Archives: September 2010

Gender neutrality and the notion that women and men are essentially the same is harmful to boys and girls and may degrade our health and well-being in real terms. Right now I’m reading Why Gender Matters, by Leonard Sax, M.D., Ph.D. I highly recommend the book.

Chapter six is titled “Sex” and Sax begins on the new adolescent trend of hooking up, versus old-fashioned meeting-the-parents and dating scenarios that used to preclude sexual activity in most teens. “‘I can’t tell you how many girls come in who are bereft about having had sex too soon…’ ‘The kids don’t even look at each other. It’s mechanical, dehumanizing. The fallout is that later in life they have trouble forming relationships….’” One girl interviewed says “It made me feel dirty. Like he just wanted to, like, use me, use my body. Like I wasn’t really even there…” This change from dating to hooking up shows “a shift from personal sex to impersonal sex.”

There are basic differences between girls’ sexuality and boys’.

“The neurochemical basis for both love and sex in females involves the hormone oxytocin, the same hormone released when a mother breast-feeds her newborn baby. ‘Oxytocin’s effects on both [romantic] attachment and sexual behavior are estrogen dependent and gender specific,’ observes neuropsychologist Lisa Diamond, adding that there appear to be “more extensive oxytocin circuits in female than male brains.’ In males on the other hand the hormone underlying sexual attraction is not oxytocin but testosterone, the same hormone that mediates the aggressive drive.”

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In this post, I am not arguing that opposing same-sex marriage (SSM) is a bigoted policy. I will be arguing that in a forthcoming post; but that’s not my argument today. In this post, I will defend the use of the word “bigotry” in policy debate. That may seem like an odd thing to do, but when I read SSM opponents, I get the overwhelming impression that they believe that the word “bigotry” should never be used in a civil debate.

* * *

Let’s discuss the word “bigotry.” Starting with what I don’t mean.

When I say “bigotry,” I don’t mean “you’re a monster.” When I say “bigotry,” I don’t mean “you’re a bad person.” When I say “bigotry,” I don’t mean “shut up.”

When I say “bigotry,” I don’t mean that you feel direct hatred or animus towards anyone. When I say “bigotry,” I don’t mean to ask for a lengthy narrative about your many close LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual) friends and the prejudice-free state of your mind. With all due respect, none of that is likely to be relevant in a policy discussion.

When I say “bigotry,” I don’t mean “I’m a better human being than you.” Everyone has some bigotry in them, me included.

* * *

So what does “bigotry” mean? In his post on “The B Word,” David Blankenhorn wrote:

…there is a lot of genuine anti-gay bigotry out there, including within the movement to oppose gay marriage. By anti-gay bigotry, I mean the expressed belief that homosexuals deserve our contempt and are the fair objects of ridicule. It’s there, and it helps to fuel opposition to gay marriage. I wish this weren’t true, but it is, and I don’t think that this fact is disputable on an empirical basis. So while I certainly don’t like being called a bigot, I suspect that many gay advocates of same-sex marriage have been called names at least as ugly as “bigot” far more times than I have ever or will ever be called ”bigot.”

The second thing is that the tactic works. It ends conversation. It divides the world into the decent people and the evil people, and in that way silences most anyone with a dissenting view who might not like to be publicly called out as an evil person.

Kudos, David, for acknowledging bigotry in the anti-SSM movement, and that the slings and arrows suffered by heterosexuals opposed to equality are not remotely as bad as the bigotry LGBT people have to live through. I know that seems like an obvious point to my readers on “Alas,” but it’s not a point most SSM opponents would bring up.

That said, I disagree with David on a few counts Read More

Here are some of my favorite quotes from Meg Meeker, M.D. and her book: Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters- 10 Secrets Every Father Should Know.

Pg.4:

Most of you out there are good men.. but you are good men who have been derided by a culture that does not care for you, that, in terms of the family, has ridiculed your authority, denied your importance, and tried to fill you with confusion about your role.

