"High Expectations"

I’ve been hearing a lot about high expectations recently. Partially, it’s because I work in an office full of middle-aged women who find it funny that I expect a guy to cook and clean, and that I have a strict rule about not dating anyone who doesn’t. When they throw around phrases like “high expectations”, I get a little jolt of happy because it means my expectations are higher than theirs, and that I hopefully won’t have their marriages. Because their marriages, while working quite well for them, would make me miserable. Because I have high expectations.

I don’t really know if this is truly a feminist issue, the issue of expectations and when they become too high. It doesn’t really matter, though, because it is an issue.

Truthfully, I think the idea of having too high expectations to be pretty laughable. Not saying that there is no one in the world with ridiculously high expectations. Of course there are. And maybe they should be told to dial it back and not expect a guy with an actual white horse to come riding up to take them away. But for the average person, I think “too high expectations” may just translate to “different expectations”. As in, “those are expectations I cannot or will not meet, and therefore they are too high”. But that’s the point of expectations. To figure out who fits with who. Sometimes, the person you’re interested in won’t fit yours, or you won’t fit theirs.

I’m a big believer in coming to a potential relationship with an idea about negotiables and non-negotiables. I’m a big believer in coming to a potential relationship with expectations of behavior, and nonbehavior. I’m also a big believer in this potentially not being the first conversation you have with a person, but an evolving topic that has to be built into a relationship. And I mean any relationship. Important friendships as well as romantic endeavors. You have to know where you stand, and what you’re willing to put up with and what you’re not willing to put up with; and the other person needs to know those details as well. Otherwise, this stuff doesn’t work. And if you go into a relationship and say, “I expect X, Y, & Z”, and your potential person says, “I can do X and Y, but I can’t promise Z; oh and by the way, I need A, B, & C from you”, then you have a working knowledge of what’s going on. And later on, if the potential person becomes an important person who does do X and Y and also J through N but just can’t manage to get down Z, you can reassess how much you’re willing to fight for Z. How much of a nonnegiotable Z actually is.

I’m a big believer in this for a personal reason. I have been dating the same guy off and on (and off and on… and off and on, and… you get the picture) for the better part of 7 years. And in the beginning, I had little in the way of relationship expectations. Sure, I expected someone I could talk to, who would respect my passions (not that he had to be passionate about the same things, but he had to at least not belittle them). But I didn’t have the big picture ‘How I Expect To Be Treated’ stuff down at that time. And I had my ass handed to me in the form of major heartbreak. And over the past 7 years, I’ve gotten pretty down with the whole, “This isn’t working for me, and we need to change something” deal. It isn’t perfect. He isn’t perfect. I’m certainly not perfect. Our relationship has been at best dysfunctional in the past, and it takes a lot of work to lean toward functionality even now.

But what I have learned from the yo-yo effect of my relationship is that high expectations are key to happiness. Having high expectations, and having the self-respect to expect those expectations to be met, is the key to a healthy relationship. Having the self-respect and self-awareness to understand what will make you walk away.

The only time expectations can be too high is if you’re (a) single, (b) looking, and (c) miserable without a significant other. If you meet those three criteria, then maybe you should think about shelving that whole “He has to have voluntarily read Foucault and understood his theories” thing. If what you’re looking for is a boyfriend, and if you’re not happy without one, maybe you can overlook a detail like not knowing a lot about French post-modernist thinkers. However, if only (a) and (b) apply, if you’re happy – or at least content – on your own, you can hold out for a fellow post-modernist for longer. High expectations only become “too high” when you get tired of waiting.

Too often, I think, we have low expectations when it comes to relationships. Too often, having someone say, “Oh, you’ll never find someone who does X, or will commit to Y, or thinks Z” forces people to settle for someone who doesn’t fit their basic criteria of nonnegotiables. Because the worst thing is to be alone. Because the most important thing in the world is apparently to find someone, so you don’t end up dying alone. I can dig that. When I was little, we had a downstairs neighbor who frequently said, “You’ve gotta live with somebody”. It was a very Steven Stills, “Love The One You’re With” philosophy.

I just don’t think that’s automatically true. It may be simply dependent on the fact that I’m a loner. It may be that my family has an odd history of having singletons who live alone and enjoy it. It may be that I would much rather be alone than be in the marriages my coworkers have, and that I’d rather be alone than constantly feel as if my needs didn’t mean much to my friends.

