Educating a Crazy Broad

As an airplane is about to crash, a female passenger jumps up frantically and announces, "If I'm going to die, I want to die feeling like a woman."
She removes all her clothing and asks, "Is there someone on this plane who is man enough to make me feel like a woman?"
A man stands up, removes his shirt and says, "Here, iron this!".

And so begins the much awaited response to the silly and ridiculous iVillage article called Translating Man-Speak: What He Is Really Trying to Tell You. The article is an excerpt from a book by Lisa Sussman called  Over 100 Things Women Should Know about Men.

I suppose that if you accept the premise that you get what you pay for then you'll understand that a book that sells for less than a buck isn't worth much. If you take the article seriously and believe that it is an accurate representation of men then you are probably wondering why I am writing this because we don't have a clue as to what we think or feel about anything. Really, just look at this:

The awful truth is, most men have no idea how they feel at any given time. Studies show that men use language to establish difference, separateness and independence (exactly the opposite of women, who talk to connect). So demanding that he talk to you is guaranteed to make him squirm and start rambling about whether new Cheerios really are improved.

Call me uptight, anal or curious but I wonder what studies she is referring to. Probably the one from the Gay Fouker institute that found that 37% of chimpanzees prefer Dole bananas to Chiquita. Or perhaps it is the one that shows that if you own more than 17 pairs of shoes you are a self indulgent, gold digging narcissist with illusions of grandeur.

That is not really nice of me to say. Really it is mean spirited, unkind and degrading. Or maybe not. Sussman offers the following strong advice to her fellow members of the finer sex.

How to talk to a man so he understands you:

Men can only take directions one at a time. So, if you want him to go into the kitchen and get you a cup of tea, make it a two-part request (this also applies to when you are in bed with him).

That's brilliant. Comments like that help to promote fine responses from men about the best ways to keep women from talking and why women should have flat heads. Oops, I really shouldn't offer tongue in cheek remarks unless I specify whose tongue and what cheek it should be planted upon.

I am vaguely curious to find out whether Sussman intended for this piece to be taken seriously. That would be a smart move and demonstrative of someone who once worked as a journalist. But what fun would that be? It is much easier to rely upon stereotypes and cliches. Better to take the path of least resistance and offer a poorly constructed essay that lacks substance, or maybe not.

Maybe the smarter course of action is to point out that men communicate quite effectively. Maybe the better path is to point out that not asking loaded questions isn't indicative of stupidity. Maybe it is worth pointing out that no one wants to feel like they are on trial or that they have to walk on eggshells. Don't ask questions about whether a certain item of clothing makes you look fat unless you are willing to hear the answer.

Don't ask us if we think another girl is pretty unless you are willing to hear what we really think. Say what you mean and mean what you say. You might be surprised to find that we do that with far greater frequency than we are given credit for. AND we do it with far greater frequency than women do, again, if we go by crass gender stereotypes.

You don't appreciate being referred to as the ball and chain or battle axe any more than we appreciate being portrayed as silly buffoons.

The Male Brain Versus The Female Brain

The tweet above is from early Monday morning. It is in response to one of the most misguided, foolish and dumb articles I have ever read. A piece that supposedly was written by a woman to help other women understand men. I suppose that if you like living in a world based upon cliches and stereotypes that it is the kind of piece that makes sense.

If you like reading/watching stories/movies that portray men as cloddish buffoons than it would be a good read.

Anyhoo, my response to iVillage led to an offer to write a response. I expect that I am going to take them up on it. At the moment I am mulling over what sort of response I wish to write. I'll keep you posted on the particulars of when and where it is posted. In the interim here is a video I posted last year.

The Male Brain Versus The Female Brain

Idea #237 for Wooing a Woman

This is part of an ongoing series in which I train men how to woo women. For the prior installment please click here.

Women love men who can dance and sing. When you find a woman that you wish to woo it is always good to gather some friends and dress up as The Village People. I have had great success dressing up in leather and singing Macho Man to the women of my world. You ought to try it too.

Idea #265 for Wooing a Woman

This is idea #265 for wooing a woman and like all ideas here personally tested and proven to be effective.

