When a dog bites a man, that is not news, because it happens so often. But if a man bites a dog, that is news. – John B. Bogart
Though the source of this quote is in dispute (it has also been attributed to Charles Anderson Dana and Lord Northcliffe), few would dispute its general veracity. When something ordinary happens (such as politicians waffling on positions or going back on promises, banks inventing new ways to cheat people or the military scapegoating somebody for a business-as-usual practice which unexpectedly turns into a scandal among civilians), it isn’t really news at all by the “dog bites man” test. Yet as these examples show such things are presented as news every day. Sometimes they become newsworthy because of the unusual size of the dog or the sheer number of people bitten; sometimes it’s just a slow news day, and very often such stories are the equivalent of the patter, lovely assistant and other misdirection used by a conjurer to draw attention away from what he’s actually doing. But in some cases “dog bites man” stories become newsworthy because the media have succeeded in convincing enough people that dogs actually don’t bite men, so when it happens in a public place silly people are either surprised or must at least pretend to be.
Two stories of the latter sort came to my attention last Tuesday (January 4th). Neither of these will come as any great shock to whores, regular readers of this column or people who go through life with their eyes open. But judging by the fact that both were presented as news, and by the commentary following the articles, one must presume that many people either don’t recognize these as examples of “dog bites man” or else believe that dogs do not in fact generally bite men; they therefore react by feigning surprise, denying that the story actually describes an incident of canine aggression, or questioning the veracity of the report.
The first story reports on a study which demonstrates what rational people already know: many if not most women are simply not interested in all-consuming, male-style careers and prefer to “marry up” or take jobs which allow them to enjoy their lives and concentrate on their families rather than forcing them to sell their souls to corporations as so many men do.
…according to Catherine Hakim of the London School of Economics…more women are choosing to marry wealthy men than in the 1940s…she suggests men dominate the top positions because women simply do not want careers in business. “Women’s aspiration to marry up, if they can, to a man who is better-educated and higher-earning persists in most European countries,” she said. “Women thereby continue to use marriage as an alternative or supplement to their employment careers.”
The research…showed that 20 per cent of British women married husbands with a significantly better education than their own in 1949…[but] by the 1990s, the percentage of women deciding to “marry up” had climbed to 38 per cent – with a similar pattern repeated in the rest of Europe, the US and Australia. The report concluded that equal roles in the family, where husband and wife shared employment, childcare and housework, was “not the ideal sought by most couples…it is thus not surprising that wives generally earn less than their husbands, and that most couples rationally decide that it makes sense for her to take on the larger share of child care, and to use most or all the parental leave allowance.” Her report also suggests that many women do not want to admit they want to be housewives – even to their partners. “It has become impossible to say, ‘I wouldn’t mind being a housewife,’ …it is so politically incorrect that a lot of women don’t want to admit it.”
Dr Hakim also accuses feminists of peddling a string of myths and manufacturing “political ammunition for a war that has ended.” She says: “Women today have more choices than men, including real choices between a focus on family work and/or paid employment…Despite this, many politicians and feminists appear disappointed with the slow pace of change in women’s attainment of top jobs. Sex differences are treated as self-evident proof of widespread sex discrimination and sex-role stereotyping rather than the result of personal choices and preferences. Demands for further change rest on faulty assumptions and dated evidence. The latest research shows that most of the theories and ideas built up around gender equality in the last few decades are wrong. Despite feminist claims, the truth is that many men and women have different career aspirations, priorities, and life goals. Policy makers should therefore not expect the same job outcomes.”
Honestly, why does this surprise anyone who has personally known more than two women? Despite three decades of neofeminist propaganda, can anyone who isn’t wholly delusional really believe that the vast majority of women want a masculine career? OK, that’s a rhetorical question; obviously many people outside the Netherlands do indeed believe it, as evidenced by this Jezebel editorial on the study. A few women in the ensuing commentary point out that homemaking is a valid path and that true feminism is about giving women the CHOICE of opportunities, not forcing us all to be bootlicking, clock-punching corporate lackeys. But the rest of them…well, read it yourself. Given this widespread willingness of women to ignore their own feelings and the observed behavior of their friends in favor of neofeminist dogma, is it any wonder so many of them believe the related propaganda about sex work?
The second story is really only interesting because A) the woman is young, and B) she states what she’s looking for so clearly. Other than that, she’s no different from any other woman who’s ever supported a gigolo and not much different from immature women who fantasize about gay guys, androgynous young boys or other non-threatening males. And in her quest for a silly romance-novel fantasy of sexless love, is she really all that different from immature men who pursue a silly porno-movie fantasy of loveless sex? Either way, it’s still dog bites man.
Somehow this is just making me laugh. 😀
Years of complaints & propaganda, and it turns out most women still want be June Cleaver if they can.
I’m just wondering, Maggie, if this is/was true for you as well.
If things could be different, would you have done this, married up, and never gone into prostitution?
Marrying up is prostitution, but I know you mean formal prostitution. But the answer is yeah, sure. The money alone isn’t enough; I had a number of serious proposals from millionaires in my time. But if I had met my husband before I started working rather than as a result of it, I would still have married him.