If the most important thing is getting some friends or a girlfriend/boyfriend, high expectations and some semblance of standards are going to get in the way of that. If the most important thing is getting the optimal friends and/or boyfriend/girlfriend for you, then high expectations are the way to go. Because high expectations are what help create lasting, fulfilling relationships. It’s how we find people who go along with our idiosyncrasies, and whose idiosyncrasies we’ll alternately love and tolerate. It’s how we create a community. It’s how we create a place where we can be ourselves with abandon, and how we celebrate others’ true selves as well. It’s how we find people we can discuss crazy details of our shared favorite things. It’s how we get treated as people who matter, whose concerns and opinions and needs matter. That’s what high expectations are: they are the expectation that the other person is going to care enough to care about what makes us us, and to sometimes bend for us – just as we would bend for them. And if you find someone who shares your love of Foucault who is also interested in social justice and is willing to move with you through this thing we call life, all the better.

Monday Reading List

"We Are Not Animals in the Hood":

Lisa Gray-Garcia says the tours “zoo-ify” poor people and people of color, who will clearly not be paying $65 to drive around looking at projects, tags and bullet holes.

Single-Minded:

Does that go back to the idea that being single is seen as a threat to those in relationships? The idea seems laughable, but somehow it always come roaring back. There are also still so many (namely lumped into the category of “relatives”) that find it strange when you don’t bring a love interest to the Christmas party every year.

Why I Hate Label-Hating:

What is a label? It’s a description. It’s a name. Words are the primary tool our species uses to communicate and “labels” are just that: words we use to explain ourselves and others. The wrong word, especially when it is instituted upon a person by the entire culture, can do tremendous damage, and I understand that most queer people are walking around with considerable baggage because of this, myself included. But that isn’t an argument against labels per se. Once again, it’s an argument against coercion.

When Men Were Men, And Burned To Death:

When men were men and film was in black and white, race car drivers died and were injured in crashes with what now seems like shocking regularity. European motorsports resumed after a nearly decade-long hiatus caused by the Second World War, with sports car and Grand Prix racing adopting advances in engines, materials and aerodynamics spurred by military technology, and the cars went faster and faster from the early fifties on. The speeds quickly outstripped the cars’ rudimentary abilities to protect drivers in a crash, leaving ever thinner margins of for lightweight machines with hundreds of horsepower on tracks made of winding public roads.

From Cute Overload:

Changing Last Names

Over at Feministe, Jill has tackled the idea that women should change their names upon marriage in The Name Game. I like the piece a lot, probably because I agree with it wholeheartedly.

There are any number of unfeminist choices I make on any given day. I wear high heels a lot. That is partially because I have always walked on my toes, so having high heels takes away from my weirdness when I'm in a professional environment. But it is also partially because I like high heels; I like the different styles and I like how they look with skirts, and I like the few extra inches they give me. And yet, all of those things I like about high heels doesn't stop my continued wearing of them to be an unfeminist choice.

But getting married, changing my name, are not unfeminist choices on my list. At the moment, I'm not for getting married. Weddings, and their cost, kind of freak me out. It isn't that I don't like being the center of attention. I so do. It isn't that I don't like pouffy dresses. I like 'em a lot. It isn't that I don't like fancy parties with dancing and sit down dinners. All of those things are cool, too. But what I don't like is the idea that participating in a ritual somehow makes my relationship more meaningful than it was the day, week, or month before.

But if I were to ever get married, I wouldn't change my name. I'm a big fan of my name. I like the people who have my last name. I like the life I've had with it. I like how my first and last names go together. I like that people can find me with it.

But more than that, there is this nagging thought in the back of my head, and it is best summed up in this comment by Another Jill on the (long, long) Feministe thread:

more than that– there are some compromises that aren’t fair. Sometimes someone has to lose in order to to accomplish what both people want.

And the nagging sensation in my head is the one that asks, "And why is it that, in most circumstances, it is women who lose?" A while ago, my ex and I were having a theoretical conversation about marriage, and I told him I wouldn't change my name. He was, in a word, appalled. And at some point, I asked him why he wouldn't change his name to mine. "I like my name" was his answer. Exactly. For those women who want to keep their last names but change them for the ease of compromise, I understand that on the individual level, it is an individual choice. But on the whole, if women are the ones expected to acquiesce in this matter whether or not they wish to keep their own last names, and if the option is a completely foreign one to most men, then the individual decision relates to the system as a whole.

