please stop calling it burma,
the country is now known as myanmar.

Meh, what's wrong with chivalry? If you modernize the reasoning for it, that is.

Though I wonder why on earth the girls didn't put their feet down and say, "I want to go to the dance," if it bothered them so much.

Incidentally, Kevin Drum is having a "Worst Blog Post of All-Time" poll at his site, http://www.washingtonmonthly.com .

Among the list: Ann Althouse's meltdown over Jessica's ta-tas.

Althouse does face some stiff competition, though, especially from John "Assrocket" Hinderaker's remarks about Bush: "It must be very strange to be President Bush. A man of extraordinary vision and brilliance approaching to genius...."

Check out the list if your stomach can handle it... and let's show Althouse our support! :)

Love Katha Pollitt's piece; finally some left-feminist writing that shows you don't have to be a David Horowitz fan to find Ayaan Hirsi Ali's work deeply compelling.

Chivalry might not be a problem, if men never-ever thought that A) it meant they were owed something, B) it meant that women are weak and shouldn't get to do whatever they want, hold certain positions of power in society, etc.

Unfortunately, we will never be able to test this hypothetical, b/c plenty of men who practice chivalry also believe A and or B, and probably always will. That's the way things seem to work when you polarize gender.

For just one itty-bitty creepy example, a study at a sizeable university found that the average college male felt that if he spent at least $10 on his date he expected something sexual.

Chivalry might not be a problem, if men never-ever thought that A) it meant they were owed something, B) it meant that women are weak and shouldn't get to do whatever they want, hold certain positions of power in society, etc.

Unfortunately, we will never be able to test this hypothetical, b/c plenty of men who practice chivalry also believe A and or B, and probably always will. That's the way things seem to work when you polarize gender.

For just one itty-bitty creepy example, a study at a sizeable university found that the average college male felt that if he spent at least $10 on his date he thought he should get something sexual.

Personally, my biggest feeling towards chivalry is just that it's /unnecessary/. I am not a child. I do not need to be taken care of. I will, however, generally let someone do it if I trust the person, and if I feel like it's not an essential part of the relationship for them. (the guys who freak out at the idea of a woman holding the door for them or a woman offering to pay for a date are the ones to avoid)

That being said, Basiorana, I guess I agree that it's too bad if the girls really did want to go to the dance, but let the boys decide the activities. But an article I'd support would have to be a different article altogether. If the article had focused on how teenage girls are too passive, and boys think they always get to determine what happens on a date, and then asked how we can get girls to be more assertive and boys to genuinly care about their partner's feelings, well that one I might agree with. But that wasn't exactly the focus of the article. The focus was more promoting adhering to traditions, making blanket statements about what girls want.

Personally, I was as anti-school dances and anti-tradition in general in high school as anyone. It had nothing to do with not being in touch with my own desires and feelings.

Basoriana -

So what would your idea of chivalry be?

I thought that story was interesting. I wonder if the girls really were bothered by it or if it's just the father projecting his own discomfort. It's possible that some or all of the girls knew what was up but did not explain that to their parents. Of course if it was just a bait-and-switch deal that the girls weren't aware of beforehand, they have every right to be pissed but I bet they'd have a hard time showing it due to peer pressure and the overall desire not to be called a bitch and whatnot.

NINA: "For just one itty-bitty creepy example, a study at a sizeable university found that the average college male felt that if he spent at least $10 on his date he expected something sexual.?"

Nina, is there any possible chance that you remember the author of the study or have a link?

We are about to do a large scale study (N = 30,000-60,000) on attitudes toward gender and money. One of the questions we are asking is about men's beliefs about sex and women's sexual obligations when they pay for dates (and women's feelings of discomfort/obligation when men insist on paying), and how feminist attitudes relate.

I'd appreciate it if you are able to find a link!

apple blossom: Some of us choose to refer to the country as Burma because "Myanmar" was the new name chosen by the military junta when they took power. The democracy movement in Burma prefers the name "Burma."