Unfortunately this edition of wooing a woman does not come with video, but perhaps one day it will. Here is the concept:

You head down to the office of your lucky lady and serenade her with Kenny Rogers songs, while dressed like Kenny Rogers. If you really want to have fun grab some of the guys from this site and use them as your backup singers.

Let's Marry For Money

Ahh young Jessica Wakeman, you are entitled to your opinion even if it is childish, garbled and moronic. I can't decide if I am bored enough to have all of the fun that I could have with this...Let's play for a moment or two.

(The Frisky) -- There's a new book out called "Smart Girls Marry Money: How Women Have Been Duped Into the Romantic Dream -- And How They Are Paying For It," by Elizabeth Ford and Daniela Drake.

Forget for a moment that they annoyingly refer to grown women as "girls" in their title and check out their thesis: because, for a variety of reasons, men earn more money than women, it's a wise move to marry someone who can provide for you and your family.

I find it funny that someone who thinks that it is annoying to call grown women girls can turn around and say that she wants to marry for money.

I haven't read the book, so I have no idea if it is filled with sexist swill or not. But just reading Newsweek's article about the book, it sounds like pretty sensible advice to me.

Before you get upset, I will acknowledge a bunch of things that I know to be true: yes, women earn less than men for a lot of sexist reasons and that discrimination must stop. Yes, mothers get "mommy-tracked" and their careers are stalled. And of course there are all kinds of misfires to the "marry rich" idea, such as the rich guy who is an a-hole. But that doesn't change the fact that marrying a man with money can be a better idea than marrying someone who is broke.

A bad match is a bad match regardless of finances. It might sound like it is easier to marry someone who has money, but if you don't click the cash won't matter, unless you really are shallow.

Take me, for instance. I'm afraid I'm going to get tarred and feathered as a "bad feminist" for admitting this, but yeah, I do want to marry someone who can financially support both me and our kids.

I get the feeling that you don't know what side you want to take here.

I'm not ashamed to "marry for money," if that's what would you can even call it, because I don't fundamentally believe it is the "man's role" to provide for women.

So does that mean that you intend to earn enough to support the family. Would you support a husband who wanted to stay home and raise the kids.

My actual motivations, as I see them, are pure enough. I know of great guys out there -- journalists, teachers, non-profit dudes -- who will probably make great dads. But I personally wouldn't pair up with them because, realistically, our two salaries together just wouldn't be enough to cut it for what I want out of life. But, but, but, "Bank accounts shouldn't matter at all!" And while I agree with that in theory, sorry, a man who can provide for me and our children is just much more attractive to me.

Why not just have the intellectual honesty to do away with the fake apology. You have expensive taste and you don't want to have to give it up.

Bank accounts -- and debts -- do matter. And acknowledging that doesn't make me a gold digger akin to Anna Nicole Smith -- it makes me smart.

Nah it just proves that you are young and inexperienced. There is so much more to a relationship than a bank account.

Right now, I rent an apartment in New York City (not cheap) and pay all my own bills myself. But I'm living at the edge of my own means as it is. I don't make a lot of money as a journalist, I owe lots of money to student loans and unless my future husband or I had a great job prospect someplace else, I don't want to live outside New York City, or very far from NYC, because that's where the media capital of the world is right now.

It seems a bit hypocritical this position of yours. You can barely survive on your own. You hope to maintain residence in one of the most expensive cities in the US while simultaneously maintaining lifestyle that you can't currently afford on your own. You're fooling yourself.

Maybe this isn't "feminist," but logically, I need to marry a guy who makes more money than I do -- preferably a lot more money than I do -- for us to be able to afford what I want and I hope he will want, too. An apartment big enough for kids, prenatal care, doctors appointments, birthday presents, vacations, summer camp, college, their own car, all that stuff.

You don't have a clue how much all that costs and how quickly a decent salary will disappear. But if you have any sense you'll adjust your expectations like most mature adults.

I know parents can raise children well on much less. But personally, that's not the lifestyle I grew up with. I want to be able to give my children everything I had -- maybe a little less, maybe a little more -- because I think my parents did a great job.

Stop apologizing. Own this or give it up. You grew up with money and can't imagine what life would be like without it. Well, the beauty of life is that it has a way of providing its own education.

