Rediscovering second wave feminism

My college friend Jonathan Liu wrote an incredibly inspiring piece about the sacrifices he made by choosing to be a stay-at-home dad that also applies to making any life decisions: once you make a decision, don't keep looking at all the decisions because "the grass is greener where you tend it." (I'm sure he's not the first to say it, but I've never heard it before, and it's a wonderful saying and a vital point for anyone making any decision.)

His piece was in reaction to another piece by a mother who went part-time in her career after becoming a parent, but who divorced and now wishes that she had been more active in her career. The trend of the last decade for highly educated women to become stay at home moms was treated as a third wave feminist phenomenon --- the trope went that second wavers overemphasized career at the expense of family, but third wave feminists can be confident in their position enough to take time out of their careers to raise their children. (Likewise, some third wavers thought that second wavers were too sexually conservative, and thought that the circumstances had changed enough that it was safe to be promiscuous, but even setting aside questions of the sexual double standard, third wave feminism hasn't erased the economic factors at play in the sexual marketplace, which I've discussed in previous posts about hooking up.)

The third wavers certainly have a point --- some latch-key kids of the past wish their parents had been around for them, and the third wave stay at home phenomenon tries to rectify this. But truly this article just points to where the second wavers were right: economic forces can't be ignored. Women who have prestigious and/or well-paid careers outside the home in addition to children have a more secure position if their marriages fail, as many marriages do --- marriages don't have a 50% failure rate as many say, and everyone has to work to make their marriage as good as possible to avoid divorce, but divorce is certainly common enough to be worth thinking about. And it might even be that women who work outside the home in good jobs might even be less likely to get divorced. I'm not aware of the research on that point, but my knowledge of the research says that they are better off on a range of other metrics.

None of this is to say that anyone's choice is right or wrong. That's an individual decision. To the contrary, as Jonathan said, everyone has to be aware of the true costs of their decision, rather than believing that one choice or the other is an optimal choice. There is no optimal choice in general, but each individual has to figure out what is best for them. Second wave feminism is not a religion, and there's no virtue in adhering to its foundational "tenets" out of blind faith. But there are reasons why stay at home moms of previous generations were not content to stay at home and put their careers second. Many circumstances have changed, every family is different, and so on, but these reasons have certainly not expired. The modern world has made so many things possible, but widows and divorcees are still worse off than married women, working women with good careers are still better insulated from hardship, and second wave classics like the Women's Room are still relevant.

Safe sex ads: where everyone is above average

New safe sex ad from Candies Foundation with Bristol Palin and Mike Sorrentino from Jersey Shore. First, Bristol looks a bit nervous, fidgeting as she's talking about sex and safe sex, which is odd since I would think they could try refilming until she didn't look nervous. Second, Mr. Sorentino whips out condoms, and brags that they're large-sized, and then offers one to Ms. Palin, just in case. A condom that's too large is only marginally better than no condom at all. What good does it do for a safe sex ad to raise the size issue when, by definition, only a small proportion of their viewers need large-sized condoms? While googling around for information about what proportion of males "need" large condoms, I found an article which said that the market share for a single large-sized brand went up from 5% to 20%, but that the condoms are not actually larger than other condoms.

Balanced arguments are more persuasive

According to this summary of a meta-analysis, arguments are more persuasive when both sides are presented, even when preaching to the choir. This research explains why abstinence-only sex education --- which is still funded at $50 million per year and requires that only disadvantages of birth control and condoms be presented, not advantages --- does not encourage abstinence as well as comprehensive sex education does, even among those inclined to believe it, and why the only abstinence-only program found effective (the Jemmotts' program) was not one-sided enough to be funded under federal abstinence-only funds.

Vows, oaths, and pledges

Rabbi Marc Angel explains why virginity pledges don't work, although he's talking about loyalty oaths in Israel, and why they are a bad idea: "To those who are loyal to Israel, oaths are not necessary. To those who are not loyal, oaths won't help."