Rational women have realized this for years. What neofeminists refuse to acknowledge is that it’s just as wrong to restrict women to the “career track” as it is to restrict us to the “mommy track”. Real feminism is and always has been about CHOICE.
“Rational women have realized this for years.”
=Oh. Well then you can understand my confusion resulting from listening to pop culture, because THAT certainly isn’t the message.
“What neofeminists refuse to acknowledge is that it’s just as wrong to restrict women to the “career track” as it is to restrict us to the “mommy track”. Real feminism is and always has been about CHOICE.”
=Makes sense to me, and I have no problem with that.
Indeed, most women I’ve met don’t really want to spend that much time working. There are exceptions, of course — more so than I (in my teens in Brazil) had expected to see — but they are far from being a majority in my experience.
(I am still glad to see studies being done on that, though, and I’ll welcome more; because not always is what looks like “dog biting man” really a case of dog biting man. The sun does look as if it obviously revolved around the earth, as most people believed during most of history; yet it doesn’t.)
I’ll add that most men don’t want such high-pressure big career jobs either. It takes a certain kind of personality to want that; and even though this personality is much more common among men than among women, it is by no means true that most men want it. Many a man (myself included) chose NOT to have a big corporate career, despite the high salaries. And even among those who did choose such a career, there are many who are not really doing what they want, but what someone else — parents, spouse — wants.
The second story you mention reminds me of how powerful literary stereotypes are. Indeed, your comparison is quite accurate: just as some people forget that porn, in Dan Savage’s quite accurate formulation, is kabuki sex, not real sex, some others forget that romance lovels are kabuki love, not real love.
It’s not bad to be a dreamer; but it’s bad to confuse dream and reality, to let your gut-aesthetic reactions to porn or romance convince you that reality “should be” something other than it is. The term “Platonic”, in my dictionary, is not really praise.
It would be better if people noticed that the real people around them, with all their quirks and illogical edges, are even more interesting than any porn actress or any romance novel white knight. There is a lot of mystery in other people’s internal worlds and motivations; and more than enough ‘difference’ and ‘variety’ to keep us interested.
Wow, this has me thinking about a lot of stuff, some of it too personal to put here w/o checking with others.
“Wow, this has me thinking about a lot of stuff, some of it too personal to put here w/o checking with others.”
=See, now I’m curious. 😉
“Marrying up is prostitution,”
=Right. Keep forgetting that.
“but I know you mean formal prostitution. But the answer is yeah, sure. The money alone isn’t enough; I had a number of serious proposals from millionaires in my time.”
=Really? I assume by that you mean that the men were so unappealing to you as potential husbands that it didn’t matter how much cash they had? Or that they wanted to put you in a cage? Or both?
Also I must say it aMAZes me to hear you say, “The money alone isn’t enough.”
“But if I had met my husband before I started working rather than as a result of it, I would still have married him.”
=But that’s my question. Obviously you’re saying that your husband has the right qualities to make you want to build a life with him…I’m saying that even after marrying him, and if you were financially secure, would you still have become a formal prostitute? Because some women do.
It shouldn’t; I can make as much money as I like without having to belong to somebody just to make a living. To me that’s no different from selling my soul to a corporation. For marriage to be worthwhile to my mature self it had to be a union of souls.
If I were financially secure it wouldn’t have been necessary.
“It shouldn’t; I can make as much money as I like without having to belong to somebody just to make a living. To me that’s no different from selling my soul to a corporation.”
=Got it.
“For marriage to be worthwhile to my mature self it had to be a union of souls.”
=Understood.
“If I were financially secure it wouldn’t have been necessary.”
=I see.
But since you described it once as ‘your calling’ (and since you identify and admire prostitutes of past times, sacred/temple prostitution, etc.), would you really have had no interest in it? What would you have done with your life, if you were financially secure and didn’t have to think about money?
Obviously, you don’t believe in destiny. A true calling is exactly that; any other use of the word is an absurdity. I didn’t set up the hypothetical situation; I was asked how I think I would’ve responded to it. That doesn’t mean I believe it actually could have happened that way.
Indeed I don’t, but the question I had in mind was simpler: whether you think that sudden financial independence early in life, when you still weren’t a prostitute, would have meant that you would have dedicated your life to something else. (For instance, the reason why I’m a linguist, rather than a physicist as I was going to be, is that a certain accident happened at a certain moment in time that made it possible. And yet I think I would have gravitated towards languages anyway, because I find it difficult to think of myself as myself without languages and words in my life.)
I would like to believe that had I not become a prostitute myself I would’ve still advocated for prostitutes’ rights, because I have taken a pro-prostitution stance since adolescence. But obviously I can’t know that; it could be merely wishful thinking on my part.
Please note: The following is my opinion only and in no way indicates whether it is right or wrong as that is a whole subject in and of itself.
At this point in my life, I prefer being a prostitute to being someones wife (millionaire or not). I get the benefits without the bullshit. In my earlier years I felt the ‘right thing’ to do (according to my parents and society) was to get married, have a normal career, kids, picket fence, blah blah blah, happily ever after. Obviously that didn’t work out for me. Now in my later years, I will probably desire the companionship of a spouse. If and when I get married again, I do hope that I am in a position to marry for love rather than money.