I'm not looking to get married, not now and probably not ever. But if I do, at some point, end up getting married, I'm keeping my name. If I have children (which I'm also not planning on), I'll want to give them my name. Because it is mine, and I like it, and I want it to continue on. I want my children to have my name (although some days, I think about playing around and giving my hypothetical boy children my name and my hypothetical girl children their father's name, or vice versa). It is a selfish desire, to be sure. But just because it is selfish doesn't mean it is wrong. Because Another Jill is right; there are compromises that have to be made in any relationship. I just don't think I'm automatically the one to make them in these specific matters. (Other matters, yes.)

That doesn't mean every woman should keep her name and give her children her name (if she marries at all). What it does mean is that, at this moment, my (theoretical, subject to change) choice is considered radical and/or political, whereas taking your husband's name or giving your children their father's name is considered normal. I want to live in a world where both options are considered normal, where there is a fair mix of husbands taking their wives' names, wives' taking their husbands names, husbands keeping their last names, wives keeping their last names, children getting their fathers' name and children getting their mothers' name.

I think SarahMC summed it up well on the thread when she said,

Men have bad relationships with their dads, shitty memories of nasty childhoods, unfortunate initials and cumbersome surnames just as often as women do. But you don’t see them ditching their names at the rate women ditch theirs. And that’s because adopting one’s husbands’s name is a patriarchal tradition, and yeah, we still live in a patriarchy. Until we no longer live in a patriarchy, that tradition will be loaded.

One reason men rarely think to drop their surnames is because, from the time they are born, their surnames are treated as though they belong to them. EVEN THOUGH they get their surnames from their own fathers JUST as baby girls do. And yet women still claim their surnames are “really their fathers’.” If that’s true, then the same can be said of men.

Exactly, and yet it isn't. And yet, women's names are still the only ones that are transient, when all names should be potentially so.

Edit-

Alara Rogers' comment managed to articulate something that was sort of there for me in my head but almost completely absent from this post, and it adds more (and needed) nuance to SarahMC's point:

One thing I would like to note is that because feminists have fought so hard to give women the option of *not* changing their names, women actually have more options in this regard than men do. The female headspace includes both “change name” and “don’t change name” as reasonable options. And sometimes, as many posters have pointed out, “change name” is a great option to take, because if you do it when you get married, it’s free and it’s symbolic of your Great Love For Your Spouse rather than your Great Hatred Of Your Dad. But men don’t typically have that headspace available to them, and that’s because feminism has opened up options to women, but no one has really pushed on opening options to men. (Largely because the options men already have are the ones labeled as more powerful or better to have, and people don’t think in terms of “you know, it would be really great if I had the option to be weak and subsumed into someone else’s identity!”… but there are actually men who would take that option if they thought they could easily do so.)

It’s never a feminist act to change your name to your husband’s. It may not be a *sexist* act, it may not be a misogynistic act, it may not be an oppressive act, and you can commit that act and still be a feminist. But it’s never a feminist act. That being said, yes, there are good reasons to do it sometimes. The problem is that these good reasons are only perceived by women. Men hardly ever see these good reasons; thus men don’t have the option of cutting ties with their abusive fathers, or escaping the pressure of being a Junior (sweet jesus, I really don’t understand why there aren’t hordes of Dude Name Jr. changing their names to Dude Wifename because my god, exact same name as your father! *My* dad goes by Tetter, pronounced Teeter, to all his friends because his first and last names are the same as his father’s, and he’s not even a full Junior. And how much would it piss off the dad that you hated if you gave up being a Junior so you could carry your wife’s name? But few guys do it, even though there should theoretically be *more* men motivated to do so, as women don’t formally do the Junior thing.)

My ex wanted to change his name because he didn’t even know his dad. But he didn’t want to change it to mine, he wanted both of us to take a new name together, and I told him fuck that noise, my name is my name. You want a new name, great, but I won’t change mine. (In the end we never got married anyway.) My husband already *has* changed his name, to his adoptive father’s, when he was old enough to decide for himself that he would rather be New Dad’s Name than Old Dad’s Name, but this has made him even more attached to his name and he wouldn’t change it for anyone. So I do know men who have wanted to change their names to escape their biological fathers, and funnily enough, neither of them took their wife’s name or wanted to. It’s just not in the repertoire that little boys are raised with.

Emphasis mine. I highly recommend reading her entire comment, as this is only an excerpt from it.

As Long As It's Out of "Love"...

Here's the thing. I have this idea in my head that I love television and television shows a lot more than I actually do. When the television is free in my house (which happens once in a blue moon, since my parents get up earlier than I do, my sisters and my father get home before I do, and my sisters stay up later than I do), I will sit there and desperately attempt to find anything on worth watching. I'm here to say - there isn't much.

