I know that headline will set the menfolk off. Maybe the womenfolk, too. No matter. I just wanted to get your attention. For an entirely different purpose (though it really is a terrific film, with some lovely shots of Carroll Gardens.)
Wanting to bring together some recent CT threads on gender, sexism, and film, I thought this scene—which Michael Pollak reminded me of—does a brilliant job of capturing how and why academic men of a certain generation would have been so freaked out by the rules and laws of sexual harassment.
<iframe width=”420″ height=”315″ src=”//www.youtube.com/embed/Mz6UbMruN7k” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen></iframe>
The scene is between an older male professor—wonderfully played by John Mahoney, who also played that creepy dad in Say Anything, the father of the girl John Cusack was in love with—and Olympia Dukakis. She asks him why he likes to sleep with his female students. He tells her, and even though it’s 1987, i.e., a bit before the debate about faculty sexual harassment would really hit American campuses, he gives a visceral, concrete sense of what a male prerogative it was, to be able to fuck your students at will. And by implication why so many male faculty would freak out when they were told they couldn’t do it anymore.
Laws against sexual harassment really spelled the end of their world, the end of the old regime, the death of a whole way of life. A way of life that they thought was concomitant with education itself.
That’s how privilege works, as I’ve argued. The privileged imagine it to be an intrinsic part of the enterprise they’re engaged in, so that when the privilege goes, the enterprise goes with it too. And so the privileged freak: not just for themselves, but for all of humanity.
{ 122 comments }
William Timberman 09.29.13 at 4:57 pm
Amazing the amount of social relevance that can be crammed into a romantic comedy. Everyone remembers Snap out of it! But how many remember Who’s dead? or How long must I wait? Or It costs money, because it SAVES money. Or Old man, you give those dogs one more piece of my food, I’m gonna kick you till you’re dead. Or La bella luna. The moon brings the woman to the man.
Great film. Hardly ever mentioned. And Cher…whatever sins she’s ever committed against good taste were redeemed for all time by this performance (and her equally delightful turns in Mask, and Silkwood.)
Corey Robin 09.29.13 at 5:09 pm
And don’t forget how great Cher was as a performer in the 70s. Check out this clip of her and Tina Turner singing “Shame Shame Shame” on the Sonny and Cher show.
William Timberman 09.29.13 at 5:18 pm
Priceless.
William Timberman 09.29.13 at 5:34 pm
And how did I forget She’s too young for you/I’m too old for you? Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa.
Main Street Muse 09.29.13 at 5:41 pm
The privileged used this sense of entitled prerogative in other sectors too… witness AIG’s Benmosche (who apparently has both a girlfriend and a wife) whining about the “lynching” those awful populists gave bankers after the bailout. He really and truly thought that the bankers were as victimized as Emmitt Till… http://bit.ly/1dQDRKn
[Interesting to focus on Cher and Tina Turner in a post trying to “bring together some recent CT threads on gender, sexism, and film…” They are women who certainly used all of their assets and talents to help advance their careers.]
Cleanthes 09.29.13 at 6:02 pm
That video of Cher and Tina Turner made me feel sad. Two great female performers have to strut their half naked bodies in order to sing a song, and everybody finds it normal. Imagine if Bruce Springsteen and Al Green had to sing Tired of being alone/Rosalita with naked torso and tight blue jeans. As far as I know only the great Iggy the Iguana used to do that kind of stuff.
That much been said, those women were hot…
Mao Cheng Ji 09.29.13 at 6:18 pm
Right. But unfortunately what you see in Oleanna isn’t too pretty either.
marcel 09.29.13 at 6:39 pm
Cleanthes wrote :
Imagine if Bruce Springsteen and Al Green had to sing Tired of being alone/Rosalita with naked torso and tight blue jeans.
Or a (young!) Mick Jagger.
Peter Erwin 09.29.13 at 6:43 pm
Cleanthes @ 6:
I think there have been more than a few male singers who’ve performed bare-chested. E.g., from roughly the same time as that Cher/Tina Turner performance, there’s Mick Jagger, Jim Morrison, Robert Plant, Roger Daltry, David Bowie, Freddie Mercury, …
fgw 09.29.13 at 7:25 pm
He comes off a bit sympathetically to make your point, doesn’t he? Just an aging Don Juan (or was that just his play to win over his dinner companion, I never saw the movie?). Somehow the whole part about economic coercion got left out of their conversation. Which I think was and is the more prevalent way for middle aged Professors to get young students in their beds.
Cleanthes 09.29.13 at 7:27 pm
Peter Erwin @ 9
Well, it seems that my ignorance about rock music is even greater than I suspected; thank you for educating me on the matter. Now I know that the practice of singing half naked is not sexist, its just sexually appealing.
By the way, those dudes singing topless have nothing on Gal Costa, a great, beautiful Brazilian singer, singing Cazuza’s powerful rock song Brasil, while topless. Just google Gal Costa Brasil and see for yourself.
bigcitylib 09.29.13 at 7:32 pm
The practice extended down to TAs. I knew an English Lit grad student back in the 80s who had a half dozen poems he’d written with a blank space for the girl’s name. They could be used semester after semester.
As for the guys performing half naked, its always been routine (think Red Hot Chili Peppers for modern version). The trick is knowing when to stop.
nancy 09.29.13 at 8:16 pm
Grandpa at the breakfast table. Somebody tell a joke. Used as shorthand in our household only yesterday.
Donald A. Coffin 09.29.13 at 9:10 pm
I’ve been teaching at the college level full-time and part-time since 1970, and I’ve known people at every institution at which I taught who had relationships of one sort or another with students. I know maybe a dozen who married students (and a couple of the m did that more than once). But I never understood it. Oh, I get the power relationship thing, and I get that some people have a great deal of trouble with self-control. And I get being interested in sex. But I could never figure out how one could do one’s job honestly and well if one was screwing one’s students.
I guess I thought doing my job as honestly and as well as I could took precedence over what old-line Marxists would have referred to as “momentary interest.”
Mario 09.29.13 at 9:12 pm
Perhaps I miss some context, but how do you draw a line from what this guy says on this clip to “a sense of what a male prerogative it was, to be able to fuck your students at will”? It does not sound like coercion, nor anything like that, so…
This is an honest question.
Corey Robin 09.29.13 at 9:20 pm
I wasn’t trying to suggest coerciveness, though of course that inevitably hangs over the professor-student relationship. I was trying to suggest that male professors used to see fucking their students — and looking out into the lecture hall in order to choose which one they’d like to fuck — as one of the features of the job. I don’t think this guy in the clip would have formulated it as a mode of coercion or even a privilege at all; he would have seen it as something that made education fresh, new, interesting, educational. That’s the point.
Tim Chambers 09.29.13 at 9:37 pm
What I see is an aging rue who wants to believe he’s still desirable. Pathetic but not sinister.
