Women ought not to be on the pill, because women on the pill make rightwingnut pundits flaccid, and we can’t have that.

But really, what you’re doing is defending half the human race against wretched bigotry that affects their self-esteem, economic well-being, and health

It is actually more than half the human race, if you consider the secondary impacts that reproductive rights for women have on the economic well-being and health of relationships with partners and pre-existing children.  Women are unquestionably the front edge of the impacts, but the whole tangle blows entirely though a broad range of human relationships and health and socioeconomic issues.

Not to mention that when men are removed from the reproductive rights equation, they tend to be less responsible for and willing to do things like, oh, wear condoms.

Oh, and isn’t that spelled Douchehat?

Where can one swear and information charging the Pope with crimes against humanity. 

There’s not enough holy water in the Vatican to wash the blood off his hands on this issue alone.

Can we please support some unfortunate woman, who contracts HIV because her whoring Catholic husband refuses to wear a condom, when she sues the shit out of the Catholic Church and RATzinger personally?

This Douthat guy seems really unaware of himself. I mean, most straight college guys would not react that way to a potential encounter. He sounds perfect for the NYT.

Ms. Kate—I could never remember how Douthat’s name is supposed to be pronounced until the boys at “Sadly, No” pointed out that it rhymes with “cow butt.”  Weird but true.  Though Douchehat would appear to be much more in line with Douthat’s essential being, and much less insulting to cows.

“The Pope claimed that distributing condoms makes the problem of HIV worse.”

...so, if you’re Da Pope, you can just say something, no matter if it’s complete bullshit, and then that’s the new Truth?  Cool…

Besides, why should the pope care about a bunch of African and other HIV sufferers when he has far more important things to do — like figure out how to justify keeping a bishop who denies the Holocaust, or how a 9-year old girl having an abortion deserves excommunication, but the stepfather only needs to say a couple Hail Marys and he’s good to go…

One successful foray ended on the guest bed of a high school friend’s parents…

Wait… that was one of his successful forays? I’d hate to hear how things go when they end badly!

(and jezuz murphy! there’s a film out there that stabs someone in the face with a fork during sex and tries to make it funny?! Another example that puritanism in America needs to be stopped for the good of us all! If no one thought that sex was/should be “edgy” or “abnormal” then none of those “jokes” would work and we’d all be better for it. More sex ed please! Also, less taking advice on sex and societal norms from someone who grew up about five generations ago… that’d help too)

The little slut. Getting drunk and ending up in bed with someone without thinking it through. That’s the kind of trashy person who should never be able to hold their head up in polite society again. Oh, wait, he wrote (part of) a book about it, and now he’s getting a gig at the Times? I guess there is redemption after all, for pretentious conservative ivy league white guys.

What strikes me about that passage is that Douthat was almost precisely re-enacting the behavior of a sexually conflicted, conservatively-taught young woman who gets bedded while drunk (or even gets drunk in order to go to bed with someone) and doesn’t do anything about contraception because that would imply an intention to sin. Except his takeaway is that the partner who took responsibility for making sure there was no offspring is yucky.

I suspect that reproductive rights is something many liberals are allergic to, because engaging it feels like you’re feeding the culture wars.

I’ve had first hand experience with this one.  I work at a civil legal services provider, and my colleagues vary politically from liberal to left.  Nonetheless we were discussing restrictions on so-called late term abortions one time - particularly concerning health exceptions.  I had to point out two things. 

First, that most if not all late term abortions are performed when something has gone seriously wrong.  Second, I noted that I would not want my mom’s, sister’s, girlfriend’s doctor worrying about whether the health exception would protect him or her from a prison sentence.  I want her health foremost in the doctors mind.  I do NOT want the doctor weighing the risk of prosecution and jail time.  (Particularly if the relevant prosecutor has taken a hard line in the past.)

But my colleagues just had not though of that before.

and then whatever residual enthusiasm I felt for the venture dissipated, with shocking speed, as she nibbled at my ear and whispered—“You know, I’m on the pill…”

Somehow I highly doubt he would’ve appreciated her more if she’d have gotten pregnant, that would’ve just opened up a whole ‘nother can of misogyny “bitch tricked me into being a father” hatred. Unless you’re a snow white virgin on your wedding day, ready to accept the man’s seed, then you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t. Then again, once said virgin gets pregnant and is no longer considered “hot” or spends too much time, you know, taking care of the baby, then she’s made out to be frigid and it’s time for a mistress!

I was forced to sit through the full trailer for Miss March when we saw some other movie and I was pleasantly surprised that not one person in the full theater laughed at anything that was going on in the film.  I was already uncomfortable by the black groupie who’s death by falling out a bus was supposed to be considered “funny” but then I read the review Feministing linked to and I felt sick.

