Wow. More posts like this please, now I want to read the book.

So much about relationships can involve deception in form or another: yourself, your significant other, the world around you.

"But then you're just an object in a turtleneck sweater." Hmm, kind of like Steve Jobs. (Great post, thank you.)

http://www.haberarts.com/

Two quotes from the post above:

For women, our romantic woes are tied into our social and political oppression.

and

It's not that women don't cheat or cheat a lot, but when men do it, there's so often this thick coat of entitlement to it.

So let me make sure I understand this.  When a man gets his heart stomped on by a cheating woman, that's not so bad because women don't as a rule feel entitled to cheat.  But if a woman is two-timed by a cheating man, well that's much worse because of all the political and social implications and what it says about the male sense of entitlement.

Good grief.  All I can say is that I wouldn't want to be Amanda Marcotte's son, brother or male friend who might come to her looking for a bit of sympathy for a broken heart.  One gets the sense they'd be told they have no right to be hurt.  Come to think of it, I'm not sure I'd want to be a female looking to her for sympathy either. 

Here's a crazy thought: isn't it possible that BOTH men and women hurt their romantic partners for a variety of reasons, very few of which have anything to do with the relative levels of power of men and women in society at large?  That personal relationships are too complex to boil down to something so simple?  That if someone's cheating were to be entitlement-free (and honestly, as a 41-year old man, I can honestly say I have NEVER met another person, male or female, who feels "entitled" to cheat), it would be just as hurtful to their partner as if it were done by the worst chauvinist?  That if someone stays in a relationship that isn't working for them, it's up to them to either decide to live with it or get out.  And whether power relationships between men and women change or stay static, that will ALWAYS be the case.

If you really want to see cheating-as-entitlement, watch the new series Mad Men on the AMC cable channel.  Then ask yourself: Do you know anyone who behaves like that anymore?

Pretending there is no connection between the man who won't promote you at work because you're a woman and the man who won't do his share of the housework at home because you're a woman is a dishonest tactic.

That makes no sense Amanda. Pretending that there is a connection is even worse and provides an excuse for the behavior. You're not promoted at work because the boss is a man, you're not promoted at work because the laws allowed him to pass women up and women had no legal recourse to force him to treat employees equally. Pretty much the same reason why blacks were not promoted. I don't much care what their reasoning is, what I care about is equal protection for all citizens. If a man doesn't do his share of the housework, that's a personal problem and has more to do with the fact that no one wants to do housework and will weasel out of it if he/she can.

What bothered me about Pollit's book wasn't that she wrote about her bad experiences with men, it's the impression I took away from the book that she thought that because she was a feminist, she should be exempt from bad experiences with men. I don't remember feminism ever being about acquiring a particular lease on a problem free life or relationships. No one gets out of life without shitty stuff happening and Pollit is no exception. If she turned a blind eye to his philandering for years and years, it wasn't because she couldn't reconcile her political and personal life, it wasn't because she was smart about politics and stupid about men,it's because like most people who are in bad relationships they're afraid of being alone - and that's true if you're a man or a woman.

I admire Pollit, I admire her writing, but there was nothing new in this book that hasn't been written about for centuries. I don't object to Pollit's feminism and ignoring a pair of underwear in the laundry and writing about it, I object to anyone writing about private matters like this - not everything is grist for the mill, nor should it be. What we learned from that was that Pollit, like the rest of us, is willing to put up with a lot of shit rather than be alone.

In some cases (emphasized, though I expect you'll conveniently pretend I said "all"), men cheat with an attitude dripping with male entitlement.

I think you are mixing up two very different things.  Yes, the attitudes of society at large towards male and female cheating are not identical.  If a man is caught cheating, there are some who will make excuses (although the proportion of people with this attitude is small and declining, I would argue) whereas that is much less common with respect to a woman's cheating.

But to argue that this means that there are lots of men out there who feel entitled to cheat is simply ridiculous.  The vast majority of men and women who cheat know it's wrong.  They do it for a variety of reasons but few of those reasons have anything to do with a feeling of entitlement.  After all, if they REALLY felt entitled, they'd be open about it and just say this is what I'm doing.  The fact that the overwhelming majority of people who cheat try to keep it a secret tells me they know it's wrong.

Now of course it's possible that people rationalize behavior they know is wrong by claiming a need for sexual variety or whatever.  But rationalization is totally different from feeling entitled.