Tim Chambers 09.29.13 at 10:10 pm
Make that r0ué.
What is far more interesting to me is what was meant by her line, “You don’t know much about women, do you?”
Anyone care to speculate?
Meredith 09.29.13 at 10:33 pm
The best line: “What you don’t know about women is a lot,” the truth of which is only confirmed by the last line, “Well, that’s not what I hear.” (Olympia Dukakis is amazing in that scene — she died only in the last few weeks, RIP.)
I’d be cautious, though, in assuming that more than a very few professors often or ever slept with their students, especially undergraduates, before the policies forbidding it in the 1980’s. It happened, of course, but not without the disapproval of many colleagues (and their wives — nearly all professors were men, of course) and, if known about or suspected, it prompted lots of gossip.
Which isn’t to say the OP’s argument about the assumptions of privilege is mistaken. Rather, I’m suggesting that it doesn’t take many people actually enacting a privilege to shore up other privileges for a whole group, most of whose members will not personally enact any privileges in such crass form. I could [italicize that could] sleep with my students if I chose to, most of those male professors could tell themselves, but I will not (because I am a faithful husband or good Christian or Jew or whatever — though might we note how few Jewish professors there were until fairly recently at all but a few schools?). Win-win for the privileged. (I’d love to hear from some sociologists about the role of gossip in contexts like this.)
Another topic altogether: gay professors and students in the olden days. More complicated, though the same potential abuse of power could be at work.
Cher is a ridiculously good actress. I wish she acted more, but then, maybe she doesn’t see many scripts worth bothering with.
b9n10nt 09.29.13 at 10:49 pm
Something I wrote (to myself) last month:
If you are benefitting from certain institutions that help comprise a social order, they appear in your imagination as a natural, inertial entity, inextricably tied to society. Â Radicals then, in seeking to change or destroy a particular institution or set of institutions, are in fact threatening the entire social order. Â Â You can’t change a part without grievously injuring the whole. Â
The radical sees it differently.  Corrupt institutions are only maintained by the vigilant cultivation of their beneficiaries.   You can safely change part and the whole may  dynamically adjust to the new realities.
clew 09.29.13 at 11:46 pm
“There must be blood, and it must be innocent, or the wall will not stand.”?
MARGARET 09.29.13 at 11:47 pm
Happy to say: Olympia Dukakis is alive, and rather well. She’s 82, and still working in show business. Good for her.
ralph 09.30.13 at 12:00 am
Some of this conversation seems unduly slanted by recent news. Of course you’re right about privilege; but the thing he says that’s so good is NOT about the whole thing, it seems to me the line is, “I look up and see a fresh face, and see me in her eyes.”
that’s the bit. There is a real issue with power imbalances being aphrodisiacs; both women and men fight that issue (or not, as the case may be). This point, however, is the one that sings: it’s the reflection of wished-for potency that they no longer feel they have at that moment.
The remainder of the clip is him acknowledging — great, great writing there, by the way — that it’s not true; that they eventually realize he’s really not “potent” intellectually, that age has sapped whatever he once had. Real honesty, there, yet dispiriting, too, in light of the effect on the unmentioned “fresh face” and our society in general.
None of this denies any of the other comments re: coercion or power imbalance or anything else. It’s just that the particular details of that one line remind me soooooo much of the professors I knew, and the colleagues I had who responded to the same feeling. None of them ever had a feeling of coercion or intrusion; all thought it was consensual.
Great clip. And yes, although I profoundly find Cher helplessly useless, she’s great in that movie. Just great.
ralph 09.30.13 at 12:11 am
On another point: Olympia’s original “answer” — that they’re avoiding death — seems profound but I’ve always considered that a bit of a sleight-of-hand. Because we’re dying once born, we **always** seek to avoid death until we are no longer avoiding death. The question is what things do we each do to “feel alive and vital” until we no longer to feel so (and the answers, like most things, are gendered).
This is one answer, from the 1987 english lit male’s point of view: the “fresh face”. One that seems to so completely subvert anything you thought you should be doing while teaching. I mean, really. We all give in to sin; but to not **notice** that you’re sinning I have always thought unreal.
John Quiggin 09.30.13 at 12:20 am
At least in Australia, the interval between old-fashioned prohibitions against premarital sex in general and modern understandings of power imbalance only lasted about 20 years, from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s.
There was a famous case at the University of Tasmania in 1955, where a professor was summarily dismissed on the basis of allegations that he had seduced a student, which he denied. His chair was the subject of an international boycott. At least overtly, the dispute was about due process, though it might have been a harbinger of the attitude that his offence wasn’t really so bad.
Hector_St_Clare 09.30.13 at 12:23 am
Corey Robin,
If I might ask, what are we discussing here- professors dating students *currently in their classes*, or professors dating students at the same institution, or dating anyone who’s currently a student anywhere, or what? As far as I know, institutions differ in the exact policies they have, although most of them seem to ban relations with someone currently under your supervision.
Not dating someone who works for / takes a class from you seems like common sense to me, on the ‘don’t **** where you eat’ thing that Cher cites (I think workplace romance is usually a bad idea in general, for that reason). I think more broadly though, cultural liberals are insanely hostile to relationships where there are big differences of age, class, social status, educational status, etc. between the partners. Quite as much as cultural conservatives oppose same-sex relationships, and with substantially less reason.
Re: There is a real issue with power imbalances being aphrodisiacs; both women and men fight that issue (or not, as the case may be).
You can fight it, if you want, but you’re fighting biology. Women in general, for evolutionary reasons, prefer mates of higher status, and men (in general) prefer mates of lower status. This is not true in every case, but it’s true in the main. It’s certainly true for me- I want a dependent/provider relationship, and few things seem more unromantic to me than the ‘equal partnership’ sort of relationships that a lot of Santa Monica feminists seem to like. Again, ecology agrees with Ephesians (and I mean that, in this case, quite literally).
You can fight against power imbalances if you want. I think they should be encouraged, not fought, because in general they will make people the happiest.
Matt 09.30.13 at 12:30 am
It’s certainly true for me- I want a dependent/provider relationship, and few things seem more unromantic to me than the ‘equal partnership’ sort of relationships that a lot of Santa Monica feminists seem to like.
Well, it’s good to have that up-front and out of the way, but I’d ask you not to generalize for the rest of us. And that’s not Cher in this scene, as you’d know if you’d read the other comments, or even the original post.
Jeffrey Davis 09.30.13 at 12:33 am
I have a wonderful memory of “Moonstruck”.
Nicholas Cage lifts his prosthetic hand to complain, “What am I? A slave to Justice?”
Except it isn’t in the movie.
Hector_St_Clare 09.30.13 at 12:36 am
Re: And that’s not Cher in this scene,
It isn’t? Who is it then?
