of having sex with the same girl; his case is pending.
This is just in Utah. There are stories like this every day. Here’s one from Houston. But when I did a search, multiple cases came up. Here’s a complete list. And this is just the women.
Where is the Teacher’s Union? Where are the huge settlements from school systems for providing unsafe environments? Why are schools given an exemption from the expectation that children should be safe?
Evidently, there is a taboo bigger than sexual abuse and assault: Thou Shalt Not Put Teachers In A Bad Light.
Cross-posted at RightWingNews
Talking About Men Again & Enduring Prohibition
Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009I have written on manliness before since I dig manly men and find the softening male culture…well, boring if nothing else. Men and women are made different and their differences make life interesting. The sexual revolution resulted in a boring world where men are metrosexuals–all pointy-toed shoes and manicures, and women are butch she-beasts. In both cases, what can be identified as uniquely masculine or uniquely feminine are lost. People are neutered.
I don’t want a neutered world. I want a world where being fully female and fully male is valued. Tom Flake guesting at Brutally Honest describes the man he wants to be:
I am “Old School”. In a previous era I may have been considered macho. I prefer combat sports (boxing and mixed martial arts) to team sports (baseball and basketball). I prefer outdoor activities (rock climbing, whitewater rafting and camping) to video games. I prefer competition to cooperation, and may the best man win. All too often today, macho self-confidence is confused with “a*shole”, “arrogant”, or “pig-headed” particularly when it entails any interface with the gentler gender. I believe that in this era of feminized, emasculated, gender-neutral, neutered, politically-correct, “my right to not be offended, trumps your freedom of speech” era, many men who would otherwise voice their opinions have chosen instead to be quiet and pine for a better yesterday. Yet, straight shooters who opt to solve problems rather than wring their hands over them, is exactly what we need.
We have come to a point in American society where straight shooters are viewed with suspicion and loathing. Saying the truth in a direct manner “hurts people’s feelings”. Using logic means that “you don’t care”.
The culture encourages warped stereotypes by creating women heroines that can best their male counterparts physically, when it’s patently false. (Wonder Woman had magical powers to help her. I’m talking about human women with superhuman powers.) Can you imagine a woman kicking John Wayne’s butt?
The culture encourages “hooking up” when it creates a superficial sexual environment that diminishes the soul and spirit. Women wonder why men won’t commit. Men wonder why they should.
The culture shows disrespect for men. There are too many examples to list. Don’t be too tough. Don’t be too anything.
The culture shows disrespect for women. Don’t be too mommy-ish. Don’t be too successful at work.
America has become The View–both women and men are hectored to death by clucking hens, peck, peck, pecking the culture into “nice” submission. We are all enduring prohibition still. Bossed and nagged, both men and women are cowed into submission lest they be branded immoral.
I’m tired of it. I’m tired of things you can’t say. I’m tired of typical female and male behavior being pathologized. I’m tired of weak leaders and shrinking, scared thought-leaders.
If America is going to rise from this ash heap, someone will have to lead. Weak men and pious, pouty women won’t do it.
Cross-posted at RightWingNews.com
Dispensing With Social Niceties
Thursday, February 19th, 2009Dating can be a hot mess and not the so-bad-she’s good Tara Reid kind, either. As I wrote last week, with the new technology, lack of family cohesion, and cessation of social rules governing all sorts of behavior, people are doing some crazy things (face licking) and thinking it’s normal.
Exhibit A:
If you’ve watched the news at all (I don’t, but I saw the cover of the National Enquirer and other weeklies at the grocery check-out on Sunday), you know that the pop singer Rihanna (featured on this blog in the song Life Your Life) got tuned up by her boyfriend Chris Brown. And by tuned up, I mean her face was severely beaten and she was choked and had to go to the hospital for chronic and persistent head aches (I’m guessing a concussion.)
Now, the reaction by the guys at the counter at H.E.B., one black two white, was this: Rihanna must have done something horrible like give Chris an STD or something because a dude just doesn’t hit the face of a woman because he’s angry.