I really recommend you watch "Mad Men".  Your mindset seems stuck in the same time period (the show is set in 1960).  And what makes the show so interesting is that you watch the interactions between the sexes and you think how different things are today.  Your Hugh Hefner remark is telling.  "Hef" may once have set himself up as defining a "Playboy lifestyle", but that went out about 25 years ago.  Honestly, do you really think men these days envy an 81-year guy who spends all day in his pajamas popping Viagra so he can boink twenty-something bimbos?  Some may joke about it, but Hefner these days is himself a subject of comic ridicule.  There's a reason Playboy basically converted itself to porn.  The whole "Playboy lifestyle" thing wasn't working any more and their readership was tanking.

Finally, I'm intrigued by your comment that there isn't any evidence that men are more promiscuous than women by nature (i.e. that different levels of promiscuity can't be explained by societal attitudes).  I'm curious what such evidence would look like.  Might it look like evidence from the animal kingdom, where different levels of promiscuity do exist?  Or are their societies sexist too?  How about within the two homosexual worlds?  Wouldn't you say that differing levels of promiscuity between gay men and gay women offer some evidence?  Or is lesbian sexuality socially constrained too?  How about the fact that men go to prostitutes more than women?  Actually, "more" doesn't quite describe it.  If the ratio of female prostitutes to male prostitutes (who serve women, that is) is less than 1,000 to 1, I'd be surprised.  Doesn't that present a teensy bit of evidence?  Or are there oodles of women out there itching to hire a gigolo but are afraid what society thinks?

In fact, if anything, societal attitudes rein in male promiscuity much more than they promote it.  From traditional church teachings to modern relationship couseling, the overwhelming message that society sends to men is that you should control yourself.  The fact that teenagers in a locker room or college students in a frat house slap each other on the back when one of them gets laid does nothing to change that fact.

I think you're right that the double standard is certainly fading away, but I wouldn't say it's exactly gone. It bears mentioning that Katha is from an older generation, so the men of her generation (like her now ex-boyfriend) still carry with them the entitled attitudes of the era I'm referencing. Look, for instance, at Bill Maher's blase attitude towards being a creepy old fucker. He doesn't realize things are changing and that nasty attitude towards women is getting dated.

But I wish I was as blase as you about the notion that it's all over and men and women are held to the same standard. Not yet, as the popularity of silly, half-baked evo psych theories about how men supposedly have so much more sex than women (with who?) demonstrates. There's still an attempt to establish a set of sexual standards that women are supposed to live by but men aren't.

What did Bill Maher do? I tried googling you and him, saw where you called him a hack (and by the way Google claims Pandagon is a dangerous site full of malware, but I know better) but I can't figure what he did to earn the creepy moniker. Seems like a fun enough libertarian to me.

thosethingswesay.blogspot.com

So why get angry or disappointed at Katha that she had this happen to her? Part of it is the feminist mystique, this notion that women can somehow will themselves a better life and better treatment from men simply by being feminist.

Anger and disappointment might be inappropriate. But it is a bit depressing or dispiriting, no? What is dispiriting in that a noted feminist writer and thinker, who presumably has spent much of her adult life reflecting on power relationships between men and women, and so might be expected to understand the patterns and pitfalls of these relationships and be more attuned than most to the warning signs of harmful patterns, could still be taken for a ride. It would be like Paul Krugman writing a book about how he lost his life savings in a pyramid scheme run by a Las Vegas flim-flam artist.

Destor,

Bill Maher's attitude toward women is definitely on the level of Beavis and Butthead at best. I often find myself embarassed by things he says about women as though he were an adolescent. His otherwise insightful show makes me cringe when he comes out with one of his remarks about tits or fucking in the way some drunk kid of 20 might do with his buddies in a bar. The problem is, of course, that he's not drunk or 20 or with his buddies--he's in front of millions of people. Just a few weeks back he went on a tirade against mother's breastfeeding babies in public which I found extremely immature not to mention highly offensive. Along with his sexist thang, he also openly dislikes children which is just off the scale offensive certainly to all parents.

To give you an example, when he has Ann Coulter on his show (which is offensive in itself) he fawns all over her, goes out of his way to tell people he likes her, how hot she is and they are friends, etc... with lust written all over his face and gestures in my opinion. He leers at her really. The very idea of Ann Coulter with anyone turns my stomach but that's a different subject altogether. He behaves similarly with any woman on the show who might be considered attractive such as Maureen Dowd, a young woman who anchors a financial program on MSNBC last week whose name I forget get the usual "I just love watching your show so much I may even turn on the sound soon", and so on.