As for generalizing, the only ones generalizing here are the people who do actual studies of human mating behaviour (instead of chattering about it at the martini salons). I merely paraphrase their work.
Meredith 09.30.13 at 12:46 am
@22 You’re right! What was I thinking? (Was I thinking of Julie Harris?) Well, I feel terrible.
Derek Bowman 09.30.13 at 12:52 am
Yes, “for evolutionary reasons,” the cultural expectations and desires you have internalized are totally just biologically fixed and so really just to be accepted as natural. Surely those of us happily in relationships that don’t match this pattern must be vainly fighting against our deepest biological urges.
Svensker 09.30.13 at 12:52 am
Re: And that’s not Cher in this scene,It isn’t? Who is it then?
Oh, for God’s sake. Are you blind AND deaf? IF you are, you should mention it and someone will tell you what/who’s in the clip. Otherwise watch it yourself before pontificating.
Matt 09.30.13 at 12:52 am
It isn’t? Who is it then?
If you’d try the very simple method of _reading the post_ you’d know that it’s Olympia Dukakis. It really isn’t that hard. You didn’t even have to read the comments to know that, just the post. Before commenting, you should at least _read the post_. I think you don’t even have to be a “Santa Monica feminists” (whatever the hell that is suppose to mean) to know that.
ralph 09.30.13 at 12:54 am
Hector, no, not insanely hostile at all, merely sensitive to what the differences mean when **they are ignored**, and more especially when they are aggressively denied. Aggressive denial always suggests a bad conscience.
Oh, and I seriously doubt whether anyone knows where biology begins and ends here, my friend. In our very recent past and even today in large parts of the world men (and, unfortunately to my mind, some women) have believed that even a glimpse of a female leg would release the male biology in a way that basically absolved them of any responsibility for whatever they wanted to do with that leg and its attachments.
Yet today entire societies function very well — albeit with continued violence — with women who wear paint-on-stretch-jean-like-items and sweatpants with “Juicy” stitched on the ass. We’re still in transition on these items — people still think it’s provocation — but color me unimpressed by the reference to biological certainties in this regard.
I honor your honesty in confessing that you are pleased by mates who are not equal to you; that is your right, of course. All I am hearing here is a man who can’t feel romantic if he’s not feeling dominant in some way. I understand that — you are not alone in this — but I don’t subscribe to that view of the world. If you really think that difference is the spice of life, make a pass at an equal or a better some time. :-)
Hector_St_Clare 09.30.13 at 12:58 am
Re: IF you are, you should mention it and someone will tell you what/who’s in the clip. Otherwise watch it yourself before pontificating.
I watched the clip. I don’t know what Cher or Olympia Dukakis looked like, so I assumed it was Cher, of course.
ralph 09.30.13 at 1:05 am
Corey — thanks for the film. I’m renting it tonight. Everyone was wonderful in it. Or so my memory goes… :-)
Matt 09.30.13 at 1:05 am
I don’t know what Cher or Olympia Dukakis looked like, so I assumed it was Cher, of course.
Why, <when the post itself said it was Olympia Dukakis? I mean, it’s trivial, really except what it shows about your engagement here, and whether you’re doing anything other than blabbering.
Ronan(rf) 09.30.13 at 1:10 am
Dont mind Hector. He knows the difference between Cher and Olympia Dukakis. This is just part of the schtick
Hector_St_Clare 09.30.13 at 1:17 am
Matt,
Very well, I’ll be sure to read the arguments of my interlocutors with more care next time. Nevertheless, when you mention ‘Moonstruck’, most people naturally think of Cher.
Omega Centauri 09.30.13 at 1:19 am
I suspect many of those “relationships” are not power imbalances, but short term youthful infatuations, and the object of the infutuation just not resisting.
I’ll never forget the following scene that happened to me as a first year college student. The TA led discussion had just ended, and threee students were left. Myself, and brainy engineering nerd, and a very cute girl. The girl was absolutetly swooning over the TA (who had left), and us males were attracted to her. She thought he was the smartest thing she’d ever seen (the material was actually pretty basic, and we both knew we could impress her just as well). Well, the thing that impressed me, is after she left, the “nerd” threatened me with fisticuffs, if I pursued the girl. At the time I had a girlfriend so I had no intent, but here I was a college athlete who could do 138pushups, was being threatened by a 98pound nerd who I coulda pounded into the ground with one hand tied behind my back. I guess, attraction can be that powerful a thing.
But, in any case, I can see how from time to time, a student just falls for the seemingly genius professor (or older classman).
Alan 09.30.13 at 1:35 am
Ok, a modest proposal for commenting on thrill-ride posts, modeled on height requirements:
Your must be at least sophisticated enough to understand why “All in the Family Guy” might be a puzzle on Wheel of Fortune.
You cannot be more sophisticated than someone who can clearly explain why “Family Guy” thrives in its 12th season without invoking the word “ironic”.
Alan 09.30.13 at 1:45 am
“Your” (sic) obviously.
No offense intended even if taken.
stubydoo 09.30.13 at 1:59 am
The background music in that clip is absolutely awful. Reminds me of the dancehall scenes from The Muppet Show.
Sorry I don’t have a point about the topic at hand.
Dr. Hilarius 09.30.13 at 2:08 am
1987 a “bit before the debate about faculty sexual harassment?” Maybe so, but I can remember it being a hot topic well before 1987. Faculty-grad student relationships took place but weren’t all that common. (One such relationship involving one of my committee members matured into decades of marriage (ongoing) and three children.) Affairs between faculty and undergrads were a no-no even if not explicitly forbidden. My experience is based on time at two US universities, 1978-86. This was in biology, perhaps others disciplines were different.
As a TA, I learned to keep my office door open during office hours. Even so, every once in a while a struggling student would suggest some extracurricular activity to boost her grades. One coyly suggested she would be happy to “clean my house” some weekend. Knowing the state of my house I almost said yes. (kidding!)
Hector_St_Clare 09.30.13 at 2:27 am
Re: Hector, no, not insanely hostile at all, merely sensitive to what the differences mean when **they are ignored**, and more especially when they are aggressively denied.
But I don’t deny them, rather I embrace them, hence the references to Ephesians, gender complementarianism, etc.
Re: I understand that — you are not alone in this — but I don’t subscribe to that view of the world
I don’t subscribe to being attracted to men, but I have no problem with men who are, and in fact I believe their relationships should have the same legal protections as everyone else.
Also, I haven’t got a clear sense whether we are talking about situations with professors and students where a professional/teaching relationship exists, or between two random individuals who happen to be at the same institution. Banning the former seems like good common sense, banning the latter seems like an unjustified imposition on people’s personal freedom.