But that’s just me and what I may want. To each their own I say.
Brandy, it seems to me that what you’re talking about are always the central issues in the “Marriage or not” question.
Who makes the money? Who controls the money?
Who controls the pussy? How is it doled out, what’s the criteria for getting fucked or your dick sucked after you jump the broom?
How dependent is one partner on the other? In other words, I want companionship, but I don’t *need* you to survive. Emotionally, physically, financially?
People want to retain a certain degree of autonomy and independence and still have the security of a stable relationship.
People want to retain a certain degree of autonomy and independence and still have the security of a stable relationship.
I agree. Which is why it is actually more interesting, from my perspective, to live in a world in which it is possible for women to achieve financial independence from men. Their relationships with men become more interesting by themselves, rather than following always some sort of commercial quid-pro-quo model. In my experience, it adds to the intensity of my feelings to think that a woman stays with me because she wants to, not because she has to.
I’ll go for that.
You know, there aren’t very many advantages to not having very much money, but there is this: if any woman shows an interest in me, I know it’s me she’s interested in, not my money.
Since we’re talking about women, and men, and roles, and society, and there’s been the stuff about Brave New World and 1984 recently, I thought you might be interested in this: http://tinyurl.com/4reknfp
Interesting discussion over there (and I agree with the guy who says Orwell being mostly remembered for 1984 — sometimes for Animal Farm — is a bit unfair; he had more things to say than that).
Social commentary became very frequent in science fiction after the 60’s and 70’s, didn’t it? The New Wave movement had a lot to do with it; and people like Ursula Le Guin moved away from the space opera style and into science-fiction based on the human sciences (anthropology, philosophy…). Even my darling linguistics showed up (I remember Suzette Elgin’s Native Tongue, Jack Vance’s The Languages of Pao, and — my favorite — Samuel Delany’s Babel-17).
But it was present before. I mean, isn’t Heinlein’s later work (starting with Stranger in a Strange Land) full of social commentary? Isn’t Asimov’s Caves of Steel and The Naked Sun — or even Nightfall? (As I recall, Brian Aldiss argued for its presence even in early works in his history of SF, Trillion Year Spree; something like ‘the ‘sense of wonderment’ of science fiction often went together with a ‘sence of difference’ that leads to reflection about the here-and-now’).
It’s often there, to some degree, in what many consider simple pulp adventure. The John Carter of Mars saga (from which I take half my name) comments on collectivism, eugenics, organized religion, and racism. Heck, go back to Frankenstein and there’s some, and not just the “there are some things that Man was not meant to know” idea that so many obsess on.
Indeed. One thing that always struck me about Shelley’s Frankenstein was the social criticism implied in the description of attitudes and prejudice towards the monster (as he recounts the history of his own education); he showed signs (at least in the beginning) of having a ‘noble soul’ and a likeable personality soon perverted by circumstances.
Maybe some people (Larry Niven’s Ringworld comes to mind) can really power their science fiction simply on wowy machinery and physics speculation; but all in all, even for science fiction writers, it is so much more interesting to also write and people, their interactions, and the strange solutions they find to their own socio-cultural-political problems…).
” …demonstrates what rational people already know: many if not most women are simply not interested in all-consuming, male-style careers and prefer to “marry up” or take jobs which allow them to enjoy their lives and concentrate on their families rather than forcing them to sell their souls to corporations”
I’m sure this is true but many women don’t marry – for whatever reason – and they need to take up higher-earning positions in order to support themselves. If too many women are perceived as likely to lose interest in their careers once married, or once they have children, there’s a danger that we could return to the situation that existed not too long ago when women in general were denied to opportunity ascend the corporate ladder, or train for certain professions.
I think the point Dr. Hakim was trying to make is that governments are trying to create a Procrustean bed; 50% of top positions MUST be filled by women, whether that many qualified women are interested in them or not.
In any case, there’s a very simple solution to the problem; men who enter certain professions are routinely required to sign exclusionary contracts which penalize them for flying the coop to a competitor. All that needs be done is ask women in high positions to sign a similar contract penalizing them if they quit before the term of the contract is over. That way every woman can decide for herself how long she wishes to commit and be paid accordingly, exactly as men are, without special privileges or government interference.
Sounds like a good idea. I hope others will accept it.
I’m pretty sure that most men aren’t too interested in “all-consuming, male-style careers” either. They just put up with them because they need the money, largely to attract women.
Women have the option of marrying up to avoid the drudgery of corporate life, and unsurprisingly many avail themselves of it. Men (with very few exceptions) lack this option, and therefore have no choice but to stay in jobs that they’d rather not be doing.
Strictly speaking, nobody needs a job. People need stuff. In this society (and in most), the way you get stuff is with money. One of the most common ways to get money (with which you can buy stuff) is by working for pay at a job.
As more and more of the work is done by machines (and thus there are fewer and fewer jobs available), and as these machines don’t need money because they don’t need nor do they desire stuff, we are going to have to move beyond the notion of “working for a living.”