We all had hopes and dreams that we had to adjust to the reality of the day. So many things can happen that are beyond your control. One catastrophic accident can send your world spinning.

But let's ignore that and get back to the real point here. The worst advice anyone can give another is to marry for money. Money doesn't buy happiness or love and without those two items marriage is a waste of time.

Living The Bachelor Life

I am man, hear me roar. Watch as I burp and scratch and revert back to my bachelor life. The family is as they say....Gone!

Here I sit at the computer, unshaved and unwashed. There are a couple of dishes in the sink and newspapers spread across the table. Last night I stayed up well past the witching hour and thoroughly enjoyed the silence and the solitude of my man cave.

I woke up this morning sans alarm, wife and children. In other words I woke up as nature intended. For a moment I wondered if it was all a dream and then I remembered that it wasn't. With a yawn, a stretch and a big smile I rolled out of the bed and strolled through the house.

The quiet, oh, the blessed quiet.

I paused and looked around and smiled. It won't be long before I miss the chaos and the racket. It won't be long before it is almost too quiet, but for now I am doing my happy dance around this joint.

Truth is that it is not particularly messy or cluttered. I don't like that much, but I don't have to be the role model so I don't have to do it all immediately. I don't have to do anything that I do not want to do.

For a while I was tempted to get in the car and go somewhere. Last night around midnight I played with thoughts of going to Vegas. A short while ago there was no one who could play, but now that life has happened and some of the boys are single possibilities exist.

So at a few minutes past 12 I called and asked if was up for a road trip. I had a full tank of gas and offered to drive. He laughed and told me that he wanted to, but had to be at a dinner meeting today.

I said no problem and he laughed again. He believed that I could get us there and back in time for the meeting, but said that he didn't think he'd be rested enough for the meeting.

And that my friends is the difference between who we were twenty years ago and who we are now.

Of course I should stipulate that I considered the state of my personal economy and remembered that Obama and company haven't offered to bail me out. But I'd be lying if I didn't think about how time at the blackjack table could solve that. With a little luck and a short run I could provide my own bailout.

Maybe next time.

Instead I consoled myself by playing Viva Las Vegas while writing a brief and sending out 1,876,993 emails for work. And then for good measure I wrote three posts that I immediately deleted.

And now I sit here, staring at the computer screen, wondering whether I feel like cooking or barbecuing my dinner. It is summer in LA and in a short time the weather will be perfect for dining outdoors.

All I have to say is that some days it is good to be a man.

'Men Live Better Where Women Are In Charge'

Before some of you run off and try to kick me out of the clubhouse take a look at this:

SPIEGEL ONLINE: What is life like for a man in a matriarchy?
Coler: Men live better where women are in charge: you are responsible for almost nothing, you work much less and you spend the whole day with your friends. You're with a different woman every night. And on top of that, you can always live at your mother's house. The woman serves the man and it happens in a society where she leads the way and has control of the money. In a patriarchy, we men work more -- and every now and then we do the dishes. In the Mosuo's pure form of matriarchy, you aren't allowed to do that. Where a woman's dominant position is secure, those kinds of archaic gender roles don't have any meaning."

Read the whole thing.

Alysa Stanton Becomes First Female Black Rabbi

From ABC:

"Growing up in a black, Pentecostal family in Cleveland, Alysa Stanton never imagined the day when she would be preparing to be ordained as a rabbi. But that day will come June 6 for the single mother who will be ordained by the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati, becoming the first African-American female rabbi in the world.

"Ten years ago, if someone said I was going to be a rabbi, I would have laughed," Stanton, 45, told ABCnews.com. "Me, a spiritual leader?"

Soon-to-be rabbi Stanton and her daughter Shana, 14, whom she adopted when she was 14 months old, will move to Greenville, N.C., in August, where Stanton will take her spot behind the pulpit at Congregation Bayt Shalom, which is both conservative and reform.

Stanton, a reform Jew, said that her mother encouraged her to explore different religions as a young child and that, at the age of 9, she was already asking her priest to teach her about Kaballah, which focuses on the mystical aspect of Judaism.

Then, at age 10, she received her first Hebrew grammar book from her devout Christian uncle who made it a habit to attend Jewish ceremonies, as well as his own. By her early 20s, Stanton said she'd decided to convert.