Miss March to me is akin to the bang bus crop of porn, the writers and director felt the need to up the ante it seems, from the tameness we had with films like American Pie, and thought that anything vile would translate to funny. Thankfully, it totally backfired on their asses and is now on the way to being the worst movie of 2009.

That story sounds awfully apocryphal to me.  At what point did she change into pajamas?  And, actually, why was she wearing pajamas?  She was “masticating” his neck and cheeks?  No wonder he was turned off.

“Do most Harvard guys take so long to get what they want?” she had asked, pushing her tongue into my mouth.

Is she a ventriloquist?

“Except his takeaway is that the partner who took responsibility for making sure there was no offspring is yucky.”

...so if he boinked her and neither one of them used BC, then how would he feel?  And if she got pregnant, then how would he feel?

(I’m not going to ask about how she feels.  #1, in conservoland, her feelings don’t count anyway.  #2, as I read on another blog, there might be enough information there to identify her, and she’s probably so embarrassed and traumatized — not because of the encounter itself, but for who it was with — that she’s still in counseling…)

Women ought not to be on the pill, because women on the pill make rightwingnut pundits flaccid, and we can’t have that.

You ladies ought to be less goddamned selfish over this issue.  Just how many countries have to be invaded because you can’t be bothered catering to the penile problems of right-wing pundits?

(Damn.  I now have to point out that that was parody because it sounds way too much like something a wingnut *would* say…)

Amanda, for that “Privilege” excerpt alone, I respectfully request a “L-O-S-E-R-S” tag be added to the piece.

And I swear whenever I look at the Pope anymore I’m looking into the face of pure evil.  This one doesn’t even try to cover it up like his predecessor did.

Older Stewieu: I’m sorry. That’s never happened before.

Fran: What? The eight seconds of sex, or the forty minutes of crying afterwards?

norbiz wins the thread with the appropriate FG quote

And I swear whenever I look at the Pope anymore I’m looking into the face of pure evil.

Same here. I try not to judge people by their looks, but this guy just makes my blood run cold.

That really IS a good Family Guy quote. But it MUST be followed by Stewie’s next line, which I will approximate:

“So…do I pay you now, or something?”

I think whats-his-face would probably feel the exact same way.

My throat was dry from too much vodka, and her breasts, spilling out of pink pajamas, threatened my ability to.

Threatened his ability to what? Spill?

Second, I noted that I would not want my mom’s, sister’s, girlfriend’s doctor worrying about whether the health exception would protect him or her from a prison sentence.  I want her health foremost in the doctors mind.  I do NOT want the doctor weighing the risk of prosecution and jail time.  (Particularly if the relevant prosecutor has taken a hard line in the past.)

But my colleagues just had not though of that before.

I hadn’t thought of that angle yet either. I was already against any legal restrictions on abortion at any time, but I appreciate learning a new argument.

”...and then whatever residual enthusiasm I felt for the venture dissipated, with shocking speed, as she nibbled at my ear and whispered—“You know, I’m on the pill…”

Oh, God, Mr. Douthat, allow me to explain.  Your bed-partner’s interposition was not intended to be impolite.  It was not meant as a direct insult to the quality of your sperm.  It was meant, on the contrary, as a a gesture of consideration toward you, as a reassurance that you would not, as an undergrad, be presented with the burden of an infant whom it wouldn’t be fair to expect you to be willing to raise.

There, now.  Feel better?

...with a girl who resembled a chunkier Reese Witherspoon…

“If I, the Miraculous Ross, had been allowed my just desserts, I would have been served up with the real Reese Witherspoon, not some low-rent pneumatic knockoff.  No cheap substitutes, ever!!  No compromises, even in the face of Apocalypse itself!!  Or something like that.”

...a <strike>chunkier</strike> healthier Reese Witherspoon…

Fixed.

I fail to see how being told by someone that I want to sleep with that they are on the pill would be a turnoff. Even if I already had the condom on.

Threatened his ability to what? Spill?

Since the preceding sentence was “I wasn’t sure what to say, but then I wasn’t sure this was what I wanted.” I think it threatened his ability to say this might not be what he wanted.

Odd, that. When I’m rendered speechless by a pair of breasts I’m usually pretty damn positive this is what I want.

What Mark said.

... now I want to know what happened when the hunky frat guy joined him in bed on another night. Because I’m really thinking that’s what he would prefer, if breasts threatened his ability to (get it up, was how I interpreted things. Like he couldn’t finish the sentence because it would mean being vaguely vulgar, like calling your attempted lover a Slutty McSlut Slut indirectly isn’t far more crass).
But maybe he’s not just closeted, but completely messed up by religion.