Cheryl Rofer 09.30.13 at 2:33 am
“I look up and see a fresh face, and see me in her eyes.â€
And so he seduces her so that she can show him that best “me” that he has lost. It’s much easier than taking stock of his life and figuring out what he could do to make it better; just take that pretty young thing and her admiration until that admiration ends, which, as he says, it always does.
That’s pretty vampirish. And weak. It ties in with the style of the mid-20th-century male writers and the dislike by some for female writers. The female writers are willing to expose that weakness. The boys’ club never will.
Belle Waring 09.30.13 at 2:57 am
“Santa Monica feminists”
I win Hector bingo!
Barry Freed 09.30.13 at 2:57 am
I recall reading somewhere (I can’t find it now, sorry) an interview with Camille Paglia where asked her about her sexual preferences she replied, “graduate students.”
(And yeah, I thought it was funny at the time.)
Hector_St_Clare 09.30.13 at 3:09 am
Age issues aside, my sexual preference is ‘anti feminists’.
Freddie deBoer 09.30.13 at 3:16 am
For contrast, a guy I knew was repeatedly shamed by other grads because he, a 25 year old MA student, was dating a 22 year old undergraduate from an entirely different department. The culture has definitely changed.
Hector_St_Clare 09.30.13 at 3:19 am
Re: The culture has definitely changed.
And not in healthy ways. Of course, what’s popular is seldom a good guide to what’s right.
b9n10nt 09.30.13 at 3:42 am
Actually, hector you’d be fighting biology there, for what’s popular IS, right? I mean, your biologically programmed to seek status, and clinging to minority views lowers your status, thus you’re at war with yourself.
I think a Wall Street liberal has just bought you a dry martini at a bar in Santa Monica tended by a feminist! Welcome to the club.
adam.smith 09.30.13 at 3:49 am
FWIW, while I’m 100% with Corey on the general topic, this is crazy and not at all my experience (and I believe I’m pretty close to Freddie’s age). Three years age difference, significantly above x/2+7 territory, and no way to be in any student/teacher relationship seems perfectly normal and any actual shaming (rather than good-nature jabs) about this somewhere between bizarre and assholish.
soy un perdedor 09.30.13 at 3:57 am
If I may, I’d like to make a quick and modest observation (related more closely to much older posts and perhaps only indirectly to the current post): this may be entirely my imagination, but I get the feeling that some posters and commenters here find it hard to empathize with or understand those who have lost the genetic lottery and are therefore unattractive. I think that’s because the posters and commenters here are a self-selected group of very successful individuals who have never had to face frequent humiliation by peers and repeated rejections from prospective partners. The extreme natural inequality in attractiveness is therefore something that’s rarely offered by the participants on this blog as a possible root explanation (note: not excuse or justification) for all kinds of human behavior. Unfortunately, I think people powerless in one dimension sometimes tend to exercise power (often, criminally) in another as a compensating mechanism. (Again, I am not saying this applies to the academics who’re sexual harassers – the subject of the OP.)
Contemptible behavior is undoubtedly contemptible and deserves punishment and scorn but I feel (this may be my own complexes rather than an objective inference) that at least some posters here find genetic unattractiveness contemptible in and of itself – unattractive people get no sympathy and are, at worst, mocked, or, at best, urged to lift themselves up in terms of attractiveness by their own bootstraps.
Perhaps, I think, from an academic perspective it is easier to empathize with those who have lost the socioeconomic lottery. Different types of inequality, for perfectly understandable reasons, are treated rather unequally at Crooked Timber.
In the grand scheme of things, the posts and comments on this blog are awesome and my minor (and perhaps incorrect/irrelevant) criticism (if you could call it that) should most likely be ignored.
Freddie deBoer 09.30.13 at 4:01 am
It seemed to me to be the product of three things. One, the confused expression of good political tensions. Two, condescension towards undergraduates and towards young women. Three, the inevitable tendency of political arguments to be drained of their initial exigency and to devolve into a set of social cues and cultural attachments, which are deployed not towards a more just and equitable world but towards the social positioning of those doing the deploying. This is a recurrent feature of essentially all academic politics.
I’m anti any teacher ever being involved with a student, in a way that has less to do with age and everything to do with power imbalances, for what it’s worth.
Freddie deBoer 09.30.13 at 4:03 am
*political intentions
adam.smith 09.30.13 at 4:15 am
that sounds like a plausible summary to me and more in line of what I’ve seen, though I still can’t imagine actual shaming for this. While I very much saw undergrads I taught when I was a TA as “kids,” I did become good friends with some not-my-student undergrads I met through political stuff. I don’t think anyone would have batted an eyelid had I dated one of them (I didn’t).
Obviously any student-teacher relationship is off bounds, even Hector seems to agree with that, but a grad student from a different department entirely doesn’t seem to fit the bill.
David (Kid Geezer). 09.30.13 at 4:26 am
Not in the workplace? Really? Where many, if not most, relationships start. 35 years ago my wife told me that “you don’t meet your honey where you make your money.” We’ve been married 34 years.
Hector_St_Clare 09.30.13 at 4:53 am
Adam Smith,
I’d agree with teachers not dating *their own* students, but someone from a different department seems fine to me, as long as everyone’s over 18.
Hector_St_Clare 09.30.13 at 4:57 am
I also think your ‘1/2 age plus seven’ is more cultural liberal silliness (in my case, that’s about the upper limit of how old I’d want to date, not the lower).
As long as there is no professional relationship involved and everyone’s over 18, I don’t see problems with people of any age dating.
Hector_St_Clare 09.30.13 at 5:05 am
It’s rapidly becoming clear that Crooked Timber on age disparate relationships is sort of like Family Life Radio on same sex marriage.
JW Mason 09.30.13 at 5:20 am
I recall reading somewhere (I can’t find it now, sorry) an interview with Camille Paglia where asked her about her sexual preferences she replied, “graduate students.â€
Uh-uh, that was Jane Gallop.
ralph 09.30.13 at 5:27 am
Cheryl: Yes, yes. that’s precisely it. It is so that she can show him who he wants to believe he is. Some — like Mahoney’s character in the clip — are **aware** of it, yet give in precisely because they do not know how else to grab life by the lapels. Others have NO idea that this is why they do it. My guess is that the Mahoney character, as the norms change, quietly resigns himself to the lack of frequent goodies because he already knows it’s not real, and/or not right. I think the ones who complain outloud about “freedoms” are the ones who, genuinely, are completely unaware of what they’re doing, or why.