I'm sorry, If some guy ever sent me a text at 2 or 3am saying "u busy?" the answer they would get is...oh, wait, I would be sleeping! I don't know of any girl who thinks that a text at that time of night would end in "romance" and they certianly wouldnt be "clutching their cellphones" the next day. Maybe girls deserve more credit than that. And maybe those boys had another reason for skipping the dance other than groping in a dark corner: theyre high school kids, probably broke high school kids, or maybe they were making a statement. And how does the author know that all the other girls wanted to go? That whole article was just too 50's or me

I actually usually think of "chivalry" as "basic manners, coupled with romantic ideals."

Most of chivalry is in fact manners that women should do too (holding doors, giving up your seat to the infirm, etc). But then there's also the aspect of chivalry that is things like expecting that your date won't want to have sex with you after only one outing, or wooing someone rather than the modern atmosphere of bed-hopping. Romance over one-night stands, basically.

Well, at least that's how my parents explained chivalry to me. I know it has other connotations, but frankly I agree with the writer to the extent that forgoing a dance for hanging out in someone's basement is not chivalrous.

If they had other reasons to skip it, like money or making a statement, they should have confirmed that their dates wanted to do the same thing BEFORE making that commitment.

There was once in high school where a boy I liked from another school asked me to his homecoming dance but only after his date turned him down. He asked me when there was pretty much no time for me to get a "proper" dress (as my mother put it) so we were just going to go out on a regular date. However, he said he needed to put in an appearance to take photos for his mom, so while he went in he left me in the car, and it just so happened my parents drove past. To this day my mom hates him for leaving me in the car. I didn't really care at the time or even now but it totally pissed off my mom, and this article sounds like the dad is the same way. It's nice that he wants his daughter to be treated "nicely" but I think he has more of a problem with his daughter being sexual without the boy really "earning" it.

He even quotes Laura Sessions Stepp, which is never a good thing. But I loved this;

Meanwhile, 60% of 125 college students in a new study by Michigan State University have had a sexual "friends with benefits" relationship. Nine out of 10 "hookups" didn't lead to dating relationships, the study found. More ominously, after casual sex, females are more likely than males to show symptoms of depression, according to a study reported last year in the Journal of Sex Research

Must be that pesky semen they're craving;)*

*note there was an article a while back about women being addicted to semen or some such stuff.

UltraMagnus, it's possible. Most parents like this genuinely just want their kids to have chivalrous dates and never be sexual *cough*yeahright*cough* but he could think that the boy somehow doesn't deserve his daughter.

And if she actually didn't want to go to this thing, her dad's a bit of a loser.

About the living-apart-together piece.

I'm covetous of my own space, and personally feel like such an arrangement has lots to recommend it . . . but what are we to make of this part of the scenario:

Not that I never get angry, especially because I’m usually the one rushing around in the morning trying to get our boys off to school. When I’m on vomit patrol by myself, or when Henry wakes me at 3 a.m. to ask, “Why do we have knees?�

Yet . . . he agreed to take on the burden of children in his late 60s; the least I can do is let him get a good night’s rest.

I don't want to be harshly critical of one couple's choices (each situation has its own particulars), so my point isn't to criticize Judith Newman or her husband specifically, but raise a larger question about how successful equitable co-parenting can be when spouses have two separate house-holds.

If divorced couples are any guide, women would end up, overwhelmingly, the custodial parent. And when you're the on-site parent, you're going to do more of the day-to-day work regardless of how "on" the off-site parent is when they're there.

What do other people think? Could this type of arrangement work for couples committed to gender equity in house-keeping and child-rearing? What would that kind of equity look like?

On the 'chivalry is dead' piece, what that guy really needs is to step up to the plate, be a REAL man, and take his daughter to one of those purity balls already. It's obvious that's what he really wants.

But everybody must have something about their families to complain about right?

Sigh. My problem is that I don't see anything wrong with this 'hook-up culture', so I really don't get what all this fuss is about. You know what bugs me though? The way they've fucking polarized the whole thing. You're either an angelic virgin (complete with card, a ring, and apparently a personal relationship with Jesus) or you're shagging everything that moves.