Couldn’t his whole story be condensed to “Girls are icky”?

“According to a recent poll commissioned by Catholics for Choice, which interviewed Catholics in Ghana, Ireland, Mexico, the Philippines and the United States, support for condom use among Catholics is overwhelming. When asked if “using condoms is prolife because it helps save lives by preventing the spread of AIDS,” 90% of Catholics in Mexico, 86% in Ireland, 79% in the US, 77% in the Philippines and 59% in Ghana agreed. Unfortunately, the Catholic hierarchy’s position holds the most sway in the countries least able to deal economically and medically with the disease.”

Lay Catholics get it, why can’t the Pope? Oooh, right. Humanae Vitae.

First of all, there’s only room enough for one Ross on the internets and that job is taken, thank you very much. Second, Ross Douchethat aptly illustrates the problem inflicted on our society by the Christian right - the fact that the creepy, deep seated sexual dysfucntions of self loathing men are repeatedly, constantly validated and even depicted as “normal”, when in fact, what these people actually need isn’t validation, it’s sex therapy. Our entire society is completely incapable of having an honest conversation about sex because we’re too busy making sure these bizare, sexually crippled people aren’t ever forced to respond to ordinary things like grownups.

It’s difficult to tell just which neurosis is on display here but FWIW, Douchethat writes like a man either deeply disgusted by the sex act in general, or deeply disgusted by the fact that he hasn’t successfully prayed himself straight.

It’s really too bad that Douthat will never take a moment to consider how that anecdote would have played out if he’d been a member of the opposite sex.

Couldn’t his whole story be condensed to “Girls are icky”?

Completely agree. Every detail of the tale seems to make him squeamish.

She had breasts, ample ones. Ew. She had a tongue, and was willing to use it. She had pink pajamas. She had body fat.

Now, for me, the takeaway wasn’t that the guy is a closeted gay, no, for me the takeaway was that he has a child-virgin syndrome that needs serious addressing. I got a hugely icky vibe that if she had been waifish, dressed in Victorian white, and motionless, then “his ability to” wouldn’t have been threatened.

However, I am knee-deep into Hollywood Lolita right now, which is pretty rancid, so I could be projecting too much.

Since the preceding sentence was “I wasn’t sure what to say, but then I wasn’t sure this was what I wanted.” I think it threatened his ability to say this might not be what he wanted.

That’s a plausible interpretation. <a href=“http://edgeofthewest.wordpress.com/2009/03/16/i-am-unfamiliar-with-the-proper-treatment-of-bags-of-sand-for-i-am-a-harvard-man-not-used-to-menial-labor/”> has it as “threatened my ability to breathe” but they’re also linking from DeLong.

There’s a book I read by Joyce Carol Oates called The Falls that begins with a fella having sex with his virgin bride on their honeymoon.  The fact that she is sexually aroused disgusts him so much that he vomits after forcing himself to have sex with her and then the next morning he goes and jumps into the Niagara Falls.

I imagine this guy would consider that character as being somehow sympathetic.

It’s really too bad that Douthat will never take a moment to consider how that anecdote would have played out if he’d been a member of the opposite sex.

I think we can all agree that an uncomfortable woman being raped by a drunken frat boy is not anywhere near as bad as making Ross whats-his-face feel squicky.

Y’all are misreading this. Ross obviously is too subtle a thinker for the likes of you. When he talks about her drunken masticating, you’re supposed to understand that she’s a fucking zombie. Have you ever fucked a zombie before? It’s pretty gross. I imagine the “breasts spilling” should be read as literally as possible.

Seriously though, I guess no one ever told him that it’s ok to come out and cop to it when you’ve got whiskey dick.

Denise,

I haven’t read The Falls, but the scene did make me think of Sleep, Pale Sister where the husband is horrified that his “child” bride hasn’t been taught by her parents that sex is something to be hated, feared, and loathed.

Shorter Douthat: Sex is no fun if she’s into it.

I’m not totally comfortable with mocking Douthat’s reaction by suggesting that he might be gay…  but my chief point is something else.

As Essie Elephant pointed out, the way he adds superfluous detail really does convey a sense that he is utterly repulsed by the female body:

“chunkier”
“masticating”
“pushing her tongue into my mouth” (not “kissing”)
“breasts, spilling out”
“nibbled”

The cumulative effect is that poor Ross Douthat is overwhelmed by female flesh that’s on the verge of devouring him.  IMHO the punchline about “You know, I’m on the pill…” is not so much about Contraception, Teh Ultimate Buzzkill as that she’s granting him unprotected access to her body, unashamedly.  Her big round pink unrestrained body is suffocating him.  It’s like little Gulliver amid the giant women of Brobdingnag, being used as a dildo.

