Very Faithful InkReader S.S. comments on my post on the orgy of female juice-binging (to the point of vomiting and passing out) and one-night stands that the annual spring break ritual has become (see my “Spring Sex and Booze Break,” March 9). My point was overdoing it in Fort Lauderdale has been with us for a long time, but nowadays the sexual free-for-all has the full approval of the young ladies’ Baby Boom elders, who regard it as a form of self-fulfillment..
I quoted the ever-quotable Katha Pollitt and also the helium-headed Gail “Seasoned Woman” Sheehy as saying that “sex….is why we are here.”
My response was: “Well, sex is certainly why we are here. But what, exactly, does [women] vomiting, blacking out, dancing naked on the table, and doing it with multiple partners have to do with [women’s] happiness?”
Replies S.S.:
“Uh, Charlotte, don’t you remember what Dr. Frank-n-futter said when to Janet when she complained that Rocky had too much muscle? ‘I didn’t make him for YOU!’ We guys made the sexual revolution for OUR happiness, not Katha Pollit’s. Kind of cold, disgusting and exploitative, I know, but then, what did any sane person expect from men looking for sex?”
Excellent point, even though I may be the only one on the planet who doesn’t quite catch the reference because I never did see “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” I think I missed the Seventies.
S.S. also sends this post:
“Charlotte & Charlotte: Concerning ‘Brokeback Mountain’ not getting the Oscar for Best Picture [see The Other Charlotte’s post here and This Charlotte’s post here], Nikki Finke says she was told,in private, by many Academy voters that they refused to see “Brokeback.” Good ol’ Hollyweird liberals appear to have genuine homophobia, not hatred of gays, but fear of seeing gay sex on screen. The fact that it apparently wasn’t that good a movie didn’t help either
“Oh, by the way JOAQUIN PHOENIX WAS ROBBED! He deserved a Best Actor award to go with Reese Witherspoon’s Best Actress. A great flick.”
I agree: Joaquin “Walk the Line” Phoenix was robbed, and so was Paul Giamatti for Best Supporting Actor in “Cinderella Man.” Too many old-fashioned family values in the latter, too much old-time religion in the former. What can you do? But Slate’s Mickey Kaus has a different take on “Brokeback”:
“Alternative explanation: Hype was better than film! … P.S.: If the problem is really that Academy members let their fears win out over their better judgment–which I don’t buy–isn’t it more likely that the fears were not the Academy members own unspoken homophobic fears but fears of what their audience would think if they gave first prize to Brokeback? … Fear of the audience–specifically, fear that the mainstream American audience will conclude you are a bunch of out-of-touch coastal liberal elitists–may in fact be the most pervasive fear in all of media.”
Finally, reader S.M. reacts to my “Maneaters” from the IWF home page, commenting on the Larry Summers debacle (the piece also ran on National Review Online):
“It strikes me that the standard feminist rhetoric is that women are able to do everything a man can. That’s fine; however, they stop short of turning it around. There is still a strong bias in our court systems and elsewhere in the area of who is able to raise children. If women are capable of being engineers or construction workers, does it not follow that men are capable of raising children? As it stands now, our society still seems to believe that only women can take care of young children. Equality should go both ways.”
I’m sure–I know–that there are many fine women engineers, and I guess there are some bang-up women construction workers (although I’ve never seen one on the job). And some fathers undoubtedly make better mothers than their kids’ mothers. But I think that Larry Summers and I were talking about statistical generalizations. And gender difference provide the best explanation that I can think of for the persistently low numbers of female engineers and construction workers and male Mr. Moms.