Um, I'm sorry. Why can't they just leave some room for the rest of us to live in already? I'm sick and tired of all these ppl who seem to think it's great fun to tell everyone what's wrong with everyone else.

Next time I see some more of those stupid lifestyle articles I'm going to leave a comment informing them that it has now been decided that baby-boomers are now officially too old to have sex. Since you know, they get to decide whether or not it's okay when I have sex.

I wonder how well they'd take it...

The trouble with the hookup culture is that it causes emotional distress when young people don't really want that kind of relationship but feel pressured into it; plus, it's coupled with abstinence-only sex education and laws restricting birth control availability. It makes young men feel that they are entitled to sex (that's NOT sue to chivalry), it makes young women feel that they HAVE to be having sex to have a relationship with a man, even if they don't want to.

The "hook-up culture" hurts young women WAY more than chivalry did. Not that polarizing it is a good thing, I agree with you on that matter.

I mean, chivalry was a custom employed to appease women so that they remained passive...

So why, again, are we mourning its apparent demise?

Because it was not accompanied by an actual improvement of men's views of women, so consequently we have all the misogyny of old-school chivalry without even the pseudo-respect for women that chivalry offered?

Let's not forget the role class played in chivalry. Only certain women got the alleged "benefits" of it, and many of those who did were certainly caused enough emotional distress that they fought to tear it down.

I'm curious about this alleged "hook-up culture." I've never been a part of it. I teach college students, and have quite friendly relationships with some of my former students, now graduated. I've never known anybody who was a part of it. I keep reading screeds by histrionic baby boomers waxing eloquent about its destructive habits, as though it's a new thing. But...really? Because I know a lot of people who were sexually active in the 1960s and 1970s--you know, the sexual revolution?--and it seems like what we call "hook-up culture" was the norm back then, not now. Not in the post-HIV era.

So, really, who's participating in this "hook-up culture" How do we know? And is it any different from the casual sex of the 1960s-1980s? And is it really more destructive and distressing than any other part of young adulthood?

I'm in college. I see it all the time, associated a lot with drinking and party frats. It does exist, but yeah, I don't really think it's a new thing. I probably did start, as you say, in the 60's, which was about when chivalry started to disappear.

I've actually felt pressure from it too; there are many people who think it is odd to wait almost a year after starting to date a person before one has sex with them. It appears constantly in movies and on TV. Don't assume everyone is smart enough to stop having casual sex just because there are STDs out there.

And yeah, traditional chivalry wasn't always the best thing, which is why it needs to be modernized and taught for the right reasons, as I said in my first comment.

Ah but Basiorana, I too am in college (though it's grad school now for me) and I agree more with EG.

I've heard of ppl participating in this 'hook-up' culture but I don't know anyone personally. That's the problem with anecdotal evidence, there isn't any.

But I disagree with you on the part where you think that hook-up culture causes ppl all those problems. I don't think that hooking up causes those problems. They might coincide, but there's a bigger problem. You say that hooking up causes guys to expect sex from girls, effectively controlling their sexuality. Chivalry contols female sexuality. From that point of view, they both have one thing in common, men wanting to control when/how/ and with who women have sex with. I think that is where the emotional distress is coming from, from not being allowed to control your own sexuality.

Second I agree that abstinence-only 'education' hurts ppl who hook up. But ppl in relationships aren't exempt. And at least with hooking up you're not expecting the person(s) you're sleeping with to not sleep with other ppl. Obviously in both situations you would be better off with a solid understanding of birth control and STIs. So that problem isn't unique to hooking up and I would have trouble believing that it would even be worse.

I think that mainly because ppl in relationships and ppl hooking up are not mutually exclusive entities. Most ppl I know seem to flipflop between the two rather than taking part exclusively in either one. THAT is the number one reason I don't believe that this 'hook up culture' doesn't exist in the way that all these naysayers seem to think.