He owns up to being “disgusted,” but, like, obvious much?

It’s like little Gulliver amid the giant women of Brobdingnag, being used as a dildo.

Please tell me that’s not in the original version.

@ Blue Fielder:  Actually, it kind of is. 

The maids of honour often invited Glumdalclitch to their
apartments, and desired she would bring me along with her, on
purpose to have the pleasure of seeing and touching me.  They would
often strip me naked from top to toe, and lay me at full length in
their bosoms; wherewith I was much disgusted because, to say the
truth, a very offensive smell came from their skins [...]

That which gave me most uneasiness among these maids of honour
(when my nurse carried me to visit then) was, to see them use me
without any manner of ceremony, like a creature who had no sort of
consequence:  for they would strip themselves to the skin, and put
on their smocks in my presence, while I was placed on their toilet,
directly before their naked bodies, which I am sure to me was very
far from being a tempting sight, or from giving me any other
emotions than those of horror and disgust

Gulliver’s Travels, Book II, Chapter V.

FlipYrWhig, you are exactly right.  You put your finger on it; the primary impression this snippet of Douthat prose conveys is that the younger Douthat, the one who’s being described, expects to be eaten rather than laid.  Which may tie in with another impression this vignette leaves me with, which is that the younger Douthat (the one who’s being decribed) is not so much a closet case (though that seems to be the conclusion lots of people here have reached) as incredibly infantile.  He is a-scairt of the Terrible Mother.  He is afraid that once he partakes of her, she will incorporate him.  It’s all so very 50’s.  Alfred Hitchcock could use this in a fillum.

Anyone who thinks that protecting reproductive rights is a “boutique” issue should be reminded that 1/3 of all American women have an abortion in their lifetime.  That is 1/6 (~17%) of the entire population and a good bit more people than will ever, say, earn enough to worry about the top marginal tax rate or file for bankruptcy or get cancer or serve in the military or any number of other things that are considered important matters of public policy.

I wonder what people who need abortions might have in common with eachother that somehow makes their rights and concerns unimportant by default… hmm… that’s a tough one to firure.

Thankfully, it totally backfired on their asses and is now on the way to being the worst movie of 2009.

I figured that out when the commercial, which you figure is the best part of the film, had a seated, clearly-knocking-on-deaths-door Hugh Hefner spouting non sequitors.  Now I know that was the best part of the film, as it merely made me feel sorry for Hugh.  The rest of it would probably want me to kill the producers in a ceremony designed to give to me from their lives the hours of my life their movie stole.

@ Kyso:  I think they made Hefner look like he was speaking by using the groundbreaking techniques of “Mr. Ed.”

Douchethat writes like a man ... deeply disgusted by the sex act in general ...

This; Ross Lincoln has it nailed, methinks.  It fits very perfectly with the general squiffiness presented in his fairly recent Atlantic article on porn, which was one long, near-incoherent ramble through various permutations of “if it’s fun you’re bad”.

Also, what FlipYrWhig said.

I was already uncomfortable by the black groupie who’s death by falling out a bus was supposed to be considered “funny” but then I read the review Feministing linked to and I felt sick.

UltraMagnus - YES. And that’s the clip that they show over and over again on TV.
As if watching someone die horribly is supposed to be funny? And they put a crash cymbal on it too- when she hits the ceiling of the RV before falling out of the window.
WTF?

well, well. The pope is pro-HIV. surprise.

“As if watching someone die horribly is supposed to be funny?”

It’s worked in past comedy films but then the setup was deliberty funny or ironic. You also weren’t meant to feel bad about the character’s demise due to what was shown of them say being a hatefull old bag or evil just to name two examples.

Besides, why should the pope care about a bunch of African and other HIV sufferers when he has far more important things to do — like figure out how to justify keeping a bishop who denies the Holocaust, or how a 9-year old girl having an abortion deserves excommunication, but the stepfather only needs to say a couple Hail Marys and he’s good to go…
MikeEss on 03/17 at 02:07 PM

You forget how to reward a cardinal who protects pedophile priests besides giving him a seat at the right hand.

Yeah, the church has been disappointing lately.  The nine-year-old’s case was disappointing, while a condemnation of the abortion was sadly expected, excommunicating the people involved was a new low. 

