Serious ew

Via feministe, a twofer: first, a video of a "father-daughter purity ball." Which is totally and completely healthy, just like you're already thinking.

Then, link to an article by some charmer called Cary Tennis. Answering (on Salon, yet, this guy has a column) a reader's query ("Is it dangerous for a woman to wear party clothes on the bus at night?" [or, is my friend's boyfriend just a control freak and i do mean FREAK, basically]), he replies:

There is something to be said for being invisible. For the city is also a stage, occupied by actors trying to become real. Suffocated by the sheer numbers around us as we sit on the buses and subways day after day, we sometimes feel that we are less real than others, less powerful, less important and respected; we dream of doing something to take some of that power and visibility away from them. So we attack them, take their money and spend it, take their credit cards, take their lives.

How do we pick our victims? We pick the ones who catch our eye, the ones whose bright colors enrage us, whose sexual attractiveness fills us with resentment and anger.

Who will be the victim? That pretty one there.

Perhaps this is what your friend’s boyfriend understands...

... Or perhaps her boyfriend is not really thinking about crime per se, but about something a little more subtle. Perhaps it is his own discomfort at knowing what men think when they look at his girlfriend in her party clothes. He knows because he is a man and thinks certain thoughts, and knows from talking with other men that they think these thoughts too, when they look at women whom they do not know. He knows that on the subway men who do not know his girlfriend will look at her in a certain way and think these thoughts. He does not like these thoughts. They are an outrage.


He does not want men thinking these things about his girlfriend, but there is not much he can do about it. A man's thoughts are private. No law can say what a man may think. Only if what he is thinking shows in his eyes can one know. So what can he do?

... I do not know the answers. I am just another man on the subway, invisible, hungry, alone, watching.

in other words:

"You talkin' to me?? You talkin' to ME???"

or

"THE CALL IS COMING FROM INSIDE THE HOUSE!! DON'T GO IN THERE!! AIYIEEEEE"

Meanwhile, not very far away, red stapler remarks on a fellow evangelical's apologia for the haggard Haggard:

As every pastor knows, we are always at risk from the sin in us and the sinful temptations around us...

My suspicion is that as our culture becomes more sexually rebellious, things will only get worse. Therefore, as a means of encouragement, I would like to share some practical suggestions for fellow Christian leaders, especially young men:

...Most pastors I know do not have satisfying, free, sexual conversations and liberties with their wives. At the risk of being even more widely despised than I currently am, I will lean over the plate and take one for the team on this. It is not uncommon to meet pastors’ wives who really let themselves go; they sometimes feel that because their husband is a pastor, he is therefore trapped into fidelity, which gives them cause for laziness. A wife who lets herself go and is not sexually available to her husband in the ways that the Song of Songs is so frank about is not responsible for her husband’s sin, but she may not be helping him either.

Yes indeedy. Wifey has gone cold and lost her girlish figure, which naturally makes hubby go after the hot young boys who, um, haven't lost their...girlish...figures...yet?

Don't you hate it when that happens? mebbe Curves needs to start a new program: "Thin Thighs and a Penis in Thirty Days!"

Praise the Lord and pass the Slim-Fast! bless his heart. and, it is damn good of him to

"lean over the plate and take one for the team on this."

A real trooper, that one.

Finally, antiprincess links to some dude who is apparently of the opinion that

...[feminist blogger] goes on about never being able to walk down the street without fear, never be able to camp in the woods without fear, and that, "I will never experience a time when I can, without fear, without reservation, bring a man to my house and not have it even cross my mind that he would rape me."

Wow ... she's finally catching on.

Yep, all those things are ABSOLUTELY correct.

But where you radical feminists get it wrong is that these facts are not the result of some sort of "social conspiracy" meant to "dominate women" - these things are GENETIC, and necessarily so.

Based on the behavior of the vast majority of the women I have encountered, if most men did not have the drive to PERSUE A WOMAN A LITTLE MORE AGGRESSIVELY THAN SHE ORDINARILY CARES FOR, at least at first, there simply WOULD BE NO MORE HUMANS.

Yes indeed, the armchair evolutionary psychologists are in the HOUSE. did he use the term "alpha male?..." eh, can't be bothered to look.

all's i know is that any species or subspecies that produces people/giant lizards/insects who say things like

Yep ... I can see how having someone in your life who is sufficiently attracted to you that he even wants to slip you the sausage when you're maybe not quite at your best is sufficient cause to CONTEMPLATE SUICIDE.

...really has some ways to go with that whole "evolving" thing. or at any rate, the individual in question certainly does. not least for the odious phrase "slip her the sausage."