Hector is the exception, of course. He’s clear about it.
adam.smith 09.30.13 at 5:45 am
nah Hector – I just find the relationships you want distasteful (for lack of a better word. That’s the entire content of the x/2-7 ‘rule’). I don’t want to change the constitution so you can’t marry, let alone make it a felony for you to have sex. That’s a rather important difference and if that were the position of “cultural conservatives” in the US, we’d have saved a lot of people a lot of grief.
ralph 09.30.13 at 5:58 am
Hector, you’re funny. I don’t detect **any** real strong trend on this thread about whether it’s not OK to be an older man with a younger woman; what I detect is, instead, a profound distrust of the position of power in a relationship in which the supposed “inferior” is dependent upon the supposed superior for her (but also potentially his in some cases) professional future. Most of us are saying that it’s basically a form of malpractice, and should be proscribed (and is, more and more often). You can’t fairly teach someone you’re involved with. You can’t fairly promote (or demote) someone you’re involved with. That’s that.
There **is** a suspicion that even in non-professional life a much older person is not getting much out of the younger person and the younger person is likely getting an illusion; but this is not inherent. As others have mentioned, it sometimes works as well as any other relationship does (since the aged-matched ones sometimes don’t work so well). I doubt that this suspicion has much to do with CR commenters; I bet money that a poll of middle-aged Republicans would think much the same thing. Wonder if there’s a poll out there…?
Well, there are studies: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/05/100512062631.htm indicates that there may be a decided life disadvantage for women if they are far away from their spouses either direction. And here is the standard wikipedia page for such things.
ralph 09.30.13 at 6:02 am
More seriously, I’m with adam.smith, above at 64.
Meredith 09.30.13 at 6:10 am
JQ@25: “At least in Australia, the interval between old-fashioned prohibitions against premarital sex in general and modern understandings of power imbalance only lasted about 20 years, from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s.”
This, yes, in the U.S., too. Though we tend vastly to underestimate the amount of pre-marital sex among “nice folks” pre-1960’s — I could tell stories my mother told me, about herself, her friends (with some 1930’s date-rape, as we’d call it now, thrown in…).
When I was in my early 20’s, my mother gave me a gold locket, privately and tenderly, telling me it was the gift from her NYU prof (she was a grad student in the 1930’s, early ’40’s). My mother also accepted for many years (she eventually learned up) that her pregnancy (by her husband) meant she could no longer pursue her Ph.D. ambitions (women, they’ll get pregnant — can’t be relied upon).
I have hazy, very early childhood memories (6 or 7?) of visiting same professor and his wife, with my mother and father, in their PA farmhouse. I way very happy. In retrospect, though, what a strange and fraught time for all those adults it must have been. Everyone acknowledging past somethings while committing to new beginnings. (Maybe they all did it so well in large part for me, the idea of me — innocent child. Also for the fresh starts of their own marriages, which both turned out all right.)
Call me weird, but my daughter knows that locket is hers, not my son’s (love him as I do to death).
Jeff H 09.30.13 at 6:12 am
@55: “It seemed to me to be the product of three things.”
Having trouble following this post. What is “it” in this context? Is this a response to any particular post (including the OP), and if so, which one?
adam.smith 09.30.13 at 6:13 am
@55 continues conversation from @50 and my reply in @53.
Collin Street 09.30.13 at 6:19 am
Incidentally, when you sit down and work out the numbers, “x/2 -7” gives you “between twice and half the number of years lived since age 14”, which is a pretty good rule of thumb for eliminating some problems you can have if the parties in a relationship have significantly different life experiences.
Obviously if you’re not interested in equitable relationships it wouldn’t be surprising if you weren’t interested in measures designed to produce them.
Josh K-sky 09.30.13 at 6:23 am
Never hurts to mention that “half your age plus seven” was originally proposed as a target, not a lower limit.
Meredith 09.30.13 at 6:45 am
(And thank you, Corey, for reminding us of the wisdom of Nietzsche, the art of reading slowly.)
Mao Cheng Ji 09.30.13 at 7:01 am
Well, a few years from now it’ll be all on-line; no eyes meeting eyes, everybody’s safe, end of story.
However. Why should there be, in this case, any power imbalances, or power relations at all, in the first place? Is that inevitable?
And if there is no power relations (and the clip certainly doesn’t imply any) then is our distaste here just a manifestation of reactionary puritanism in us?
Or, I’m curious, are you going to tell me that the teacher-student situation always involve power relations and power imbalances, even if there is none in the traditional sense, like assigning grades?
adam.smith 09.30.13 at 7:18 am
pretty much this. Beyond grades there are letters of recommendations, informal conversation with other faculty, additional (academic) attention in & outside of the classroom etc. etc.
But I also don’t see how you infer there are no grades involved in the professor-student affairs mentioned in the clip.
Mao Cheng Ji 09.30.13 at 7:37 am
But suppose there are no letters, no conversations, no nothing. You come, lecture, go home; you don’t know their names, your job is only to give lectures, and you can’t do anything else.
One of the students gets infatuated with you. Like the rock star/groupie thing. Is it still unethical to take advantage?
Collin Street 09.30.13 at 7:46 am
… this is a question with real-world import?
Mao Cheng Ji 09.30.13 at 8:07 am
Well, okay. Like I said: rock stars and their groupies. There’s at least one professor who’s been compared to a rock star: Zizek. He used to be married to a model. Will this suffice?
Collin Street 09.30.13 at 8:14 am
Perhaps if I were more explicit: is this a question worth the opportunity cost of considering it? There are other questions I could think about: explain to me why I should care about the problem you’ve presented rather than, say, the situation of people where there are marks and future job prospects and what-have-you.
Saurs 09.30.13 at 8:26 am
What are you taking “advantage” of, if, as you say, there is no “power imbalance.”
And why are female students being likened to groupies and fashion models?
Groupies: what the Serious Male Audience calls its female counterpart. Reminder, boys: not everybody listening to you or taking you seriously or appreciating your work wants your cock. Really, honestly. Sometimes women are just their to listen, to study, to get on with it.
Saurs 09.30.13 at 8:26 am
(Fucking hell. Apologies for grammar, punctuation, and spelling.)
Mao Cheng Ji 09.30.13 at 9:19 am
” explain to me why I should care about the problem you’ve presented”
You don’t have to care, of course. I thought it might be interesting as a thought experiment, and could help figure out what it is, exactly, we’re objecting to. But it sounds like for you it’s already clear: you are only concerned about the actual misuse of power: the possibility of favoritism, reprisals, that sort of thing. Fair enough.
chris y 09.30.13 at 9:34 am
I also think your ’1/2 age plus seven’ is more cultural liberal silliness
Oh dear, Hector, I had no idea cultural liberal silliness had such deep roots! Even Wikipedia can cite a reference to this from 1931 (attributed to Maurice Chevalier) and I’m pretty sure it was conventional folk wisdom even then.
Also, the idea that the CT commentariat is made up entirely of beautiful young people who have never experienced sexual rejection literally made me laugh out loud.