Exhibit B:
A friend of a friend got tuned up by her husband (who is, by the way, a worthless slug, but that’s another story) because she cheated on him. The person who relayed the story to me defended the husband’s behavior and said that it was understandable that he would beat her like that because of how she disrespected him.
There used to be rules governing this sort of thing. Women stayed virginal and prized that virginity because it gave them great power. Men knew that in order to get nooky from a respectable woman, he’d have to make a commitment and then, once the commitment was made, he received, in return a woman who would more likely be faithful to him and who would be a good mother to his children, etc. She knew that he had self control and respect for her.
Another rule: A man simply would not hit a woman. Period. Ever. These days, though, women are portrayed in movies, on TV, in books, etc. as equal to men in physical strength which is simply not true. So you have guys beating on women and women winning, when, in real life the likelihood of that happening is slim and none. In addition, people possess less conflict-resolution skills and resort to unhelpful behaviors like yelling, screaming, name-calling, physical aggression and sometimes ending in physical violence. This used to be unacceptable. These days, three guys in a grocery store and an acquaintance can spend time arguing to me that it’s acceptable for a guy to beat the heck out of his woman when he’s “disrespected”.
This is what happens when there is no honor and there is no shame and there are no rules for engagement.
So that’s social norms. And the new norms breed babies, STDs, beatings, and misery.
The Pressured Dating Game
Monday, February 16th, 2009My blog friend Robert Stacy McCain sent me a link to his latest article, where he admonishes a young man for his blown chance at a suitably smart hottie. He probably thinks I am never going to link his piece, but that’s not true. I’ve been pondering it, instead.
Robert’s article coincides with a dear friend’s search for a good man. I recounted how, at the end of her date on Friday, the guy leaned in to give her a good-night face lick. I am not kidding. And as if that insult wasn’t enough, the man requested that she bite his neck and scratch his back. He was divorced (huh, I wonder why), professional and good looking. What in the hell?
Perhaps with the advent of technology or the decline in formal social protocols or the increase and ubiquity of porn or the elevation of the pop culture, people have just lost the ability to know what to do on a date. Note to men: face licking is a no-no. In fact, I feel safe in saying that if you take face licking out of your whole wooing repetoire, no one is going to complain.
One of the problems with online dating is the false familiarity it can provide. A person can share intimate details, have good conversations in that format, but there’s no accounting for in-person chemistry. And then, once in person, there is a tendency to be over-familiar. The physical part of the relationship can be too much too soon. Just because one person on IM feels the vibe doesn’t mean the other person does.
I know of successful dating outcomes from online dating. In fact, I’m thinking of two happily married couples right now. So, the method works for lots of people and works well. There are advantages, too, to learning how a person’s mind works before seeing the body.
When a person meets face to face, the mind connection can get lost in the body chemistry data. The problem these days is that people don’t give themselves enough time in person to get to know the mind. More than a few relationships fail because the chemistry brought a couple together but that’s all that’s there.
So it seems like there’s a dichotomy. Guys like Robert mentions have trouble “closing the deal”, but why is there pressure? He meets her. He likes her. She likes him. They can continue the conversation…that’s all dating really is. In this rushed world, time pressure, business, activities of life interfere with relationship building. Ironically, the pressure to move a relationship into the physical realm often short-circuits the inherent pleasure of getting to know someone and connecting with them. Online dating can help or hurt this process. So can in-person dating.
Dating has always been challenging, but it seems that in the deluge of busy-ness and information, relationships often stay in the superficial realm. Relationships are treated as snacks to nibble on and a good full meal rarely gets experienced. That’s how you can end up with so many unmarried young women and so many men who have trouble “closing the deal”. There’s too much pressure–time, cultural, sexual–all the way around.
Why Are Women Always Last To Approve Of Other Women?
Thursday, January 29th, 2009
Name the minority. Just think of one. At one time or another, that minority–Irish, Italian, Black, Mexican, Cuban, etc.–has taken the back seat to the more prominent, and usually earlier, American immigrant majority.
And yet one group, no matter the color, who always follows: Women.