“few things impact a person’s life like how many children you have. “

Yeah, but few things impact a society like how many children are born.  Whether a capitalist or a socialist system is in place, both need population growth to sustain either economic growth or social programs respectively.  Until we can reconcile the choice of women to delay childbirth in favour of a career with the subsequent difficulty of conceiving, then the entire societal system is in danger of collapsing. 

I’m holding out hope for technology to lead an advance in improving fertility for women in their 30s, which would allow for women to empower themselves through career advancement while still allowing population growth to continue.

The idea that Douthat is a closeted gay man is pretty rude to closeted gay men, who may not be misogynists, even though misogyny is an easy go-to excuse for not wanting to fuck women.  But it’s clear that this disgust with women and women’s bodies runs deep in our culture and is, in fact, all over pornography.  After all, we describe how “hard” porn is often by how much the women in it are punished for having bodies that leak fluids and have fleshiness.  The ideal figure for “sexiness” in our culture is extremely thin with fake tits—-even the soft fleshiness of a real breast is treated as problematic.  But I doubt that the men who are deeply invested in this beauty standard are secretly gay.  That’d make like a huge percentage of straight men secretly gay.

The Pope can say bullshit b/c he believes he is an ultimate authority.  He isn’t aware that most people know how to read and can call him out not only for a complete lack of citation of support, but also with more than enough scientific evidence to prove him a liar.

People are supposed to kneel and kiss his rings.  Especially lay people.  They are to cower at His Holiness (that is his title after all).

How dare we actually use those brains of our or the consciences he believes God gave us to question his authority?  He said it; we should shut up and obey it.

Not.  Gonna.  Happen.  Barack Obama was elected and the movement to drag the world back to the uneducated Dark Ages has ended.

You want people to stop using condoms?  Better come up with a better reason than “I took a vow of celibacy, so you should, too.”

The fact that people die b/c of AIDS, and he prefers to save the homonculi because every sperm is sacred?  Evil.  No other word for it.

Peter, agreed that a lot of children using up the planet’s resource and driving us over the edge into total environmental disaster is bad.  Luckily, the more we empower women to make their own choices, the more women will limit their family size or have none at all, and perhaps we can reverse disastrous population growth before we hit a mass starvation level.  It’s true that any reasonable assessment of any species’ population growth will indicate that you do hit a tipping point of too many individuals that causes mass starvation, and humans are not exempt from biological realities.

Oh wait.  No, you weren’t being reasonable.  You were using coded racism to lash out against women’s rights.  Never mind.

While the prospect of drunk chunky versions of Reese Witherspoon is tempting, I usually pass on such opportunities. I’d rather get to know a potential partner sober. Even so, I have availed myself of such opportunities and paid the price.

A few years back I found myself with no insurance and two HPV bumps. Who did I turn to? Planned Parenthood! 60$ for registration and acid burn treatment, $20 each for follow ups. Cheapest deal in town. Found out all I needed to do was eat right and to get enough sleep and I’d liekly never have a flare up again and would be be a risk to future partners. So far the’ve been right.

Planned Parenthood is a good resource for men too.

Therapeutic Optometrists are another good resource for the uninsured. They are common throughout Texas as UH cranks them out by the hundreds. Got acne or rosecea that threatens the eyelids and youvwear glasses? Walk out of there with a scrip for antiobiotics and Metrogel at no extra charge.

Planned Parenthood rules, and thanks for the tip on Therapeutic Optometrists.  Though I am insured, I’ve got rosacea and it’s really cool to know that there are care providers who look out for us . . .

Bacopa: “Planned Parenthood is a good resource for men too.”

BIG hug for that sentiment.

I know this is a bit off topic but what struck (but not surprised) me about the Douthat quote was a complete lack of empathy for his “date”, especially in retrospect. As a young and VERY sexually inexperienced woman I “came on strong” in a few situations because I thought that it was what the other person wanted. My heart would be beating out of my chest and my hands would be shaking but I still acted tough and aggressive. Whether this was the case with this young woman or not, being reduced to a caricature by this assbite is horrendous.

BTW, Gulliver was not used as a dildo but as a clitoral stimulator. The people of Brobdingnag were very sensitive to the suffering of others. Of course, Gulliver included a scene where the giantess took a torrential piss right before using him as a source of sexual stimulation. Swift was a bit of a ee freak just like James Joyce and Havelock Ellis.

But don’t knock Ellis. He toldvthevtruth that masturbation was common in both sexes and did no harm. He also understood that limited samevsex experimentation was widespread and not in itself a problem unless coercion was involved. He also said it was probible that a small percentage of people were most likely almost inherently same-sex attracted, and that this was not in itself a problem.