Pg. 23-24:

Daughters who perceive that their fathers care a lot about them, who feel connected to their fathers, have significantly fewer suicide attempts and fewer instances of body dissatisfaction, depression, low self-esteem, substance use, and unhealthy weight.

Girls whose parents divorce or separate before they turn twenty-one tend to have shorter life spans by four years.

Girls with involved fathers wait longer to initiate sex and have lower rates of teen pregnancy. Teen girls who live with both parents are three times less likely to lose their virginity before their sixteenth birthdays.

A daughter from a middle-class family has a fivefold lower risk of out-of-wedlock pregnancy if her father lives at home.

Pg. 31:

Troubled young women spend most of their time in counseling describing the hurt they felt from fathers who abandoned them, retreated from their lives, or ignored them.

Pg. 49:

The love you give her is her starting point. Every man who enters her life will be compared to you; every relationship she has with a man will be filtered through her relationship with you… If you are cold and unaffectionate, she’ll find it hard to express love in a healthy way.

Pg. 94-98

The most aggressive campaign against your daughter’s emotional and physical health is directed at her sexuality. She relies on your defense against the campaign… sex isn’t a simple bodily function–it is powerfully linked to her feelings, thoughts, and character… She compares all other boys and men to you. You’re responsible for teaching her what to expect and what sort of behavior to demand from her male friends.

This is something her mother can never give her, because she is not a man, a mother will never be able to represent the male species to her daughter.

I’ve heard countless girls tell me they had sex with a boy (not even a boyfriend) simply for the physical contact, because their fathers never hugged them or showed them affection… Your daughter deserves better than a life of promiscuity, or a life of modeling in pornographic magazines, which is exactly the sort of life the media are preparing your girl for. You have to intervene.

Sex separated from love creates a deep emptiness and a confusion about how to love. Repeated sexual acts–as mechanical acts–make love and sex no longer fit together. As a result, sexual satisfaction becomes impossible, and girls become jaded.

Meg Meeker goes on to describe a contemporary world of STDs that effect girl’s health and well-being in real ways. HPV causes cervical cancer, if your daughter contracts herpes, when she delivers a baby, that child may have holes in its brain that causes seizures and retardation, chlamydia may cause infertility, HIV can kill her. These are all linked to her sexuality- and her sexuality, depends on the presence of a loving, attached, affectionate father.

One young female patient of Meg’s decided to have oral sex with a boy she was dating because she felt pressured into it to maintain the relationship. She kept her virginity, but contracted herpes from the sexual act. He told all of his friends and soon the entire school new her as the girl with herpes. She made a suicide attempt soon after.

The closeness and affection of a father can be one of the most important deterrents to early sexual activity–which may mean the difference between life and death for your daughter.

This week at the Institute our Center for Thrift and Generosity celebrated the publication of Generosity Unbound: How American Philanthropy Can Strengthen the Economy and Expand the Middle Class, by NYU prof Claire Gaudiani:

In Generosity Unbound, Claire Gaudiani mounts a spirited defense of philanthropic freedom addressed to conservatives, liberals and centrists. She acknowledges the good intentions of those who favor greater regulation of private philanthropy, but powerfully demonstrates the dangers of this approach.

But this book is more than a warning. Gaudiani also uncovers the fascinating history of philanthropy in America, showing how this nation’s distinctive tradition of citizen-to-citizen generosity has been a powerful engine of economic growth, social justice, and upward mobility.

Finally, Gaudiani calls on foundation leaders, legislators, and concerned citizens to take up anew the great challenge set forth by our nation’s Founders in the Declaration of Independence. She proposes an all-out citizen-led effort to deliver on the Declaration’s promise of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all of us, particularly our poorest citizens. The success of such a “Declaration Initiative” would enable us to justly celebrate the nation’s 250th birthday on July 4th, 2026.

Not only is it an excellent and timely book, I’m also proud to say it’s the first publication of our Institute’s new imprint, Broadway Publications.