So I have to say that he fails the test of being anything like enlightened in the area of respecting women as other than sexual objects. I certainly understand why Amanda would single him out as objectionable. Frankly, I feel sorry for him. I am astounded that a man can attain his age and apparently not have matured since he was 15 as far as his attitudes toward and about women are concerned. I do believe, however, that he is an anomoly even for his age group. I know many people in their late 40's/early 50's and none of the men exhibit that sort of behavior or those attitudes. I do like his program, but if there's anything I could change about it, it would be his attitude toward women because it makes me cringe.

And, for what it's worth, with the exception of his immature/offensive attitudes toward women and children you're right, he's a fun loving libertarian.

Turns out that when asked about number of sexual partners, men are roughly honest, might inflate a little, but women claim to have lower numbers than they do. Much lower.

There you go again, conflating societal attitudes towards promiscuity with your claim that many men have a sense of entitlement about cheating on their partners.  One does not imply the other.  Promiscuity does not equal cheating.  Men and women may have different attitudes towards the desirability of admitting to many sex partners - and for sure those attitudes are strongly affected by societal norms.  But to say that means men feel entitled to cheat on women with whom they are in a relationship is nonsense.

Trying to hide something doesn't mean you are ashamed of it.

Really?  I would have thought that hiding something is synonymous with being ashamed of it. 

You seem to wish to believe that I'm generalizing to all men all the time, when I'm writing about a book and something that happens in it

What bullshit.  Your original comment makes bald statements about how "men" often feel entitled to cheat, how the behavior of the man in the book is embematic of this problem with men in general.  Sorry, but there's no other way to read what you originally wrote.  And now you're saying in fact you're only talking the specific people in the book?  Give me a break.  If it was only about specific people in specific situations, then there's no argument.  For all I know, Katha Politt's ex-boyfriend may have been the worst arrogant prick on the face of the earth with a sense of entitlement as big as all outdoors.  I don't really know or care.  But your idea that this is indicative of male behavior in general, an assertion for which you provide not a strand of actual evidence, is something that needs to be called out. 

There are of course some corners of American society where men really do still feel entitled to play around.  In the black ghetto.  Among immigrants, especially in Latino and Muslim cultures.  But somehow I don't think this is what you're trying to talk about.

The thing that really amazes me about old-school feminists like you, like old-school civil rights leaders, is that you don't know when to declare victory.  Just because society is not perfectly free from sexism or racism doesn't mean it's still 1955.  It's one thing to try to avoid complacency.  But your rhetoric would imply that essentially nothing has changed, which is ridiculous.

What I object to is Amanda M.'s sweeping assertions and pronouncements about the feminist movement. Did women sit around and complain about boyfriends and husbands and men in general - sure, women have always done that and still do that today - we gossip and yak and share problems just as we always have. However, as much as we did that, it wasn't the complaining that spurred us to action, it was the knowledge that we were second class citizens without full recourse to civil rights and the courts. Did some women join the movement because they were badly treated in relationships? Probably so, but more of us were motivated by the civil rights movement of the 60's than anything else. It was an awareness that we couldn't wait to be handed our rights, we had to force the issue.

I don't think the criticism that Pollitt should not have written the book because it exposed the dichotomy of her life is valid. What I didn't like in the book and what left me somewhat cold to Pollitt in this was what I felt was almost a conceit - an attitude that this was all so strange and wondrous for someone of her political beliefs and intelligence that she just had to share it with the world.

Beside the fact that I really don't think everyone's private and domestic affairs need to be discussed in public nor is everything that happens to people grist for the mill, men or women, it was what I perceived as almost an entitlement - that Pollitt should have gotten through life without this happening to her because she was a feminist. She should have known better, somehow. Well, since when did being a feminist exempt a woman from all the messy details and problems of life? All human beings are a mess of contradictions and paradoxes and dichotomies, that's just the human condition and no one, man or woman gets through life without problems and messes in relationships. Maybe, just maybe, Pollitt's partner didn't cheat because he felt he was entitled to cheat, maybe he cheated because he thought he was entitled to be a selfish asshole, and that perceived entitlement isn't gender specific by any means.

Do some men think as Amanda does, that they're entitled to certain behavior because they're men? Sure, some men do, and some women think they're entitled to certain behavior because they're women. Some people think they're entitled to certain privileges and behavior because they're human. Pollitt said she wrote the book so that other women wouldn't think "they're alone" in these bad things that happen, what puzzled me is why she thought for so long that she was alone in having a bad relationship. Everyone suffers in life, not just men, not just women, we all do.

