Item: A New York Times trend piece about women who plan their weddings before meeting the possible groom.
Item: Article by Hugo Schwyzer, at Jezebel, about people (many of them women) who keep written lists of their sex partners.
Now, here’s my question for the peanut gallery (serious, non-rhetorical question, because I’m curious how our varied blog community will answer this, and whether people will agree on their answer): Which of these behaviors do you think is more common (for 21st century American women, specifically)?
- Planning your wedding before you’ve met the groom, of course.
- Having a written list to keep track of your sex partners, of course.
- I have no idea.
- Actually, they’re both probably pretty rare.
- Actually, they’re both probably pretty common.
Elaborate as much as you like, and feel free to argue either nature or nurture as the cause of whichever thing you believe to be true.
1. Planning your wedding before you’ve met the groom.
This is hardly a new thing. Almost every girl plays with Barbie and orchestrates some elaborate wedding with Ken, and so begins our wedding planning. When you’ve been planning your own magical and totally unique wedding since age four, it’s easy to progress to more permanent documentation techniques than an imaginary wedding between two dolls. Before the internet, it was pictures from bridal magazines taped to the walls or onto the dollhouse. Now, it’s Pinterest. Girls are obsessed with Pinterest (I am too, but not for wedding planning reasons) because they can create these “boards” to pin all of their dream wedding things to: dress, decorations, bridesmaid dresses, flowers, reception locations and blah blah blah. While it’s no new event, it’s certainly easier to create a wedding plan with the aid of the internet.
I have thought about where I want to get married (Maybe Disneyland… sorry I’m a Disney princess and it’s the happiest place on earth)and definitely looked at dress designs because those wedding dresses are complete works of art and it’s impossible not to envision how you would look in that. But I haven’t gone further than that. I have absolutely no intention of getting married anytime soon (if at all), so those details are irrelevant to me. However, a lot of girls are DYING TO GET MARRIED. They want the fairytale romance with the fairytale wedding to boot. Fairytale weddings need proper planning, and the best kind of planning begins around age 4 with Barbie and Ken. There ya go… girl wedding-thoughts in a couple of paragraphs.
Well, definitely number one – the young girl planning their wedding and acting it out – as Dani mentioned – is a cliché, right?
Number two – I don’t think it is common, but I wish I had done so. One of the comforts of middle-age is reminiscing on ones younger days. Finding oneself unable to recall the names of those whose company we may have enjoyed, however briefly, further reminds one of ones declining faculties.
It’s easy to remember when the number isn’t that great, except for that one night after we beat Alabama in football.
How many did you sleep with in just that one night, DADvocate?
Just one. My wife at the time. I’ve never had that much desire for a lot of different women. A few good women are enough. And, from my observation, there are only a few good women out there.
Yeah, they’re all pink on the inside.
I’ll go with (3) “I have no idea,” while also adding (6) “Why am I supposed to care about this?” On the other hand, it occurs to me that, from a public health standpoint, keeping a written list of one’s sex partners is not the worst idea in the world; though I wouldn’t suggest incorporating it into one’s pre-planned wedding. (I’d also like to add, imagine the size of Wilt Chamberlain’s, um, list! But perhaps that’s in poor taste.)
4) I doubt most of us need to write down the names. I think lots of girls fantasize about their wedding but few plan it all out in any kind of realistic way.
Steve
Re: On the other hand, it occurs to me that, from a public health standpoint, keeping a written list of one’s sex partners is not the worst idea in the world; though I wouldn’t suggest incorporating it into one’s pre-planned wedding
Leo Tolstoy apparently kept a ‘fuck list’ (it was actually a written diary listing all of his sexual encounters, ever) and presented it to his fiancee shortly before they were married. It didn’t go over well, though they did end up marrying.
Lynn Gazis-Sax,
What’s your position on The Schwyzer Scandal? As part of the feminist blogosphere, do you have an opinion?
That hit the feminist blogosphere at around the time I was seeing doctors for what later turned out to be a diagnosis of cancer. Somewhere early in that controversy, Jill of Feministe made a post in which she said she’d left the topic to other moderators because she was dealing with some health issues (I’m not sure what, I hope less serious than mine and I hope now resolved), made some remarks, and then got a lot of criticism for being insufficiently critical of Hugo (though she hadn’t exactly defended him, agreeing with her fellow Feministe bloggers’ decision no longer to feature him on Feministe). At that point, I decided I didn’t have the stomach to look at that particular conflict for as long as I was ill, and so I avoided it all last year (while watching people who had been my net friends split between Hugo partisans and Hugo critics).
Besides this, it turned out that, by the time the scandal was in full bloom, a set of established lore appeared, some of which was right and some of which was wrong, and questions arose, which didn’t all seem to me to have the same answer. Hugo *did* turn on the gas in his apartment in what he himself calls an attempted murder/suicide of an ex-girl friend, a number of years ago (I think it’s now 15 years?). He did *not* rape another ex-girl friend (the post being referenced there talks about an ex-girl friend who said yes when she’d rather have said no so as not to hurt his feelings – someone made a carefully linked post characterizing that post of Hugo’s as a confession of rape, and then that post got linked all over as a guide to the scandal). He probably *was* of questionable sanity when he turned on the gas (the phone call saying “we’re checking out” raises questions in my mind about whether he understood the nature of his act at the time, and the fact that everyone involved, including both police and family of the victim, thought he belonged in a mental hospital rather than in jail also suggests that his sanity was doubtful). It *does* seem reasonable that he was dropped from Scarleteen when all of this came out (since that site is safe space for teens, and such a grave act, even that long ago, seems reasonable grounds not to have someone as a contributor). It also *does* seem reasonable, given the not-trying-to-be-safe-space nature of Jezebel, that he’s still a contributor there.