I also watch a lot of shows on Hulu, because I don't spend *enough* of my time in front of a computer screen. This mostly happens when I should be writing something but am too tired, should be writing something and am awake but have no ideas, want to be writing something but have nothing gelling, or when my family has descended into chaos beyond my bedroom door. That last one happens quite a bit, what with the "two teenagers in the house who share one tiny bedroom" thing.

So, what invariably ends up happening is that I watch some bad television, like Dark Shadows, and some television I would never watch if it contained the normal length commercial breaks, like Royal Pains.

I started watching Royal Pains because it had Cliff Calley from The West Wing. Or, more precisely, the actor who played Cliff Calley. Who also played Simon Stein in In Her Shoes, and Isaac in Defiance. I really like all of those things, and I really liked Cliff/Simon/Isaac in all of those things. This may not be a great reason, but since I like the newest addition of the Cliff/Simon/Isaac line up - Hank - it's working out okay so far. But Royal Pains has never been a show I'd sit down at 10 o'clock on a Thursday night to see 'live'. And it is quickly becoming a show I will stop watching on Hulu, because it sucks. It sucks, specifically in its portrayal of the male-female romantic relationships among the minor characters.

Take, for instance, the relationship between Sofia and her husband Javier in "Crazy Love". Javier pays for Sofia's breast augmentation - and does so in order to plant a radioactive GPS tracking device without her knowing inside her body. The scene where Cliff/Simon/Isaac/Hank confronts Javier with the evidence is pretty okay:

HANK [Holding up a glass tube with the tracking device inside]: What do you know about this?

JAVIER: Nothing. What is it?

HANK: A piece of metal that almost killed your wife.

JAVIER: What? It was supposed to be completely safe.

HANK: Yeah, not when you put it inside a magnet 50,000 times more powerful than the Earth's magnetic field. We're lucky it didn't rupture a major organ. Just one of the safety hazards when you implant metal in someone without their consent.

JAVIER: I asked the surgeon to put in the GPS, but he said she'd be fine. He said she'd never find out.

HANK: Well, sure. Otherwise putting a GPS in your wife's implant would just seem crazy.

JAVIER: You must understand. Haven't you ever done anything foolish for a woman?

Except it takes a turn for the worse when Cliff/Simon/Isaac/Hank doesn't call Javier the fuck out on the fact that paying a surgeon to implant a GPS in your wife's breast without her consent isn't a foolish fucking thing he did "for" her. It is something he did "to" her; it is something he did "to" her without her consent, and it is something he did "to" her that nearly killed her, and it is something he did "to" her because his "need" to keep track of her overrode her humanity and her ability to decide that she might just want to dump his lying ass.

Instead, Hank looks slightly chastened. Not put upon, not "you fucking psycho, I'm calling the cops", but "yeah, I guess I've done something foolish for a woman" - which completely fucking fails to acknowledge that doing something like planting a GPS in a woman's body without her consent isn't 'foolish'. Well, it is. But it isn't a benign act of foolishness. It is an act that would be reprehensible even if Sofia never found out about it, even if she'd never in her life needed an MRI, even if the tube never broke and gave her radiation poisoning. Hank ignores the fact that Javier's 'foolishness' is a criminal one, one that not only put Sofia in grave danger but one that failed to recognize Sofia as an autonomous human being who is deserving of the truth and of respect. Javier's 'foolishness' was an act of violation, and it should have been treated as such by the doctor standing before him. Because even if he were only a relatively decent human being, Cliff/Simon/Isaac/Hank should recognize behavior that is this profoundly fucked up as profoundly fucked up. However, Cliff/Simon/Isaac/Hank is presented not as a relatively decent human being but a out and out good one, one who will doctor the sick regardless of who they are or their ability to pay. And because of that, his lack of adequate response to the situation before him is even more galling. Because I think we can all agree that surgically planting loved ones with tracking devices is just not cool.

Except. Maybe we can't all agree on that. I can so see Edward Cullen doing that to Bella. After all, when this starts showing up on bedroom walls (ganked from Mzbitca's What A Crazy Random Happenstance):

obviously our ideas about proper male romantic partner behavior is fairly screwed up. This is even furthered by Sofia's reaction to Javier's atrocious and potentially deadly behavior. When Javier comes to see Sofia when she is recovering from radiation poisoning in the hospital, all is swept under the rug:

JAVIER: I didn't know that thing was poison. I was just so afraid of losing you.