Did Pollitt hang on too long to the bad relationship because she was dependent on him to do all her driving for her? (And yes, I know that's her metaphor.) That's a little selfish too, isn't it? Perhaps like all relationships, good and bad, there's a little selfishness and using on both sides. We can all be selfish and users at times, and that's not because we're men and women, that because we all humans.

deleted

Not only that but I thought a knit turtleneck sweater has signified sexy, cool and dangerous ever since the days of the Beats and French existentialists. Preppies don't wear them, they're not "clean cut." I was scratching my head over Marcotte's use of it as the equivalent of chastity garb. :-)

I just thought I should add, in response to your point that

Do some men think as Amanda does, that they're entitled to certain behavior because they're men? Sure, some men do, and some women think they're entitled to certain behavior because they're women.

that anyone who thinks they have understood the truth of what happened in a relationship, because they have read a memoir written by one party, should stick to the "Young Adult" literature section.

"All governments lie, but disaster lies in wait for countries whose officials smoke the same hashish they give out." - I.F. Stone

You know a word about why that kind of immaturity lingers: in undergrad I had difficulty going on dates UNTIL I adopted that kind of attitude.

Of course when I wanted something lasting I was myself, and it wouldn't occur to me to say that to the person I have been with for several years (I'm with her because of who she is, objectifying her would rob me of that!) but when I wanted to have some fun I had to act that way or be shot down.

Every. Time.

He probably sticks in my craw more than most because I find hostility to women to be incompatible with true fun-loving attitudes. How can you maximize the fun if you don't include the desires of half the human race? I find it a lot more fun to party with feminists than without; the creepy, exploitative-of-women, hostile element in any "fun" situation tends to suck some, often all, the joy out of the room. I've even noticed a giant difference in the vibe here between your standard sex shops and the feminist ones like Forbidden Fruit. The latter doesn't have a layer of pathetic dreariness to it. It's actually fun to be there; you aren't in a hurry to grab your purchases and get the fuck out before some inexplicable grime attaches itself to you.

I've never seen so much straw flying in such a short comment in my life.

You're not promoted at work because the boss is a man, you're not promoted at work because the laws allowed him to pass women up and women had no legal recourse to force him to treat employees equally.

Bev, I don't agree with much of what you say here, but you make the points quite interestingly and well.  But the above argument, well, it's correct in a sense, but seems to me (late to the game, admittedly) to miss a lot of what was unique and powerful about feminism as a political movement.

I can't disagree that law is an important tool, but it will never be an especially powerful one in itself, if the goal is any kind of social, rather than individual change. You can litigate, but you don't litigate in a vacuum.  In the early 80s, my mother was told by her boss that she would not be given benefits because 'your husband has them, right?'  She talked to a lot of people about whether or not she should sue, but in the end, it was a small town and she decided that even if she won, it would be hard to keep her job, and hard to get another one if she had a reputation for being litigious.

Much has changed in the ensuing quarter century, and the law has obviously played a role.  A lot of other women did sue, and everybody benefited from it.  But if all that happened was done through the law, we would live in a society where male bosses promoted women equally through fear.  I think that's manifestly not the case: here in New York, as well as in Dallas and many other cities, young women in professional jobs are earning more than men.  I know a lot of corporate lawyers, and it is well known that partners tacitly prefer to work with female associates because they work harder (too hard, but there you go).  At some level, the economic empowerment of women over the past generation has a lot to do with the fact that, collectively, we've come to value women as workers.  That is a cultural shift that I would argue cannot be explained just in terms of the fact that the barriers have been lifted.  You are promoted at work, now, because (if) the boss is a man who has shed the false beliefs about male superiority of the previous generation (okay, that's a stronger argument than I really want to make, but you see what I mean).

You've got to admit, though, the point about discrimination against religion is spot on. After all, anything short of letting the religious insert religion into every aspect of a supposedly secular government must be interpreted as "discrimination against religion".

After all, there is one representative on Capitol Hill who openly admits belonging to a religion that has no deistic belief! How do the religious cope under this kind of oppression? A set of religious beliefs representing 60-70% of the population only has 99.8% representation on Capitol Hill! I guess repeating the state-sanctioned "under God" Pledge of Allegiance and reading "In God we Trust" on the currency must be of some comfort, that is, when a chaplain is being paid tax dollars to lead prayers in government facilities.

This part doesn't really make sense:

But to argue that this means that there are lots of men out there who feel entitled to cheat is simply ridiculous. The vast majority of men and women who cheat know it's wrong. They do it for a variety of reasons but few of those reasons have anything to do with a feeling of entitlement. After all, if they REALLY felt entitled, they'd be open about it and just say this is what I'm doing. The fact that the overwhelming majority of people who cheat try to keep it a secret tells me they know it's wrong.