Mao Cheng Ji 09.30.13 at 10:17 am
“What are you taking “advantage†of, if, as you say, there is no “power imbalance.—
You are, perhaps, taking advantage of being the teacher, educator, even if there is no power imbalance or power relations in the conventional sense: no power to affect the career, or any other material aspects of your educatees’ lives.
If this sounds silly to you, then that’s your answer. Maybe that’s everybody’s answer, I don’t know… I thought there might be some controversy, but if not, so much the better…
Saurs 09.30.13 at 10:23 am
No, it doesn’t sound silly. It just doesn’t answer my question. And coupled with your “groupies” remarks (women sexually servicing men being conflated with two adults having an apparently innocuous relationship, no power divested), I don’t expect you have much in the way of an answer.
Saurs 09.30.13 at 10:26 am
I thought we put paid the notion a few years back about female students (silly, unserious, fundamentally unsuitable to higher education, obsessed to a fault with pecs and triceps and little else) being one of the “perks” reserved for male faculty but, apparently, no.
Mao Cheng Ji 09.30.13 at 10:38 am
I thought women sexually servicing men were called ‘prostitutes’. And a groupie is someone strongly infatuated with a celebrity, which seems like a fair enough summary of what’s described in the clip.
reason 09.30.13 at 10:41 am
Hector St Claire @26
“You can fight against power imbalances if you want. I think they should be encouraged, not fought, because in general they will make people the happiest.”
You mean like slaves in the old South?
lt 09.30.13 at 11:27 am
re:54. You see a version of this complaint on feminist blogs a lot. They never seem to get the irony of complaining about how hard it is for men to be judged on their looks. Conventionally unattractive or socially awkward women exist and somehow mostly manage not to harass people. But they don’t exist in this schema: the only actual “women” are the attractive young ones who have the nerve to also sometimes choose people they find attractive. I’m not unsympathetic to men who have a harder time of it, but not when they act like failing to win on a standard they themselves think nothing of applying to women is cause for a call to Amnesty International.
Barry Freed 09.30.13 at 12:03 pm
Uh-uh, that was Jane Gallop.
Ha, so it was. In the late, lamented Lingua Franca is where I read it. Memory is a funny thing; the tip-off should have been that remembering Paglia saying something funny or interesting.
Barry Freed 09.30.13 at 12:04 pm
Argh, strike “that” between “should have been” and “remembering.”
Freddie deBoer 09.30.13 at 12:11 pm
I’d also like to address adam smith’s #64 comment. Society has to have the ability to judge behaviors that it nevertheless refuses to declare illegal.
It occurs to me that, given that my grandparents met when my grandfather was doing his student teaching at my grandmother’s high school, my own rules would blink me out of existence.
Anon 09.30.13 at 12:13 pm
Hector,
You say
You can fight it, if you want, but you’re fighting biology. Women in general, for evolutionary reasons, prefer mates of higher status, and men (in general) prefer mates of lower status.
(Non-biblical) citations please.
Not dating someone who works for / takes a class from you seems like common sense to me, on the ‘don’t **** where you eat’ thing that Cher cites (I think workplace romance is usually a bad idea in general, for that reason).
It sounds like common sense to me too, but who the hell knows what common sense for Hector is. So I’d be interested in hearing why, exactly, you think it’s a bad idea. Also, I can’t find the anaphoric referent for “that reason”; “don’t shit where you eat” isn’t a reason, it just states the position.
I’d agree with teachers not dating *their own* students, but someone from a different department seems fine to me, as long as everyone’s over 18.
But doesn’t biology compel men to be attracted to younger teens–like 15-17? Indeed, doesn’t it agree with the Old Testament and require that we be obsessed with virgins? So why should we fight against biology here, and not encourage it? Wouldn’t encouragement “make people the happiest”?
Hector_St_Clare 09.30.13 at 12:24 pm
Social opprobrium can be a very powerful way of getting people not to do what you don’t want them to do, Adam Smith. society has subtler tools than the law. and if some cultural conservative thought gay sex was a sin, but didn’t believe it was any of the business of the state to regulate, I doubt that would endear him to you folks particularly.
reason 09.30.13 at 12:35 pm
Freddie @91
I don’t think anybody was ruling out Professors meeting their students. It all depends on the chronology!
Hector_St_Clare 09.30.13 at 12:42 pm
It,
I think it’s fine, equally, for women to have standards for men that they don’t meet themselves, like ‘he has to make at least five times my income’ or whatever. Men and women naturally select on different things.
Freddie deBoer 09.30.13 at 12:43 pm
I want to ENDORSE adam smith’s #64 comment. When did I lose the ability to type?
soy un perdedor 09.30.13 at 2:57 pm
1t @88
I agree completely that women who have not been blessed by the genetic lottery for attractiveness have it much much harder than their male counterparts. Due to various cultural norms and socialization, men have the opportunity to be attractive along various dimensions (looks, wealth, intellect, talent, etc.) while women are unfortunately judged by an unjust society mostly on their looks and very harshly to boot.
In fact, the extent of this gender bias even within the unattractive community is readily apparent (as are so many other biases) from fairy tales and Hollywood. While most movies insist on parity in terms of attractiveness for men and women (sometimes magically so in fairy tales like Beauty and the Beast, Frog Prince, Shrek etc.), there exists a large handful of movies where an unattractive man woos and ultimately wins over an attractive woman. But I can’t think of any movie (not that I have watched very many) where an unattractive woman wins over an attractive man. I think Shrek would have been a much better movie if an ogress had married a prince.
One could argue that unattractive women can still typically pick up a guy rather easily for a one-night stand but an unattractive guy will have to pay for it (or deal without). However, that argument is moot when one-night stands are not the desired form of fulfillment for women (or men).
A few occasional suicides, eating disorders, or self-injury among insecure teenagers (with suicides being more common among teenage men and eating disorders and self injury being more common among teenage women) are indeed a problem, but I agree (as a representative of the unattractive category) that on the grand scale of things, the misfortunes of us unattractive people (men and women) are unworthy of the kind of attention demanded by much more extreme social problems such as poverty, misogyny, racism, and homophobia. In fact, on the basis of numerous conversations I have had, many of us unattractive folks (men and unfortunately, even more so, women) feel we deserve the scorn of our genetic superiors.
Dave Maier 09.30.13 at 4:47 pm
soy un perdedor (doesn’t that mean “I am a loser”?) —
Possibly the “exception that proves the rule” (in the relevant sense), but your comment that you “can’t think of any movie … where an unattractive woman wins over an attractive man” reminded me of this one: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082883/
Cleanthes 09.30.13 at 5:08 pm
lt @88
I agree. I’ve seen at anime/gaming conventions fat young men in costume criticizing fat young women in costume for daring to cosplay while being fat. They do this instead of bonding with the girls over their shared interests, which could lead to friendship and perhaps even a relationship.