As Essie Elephant pointed out, the way he adds superfluous detail really does convey a sense that he is utterly repulsed by the female body…

What I find really revealing is that he uses all these gross-out adjectives to describe her body, but also compares her to a popular starlet so the reader doesn’t get the impression he can’t pull hot chicks.

Of course he had to find a way to blame the female for his generalized lack of interest in females because she wanted sex and clearly liked sex too.

I mean, a lot of people don’t want to get it on with a drunken, insensitive partner ... but they just say the don’t like getting it on with insensitive drunks and leave it at that.

“It’s true that any reasonable assessment of any species’ population growth will indicate that you do hit a tipping point of too many individuals that causes mass starvation”

The thing is you have to balance that with enough new births to compensate for deaths etc. Several countries are facing issues with not having enough births of females such as China or enough births period such as Japan. The problem with the overpopulation argument is that is a few areas of the globe with massive poverty that have lots of children with poor agricultural standards and resource management.

Also having too many elderly that are invalid or having massive amounts of medical care is taxing the health care system so much that younger people are dying because no hospital has room for them such as what has happened in Japan a few times. We come to a point where the elderly are going to be offered a painless death so there can be room for new people to come in.

We may have to admit the need for some tough solutions in order to minimize human suffering and save the species as well as the world.

Speaking of culture wars, according to the BBC:

People with strong religious beliefs appear to want doctors to do everything they can to keep them alive as death approaches, a US study suggests.

“I mean, a lot of people don’t want to get it on with a drunken, insensitive partner “

Well if they are sober then no but if the partner has drunk some then both will get it on. Funny thing is several women will comment that the guy performed better drunk and the guy will be baffled as to how that was possible since he had blacked out.

“We may have to admit the need for some tough solutions in order to minimize human suffering and save the species as well as the world.”

I’m no demographic trends supergenius, but isn’t there a pretty simple answer in just allowing more immigrants into those low birth rate counries from any of the tons of countries where populations are growing way faster than labor demand?  Seems a simple population growth equalizer.  And i know it wouldn’t be hard to find plenty of Africans willing to move to Japan, for example.  Unless you are concerned about racial purity, the problem of insufficient population growth in one particular country is not a particularly tricky one, it seems to me.

” but isn’t there a pretty simple answer in just allowing more immigrants into those low birth rate counries from any of the tons of countries where populations are growing way faster than labor demand?”

There are a whole host of problems with that such as educating them to speak the language of the area and function in the jobs they are supposed to be doing. You also aren’t doing a long term solution to the issue of the elderly growing in number with the young population not being replinsed nor are you solving the issues causing overpopulation in one area. You are just transfering some of the population pressure to an area that is being deinflated. Both ballons will eventually either pop from being inflated too much or pop from being inflated and deflated constantly.

I once had a boyfriend who found me taking the pill was a turnoff, because it reminded him that I would not be getting pregnant if we fucked.  (Yes, he was a fundamentalist.)

“because it reminded him that I would not be getting pregnant if we fucked.  (Yes, he was a fundamentalist.) “

He likely wouldn’t have wanted to have sex with when you were pregnant then. His loss.

“Peter, agreed that a lot of children using up the planet’s resource and driving us over the edge into total environmental disaster is bad.  Luckily, the more we empower women to make their own choices, the more women will limit their family size or have none at all, and perhaps we can reverse disastrous population growth before we hit a mass starvation level.  It’s true that any reasonable assessment of any species’ population growth will indicate that you do hit a tipping point of too many individuals that causes mass starvation, and humans are not exempt from biological realities.

Oh wait.  No, you weren’t being reasonable.  You were using coded racism to lash out against women’s rights.  Never mind. “

First off, coded racism?  Where did you get that?

Second off, well holy crap.  “Mass starvation?”  I guess a discredited Malthusian world view is now accepted as fact. 

As for reversing “disastrous population growth”, you’re not really interested in that, are you?  You are afraid of intervening to improve women’s rights in the third world where most of the population growth of the world occurs.  You’re afraid of being seen as an imperialist “take up the white man’s burden” type.  As all of the western countries of the world are now in population decline, with the exception of the United States, which is barely population stable, the developed world now does not contribute in any significant way to population increase. 

Meanwhile, any modern society needs a young generation of people to pay for social programs and to be the consumers and entrepreneurs driving economic growth.  To set “coded racism” aside, let’s look at Japan, where “Japan’s population is expected to drop to 100 million by 2050 and to 64 million by 2100”.  Who’s going to pay to care for all the old people?  Who’s going to create the next Nintendo and shit?  Who’s going to want to get rich when the government takes 70% of your income in taxes to take care of the old folks?