SOFIA: I can't believe you did that to me Javier. I had no idea you loved me so much.

[HANK and DIVYA smile]

To which I say, "Whaaa?" Again, Hank just stands there and offers tacit approval for a continuing relationship where the guy almost killed his wife (accidentally) because he was a big enough jackass to believe he was in the right to know exactly where she was and where she was going even if she didn't tell him. And Hank, our Hero, accepts the continuing of this romance. Sofia, our patient, almost revels in this gross violation and the fact that Javier couldn't just be a Big Boy and talk to his wife about the problems he was going through.

Earlier in the episode, Sofia gives a description of her rings:

He bought me this one [giant, expensive ring] because he stayed away too long on business... And then this one [another giant, expensive ring] just because he thought I looked beautiful one afternoon. You want to know what I see? I see this [small, inexpensive pink ring]. When we met in Caracas, this was the only thing he could afford. He bought it from a street vendor, and I love it.

It is sweet, and demonstrates that Javier's fears in regard to Sofia leaving him once he has lost his fortune are ungrounded. But that doesn't mean she shouldn't leave him for his crappy treatment of her. And it was, beyond crappy. It doesn't mean Javier should be forgiven, just because she loves him. What it does mean is that if Sofia had left him, or had even just suggested that planting a GPS in her chest without her knowledge was a not okay thing to do and that they would probably have to do something like get Javier's ass into some intensive therapy sessions, it would have been fairly obvious is was because of Javier's duplicitous, dangerous, and dismissive behavior in regard to his wife. It would have been hard to argue that Javier lost the woman he loved because he lost his money, instead of losing the woman he loved because he took Edward Cullen-esque stalking up a few notches.

Women, Rip Van Winkle, & Domestic Violence

A good friend of mine had up a link on his Facebook feed, advising people to read the fourth panel:Which reads: "Well, I wrote a little song about women, called 'Women are Special (They will not stop until we are dead". I had a problem with it at this point, and in the course of calling him for other reasons, pretty much expressed my distaste with the sentiment expressed in that one box. Because, hey, women are half of the population and if you seriously think maligning 50% of the population is a good idea, then there's a bit of an issue. He responded that most of the women in his life had wronged him at some point in some way, and I told him that most of the people in his life had wronged him at some point in some way - that's what happens when you have an insane amount of friends; some of them are going to not be so great, and sometimes even the great people screw up. He also mentioned the "Boys Are Stupid" Flair permeating Facebook as a reason why his link wasn't so bad. And here's where the "equal opportunity" insult falls flat on its face. Because the "Boys Are Stupid" flair is bad:

But it doesn't take into account certain inequities in life. There is a Gavin de Becker quote that says, "At core, men are afraid women will laugh at them, while at core, women are afraid men will kill them". Now, I'm not saying every woman is afraid of men, or that every man is afraid of being laughed at by women, or that some women aren't afraid of looking foolish in front of men or that some men will not experience the very real fear that a woman in their life is not only capable of killing or abusing them, but that it is also a probable outcome of their situation. What de Becker's quote does highlight, though, is the patently ridiculous and hurtful sentiment expressed in the above comic strip. Because domestic abuse is a very real, very large issue. Because:

Battering on women is the most under reported crime in America.

Domestic violence is the leading cause of injury to women between the ages of 15 and 44 in the United States; more than car accidents, muggings, and rapes combined. "Violence Against Women, A Majority Staff Report," Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, 102nd Congress, October 1992, p.3.

Three to four million women in the United States are beaten in their homes each year by their husbands, ex-husbands, or male lovers. "Women and Violence," Hearings before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, August 29 and December 11, 1990, Senate Hearing 101-939, pt. 1, p. 12.

One woman is beaten by her husband or partner every 15 seconds in the United States. Uniform Crime Reports, Federal Bureau of Investigation, 1991.

About 1 out of 4 women are likely to be abused by a partner in her lifetime. Sara Glazer, "Violence, Against Women" CO Researcher, Congressional Quarterly, Inc., Volume 3, Number 8, February, 1993, p. 171.

Approximately 95% of the victims of domestic violence are women. Statistics, National Clearinghouse for the Defense of Battered Women, Ruth Peachey, M.D. 1988.
...
Domestic violence is not only physical and sexual violence but also psychological. Psychological violence means intense and repetitive degradation, creating isolation, and controlling the actions or behaviors of the spouse through intimidation or manipulation to the detriment of the individual. "Five Year State Master Plan for the Prevention of and Service for Domestic Violence." Utah State Department of Human Services, January 1994.