But that’s not all! The release was the first major event in our new Center for Public Conversation. The Center, an online destination as well as a wonderful space just off Columbus Circle in Manhattan, has the mission of improving the civility and seriousness of our national conversation, particularly on topics related to marriage and families, thrift and generosity, and our engagement with the Arab and Muslim world. We had a great time; video from the evening will be up on the site shortly.

Read the book, bookmark the site, and watch for new events at the Center for Public Conversation and new releases from Broadway Publications.

Naomi S. Riley, affiliate scholar at the Institute for American Values, writing at the Wall Street Journal:

…All of this makes the growing evangelical interest in adoption seem particularly countercultural. With the widespread availability of artificial reproductive technologies such as in-vitro fertilization, many couples who previously would have chosen adoption can now use surrogates, donor sperm or donor eggs to have a baby who shares their DNA (or whose DNA they have carefully chosen), and whose prenatal care they can closely monitor. Taking a child as he or she comes to you may be a difficult choice for some parents to make these days…

So many TV shows are touching on sperm donation.

The pilot episode of My Generation, Kenneth really wants to be a dad, but no ladies are biting, so he goes to Cryobank to donate his stuff as a second best to procreating the old fashioned way.

Kicker comes at the end.

Love. According to Norah Vincent’s Ned:

[As a man] I was in for a mountain of rejections, and the self-hatred that came with being the sad sack pick-up artist, the wooing barnacle that every woman is forever flicking off her sleeve… “Rejection is a staple for guys.” I found myself thinking about rejection and how small it made me feel, and how small most men must feel under the weight of what women expect from them. (Pg.99)… Women guard the gate and men storm it. Natural selection is brutal, and women do, in the immortal words of Jim Morrison, seem wicked when you’re unwanted.

Ned dates women as a man for the first time.

Almost inevitably, [women] were carrying the baggage of previous hurts at the hands of men, which in many cases had prejudiced them unfairly against the male sex. For them, as for so many of us, romantic hurt equaled romantic blame, and because they were exclusive heterosexuals, romantic blame was assigned more often to the sex, not the morals, of the person inflicting the pain.

This could be one of the reasons its statistically more successful to marry in your 20′s, before you’ve built up a mountain of pain and prejudice. I see it now when I try and date older men, they compare me to women in their lives that have hurt them and are thus, suspicious of me in all that I remind them of their previous hurt.

Pg. 107: Read More

Norah Vincent is one of my personal heroes. A native New Yorker and a self-proclaimed dyke, she wrote an amazing book called Self-Made Man- One Woman’s Journey Into Manhood and Back Again. Being a six-foot-tall drag enthusiast, Norah dawned Ned, her male disguise, and infiltrated the manliest of manly subcultures.

I’ve struggled for years trying to make sense of male sexuality and how it conflicts with female sexuality. On “Ned’s” journey into an all-male bowling league, he describes his mostly married bowling-mates as they joke about their urges. Page 35:

“…these guys took their sexuality for what it was. They felt there was no getting around it, so they found ways to work within it, ways that sometimes entailed lying to their wives about going to the odd strip club.” On page 37: “They way they told it, it sounded as if the male sex drive and marriage were incompatible. Something had to give, and usually what gave was honesty. These guys either lied to their wives about going to strip clubs, or at the very least they lied about the ubiquity of their sexual fantasies involving other women.”

These points are important, because my mom divorced the man originally on my birth certificate because of his infidelity. And I know that statistically its more likely the woman that will divorce her husband, and I think fears of infidelity or knowledge of infidelity play a big role in this. Females largely lack insight into male sexuality and the terrifying places it may lead. A lot of women are divorcing their childrens’ fathers because of cheating, or using sperm donors from the very beginning to protect themselves from the hurt and humiliation of infidelity.

Chapter 3: Sex Read More

In this episode of American Dad, Stan and Francine’s gay neighbors, Greg and Terry decide to have a baby of their own using a surrogate. This episode was undoubtedly inspired by Gary and Tony and their CNN quest to have their own baby.