MG 09.30.13 at 5:21 pm
soy un perdedor, you can always watch “The Tao of Steve” which features a quite charming, overeducated, underachieving, Hollywood-unattractive guy who (nonetheless!) gets the ladies. He learns that maybe being so shallow isn’t okay. And did you see the husband who Olympia Dukakis loves even though he’s a heel? Hardly Hollywood handsome.
But OMG these threads are crazymaking. I’m not even going to touch the “academic groupies” or “I’ll clean your house”. I feel like I am still stuck in the 80s.
dbk 09.30.13 at 5:43 pm
Thanks for reminding me to rewatch Moonstruck sometime soon; I only saw it once when it came out, but I have positive memories of how I felt coming out of the cinema.
The clip, as another commenter noted, is a bit rueful-regretful-ruminative and catches the professor after most of his dallying-with-female-student days are past. At the risk of calling down the wrath of other commentators, a somewhat closer version, updated to the aughties but still valid, is Californication and its anti-hero Hank Moody. All the self-irony and satire on the lifestyle of the martini-drinking-college-teaching-novel-writing CA set aside (it’s kind of a twofer: he’s written a best-seller! AND he’s a professor!), it conveys the essential sliminess of this sort of exploitation pretty well.
The relationship between professor and student contains a power imbalance by definition; it’s a feature, not a bug of the relationship itself, and therefore imagining the power imbalance as optional just isn’t an option. Any attempt by the more powerful member of the relationship to take advantage of the relatively powerless member is unacceptable.
Once more: before anyone attacks me, I was a victim of this sort of behavior in my student/grad student days (early-late seventies), and know very well whereof I speak. Believe me, it was no fun at all for a serious, academically-oriented student who dreamed of a scholarly career to be subjected to such behavior.
soy un perdedor 09.30.13 at 5:46 pm
Dave @98
Yes – that’s what my handle means. Thank you for the movie suggestion. It is gratifying to hear that there’s at least one movie out there in which an unattractive woman wins over an attractive man!
Cleanthes @99
I agree – unattractive women undoubtedly have it much harder. The behavior of the fat young men in costume is indeed despicable. On a somewhat related note, do you think that fat people should seek a parity of BMIs in relationships?
MG@100
Thanks for the movie recommendation. However, as I noted in my comment, I know that thanks to the privileging of males in the film industry, there are quite a few movies where the unattractive male lead wins over an attractive female lead. It would be nice to hear of more examples (movies or real/fictional couples) like Dave’s where the attractiveness levels are reversed with the man being more conventionally attractive than the woman.
Substance McGravitas 09.30.13 at 6:18 pm
Without Cher, no Eddie Vedder. Or for that matter think of Kurt Cobain singing “NO RECESS!” in “School”. That is Cher.
MG 09.30.13 at 6:30 pm
#102 What about “Hairspray” or “Muriel’s Wedding”? Love those both?
Dave 09.30.13 at 6:48 pm
Now, of course, that vignette would have to feature a handful of adjuncts in the place of Marty Crane
soy un perdedor 09.30.13 at 7:20 pm
MG @ 104
Thank you for those! Your examples clearly indicate that my conjecture about the paucity of such movies was invalid. I love Muriel’s Wedding (and Hairspray too) – somehow they slipped my mind completely.
I think I may need to reconsider my entire position.
rea 09.30.13 at 7:24 pm
soy un perdedor (doesn’t that mean “I am a loser�)
He’s quoting a bilingual Beck lyric
Mario 09.30.13 at 9:42 pm
I must admit that I am deeply saddened by the thought of this sausage
fingered, violent geezer marring the innocence of these subtle
souls. His coarse and demeaning power-plays inflicted on tender souls
as subtle as butterflies sipping softly from the morning dew of
knowledge… Tears wet my face. I ask you – can we not do something
against this? Can we not do something to protect these utterly
helpless little flowers so completely incapable of defending
themselves from the abusive and intimidating brutality of pigs like
the one depicted in this terrible film?
Not to mention the deforming acts of depravity these subtle breezes of
budding virtue are forced to engage in. My soul fills with sadness at
the thought of all the corruption with which these soft rose petals of
humanity are burdened, and how long it will take them to find again
the self-respect of modesty – it often is too late by then.
And let us not forget the treason inflicted upon academia by the
monster depicted in that clip. Nobody who lacks full and absolute
control over the beast that inhabits his unspeakables should be
allowed into those high halls carved since times immemorial out of the
slow-growing tusks of uncountable pachyderms! Nobody who has not
transcended the lowly impulses of his primate body should have a
glimpse of the nectar-filled golden halls of teaching! What can we do,
my friends, to return to academia the breeze of virtue and
cleanliness?
MPAVictoria 09.30.13 at 11:21 pm
“I must admit that I am deeply saddened by the thought of this sausage
fingered, violent geezer marring the innocence of these subtle
souls. His coarse and demeaning power-plays inflicted on tender souls
as subtle as butterflies sipping softly from the morning dew of
knowledge… Tears wet my face. I ask you – can we not do something
against this? Can we not do something to protect these utterly
helpless little flowers so completely incapable of defending
themselves from the abusive and intimidating brutality of pigs like
the one depicted in this terrible film?
Not to mention the deforming acts of depravity these subtle breezes of
budding virtue are forced to engage in. My soul fills with sadness at
the thought of all the corruption with which these soft rose petals of
humanity are burdened, and how long it will take them to find again
the self-respect of modesty – it often is too late by then.
And let us not forget the treason inflicted upon academia by the
monster depicted in that clip. Nobody who lacks full and absolute
control over the beast that inhabits his unspeakables should be
allowed into those high halls carved since times immemorial out of the
slow-growing tusks of uncountable pachyderms! Nobody who has not
transcended the lowly impulses of his primate body should have a
glimpse of the nectar-filled golden halls of teaching! What can we do,
my friends, to return to academia the breeze of virtue and
cleanliness?”
TOO SUBTLE!!!!
ezra abrams 10.01.13 at 3:30 am
When I was in HS, I knew a college prof’s wife who, as far as I could tell, enjoyed f**ing half the male students on campus.
The point is, human sexuality is kind a complex; isn’t part of the point in the film clip that the coeds adore this wise teacher , but, within a few weeks, realize he is a pathetic old man ?
I’ve been spending the last few weeks working at a university (I normally work in an office park) and what strikes me is how *abnormal* the university is, in terms of all these young attractive people wandering around
Like they say, familiarity breeds attemp
soy @97
I think – perhpas a biologist can correct me – that “frustrated” males are widespread in the vertebrate phylum; that is, in many species, a significant number of males never, or rarely mate.