And the second one? I don't have a problem with casual sex. It doesn't cause problems. People being judgmental, malicious in their intentions, not being upfront and honest about their expectations, and genuinely not knowing what they want; THOSE cause problems.

I think we need to completely scrap the whole idea of chivalry and try again with the whole respect and tolerance thing. And maybe a healthy amount of if it occurs between two people capable of consent and doesn't affect you, fuck off.

The chivalry article rather made me laugh. I was one of those teens in high school who boycotted dances and led my little group of friends astray. (No joke, a parent once told me I was leading her son astray.)

At the time - I graduated in '97,so it's been 10 years since high school - it made perfect sense to us. One the one hand, put on pretty but uncomfortable clothes, listen to lame music and spend time with people we really didn't care for. On the other hand, wear comfortable close, eat pizza, watch movies with friends. No pressure for sex, no requests we dance or take pics or park or any of that stuff. Didn't have anything to do with chilvalry or hooking up or whatnot, it just had to do with choosing how we wanted to spend our evenings.

Yes, I'm a female and yes, I was the one who led my friends, both male and female, to boycott the precious high school moments like homecoming and prom. The world didn't end, we don't look back upon it with regret or longing and I'm pretty sure we had a better time than the ones who went to the homecoming dance and/or prom.

The other article that caught my eye was the one about Texas being the leader in teen pregnancies and repeat teen pregnancies. I'm a Texan and boy howdy, was I not surprised by that. Last year I had a seventeen year old *student* with 2 children, a three year old and a 16 month old. Unreal.

Basiorana, pressure to have sex definitely predates the "hookup culture."
The stuff about Horowitz was infuriating. As Pollitt points out, this is coming from major-league sexists who are probably fine with oppression of women outside of Islam (I'm reminded of D'Souza's argument that liberal support for women's rights is one of those things that justifiably enrage Muslims and drive them to terror).

ULTRAMAGNUS: "Must be that pesky semen they're craving;)* *note there was an article a while back about women being addicted to semen or some such stuff."

You're referring to Becky Burch's dissertation research - "Semen as an antidepressant" hypothesis." Basically her idea is that factors that motivated reproduction would have been selected for.

One of those mechanisms might have been chemicals in semen that elevate women's mood (above and beyond the obvious orgasm/direct physical pleasure). Becky noted that some of the components of semen are analagous to chemical components in antidepressants, and did a correlational study examining whether semen exposure was associated with elevated mood (controlling for a variety of relationship factors).

Interesting hypothesis, who knows if it is true or not.

Gallup, G. G. Jr., Burch, R. L., and Platek, S. (2002). Does semen contain antidepressant properties? Archives of Sexual Behavior 39(3), 289-291.

I don't know. There is still a lot of pressure to have sex and have it soon in relationships, at least where I am, and especially with incoming freshmen.

I don't worry about casual sex if people use protection, both know exactly what they want out of it and can voice it and agree, and people are allowed to NOT engage in casual sex and not be judged for it. But none of those happen frequently enough to make casual sex a good thing to encourage, at least for young women who are not confident and assertive enough to resist the pressures.

Chivalry, in the right context and for the right reasons, IS respect. And frankly it's better than the current alternative. In an ideal world we would have gained suitable respect for women BEFORE chivalry disappeared, and life would be great; but that's not how it happened, and I prefer chivalry to blatant misogyny.

FeDhu can you talk more about why you boycotted the dances - in Texas that must have been a brave step.

Have you gone to any formal events since?

I'm under a lot of pressure to go to my school formal (Prom in Americanese) from ppl and adults - both my mum and grandmother are already looking in the formalwear shops online and off and generally acting as if its definately going to happen.

Conservative country town thats heavily into tradition especially for girls/women - vs. kid thats started to realise shes a ALP supporting liberal feminist who wishes she was in the big city.

i dont hate the people that go to dances - i know thats their choice to make and i shouldnt try to do it for them - why im surprised FeDhu decided to "persuade" her friends.