Those statistics and figures make the assertion that it is women who will not stop until the men are dead laughable. And yet, the image of women sucking out the souls of men, as the comic continues on:

is a cultural staple. The shrewish woman is a staple on sit-coms, and in movies and in how we frame relationships. And it has been, for years and years, and centuries upon centuries. In stories like Rip Van Winkle, our sympathies are directed toward Rip:

I have observed that he was a simple, good-natured man; he was, moreover, a kind neighbor and an obedient henpecked husband. Indeed, to the latter circumstances might be owing that meekness of spirit which gained him such universal popularity; for those men are apt to be obsequious and conciliating abroad are under the discipline of shrews at home. Their tempers, doubtless, are rendered pliant and malleable in the fiery furnace of domestic tribulation, and a curtain lecture is worth all the sermons in the world for teaching the virtues of patience and long-suffering. A termagant wife may, therefore, in some respects, be considered a tolerable blessing; and if so, Rip Van Winkle was thrice blessed.

Certain it is that he was a great favorite among all the good wives of the village, who, as usual with the amiable sex, took his part in all family squabbles and never failed, whenever they talked those matters over in their evening gossipings, to lay all the blame on Dame Van Winkle."

It isn't until we have been assured of the Dame's shrewish ways and Rip's goodliness that we are told in sympathetic terms what may account for Dame Van Winkle's irritability - though it isn't framed as such. According to Hawthorne, "The great error in Rip's composition was an insuperable aversion to all kinds of profitable work", and his children looked ragged and like beggar children. And yet, still, we are told that he would do all the odd chores around the other wives' homes their "less obliging husbands would not do for them", possibly because those less obliging husbands were actually making the money necessary for their wives and children to not have to scrimp and save. And at the end of the tale, Rip awakens from his twenty year nap and finds his wife has died in his absence; this is seen as a major plus for Rip, as "he had got his neck out of the yoke of matrimony, and could go in and out whenever he pleased without dreading the tyranny of Dame Van Winkle." Published in 1819, the perceived dynamic between men and women seems to have changed very little. Men endure wifely 'nagging', with little attention paid to whether or not that wife has a valid concern or not.

And what makes this even more insidious is that the same cultural norms play out when we are discussing the other, distorted aspects of male-female relationships. It comes down to the women. In domestic violence cases, one of the questions that invariably gets asked is "What did she do?", the implication being that if only the woman in question was a little less shrewish, a little less demonic, a little less harpish, she wouldn't have gotten hit. Again, this isn't the question that comes up for everyone; not everyone asks this question. Not everyone thinks this thought. But it is still a prevalent thought, in articles and message boards - especially in high profile cases. This same thing can be found when we discuss rape victims, when we tell women that to wear certain outfits and to go certain places and to act in certain ways is to open the door to sexual assault.

To assert that men are in general the victims of women and their soul-sucking ways is ludicrous. To assert that 'women', as a monolithic group, are threats to men and want them dead is also ludicrous. Because it just reinforces the notion of that mean woman married to the harried man. It attempts to give men, all men, regardless of whether or not they are married to nice, non-soul-sucking women, victim-status. It attempts to strip all women, whether or not they are nice, non-soul-sucking women, of their very humanity - literally, by turning them into demons. And it also reinforces the notion of men and women not as partners, not working in tandem, but as being in a constant struggle, as a war. I don't know about anyone else, but when I'm in a relationship, I prefer not to categorize that relationship as being a tug-of-war, a constant battle, a situation in which I am the perpetual victim. I would prefer to think of it - and portray it as - a give-and-take, a loving and dynamic duo. And for those who would categorize their relationships the other way, well, maybe they should just not be in a relationship.

Why Do Men Care What Women Want?

In my daily (obsessive) traversing of the web, I came across an article by Kay S. Hymowitz; there were many problems with this article, from the idea that we are in a postfeminist world (more on one of the many examples for why that is emphatically not true later) to this idea that men are so cranky with women because The Rules of Dating are no longer set in stone. One of the more infuriating sentences of the article, for me, was this one:

the opportunities for heartbreak and humiliation are legion. Under these harsh conditions, young men are looking for a new framework for understanding what (or, as they might put it, WTF) women want.