From reading the feministing and pandagon blogs over the past few months, I thought I understood that the major concern of feminists is not that women choose to have children, but that they are forced to have children at a young age in order to keep them dependent on men.  If technology would allow women to keep their fertility until a later age, when they are capable of being equal to men in wealth and social standing, then women’s rights could be reconciled with the need to maintain a stable population.  It’s win-win.

What we have now is not a stable population.  The more people that choose to not make new children of their own, the better.  You can argue for sustainable population when we get back down to around one billion or less.

well, well. The pope is pro-HIV. surprise.

HIV is the penalty the Pope demands for fucking <strike>while brown</strike>.

“You can argue for sustainable population when we get back down to around one billion or less.
“

Just get rid ofmodern medicine and argiculture and you will find the population dropping down to one billion.

Just get rid ofmodern medicine and argiculture and you will find the population dropping down to one billion.

Way to miss the point.  Be responsible and don’t breed

“Way to miss the point.  Be responsible and don’t breed “

Wrong I didn’t miss the point. If people don’t die off enough then if the people who could didn’t breed they would miss the chance to and when the population got low enough there wouldn’t be enough new births to compensate for the numbers of people dying due to old age.

The issue is the over 40 set not dying off like they should according to nature.

Masticating? For serious?

This is either a) total horror at intimacy involving a fear of being consumed by ones partner (as I believe was mentioned upthread), b) dude wanted to sound like a Harvard guy but left his thesaurus at home that day, or c) smart guy who knows his vocab well enough for the SATs and GREs but has absolutely no sense of subtlety or tone in language.

Or, as suggested above, he was making out with a zombie. In which case, being on the pill, not so very essential really. Also probably not the thing that would turn most of us off.

“Whether a capitalist or a socialist system is in place, both need population growth to sustain either economic growth or social programs respectively “

Technological and sociological improvement and innovation? Piffle-toffle!

Until we can reconcile the choice of women to delay childbirth in favour of a career with the subsequent difficulty of conceiving, then the entire societal system is in danger of collapsing.

FUCK THIS SHIT.  Peter, you are an assberet fucking blaming the collapse of society on women for failing to control whether or not they have children all the while using the scary ‘women can’t get pregnant in their 30s’ lie.

Women in their 30s get pregnant.  Women in their 30s have always gotten pregnant.  Women in their 30s DON’T HAVE TROUBLE GETTING PREGNANT.

This is a “just so” story meant to frighten women from getting educations and jobs. 

While it is true the odds of having a child with Down Syndrome go up at 35, the odds are still less than 2 percent for ANY genetic defect.  What changes is that the odds of having a child with Down Syndrome equals the odds of having a spontaneous miscarrage caused by an amniocentesis, which is a very safe test.  You don’t want to abort a wanted child by accident, so they don’t offer/recommend amnio until the odds of finding something equal the odds of causing a miscarriage.

The fact that a safe test is recommended to woman after they hit 35 doesn’t mean the odds of conceiving or of having a problem suddenly jump.  It means the test is cost-effective at that point.

These crazy notions of a biological clock driving women to want children and that women can’t have children in their 30s is all patriarchal backlash due to women controlling when they have children.

Ursula, you can fuck off, too.  If you don’t want children, fine, but STFU for the rest of humanity.  Your body, your choice.  Someone else’s body?  NOT YOUR CHOICE.

tootired, I had no IDEA that Soylent Green was people, or that it is made in Japan.

As all of the western countries of the world are now in population decline,

So?

(Seriously, you’re arguing that we need to get breeding because we might not get upgraded Nintendos in the future? I’m quaking, really I am. Stable =! rising; )

Also, it’s well documented that the birthrate is higher in countries where proper social support exists for working women who start families, and where women are not under such pressure to give up work once they have had a baby. Compare countries like Norway and Iceland (and, in fact, the UK, which was at something like 1.9 births per woman last year) with places like Catholic Eastern Europe, or (especially) Japan.

You get higher birthrates - and a more ‘stable’ population - if women feel more comfortable having babies. (And I dare say you get happier, healthier babies if women a) choose to have them and b) can do so from a position of social and economic security, and are thus better able to provide for their children, while also having a life *outside* their children.)

If technology would allow women to keep their fertility until a later age, when they are capable of being equal to men in wealth and social standing, then women’s rights could be reconciled with the need to maintain a stable population.

Or, as noted above, we could actively pursue ways to accommodate women who do want to start families without compromising their social standing. If it becomes either/or, then an awful lot of women will go for career - as Japan amply demonstrates.