I think that explains a lot of the more unpleasant crime in human society; it is true that some woman may not win the genetic lottery for attractiveness, but a *lot* of men don’t win the genetic lottery for reproduction, or successful family life
john c. halasz 10.01.13 at 4:02 am
@110:
You’re engaging in a fallacy there. Sexual reproduction is well-nigh universal amongst animals and prevalent amongst plants. And of course the basic difference between males and females is that females bear offspring and males do not. But each species has its own system of mating and reproduction and there are a bewildering variety of such systems. No generalization can be readily made between the human version and that of any other species, even relatively closely related ones. (Humans are characterized by neotenic birth and extended childhoods, which might go some way speculatively toward explaining the human mating and reproductive system biologically, beneath its socio-cultural variants: human beings are both excessively horny, with continuous and hidden estrus, and have a marked tendency toward pair-bonding.)
lt 10.01.13 at 12:31 pm
@97. I think the question is not about sympathy, but justice. If, like me, you don’t think property rights are sacred, then retribution to the less fortunate in that context is desirable. But while everyone has the right to peruse romantic and sexual fulfillment, because it can most often only be achieved with the consent of another, we don’t have the right to it. I think almost everyone – however conventionally attractive – has had the experience of feeling that someone is so obviously perfect for them it feels like an injustice to be rejected, but we also realize this is a misplaced entitlement. I do think that there are other variables in terms of coming from a loving family etc. that make it a lot easier for some people to deal with these disappointments without it curdling into misogyny. Where the privilege part comes in is that men are still more likely to blame women for rejecting them, and women to blame themselves, and also that many women who are actually fairly average looking by whatever standard are convinced their problems are all about looks. I’m not sure this actually relates to the OP, though, because I’m not sure picking up students relates in any direct way to attractiveness. Some good looking men still want women who marvel at their brilliance, some less attractive men look elsewhere for the ego fulfillment.
Mao Cheng Ji 10.01.13 at 12:36 pm
“Humans are characterized by neotenic birth and extended childhoods, which might go some way speculatively toward explaining the human mating and reproductive system biologically, beneath its socio-cultural variants: human beings are both excessively horny, with continuous and hidden estrus, and have a marked tendency toward pair-bonding.”
Concealed ovulation might be the defining feature, for the mating strategy.
Hector_St_Clare 10.01.13 at 1:17 pm
Re: When I was in HS, I knew a college prof’s wife who, as far as I could tell, enjoyed f**ing half the male students on campus.
The fact that some people seems to object to that, illustrates it isn’t really the professional relationship that they have a problem with. The college professor’s *wife* has no conceivable professional relationship with any of the students, she doesn’t work there. What’s wrong with her f***ing half the male students on campus? Leaving aside the fact that she’s married, etc. (maybe they had an open thing). The real issue is that many cultural liberals don’t like status differences in relationships (i.e. differences in income, education level, age etc.). The problem there is a lot of us find status differences to be erotic.
Re: The point is, human sexuality is kind a complex; isn’t part of the point in the film clip that the coeds adore this wise teacher , but, within a few weeks, realize he is a pathetic old man ?
Sure. Of course, one could also ask whether the reason those relationships break up is because the feminists and the cultural liberals do there best to break them up. There are relationships with big age differences that work out fine.
Re: But while everyone has the right to peruse romantic and sexual fulfillment, because it can most often only be achieved with the consent of another,
This is true, but it’s also oversimplistic, because what we choose and what we decide we like is influenced by our (cultural, political, ideological, economic, physiological) environment. We could have a society in which women tended to choose a certain type of men, and we could have a society in which they chose a different type. Obviously there are three billion women out there and every one wants someone a bit different, but we can still make general statements about shifts along a spectrum, and in that light we know (now, anyway) that things like the pill, the general level of societal wealth, feminism, public health, desired number of children, and a whole variety of other factors affect the kinds of decisions women make (in the aggregate) about what kind of man they look for. The same is true for men, of course.
Re: You mean like slaves in the old South?
Do you treat your children like slaves?
Hector_St_Clare 10.01.13 at 1:21 pm
Re: human beings are both excessively horny, with continuous and hidden estrus, and have a marked tendency toward pair-bonding.)
We do have a marked tendency towards pair bonding, but we also have strong innate temptations to seek multiple partners on the side. This is true for both men and women (it’s even true in many birds, which for the longest time were thought to be exemplars or monogamy, as far back as Aquinas and as recently as most zoologists up until a couple decades ago) and whether you attribute it to evolution or to original sin is probably not, in the last analysis, a particularly important question.
Hector_St_Clare 10.01.13 at 1:23 pm
Re: Obviously if you’re not interested in equitable relationships it wouldn’t be surprising if you weren’t interested in measures designed to produce them.
I’m not really interested in ‘equitable’ relationships, no. I’m interested in relationships where one party provides for and cares for the other, and the other takes on a more dependent, submissive role, like St. Paul outlines in the New Testament.
Adrian Kelleher 10.01.13 at 2:14 pm
@Hector
You should give Katarzyna Niewiadoma or Jolanda Neff a shout. Who knows, maybe one or the other would be sympathetic to your particular needs?
Fu Ko 10.03.13 at 2:44 am
There are a lot of films and stories where a poor woman of low social standing (beautiful, however) wins over a much wealthier man or one of much higher status (e.g., a prince).
Fu Ko 10.03.13 at 2:45 am
(…and in those films they often try to tell us through the story that she’s not that attractive, although they still cast a very attractive woman.)
ezra abrams 10.04.13 at 4:22 am
@110
uh, I do know some biology
Like, in australia, their are crickets where the male has a tasty nutritious treat – the spermatophore – that he delivers to the female with his sperm.
The volume of this treat varys, and can be as much as 1/2 body weight of the male
The choosyness of the male is proportional to size of treat; in species with the largest treat, the male is investing more then the female, and females chase males…
but I digress; to repeat myself, it is an obvious observable fact that many Homo sap males are “furstrated” – not, they don’t get as much sex as they want, but they get very little or NONE
similar males can be in other taxa of the vertebrate phylum (got ya – it is the chordata, not the vertabrata), and maybe even in plants and sexually reproducing yeasts
but, the point is there are many males who, it would seem as part of biology, don’t get to mate at all; they, human or non, tend to have less invested in society and tend to be more violent and wierd (ok, that last is speculation)
john c. halasz 10.04.13 at 5:39 am
@120:
Nah. I’m still not buying your socio-biological clap-trap. And why are you still harping upon insects? Why not upgrade to, say, sea elephants? Still more to the point, why emphasize biological mating chances, (as if that were the sole “reward”), rather than socio-economic exclusion, in the genesis of male tendencies toward violence? (And are females any less “weird” than males?)
dax 10.04.13 at 12:04 pm
Another example of less attractive woman winning over attractive man would be several Judy Garland films. Garland often had roles where she was supposed to be the ugly duckling.
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