Sarah Palin’s mistreatment this last election at the hands of the Left, the Press, and mostly, women generally, revealed the sexism and hypocrisy of a big chunk of the electorate. So, Sarah is back in Washington today to talk at the Alfalfa Dinner. What caught my attention in The Politico’s article was this:
Comprised of mostly older white men, the group didn’t induct women until 1993. Blacks were only welcomed in the 1970s.
Presidents, though, almost always attend and speak.
This isn’t a sporting club or a golf club, where guys get naked together in steam rooms. This is a political club that everyone attends. Blacks were welcome 20 years before women.
During the election, both Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin were subject to vicious, sexist attacks. In Sarah Palin’s case, much to my chagrin, she was savaged by many a conservative woman. She was “too young” or she should “be with her children” or she should have “done a better job with her daughter” or she was “too beautiful” or she “talked funny” or she should “be home with her husband.”
Women stand in the way of equality. In order to justify their own work-parenting-spousal-career choices, they must make themselves right and everyone else wrong. This behavior is bad enough in Mommy and Me play dates, it’s worse, when the cattiness eliminates good potential candidates.
Are American women willing to continue their inane double bind and risk losing out on America’s potential Margaret Thatcher, Indira Ghandi, Benazir Bhutto, or Golda Meir?
The sexist men’s clubs tend to jump out and grab our attention. Women were only admitted in 1993? Wow. But the real stumbling block for a woman politician’s success is other women. They hold women candidates to standards they would never hold a man to. It’s time for women to let themselves off the hook and realize there is no “perfect” way to balance work and career. The Presidency is a sacrifice for all families who join their parent in the Oval Office. It is public service.
A woman could do the job. They have a few years to get used to the idea:
And aside from the real thing, club members always nominate a mock candidate for the highest office in the land. The “nominee” is then required to give an acceptance speech.
Should Palin be this year’s lucky nominee, she’ll be in good company: Three honorees have actually gone on to actually become president – Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush.
Boob-Job Sales Slump
Monday, January 12th, 2009The pendulum has swung, folks. Perky breasts, like hemlines, are going down–reflecting the economic slump. Plastic surgeons are quite confident the problem is economic. Women just can’t afford to do what they want to do which is to have glorious, hard, round, mounds of silicone. Well, that’s the theory:
But now the society reports a 62 percent overall decrease in cosmetic surgery from 2007 to 2008. Business has plunged in regions with the largest home foreclosures, from Florida to Southern California. Forget about Ohio. Until the financial crisis hit, the theory and practice of cosmetic surgery encountered virtually no impediments from medical or mental health professionals, or media enablers
I don’t think it’s entirely the economy and I don’t think it’s that big companies convinced women that they needed huge mammaries that made women buy boob jobs to begin with as Maura Moynihan asserts in the above article. I think it’s simpler than all that: As time has gone on, women have seen the long term consequences of plastic surgery including boob jobs. Except in rare cases like Demi Moore, plastic surgery makes women (and even worse, men) look weird.
Cases in point Madonna, Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman, Jerry Jones, etc. A person reaches a certain threshold where the risks outweigh the benefits and a person looks not young and fresh but old and stretched. Smooth, maybe, but still old.
The Hollywood insiders might all be lying to themselves, but those on the outside peering in see the plastic surgery crazy and make economic choices based on evidence. What used to be trendy and helpful, is now seen to be a slippery slope to weird town.
Now, I think that as doctors refine their techniques, make them less obvious and invasive and more believable, not to mention less risky for a person’s health and less expensive, people will turn back toward plastic surgery. Humans will always be vain as long as mirrors exist. And people will always spend money to feed their vanity. But there’s no point to spending money on a product of questionable benefit.
Never fear, plastic surgeons, there will be an upturn in breasts again.
It’s Okay To Be A Slutty Feminist
Monday, December 22nd, 2008It’s Okay To Be A Slutty Feminist
As long as you don’t get paid for it and you’re ugly. [Linked fixed]
Long Hair & Men
Wednesday, December 17th, 2008Long Hair & Men
A hair-cut once created relationship misery.