"Most people convert because they're marrying or dating someone who is Jewish or for another reason other than just picking that spiritual path," Stanton said.

"I did so because it was the path for me," she said. "Not only from a religious standpoint but from an ethical and social and communal standpoint, it was important to me."

Let's see what the J-blogosphere's Gil Student had to say about this, also from the same article.

"But the Orthodox Jewish community, which has historically not permitted women to hold leadership roles in its congregations, is less accepting of Stanton's upcoming ordination because of her sex.

"My general feeling, as a rabbi, is that there is a great deal of room for everyone to have spiritual fulfillment in Judaism but the public role of a rabbi is only for certain people and that excludes women," Orthodox Rabbi Gil Student of New York City told ABCNews.com. "That's based on tradition and enshrined in law."

As for race, Student said that neither he nor the Orthodox Jewish community finds any problem with African-American Jews. "There is no such thing as skin color in Judaism, it doesn't exist," Student said. "

Why Women Are Angry

Now here is is an article that is guaranteed to start numerous fights. If the author were close enough I'd ask her to iron my shirt, bring me a drink and change into something sexier and then I'd duck.

"I never have a moment that's just mine. Someone always wants a piece of me. Yesterday, in the middle of a bikini wax, I had an urgent call from the office and had to orchestrate a crucial meeting on the other side of the world, biting my fists to stop yelping at the wrong moments.

Frequently, as I reach for a file from my bag in the midst of a presentation, a pair of baby pants or a lollipop falls out. It hardly helps my image as a cool, collected professional. I watch the smug glances of the men around the table and want to slap them.

Recently, the Children's Society published a report lambasting modern women for being too selfish to be good mothers.

Are they kidding? I'd like to see the authors spend a week in my shoes. Most of my days are a near-precipice experience. I'm so close to the edge that I'm in a semi-permanent state of panic. I have a constant list of things I have to do running through my head like a stock market ticker-tape.

What must it be like to live without the tyranny of the list? To sink into a bath and not be mentally composing tomorrow's agenda? What is it like to be a man and have nothing to think about but the task in hand?

No wonder the vast majority of our great scientists, thinkers and artists are men. Think how much room they must have in their heads without all the domestic clutter their wives are taking care of.

Am I angry? You haven't heard anything yet."

Valentine's Day- A Day That Should Live In Infamy

If for some reason you are unable to listen to the audiopost above let me give you a basic rundown on what it contains. It is a repeat of my call to arms for men to free ourselves from the bonds of servitude of forced romance. It is time to rise up and remove the shackles, to no longer be burdened with trying to serve a cruel master.

Valentine's Day is a fake holiday whose sole design is to use pain and suffering to guilt people into spending money on foolish cards and foolish gifts.

I say enough is enough. It is long past time for us to push this sad day into the dustbin of history. Ban the day from our lexicon, rise up and be free. Romance should be spontaneous and not forced.

Frak this holiday. So say we all.

The Male Brain Versus The Female Brain

We Leave The Toilet Seat Up

Before we begin the exciting topic of what position to leave the toilet seat in let me share some of what I have been listening to this evening.

God Only Knows- The Beach Boys
My World Is Empty Without You- The Supremes ( I prefer the original- no time to search)
Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major- Bach (Played by Yo Yo Ma)
Gimme Three Steps- Lynrd Skynrd
No Leaf Clover- Metallica

Ok, let's move on to the incredibly interesting topic of what position to leave the toilet seat in, up or down. I have to give credit for the topic to the illustrious Therapydoc. If you tool on over there you can see that she and I engaged in a bit of back and forth about whether the toilet seat should be left up or down.

Having grown up with more sisters than you can shake a stick at (I tried that once. Bad idea, my father had none of it and, well let's say that I only did it once.) I learned that women have this funny idea that the toilet seat must always be left down so that if they decide to use the powder room it will be ready for them.

I take a different position and I hope that my fellow men will join me in overthrowing the tyranny of the toilet seat. It is time to force these dames to do as we do and learn how to look at the seat before sitting down upon it. Somewhere my mother is beginning to grimace and squirm, she has this weird knack for sensing when I am going to cause trouble.