My Baltimore Sun op-ed defending O'Donnell on abstinence, but not on poverty

My op-ed in today's Baltimore Sun says that O'Donnell's personal religious beliefs about abstinence and masturbation are reasonably mainstream evangelical beliefs, but that her mainstream Republican beliefs ignore that the Bible says that fortunate, wealthy societies have an obligation to provide for the poor.

Originally I framed the article as we should be sensitive to her because the Bible says to be sensitive to those who are alone through no fault of their own like widows, orphans, and converts, but the Bible also says societies have the obligation to be generous to the poor. This obligation to sensitivity for widows, orphans, and converts seems to extend to be sensitive also to people who are involuntarily single, as virtually all religious single adults are, and abstinence must be a particularly difficult subject for her since abstinence means that she has an idealized view of marriage and her eventual husband she hoped would love her for her beliefs and admire her for having stuck to them since her conversion to become more religious. I liked the parallelism, but it involved too much speculation about her personal life.

More importantly, I'm not a religious authority, so it's not my place to say what we should and shouldn't do.

Two good comments so far on Baltimore Sun. One said how to you judge which beliefs you criticize candidates for. That's a really terrific topic --- many politicians have personal religious beliefs, but they maintain a line between those beliefs and the policies that they support. One example is Joe Lieberman where it's my understanding that his personal religious beliefs should in theory make him more supportive of social programs to help the poor, but lately he has been voting against these programs for what may be political reasons. A case where religious beliefs do influence policy for Christine O'Donnell is that she is clearly extremely anti-abortion and anti-choice --- she would ban abortion even for rape survivors --- and there's every reason to expect she would vote that way, and that's a great reason to vote against her, but that's from her policy statements, not from her religious beliefs. On the other hand, there are some distinguished politicians who have personal beliefs against abortion, and they themselves would not have abortions except under limited circumstances, who have strongly pro-choice voting records. It would be a great study to look at when what we know of candidates' personal religious beliefs agree with their voting records, and when their personal religious beliefs contrast with them. And perhaps this study has already been done. Any political scientists to comment?

Second comment calls for holding politicians accountable for making "rational evidence-based decisions," and oh my, I am so in agreement with that. Not making evidence-based decisions, and instead making decisions for reasons of politics, is extremely common in our government. Paul Krugman is a Nobel Prize winning economist and an expert in the Great Depression, and he's been writing op-eds for the past 2 years saying that we need to give more stimulus or unemployment is going to stay high for years and years, and we are going to lose a generation. And he's been saying the same theme over and over, and he's an extremely distinguished economist, a Nobel Prize winner, and not enough politicians listened to him to affect policy. And the failure to provide fiscal policy that can be adequate stimulus is the worst way that the government can fail people. We're talking about hurting young adults who happen to be coming of age now and during the next several years, and the effects of a worse job market when they come of age will affect them for their ENTIRE LIVES, and they will have not just lower earnings, but (judging by studies of past generations born in high unemployment eras) worse social problems. That's huge, and in my opinion way more important than abstinence education. But, yes, abstinence education is a shame, especially how $50 million abstinence-only funding came back in the health care reform bill in order to get it through Congress. And both of those issues are because of the 60 vote filibuster, and the fact that Senators no longer have to actually filibuster, they can just claim that they are. Some have said that if they actually had to speak for 24 hours straight, they would do it less. Again, the political scientists can speak.

New sex ed game

This sex ed game Privates is supposed to be fun. I don't use a PC, so I will never know, but it definitely looks better than the web game that they gave as an example of a terrible sex ed game: parts were funny and parts just strange, like their character names: Captain Condom, Power Pap, Willy the Kid (phallic-shaped but short), and Wonder Vag. Really, Wonder Vag. I played for 30 seconds before I had 4th grade flashbacks. Looking forward to hearing how Privates works out.

Virgin dating site

Virgin dating site "use[s] virginity as a significant compatibility tool to bring people together. Some people may overlook the bonding power of virginity. Virginity as an important common aspect between people can lead to close friendships, or can even serve as a mutual precious gift of marriage."

I wonder how many users they will have and whether any will not also be on eharmony or a big evangelical dating site (presuming that there is an equivalent to jdate for evangelicals.) It is interesting that they would segment the evangelical dating market like this.