What do people here think i should do?

I went to the dances at my high school mostly because they *weren't* big deals - they were an excuse for us to not be at anyone's house, like we usually were. I never had a date, so it was just a fun time to hang out with my friends - especially since I'm a bargain hunter and found my senior prom dress for $10.00, and my junior prom dress for $1.50. I went with one of my (girl) friends as a 'date' since we got discounts to buy a pair of tickets instead of sinlges.... For homecoming dances, we weren't supposed to 'upstage' the Court with our dresses, so we generally just wore jeans and cute tops, and gossiped at the side while they did their dance. I'm from Michigan, where I don't think these things are such a big deal. During my high school career, we seemed to mostly go through the motions of them just for the 'milestone' than the experience. I had fun, but I probably wouldn't have had any regrets if we had skipped and just had a bonfire those nights instead.

Julianne, it's your life you're the only one who has to live it. If it makes you uncomfortable tell them that this time, they don't get to live vicariously through you.

But back to how the whores are taking over our country.

Bas I can empathize with standing counter to what is commonly done in your group of friends or classmates. But in my ideal world (otherwise known as my head, le sigh) people should be able to have sex however and with whomever they want without it being of huge public interest. That is what I want, and anything short of that just isn't good enough (at least in the ideal sense, in the real world I would do whatever lets you sleep at night).

But I think I've already established that I think morality is relative and that I much prefer my own to what others would impose upon me. heh.

Aw yes but to me chivalry and misogyny are one and the same.
Women are weak, and need to be guided and controlled, taken care of.

But what about the women who didn't fit the mold laid out for them? There hasn't ever been chivalry for them. They get punished, hurt, ostracized, put-in-their-place.

Chivalry is all about taking care of someone too stupid, weak, and ignorant to do it themselves. Here can I carry your bags? Let me hold this heavy door open for you. Here take my arm as we walk, I'll make sure you don't get lost. Don't go out by yourself, take me along with you. Why? BC(proper) women aren't out on the streets alone.

I do not call that respect and it is a very poor substitute. I call that patronization, and I don't want any part of it.

If women were respected, chivalry would not be needed to protect the few women that the menz find worthy.

But the issues you raise with casual sex have nothing to do with the actual sex part. Using protection is an important part of ALL sex, not just casual sex. Knowing what you want and being able to speak up for it, applies in a million situations even completely outside of sex. We should be addressing the people who Do judge others, pressure others, victimize others.

Sitting there and saying we shouldn't encourage casual sex is bullshit. Instead of addressing the actual problem you want to tell people to avoid having certain sorts of sex because other people will think poorly of them. By saying that, you caste yourself in the same boat as people who want to 'save' sex for marriage and label everybody else as whores. I understand that you want to be pragmatic, but you're not even addressing the real problem. The real problem is not that people are having casual sex, the problem is that other people think it's okay to JUDGE them for it.

And secondly, I actually find it offensive that you assume that if a girl wants to have casual sex it is because she is not confident enough to say no and has problems asserting herself. Bullshit. You create that girl with your idea that girls need to be protected from casual sex and not encouraged to think that they're allowed to desire sex outside of a relationship.

Helping girls be more confident and assertive can start by us not telling them when and with whom it is or isn't okay to have sex with.

This thread reads a lot like a Basiorana Q&A.
-----------

I really want young people to learn to value their peers and their partners and to derive enjoyment from treating each other well. I don't think that has to be a gendered endeavor.

I recently graduated college and perhaps i can offer some insight into hookup culture. a lot of people i knew were part of it, and most of those who weren't were in relationships. A lot of the time its a friends with benefits situation and its nice because both people are on the same page and know what to expect- someone cool to go out with or meet up with after being out to fulfill your needs. no big deal. I still can't figure out why it is so hard for some people to believe that girls always want to be in a relationship. A lot of my friends and myself were not in relationships because we didn't want to be in them because of timing or because of lack of romantic interest in anyone. whatever the reason, I understand how having sex when you don't necessarily want to could lead to emotional damage, but to assume that mutually agreed upon sex or sexual activities can't work without causing that same damage (and, of course, only to women), is such a lame stereotype.