I think, in general, that some acts may incur some longstanding consequences as to where you may do what, even after you’ve turned your life around (the Catholic priest child molesting scandals convince me of that), but that no acts enforce an obligation for the whole world to de-friend you. (I don’t, for instance, think that Jodie Foster deserves criticism for publicly remaining friends with Mel Gibson, as long as she doesn’t use her influence to get him any special exemption from any legal penalties that may appropriately apply to him, or to harass anyone who may be his victim. And this isn’t because I have any particular sympathy for Mel Gibson himself.)
Re: Hugo *did* turn on the gas in his apartment in what he himself calls an attempted murder/suicide of an ex-girl friend, a number of years ago (I think it’s now 15 years?).
Let’s just recollect one particularly gross detail of this little episode. He brought it up on his blog, in the context of a friend of his feeling guilty about leaving a dog outside on a cold night, and how it could have been killed. (Which is something I did too about two years ago, with a cat, and felt very guilty about afterwards). Hugo thought he would make this dude feel better by saying, “hey, that’s nothing, I almost killed my girlfriend once!”
I think it’s pretty disgusting to compare deliberately attempting to kill a woman, with accidentally almost killing a dog.
Re: He probably *was* of questionable sanity when he turned on the gas (the phone call saying “we’re checking out” raises questions in my mind about whether he understood the nature of his act at the time,
I think he said he was depressed or something, but this country is full of lots and lots of depressed people (as well as people suffering from anxiety, bipolar, and lots of other issues), and the overwhelming majority of them never attempt to kill anyone, except possibly themselves. I don’t think he ever implied he was delusional or anything.
Delusional only about the girl friend’s desires (I got the impression he was saying he thought she, too, would think suicide a fine idea, a thought that was very much not the case). Not delusional about the fact that turning on the gas was likely to kill them both.
Hugo was more than “depressed or something”; he was, at that time in his life, according to another post of his that predates by years the confession about the girl friend, in and out of mental hospitals repeatedly with various DSM diagnoses, including depression, multiple suicide attempts, alcohol and drug addiction, an eating disorder, and various diagnoses of a personality disorder, usually borderline personality disorder (but sometimes narcissistic or antisocial personality disorder). He was hospitalized six times, over the course of eleven years, involuntarily (what we call in California a 5150), as a danger to himself and others. (Presumably the last of these involuntary hospitalizations was the one after the attempted murder/suicide.) Two of those times (presumably including the one involving the murder/suicide attempt), the hold was extended beyond the initial 72 hours when he was judged a continuing threat to himself or others. I expect this history is why he wound up committed to a psych ward rather than facing prosecution.
And it’s also true that most people who are depressed, or mentally ill, or living with alcohol and drug addictions or eating disorders, don’t attempt to kill anyone except, often, themselves. Hugo is an exception.
Lynn Gazis-Sax,
Correct. But he wasn’t suffering from any condition that deprived him of the ability to know the nature and quality of what he was doing. He knew very well that he was trying to kill his girlfriend. And I don’t believe for a minute that he thought she asked him too. He admitted as much in his post of about a year ago, which got took down for ‘legal reasons’.
(3) I have no idea, since I don’t recall doing either one. If I had kept a list, it would have two names on it, both of which I have no trouble remembering. Plus another almost-ran. Is it notable that I’m still on good terms with both of the ones I didn’t marry, after almost 50 years? What on earth is the Hugo thing? Any connection to the scifi prize?
I think it’s cool that you’re still on good terms with both the ones you didn’t marry.
The Hugo thing is the fact that a professor at a community college in Pasadena, named Hugo Schwyzer, who teaches history and women’s studies, and who is known as a feminist blogger particularly given to confessional posts about his misbehavior in the bad old days when he used alcohol and drugs, and how his life turned around once he got serious about the Twelve Step movement and sobriety, revealed an incident from that past that was more severe than any he had previously revealed, causing a great deal of controversy in the feminist blogosphere over whether he could still be accepted there. This controversy continued throughout 2012, with various online publications deciding either that they could no longer feature him, or that they still would.
Controversy about other past self-revelations of his, both mistaken (no, he did not rape a past girl friend) and true (yes, he did, back in those bad old days, sleep with students for whose grades he was responsible) attached to the controversy, as did controversy over various of his current views (the most frequently cited being something he said about men who want to jizz on their girl friends’ faces), and about the way in which he revealed the most major misdeed and whether it showed a full appreciation of just how bad that act was.
That deed (which I gather happened in 1998) was turning on the gas in his apartment, where his then on again off again girl friend was passed out after he and she had been drinking and drugging together, in the belief that said gas would kill them both (but first having phoned and told a friend, who made sure cops showed up and rescued them both). Hugo received no legal sanctions for this act, but did spend time committed involuntarily to a mental hospital.
During the course of the controversy, a legal action was brought against Hugo enjoining him against speaking further about these events, and, possibly as a result of this legal action, some or all of what he wrote about his actions is said to have been removed from his blog. This has the result that all of our information about what happened comes from what we remember of posts no longer present, written only by Hugo, who gave multiple accounts varying in some details, and who describes his state at the time (thoroughly wasted) as such that he may not be an entirely reliable witness as to the details of how matters transpired. I think, though, that the basic facts that he turned on the gas, that he and his girl friend were both in the apartment at the time, that they were both removed from the apartment and brought to a hospital, and that he was involuntarily committed to a psych ward, are not in dispute; I can’t be sure of all other details.
Here’s what someone at the Atlantic wrote about the controversy, a few weeks after it had started: http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/02/exile-in-gal-ville-how-a-male-feminist-alienated-his-supporters/252915/
Re: written only by Hugo,
I’d sort of like to hear what the lady involved has to say about all of this. My guess is it wouldn’t be complementary.