Here's what I'm looking to understand: why do you care? Seriously now. Maybe it is just the fact that most of the men I am friends with are in happy, committed relationships (at least, I assume from the smiles and the moving in together that they're happy...), but there is a total disconnect for me in this idea that a guy needs to know what women want. First, there is this idea that a guy could ever know what "women" want, as if we are some monolithic group that holds monthly meetings meant to decide what expectations and desires to harbor. We don't; what I want out of life is different from what the married femmes want. And those married women don't all want the same things either. That is life. But the real question shouldn't be What Women Want. Even if there was a monolithic, monthly meeting, that should never really be a guy's concern - just as What Men Want shouldn't be a single woman's concern.

The real question is "What do I want?" Because without that question being answered, even for the moment, there is no way a person will be satisfied in a relationship. If a man (or woman) tailors his (or her) responses to the opposite (or same) sex companion in order to not be alone, or in order to get some sex, or in order to have a dinner companion, then that man (or woman) will not have their own needs met (unless those needs were simply to not be alone, to get some sex, or to have a dinner with someone). That brings me to this gem of a line:

The woman may be hoping for a hookup, but she may also be looking for a husband, a co-parent, a sperm donor, a relationship, a threesome, or a temporary place to live. She may want one thing in November and another by Christmas.

And if the guy (or girl) in question doesn't know what he (or she) wants, this could be a problem. Not knowing if the girl across the room is looking for a hookup, a husband, a co-parent, a sperm donor, a relationship, a threesome, or just a place to crash is very much a problem if the guy in question is looking to change his response depending upon what the girl wants. But if the guy knows all he wants that night is a one night stand and is upfront about it, half of the hard part is over. Because now, he doesn't have to tailor his responses to what That Woman Wants. He can come to the table saying, "This is what I want", and that is a good thing. And maybe he'll find a woman who wants that same thing that night, and maybe he won't. Maybe he'll find that woman the next night.

The thing is, everyone is going to have bad dating experiences. On a planet with 6 billion people and change, not everyone is going to be compatible, and not everyone is going to want the same thing at exactly the same time. The problem with some of the guys who wrote into Hymowitz to complain about those horrible women is that they seem to be missing the synapse that tells them that. They are missing that bit of common sense that would tell them even if they are looking for a relationship and they find a woman who also would like to pursue a relationship, they may not be compatible. That he may want a housewife, and she's on the fast track to being a high powered lawyer. Or that he's looking for someone with similar aspirations, and her greatest aspiration is to head the local PTA. That's just how life goes.

I think Jeff Fecke says it best when he says,

"The older I get, the more I believe that women and men are a mystery to each other only because we are constantly told from birth that women and men are a mystery to each other, who speak different languages and are unable to actually communicate. It turns out that men and women are a lot alike. There may be minor differences, but nothing that can't be figured out by asking questions. Indeed, much of the trouble in relationships could be solved by teaching our children that if they have questions about that boy or girl they're interested in dating, the best thing to do is just bite the bullet and go ask them. And that if they get asked an honest question, then give an honest answer. Instead, we teach boys and girls that they have to deal with girls and boys through an elaborate system of games and deception. It's a wonder any relationships work at all."

I can't help but agree. And I can't help but think that many of the men who are bent out of shape over the lack of concrete and inalienable Rules would have been bent out of shape over the state of women for one reason or another anyway. Because any group of people who believes that there should be concrete and inalienable rules for dealing with another (incredibly large) group of people obviously doesn't think very much of that second group. Because if that first group acknowledged that women were humans and humans are complex, they would know that there is no single rulebook for figuring them out.

Dear Abby: Creating Emotionally Retentive (Pre)Teens

I love reading Dear Abby; for a while there in college, my best friend and I would hang up the truly classic Dear Abby letters. There was one from a guy whose wife left him for his father; another from a mother whose lesbian daughter was in an abusive relationship, and she wanted a spell to protect her daughter. I've gotten more than my share of laughs from Dear Abby and her ilk of advice columnists over the years. Oftentimes, they suck. The only one I liked a majority of the time was Ann Landers, but of course she had to go and die.

So I read the advice columnists and laugh; sometimes I empathize. And sometimes I want to throttle someone -the advicee or advicer, it changes frequently. This time, it is the advicer, Ms. Dear Abby herself.

"DEAR ABBY: I am a "tween" who loves to share stories with my mom. When I tell Mom about my crushes and problems with my friends, I always tell her, "Don't tell Dad, please..." She says she won't, but I found out that she tells my father everything. I am really embarrassed. Can I trust her anymore? --LILLI IN THE CITY

DEAR LILLI: Your mother should not have made you a promise and then have broken it. It may have happened because she thought your father had a right to know what was going on with his little girl. That said, there's something YOU should know: A secret is no longer a secret when more than one person knows it."