"Don't go out by yourself, take me along with you--" in my college town on weekends, this is a common practice by "chivalrous" men because it deters drunks, creeps and rapists from bothering girls if they've got a guy along with them. Is that right? No. But it's safer.

Truly chivalrous men (of whom I know several, but which are admittedly rare) do not care if a woman does not fit the mold. My brother, for example, will offer to get up from his seat on public transportation for any woman, even if she's a butch lesbian or was once a man or looks like a prostitute. They don't fit the classic chivalrous mold, but he is still chivalrous towards them (Actually, we've warned him about this on occasion lest a "feminist" woman take offense to his actions and retaliate).

And yeah, technically most women don't need to have a man offer his seat, or hold doors, or carry their bags. But the guys I know whom I would describe as chivalrous aren't doing it because they think women are weak, but rather because they think it's a nice, helpful thing to do, and they've been taught women are more likely than men to accept their help, so they're not going to offer it to men. And yes, I do know a lot of Boy Scout-type guys.

There is a kind of "chivalry" that is little better than misogyny, but that is not what I was raised to interpret as chivalry and not what I referred to here. I consider it unfortunate that the two approaches are so confused in our society.

And I am not saying that all women who engage in casual sex are doing so because they feel they cannot say no. I am saying that there are women out there for whom this is the case, many of them. Some were victims of abuse or other trauma, many are young and have been inundated their whole life with the idea of owing sex to the men around them.

If a woman truly wants to have sex outside of a relationship, more power to her. But our culture is glorifying that to the level at which middle-of-the-road types-- those who want sex outside of a traditional marriage but only within long-term trusting relationships-- feel that there is something wrong with how they want to live their life.

We shouldn't dictate sex. But what we have now is not the answer. Rather, we should focus on presenting a more realistic image of relationships to young women-- show them that there are relationships with or without sex, that there can be sex without relationships, and that they have the right to chose whatever scenario they want.

RE: the living-together-apart article

This piece was rather strange. The statistics cited about how many couples are living-together-apart seemed high, and I do wonder if that number included couples that haven't (yet or ever) divorced but are no longer "together".

The specific woman who wrote in seemed to gloss over the large (apparent) age difference between her and her husband, and his seeming disinterest in the children. She mentions "he agreed to take on the burden of children in his late 60s; the least I can do is let him get a good night’s rest" and that he hates noise and makes the children cry when they have to live with him- to me that was a red flag that the author had convinced this man who didn't want children to have them on the condition that he didn't have to do the difficult work. She certainly makes it sound as if he doesn't particularly care for the children and isn't willing to make room for her and the children or make changes to his apartment which he likes just so. Reading between the lines (and maybe I am wrong) but he sounds just too old and set in his ways to change for his third wife and the children she seems to want way more than him.

I wouldn't have issues with living-together-apart, and I have often said that the only way I could live with a long-term lover is if we had apartments across the hall from each other. Then again, I never want children. If there were children in the picture, I have no idea how they could really split the child-rearing 50-50- it seems almost impossible, and certainly not what this particular couple is striving for at all. My guess is unless the couple did live super-close, there would be one home/parent that would have the children most often, and that parent would do the majority of the difficult work.

RE: Did I steal my daughter?

A really interesting read that brought up even thornier issues that I have never read about before, such as the danger in supporting the bio-parent(s) after the adoption, which can mess up the child's village's perception of adoption. There was a part talking about how a $30,000 adoption seems mean when the parent could afford the child with an additional $200 a month. Now, I am the childfreeist childfreer to want my tubes tied, but even I can see that supporting a family halfway across the globe is not the same as raising a child at my home. Still, its more than a little sticky to be taking the kid away from the parents, spending gobs of money, when the parent(s) are alive and heathy and able to care for their child, if only they had a bit of help. It certainly put transatlantic adoptions in