And yes I am well aware that suggesting that we don't have to put the seat down is a recipe for a fight. But ladies I ask you if you would consider crossing the street without looking both ways. You would not. You don't drive with your eyes closed and you usually take a moment to check yourself out in the mirror before leaving the house.

So I ask why you who are capable of so many things claim to be incapable of determining what position the toilet seat is in. It makes no sense.

We can take this from a different position too. Every now and then we men have to respond to a need that requires sitting upon the toilet. We haven't any problem checking the position. I have no more interest in falling into the toilet than you do.

Ok, that is about as much energy as I am willing to lend to this topic.

One Way People Are Passing The Time

Is anyone really surprised by this story from the BBC:

A YouGov survey of 2,000 adults found sex was the most popular free activity, ahead of window shopping and gossiping.

The Scots were most amorous with 43% choosing sex over other pastimes, compared with 35% in South England.

Aids charity the Terrence Higgins Trust, which published the survey, also welcomed recent figures showing an increase in condom sales.

Around one in 10 respondents to the survey, carried in November, said their favourite free activity was window shopping and 6% chose going to a museum as the cheapest way to pass the time.

But the sexes differed on their priorities, with women preferring to gossip with friends while men had sex firmly at the top of their list.

Sex And Marriage- They have It Every Day

Believe it or not, I sometimes choose not to blog about a topic or decide that I need to rethink a post. When that happens I save it as a draft with the intention to revisit it later on. Every now and then I forget to revisit the draft and the post languishes in limbo.

Anyhoo, I just "discovered" this half finished post and from June and decided to finish it and share it with you.

The New York Times is running an article about a couple of married couples and their experience having sex every day. It generated some discussion among various people I know so I thought that I'd throw it out here. So let's grab a couple of excerpts from the article.

"Or would you turn to your mate and say, “Honey, you know, I’ve been thinking. Why don’t we do it for the next 365 days in a row?”

That’s more or less what happened to Charla and Brad Muller. And in another example of an erotic adventure supplanting married ennui, a second couple, Annie and Douglas Brown, embarked on a similar, if abbreviated journey: 101 straight days of post-nuptial sex.

Both couples document their exploits in books published this month, the latest entries in what is almost a mini-genre of books offering advice about the “sex-starved marriage.” The couples, though, are hardly similar. The Mullers are Bible-studying steak-eating Republicans from Charlotte, N.C. The Browns are backpacking multigrain northerners who moved to Boulder, Colo."

I suspect that for a basic need like sex we'd find more similarities among people than differences. Although I would imagine that culture plays a big role. The emphasis added in the next excerpt is my own.

"According to a 2004 study, “American Sexual Behavior,” by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, married couples have intercourse about 66 times a year. But that number is skewed by young marrieds, as young as 18, who couple, on average, 109 times a year.

Either way, those statistics put the Mullers and Browns in Olympic-record territory. That they thought a sex marathon would reinvigorate their marriages might say as much about the American penchant for exercise and goal-setting as it does about the state of romance.

But the couples may also be on to something. “There’s a strong relationship between rating your marriage as happy and frequency of intercourse,” said Tom W. Smith, who conducted the “American Sexual Behavior” study. “What we can’t tell you is what the causal relationship is between the two. We don’t know whether people who are happy in their marriage have sex more, or whether people who have sex more become happy in their marriages, or a combination of those two.”

I can't say that I find that last 'graph to be particularly surprising or insightful. Not trying to be snarky, but it straddles the fence a bit too strongly for my taste.

This made sense to me:

"Charla Muller and Annie Brown both talk about how mandated physical intimacy created more emotional intimacy. “It required a daily kindness and forgiveness, and not being cranky or snarky, that I don’t think either of us had experienced before,” Charla said.

Annie said that she and her husband reached a place in their relationship that they have seldom approached since. “It was just this intense closeness,” she said. “We were so aware of wherever the other person was mentally and emotionally and physically.”

What do you think?

Wanted: Women to eat chocolate For a Year

Who wants to volunteer for this.

LONDON, England (CNN) -- Scientists in the UK are seeking 150 women to eat chocolate every day for a year in the cause of medical research.

The trial, at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, eastern England, will test whether a natural compound found in cocoa, the main ingredient of chocolate, could cut the risk of heart disease among women with diabetes.