THIS Is Why You Own A Gun
Wednesday, December 17th, 2008THIS Is Why You Own A Gun
Missed this link before. Guns are a feminist issue.
Orgasms During Childbirth–UPDATED
Friday, December 12th, 2008I guess it’s going to be all sex all the time today at the blog. Oh hell, why not? The Blago scandal is boringly devoid of sex.
Back in the 70s when flower children everywhere were making sweaty, hot, hallucinogenic, pill-protected, STD-infested monkey love, a strange thing happened: babies. I know, it was a shocking side-effect to all the lovin’, man, and some of the parents kicked their wanton daughters out to suffer the indignities of being a single, pregnant, shunned lady. Enter Stephen and Ina May Gaskin who took in these women at a place called The Farm in Tennessee. I actually dig these two hippies. They revolutionized prenatal care and were forward thinking about unnecessary medical procedures like episiotomy, shaving, knocking the mom out during birth, etc.
The Gaskins also introduced the notion of an orgasmic birth.
I’ve read Ina May Gaskin’s books and seen the pictures. She was a revolutionary, forward-thinking woman who cared for many, many women. Her work transformed lives for the better. Now, there is a “new” childbirth movement centered on “orgasmic birth“:
First thing next month (Friday January 2) will be the primetime debut of a film that has been making the “under the radar” rounds of women and film festivals since May. ABC’s 20/20 will air the documentary “Orgasmic Birth”, by Debra Pascali-Bonaro, a childbirth educator and a doula, which asks the question: What would happen if women were taught to enjoy birth rather than endure it?
The message of the film is “that women can journey through labor and birth in all different ways. And there are a lot more options out there, to make this a positive and pleasurable experience,” Pascali-Bonaro tells ABC. “I hope women watching and men watching don’t feel that what we’re saying is every woman should have an orgasmic birth.”
But the title certainly catches attention, referring to what Pascali-Bonaro calls “the best kept secret” of child birth – that some women report having an orgasm as the baby exits the birth canal.
Right.
Having given birth rather easily, sans medication and more than once, the notion that women can experience sexual bliss during birth seems absurd. I’ve seen the videos and I’m not hating on any woman’s experience, but please. All sorts of changes need to happen in prenatal and birthing care, but the wild assertions and expectations of orgasms will defeat the true aims of the natural birth activists by making them look like wild-eyed nutters.
And another thing, I recognize that the birth canal has multifaceted uses, still, I can’t help but to think that this orgasm business is just one more way to sexualize, well, everything. The birthing isn’t about having a healthy baby or a woman surrendering to the primal forces of motherhood. Oh no! It’s selfish and all about a peak experience, man. It’s the narcissism-part of the hippie thing that bugs me.
Motherhood isn’t entirely about self-sacrifice, but giving birth is pretty darn self-sacrificial. Your body isn’t your own. And out of the experience comes an entirely new creature. And yes, some women have babies to be the center of attention and make it all about themselves. They are annoying. They don’t need encouragement. This orgasm business will just add fuel to the self-obsessed culture. It will also delude women into thinking that it’s a likely outcome. Silly-headed women who believe this will often end up with C-sections because they have such inane expectations of birth. It’s called labor for a reason. Birthing is hard work.
One of the most barbaric medical fields in America is obstetrics. For reasons of liability, ignorance and tradition, a process that has existed since the beginning of time is made into a “procedure”. Birthing is a process for woman and child and with different treatment, women would be empowered by motherhood rather than being the recipient of medicine. Babies aren’t a disease to be cured. Right now, that’s often how pregnancy and birthing are treated. That needs to change.
UPDATED:
Fausta adds this:
Certainly, childbirth is the most binding experience a couple can possibly experience. A considerate and supportive husband can and will do a lot of things to ease the wife’s discomfort during labor. In a sense, it is a spiritual experience, too. But take my word for it, having a fully formed, seven and a half pound, twenty-two inch human being squeeze out of a narrow opening doesn’t happen without pain. That’s just the way it is.