Excellent. Good job Abby! Making it this little girl's fault that her trust was violated! She should have never told her secrets in the first place. Hopefully, little Lilli will recognize that some of that advice is crap, and won't just bottle up her emotions until therapy is involved. That some people cannot be trusted with secrets, and dear old Mom is apparently one of those people. But that she has the right to have her "don't tell -" be respected, and some friends and family members will get that. And the others? Well, by trial and error she'll know which ones she can spill her guts to and which ones she has to rely on for other things.

WALL•E is Wondrous

Some time after Toy Story, Toy Story 2, The Incredibles, Ratatouille, and Finding Nemo, critics stopped beginning (or ending) their reviews with the question of when Pixar would get it wrong, when Pixar would stumble, or when Pixar would lose that magical quality that allows it to continually put out hit after ingenious and lovable hit. Like Anton Ego, Pixar has reduced film reviewers to simply fans; instead of contemptuously wondering when it would end, they began to wonder how much farther Pixar could go. And with good reason. WALL•E, the newest Pixar creation, does nothing to fall off course. It tackles more, and succeeds in every possible way.

It is a "G" rated children's movie that encompasses everything from politics to environmentalism to the nature of love, and yet doesn't feel preachy or as if it is imparting a lesson from on high. And it does so by, in the words of the New York Time reviewer AO Scott, acknowledging that "the paradox at the heart of "WALL•E is that the drive to invent new things and improve the olds ones -to buy and sell and make and collect- creates the potential for disaster and also the possible path away from it". It is the classic nature of a tragedy: that which is our greatest strength is our greatest weakness. At the beginning of WALL•E, we are presented with the end of the tragedy; after we have destroyed the planet and abandoned it. But it would not be a children's film -or at least not one released in conjunction with the Disney name- if it did not end in triumph.

The movie, though, does contain some fairly eery scenes and images. First up is, of course, the earth; covered in trash skyscrapers on the ground and surrounded by bits of space junk; our beautiful planet is thoroughly trashed. Massive dust storms threaten our hero and his pet cockroach. And it is utterly deserted. The most chilling Twilight episodes featured futures of this nature; as do the most frightening horror films, the ones where no one is left. And then there are the people, when we do find them. Doughy-fat and impossibly disengaged from their peers, these humans have lost the ability to walk. A scene that is both funny and alarming is one that shows what happens when one of them falls off of his hover-recliner. Unable to lift himself up, he lays helplessly for robot assistance; meanwhile, traffic is rerouted (and we may be able to take some lesson about traffic control away from this), and a robotic voice soothingly says, "Please remain stationary". Then there is what seems to be the degeneration of the education system, with youngsters being taught their ABCs via the Wal-Mart-esque corporation, here called Buy 'n Large, and the Captain not understanding how to work a book. And, of course, the robots. In a world that pulls from 2001: A Space Odyssey, the robots take orders from a long-ago given protocol.

Pixar has done what it has done in the past, and delivered a child's film with adult themes. The love story and the cuteness of WALL•E, his devotion to EVE, will keep kids engaged. As will the overall message of environmentalism and the indomitable spirit of humans -once it has been activated, of course. But for adults there is the repeated message of "Stay the course", used repeatedly by President Bush and echoed by BnL's CEO and the world's president. Pixar also highlights the wasteful laziness of consumer culture by having WALL•Rs, larger WALL•Es for the space ship, simply box up our junk and catapult it into space, and by having the continued message of the BnL Corporation be that Earth has become uninhabitable and not worth saving. It is the captain, educated by his computer as to the beauties of earth and dancing, and WALL•E and EVE and other rogue robots who champion the opposite message once hope of life has sprung up in the form of a tiny plant.

In the end, Pixar does what it does best. It makes WALL•E, EVE, M-O, and even the cockroach seem interminably human. It makes the humans that as well. And it cleverly references and alludes to other aspects of popular culture, like WALL•E's obsession with "Hello, Dolly". It has a philosophy beyond fun and hijinks, though there are plenty of those as well. And it focuses on the goodness that exists within us, even if it is sometimes subdued or atrophied. The humans of the future aren't evil; just ignorant. And Pixar manages to make going outside seem cooler than sitting home and playing with the Wii or Playstation, makes talking to the person next to you on the subway seem more fun than talking on a cellphone or listening to an iPod. It stretches the boundaries of what a child's film can be, what it can say, and what mediums it can encompass. In short, WALL•E succeeds in almost every way.