Stan is down (or at least trying to be down) with gay people. He is amicable towards his gay neighbors. …Until they mention they want to have a baby. Then Stan freaks out. His true bigotry shows through at that point, because anyone who disagrees with commercial conception and the high rates at which gay couples depend on the use of it to have children, must be a bigot. Things get especially tense when Francine (Stan’s wife) volunteers to be the surrogate.

Stan kidnaps the baby his wife births and tries to take it to an orphanage in Nebraska (where gay people have no rights). On the way he meets a nice lesbian couple that are raising two young children who seem just fine and Stan has an epiphany: maybe gay people make pretty good parents after all…

I looked over at my gay best friend Elin watching the episode with me and I felt incredibly conflicted inside. I was and am horrified at the huge task of educating a public that equates being anti-surrogacy and anti-commercial-conception with being anti-gay. Because to elevate the value and idyllic virtue of being a gay parent, means you must repress the notion that all children should whenever possible, be raised by both of their biological parents.

I looked over at Elin and made a nihilistic moan. “Why do people have to crave babies so much!” I said. “I can’t watch this $#*&!”

“I know, baby.” she said. “It sucks.” She’s the only person that gets me.

Why does having characteristics consistent with good parenting automatically mean you have the right anybody’s child, so being you pay or ask nicely for it? Is the child’s right to their heritage of nothing consequential? Can’t we agree that good parenting skills are wonderful and valuable to society? Can’t we encourage infertile couples (no matter their orientation) to adopt, foster, or find another meaningful application of their amazing nurturing abilities?

A few nights ago I had a show on the Lower East Side. A lot of people showed up I’m happy to announce, and I got an opportunity to catch up with several old friends and acquaintances. One acquaintance of mine is a beautiful young black woman I used to work with, who part time baristas, part time models. She asked me about my screenplay, “Aren’t you writing a screenplay or something? How is that going? You never told me what it was about.” I told her it was going well. My production team is busy wrapping up the last efforts of a documentary on imminent domain they’ve been working on for a long time, but we’ll start making headway very soon. Oh, and it’s about fatherlessness. “I never knew my father,” I told her. “So that’s what I wrote my movie about.” She doesn’t know anything about the details.

“I never knew my dad either!” she says.  “You didn’t know him at all?” I asked. “Well, I met him,” she said. “But that’s pretty much it.” “How do you feel about that?” I asked. “Well, I didn’t think too much about it until I started dating… Then I realized how **cked up I was about it.” That was her response. “Yea, I understand.” I said back.

The next day I was walking through Union Square when I was hustled by a man trying to sell me discounted beauty services. Apparently there was a special discount for blond girls wearing obnoxious amounts of plaid that day- and I fit the bill. Before he tried to sell me on the services he asked me what I do for a living. I tell him I’m a musician and a writer. “Oh, what kind of music do you make?” he asks. “The good kind,” I say. “Of course… Well what do you write about?” he asks. “Uhhhhhhhhhhh, I write about fatherlessness,” I tell him. I always refrain from immediately handing strangers the commercial conception story, because they never fail to feel uncomfortable when I do and I prefer to spare them that cruelty. “So I take it that you write from personal experience?” he asks. I nod my head. “I’m sorry to hear that,” he says. “My dad died when I was 10, so I think I know a little bit about what you might write about.” “I’m really sorry to hear that,” I say.

He starts to tell me the story of his best friend who donated his sperm to a lesbian couple they are both friends with. He did this voluntarily and before I ever mentioned sperm donation. “He’s the kid’s funcle.” he said. “Kind of a father, but more like an uncle.” “Well…” I said, “actually, he really is the kid’s father.” I added, “How does he feel about that? Do you know?”

“Well  at first I think he was really flattered that someone would ask him. When they approached him they kept complimenting him on how smart he is and how good-looking he is… It was like affirmation of good genes, ya know? But now… as the kid is getting older I think he realizes that it is his son and he wishes he could be more a part of his life. Not just an uncle that shows up for the birthday parties.”

I fessed up that I was a donor kid myself and of course at that point the cat got his tongue. I gave him my card and told him I have to go run some errands. We’re going to set up a meeting at some point for me to talk to his friend about his son.