A Belgian confectionist has created the special chocolate bar containing high levels of flavonoids -- a plant compound that has been shown to reduce heart risk factors -- to be used in the experiment. Soy, another natural source of flavonoids, has also been added to the bar.

Participants, who must be postmenopausal women under the age of 70, will have their risk of heart disease tested on five occasions during the year to see whether change occurs.

"The hypothesis of this exciting study is that flavonoids may improve the level of protection against heart disease over and above that provided by conventional drugs," said Dr. Ketan Dhatariya, a consultant in diabetes at the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital.

"If the trial confirms this, it could have a far-reaching impact on the advice we give to postmenopausal women who have type 2 diabetes."

For the full story click here.

Using Math/Science to Explain Women

Women Are Better Liars

According to this article women are better liars than men. Now there is a sentence that is probably going to get me flamed. Let's take a look, shall we.

Most females lie "more cleverly and successfully than men" about everything from infidelity and facelifts to barhopping and shopping binges, according to a new book.

"Women lie as a survival technique, but also to get what they want," said Susan Shapiro Barash, author of "Little White Lies, Deep Dark Secrets: The Truth About Why Women Lie," published by St. Martin's Press this week.

Barish said a Rockland County woman stripped of her secrets on Fox TV's reality show "Moment of Truth" last week proves her research true.

Lauren Cleri, 26, admitted on air she had cheated on her NYPD cop husband and preferred an ex-boyfriend. But she failed a polygraph, and lost $200,000, by answering "yes" when asked if she believed she was a good person.

"It supports my thesis that women are talented at lying - but perhaps not enough to pass a lie-detector test," Barash said.

Barash interviewed 500 women nationwide who answered her Craigslist ads seeking females to confide what they fib about. Among her findings:

* 75 percent lie about how much money they spend. For instance, they sneak purchases inside their homes after shopping or hide the price tags.

* 50 percent harbor "mixed feelings about mothering." One told Barash, "I look at these children and I crave sleep and free time. They wear me out and make me jealous of working women who have no children, no husbands."

* More than 60 percent cheated on their husbands. A 32-year-old mother conducted her trysts while telling her trusting husband she was working late. Even in asking for a divorce, she withheld the truth: "I didn't say I had fallen for another man. He was better off with my lies."

Many women use the "betterment lie," as Barash calls it, as a means to an end."

What do you think?

Why Men Are Happier Than Women

An article in the New York Times caught my eye today. It is called He’s Happier, She’s Less So. I am going to grab a couple of excerpts here to share with you.

Last year, a team of researchers added a novel twist to something known as a time-use survey. Instead of simply asking people what they had done over the course of their day, as pollsters have been doing since the 1960s, the researchers also asked how people felt during each activity. Were they happy? Interested? Tired? Stressed?

Not surprisingly, men and women often gave similar answers about what they liked to do (hanging out with friends) and didn’t like (paying bills). But there were also a number of activities that produced very different reactions from the two sexes — and one of them really stands out: Men apparently enjoy being with their parents, while women find time with their mom and dad to be slightly less pleasant than doing laundry.

Alan Krueger, a Princeton economist working with four psychologists on the time-use research team, figures that there is a simple explanation for the difference. For a woman, time with her parents often resembles work, whether it’s helping them pay bills or plan a family gathering. “For men, it tends to be sitting on the sofa and watching football with their dad,” said Mr. Krueger, who, when not crunching data, enjoys watching the New York Giants with his father.

This intriguing — if unsettling — finding is part of a larger story: there appears to be a growing happiness gap between men and women.

And

Women are not actually working more than they were 30 or 40 years ago. They are instead doing different kinds of work. They’re spending more time on paid work and less on cleaning and cooking.

What has changed — and what seems to be the most likely explanation for the happiness trends — is that women now have a much longer to-do list than they once did (including helping their aging parents). They can’t possibly get it all done, and many end up feeling as if they are somehow falling short.

Many of the women in my life complain frequently about their inability to get it all done. This is not to say that all they do is complain, but rather an observation. I can appreciate it. I often feel like I am running like a rat on a treadmill, but sometimes I just jump off. I can't live like that for too long without going crazy. It is just unhealthy for me.