I wonder how many "cheaters" you have known. Most of the people I have known who have "cheated" do not seem to feel that it is wrong. Whether I would go so far as to say that they feel "entitled" to cheat is a different matter. They tend to think that circumstances are of some kind of unusual nature that has led them to pursue behavior that society frowns on but is not inherently "wrong" any more than having extra dessert is "wrong".

The reason people are secretive about their cheating is not so much because of a sense of shame but rather because it is counter-productive. After all, a person who goes around blabbing about cheating is not really cheating any more, he or she is simply polygamous. The reason a person feels entitled to cheat and yet decides to keep the cheating secret is because the disclosure of the secret will have some negative implications that the person wants to avoid (loss of primary relationship, social scorn, etc.)

I should have thought this was obvious.

Really, I have to chuckle at the idea that "the majority of men and women who cheat know that it's wrong". Not that I've known all that many cheaters, but every single one I've known who has done that has done so while expressing the feeling that, while exposure of cheating behavior would be hurtful to the person being cheated on, it was not inherently "wrong" to be engaged in cheating. Your contention is hopelessly optimistic about human nature. One might as well argue that thieves steal things even though they know theft is wrong.

Did some women join the movement because they were badly treated in relationships? Probably so, but more of us were motivated by the civil rights movement of the 60's than anything else.

I'm not sure there is really that much distance between what you are saying and what Amanda is saying here.

Obviously, the second wave wasn't motivated by personal grievances against specific men, but by a sense of larger structures of oppression that would have to be challenged for women to effectively assert their rights.  But - though I wasn't really present at the time - I assume that there was also an understanding that these structures were not an overlay on society, coming from no one, but something that is assembled one man at a time, and hence, that there is a need not only to develop a new legal framework to allow for effective challenges to women's second class status, but also a new cultural framework to allow for genuine change in the individual attitudes that, collectively, undergird women's oppression.

Do you disagree with this?  Does Amanda? 

I don't take it that Amanda thinks that women join the movement because they are badly treated in relationships, but that they understand, as your wave so often said, that the personal is political, and perhaps that effective social change has to happen on a variety of levels at once. 

Deny to me that we have cultural messages that say men want sex, and women want love that would lead men to figure they can cheat as long as women's emotional needs are being met.

See, I don't deny that we have "cultural messages" that say men have greater sexual needs.  But I also that stems from the fact that men DO have greater sexual needs, and that the evidence for this is simply overwhelming.  You think the fact that men use prostitutes more often, masturbate more often and think about sex more often (as confirmed by countless studies) is all just cultural artifice?  Even though it is also true in every culture at every point in history?  What planet are you living on?  You want another memoir to read?  Read I'd Rather Eat Chocolate, by Joan Sewell to get a sense of the different sexual needs of men and women, even in the context of a loving monogamous relationship.

And sure, some men may rationalize their playing around by claiming that men are needier sexually.  But it's just that: rationalizing i.e. deluding yourself.  But to say that American society as a whole winks at male infidelity because we all collectively think that mens' sexual needs make it OK is, quite simply, ridiculous. 

It would be hard to think of anyone who had a more voracious sexual appetite than Bill Clinton.  Then consider the public reaction to the Monica Lewinsky scandal and tell me that society was ready to excuse Clinton's behavior on account of his not getting enough at home.  Most didn't think what he did rose to the level of impeachable offense, to be sure, but that is not the same thing at all.  Every single politician who spoke on the matter prefaced their remarks by condemning Clinton.

This isn't France, where the former President's funeral features both his wife and his mistress walking behind the casket side by side (and the present president's wife's infidelity is held against him).  This is isn't Latin America, where a father takes his son to the local brothel to lose his virginity, while threatening with violence anyone who comes within a mile of his daughter. 

I'm not sure where you got your statistics on women earning more then men in the professions, but it just isn't true. Women still earn less then men on average and male lawyers do not tacitly prefer to work with women associates because they work harder

On statistics, see the New YOrk Times, "For Young Earners in Big City, a Gap in Women's Favor." This is not evidence, of course, that women generally are doing better than men: it is a trend in certain places, among a certain age demographic, in certain professions.  But it is still interesting.

As for female vs. male lawyers, what I've said is just the scuttlebutt I've heard.  I certainly know a few female associates who have been passed over for male colleagues known to work less hard.  I'm not about to say that things are equal anywhere.  In fact, that is to some extent my point: good laws provide a recourse to right wrongs; changing societal attitudes is the only way to stop those wrongs in the first place.