The whole thing about women not getting pregnant in their 30s is such a straw man I can’t believe you’re serious. Women were putting off having children until their 30s long before the present generation.

Didn’t finish one of my sentences up there; should read:

Stable =! rising. Stable means sustainable, which in many cases means a fall from present levels; so IMO the present trends are to be welcomed. The idea that we should keep increasing the global population just so that younger generations don’t have to pay quite so high taxes to care for our old folk is crazy (and deeply selfish). A smaller global population will eventually mean a better standard of living for all. If it means a few (or several) tighter-belt decades until then, so be it.

I don’t plan to have children of my own, but I’d still like to leave a world worth living in for my friends’ children.

“well, well. The pope is pro-HIV. surprise.”

If everyone in the world became observantely Catholic the human race would literally destroy itself.
If everyone in the world become secular modern feminists, the world would do just fine.

If these two facts don’t mean something to the moral standing of the two worldviews, why not?

Douthat, y’know, I want to point and laugh at him in a Randal from “Clerks II” type of way for writing this. (Or offer up my 10-years-ago self to any young ladies who resemble popular actresses + a few cheeseburgers and tire of being shamed by callow prudes.)

But that’s not nice and part of the problem. If a teenage guy doesn’t like having drunken sex with people he doesn’t particularily like, then he should be able to say ‘That’s not my thing’ without being mocked by frat boys and frat boy wannabes. Patriarchy, broadly defined, should be blamed. But if the slightly asexual or just not ready yet or whatever Douthats of the world want that courtesy, they need to be willing to live and let live. And writing this disgust with women-radiating account, which has got to make the girl feel just great if she read it, is shitty.

If we have to put this in older terms for slow Ross, would a gentleman type that bullshit?

Most men actually like it when a woman is into it.  I think this guy’s biggest problem is the reversal of gender roles.  If it had been the other way around and he was masticating her but she wasn’t into it, he’d probably get very aroused.  Our society is better off with men who actually prefer that their partner is into as much as them.

Couldn’t his whole story be condensed to “Girls are icky”?

It mostly felt like he was saying “She was a fatty, fat fat fat, and fatties are disgusting, amirite fellas?”.

I’m not sure whether he knew her from back in the day or not, but either way this was really messed up.

Although, it kind of dovetails nicely with the thesis of the rest of his book: “I really am cool and special; everyone else sucks; and I’ll show them all!!!”

What Douthat and the Pope have in common is a purely academic and unrealistic understanding of sex—at least non-solo sex.

The celibate Pope thinks abstinence is a realistic, achievable goal for everyone. Given that assumption, condoms—which fail even as a method of birth control some two percent of the time—are a worse alternative.

Douthat—doubtless out of a complete lack of experience of sex with a partner—thinks that no woman should 1. Enjoy sex, 2. Initiate sex, 3. Plan to have sex. This should creep out any normal person. From the quoted excerpt, if he is neither gay nor asexual, the only way he can get off is via a rape fantasy. I feel sorry for his wife, in that case.

Juan, I think he was disgusted by her femaleness, but is dimly aware of how that comes off, and so played up her “chunkiness” because in his mind that’s guaranteed to turn anyone off. But all I’m seeing is a guywho has to have sex with the lights off.

It mostly felt like he was saying “She was a fatty, fat fat fat, and fatties are disgusting, amirite fellas?”.

And that’s why she was chewing on his neck! And eating all those darn birth control pills! Fat chicks just can’t stop eating things!

Or something. Eww. I need a shower after writing that…

And I *do* think the Pope likes HIV… all those little lives that need to be nurtured inside of our motherly immune cells shouldn’t be cruelly aborted by those damn doctors and their medicines!

Or, as suggested above, he was making out with a zombie.

I grabbed her left breast
And I’m pretty sure I tore it
I said, ‘go down”
But she didn’t have the stomach for it
Her teeth feel out
And her tongue fell out to boot
But all in all she was
A rotten kind of cute…

—Voltaire, “Zombie Prostitute”

Yep, as long as a woman has not had a tube scarring episode of Chlamydia, she’ll be almost as fertile in her mid to late 30’s as she was in her 20s. Safer sex pays off in late fertility.

Forced birthers don’t want us to know that.

And i know it wouldn’t be hard to find plenty of Africans willing to move to Japan, for example.

Gumby, Japan, being what it is (remember the Sambo doll?) would likely look towards its neighbors for immigrants before taking in Africans.

Korea and the Philippines would be more obvious candidates for sources of increased immigration for Japan, as there already are Koreans and Filipinos working in Japan.