I am a feminist. I studied postmodern feminist theory at Uni and felt confident that the progress and passion behind feminism offered by deconstructionism — the cultural and linguistic tools a women would need to redefine her story and her self — would result in a female self-empowerment much more substantial than the hyper-sexual self-objectification of Manolo Blahnik feminism. I am not the only one asking the question, “What Ever Happened to Feminism?” Check out Body Politic by Ingrid Sischy from the T Style Magazine (yes, I read it).

“Body Politic
By INGRID SISCHY
Published: February 25, 2007Last fall I was stopped in my tracks as I walked into a show in Milan during the collections, and a male friend, who’d just witnessed the same debacle that I had, raised his eyebrows and asked, “What happened to feminism???? It’s a question that is being asked repeatedly these days, and for good reason. The only word for the fashion collection we’d just seen was “bimbo??? — clothes put out on the runway without irony, without quotation marks, without any raison d’être other than saving money on material. Over the course of the next two weeks I gave myself a little assignment. I’d watch the runways in Milan and Paris and check off those clothes that signified a throwback to the long past of objectifying women. And on the other hand I’d put a little star down when the designer seemed to be wanting to take us into the future with a view of women that reflected self-possession.

Good thing I still like swings. Of course there were exceptions, designers who were true to the present, but by and large it was backward and forward and backward and forward. Then there were the designers who left earth entirely and showed a universe of female droids and cyborgs. These were the ones who, intentionally or not, illuminated the big challenge facing women’s fashion, best described by tweaking the famous tag line from “Star Trek???: women’s fashion, the final frontier . . . to boldly go where no one has gone before.

That’s easier said than done. As Miuccia Prada said to me, “The problem with new ideas about feminism is that there has been so little public discussion of the subject.??? Well, that’s changing, big time — if not in fashion at least in the art world, which has historically been the first place where a new perspective begins. In fact, after it seemed as though the subject of feminism had been put on simmer, the art world is cooking with gas again, not just for a new generation of feminist artists but in retrospect too. The year started out with a symposium at the Museum of Modern Art, once such a perfect target for feminist critics, who felt it was stuck in the Stone Age as far as the representation of women goes. Now there are bicoastal extravaganzas planned for this spring: the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles will stage “WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution??? from March 4 to July 16, and the Brooklyn Museum opens “Global Feminisms??? on March 23. The show celebrates a new center for feminist art, anchored by the permanent installation of Judy Chicago’s famous “The Dinner Party.??? How these exhibitions will loop back to fashion and the creative/commercial balancing act that designers have to do is anybody’s guess, but bets are that there will be a trickle-down effect, as there often is.

What’s interesting is that if one goes through the iconic works of the first, second and third waves of feminist writers, there is so little that actually addresses fashion. Rereading Simone de Beauvoir, Kate Millet, Shulamith Firestone, Germaine Greer, Lucy Lippard, Linda Nochlin and so many others, I was struck by the dearth of attention to this subject, which after all has everything to do with how identity is constructed for the outside world. There’s no lack of thinking when it comes to inner life, working life, creative life and public life, but when fashion comes up, the attitude tends to be knee-jerk and programmatic. Take Greer’s climactic moment at the end of “The Female Eunuch,??? where she creates a sort of bill of rights, inciting women to: “. . . refuse hobbles and deformity and take possession of your body and glory in its power, accepting its own laws of loveliness.??? In fact some of the most powerful, liberated women I know choose to hobble around in the craziest skyscraper shoes. “The higher the heel,??? they say, “the better I feel.???

But the other part of Greer’s declaration — that women have the right to control their own bodies — is as resonant today as it was when she wrote it nearly 40 years ago. One can see that drama being played out in the fashion arena right now, with the debate over skinny models brought to a head by the deaths last fall of two South American catwalkers from complications of anorexia. The hysteria that resulted led to a spectacle of ignorance, hypocrisy and bureaucracy. If the issue weren’t so serious, some of the solutions proposed by bureaucrats — like models being weighed in like boxers or jockeys — would be funny. But unfortunately they don’t just infringe on everything that we are supposed to hold dear in the department of human liberties, they also display so little understanding of the disease they are trying to combat that it is frightening. So is the tendency to lump together girls who are naturally skinny with those who are sick, two very different realities. Hey, as someone who likes her fries, I’m all for bringing back a Rubenesque shape as the height of fashion, but the fact is that perceptions of beauty cannot, and will not, be dictated by laws. That’s where consciousness comes in. At the center of it all, for anorexics, but also for each of us, lies the issue of control, or as Barbara Kruger wrote in one of her most unforgettable artworks: “Your body is a battleground.??? Hopefully you win.”

Manolo Blahnik Feminism: The Right to Choo’s

I call the new feminism Manolo Blahnik Feminism, which is a super-sexual, super-sexy, and super-confusing form of self-empowerment. Ariel Levy calls it “raunch culture” and I believe that it is going to blow up in American women’s faces.

I believe very strongly that there are too many dangerous contradiction in the new feminism, in the new American woman.

I attended a panel on gender differences in the new feminism and my question to the panel was, “I understand how empowering strappy stilettos, butt jeans, bare bellies, and camisole tops are for the modern woman. It is all about taking back the sex, taking back the gaze, reclaiming the control of what is cute, what is hot, what is sexy, it about taking back control, reclaiming feelings of pride in the body, pride in the shape and tan earned from an active, outdoorsy life. That’s all fine and good. Unfortunately, we men never got the memo. I never got the memo.”

In fact, I feel sort of like a fox in a hen house. Why? Well, all of my old-world, unenlightened, seduction techniques work now better than ever! In fact, the truth is, I am really too nice for the Manolo Blahnik k feminist.

The Manolo Blahnik feminist wants to be taken, wants to find a real man, wants to take risks and have a great time; she pursues a doctrine of devil may care.

Well, no matter what the Manolo Blahnik Feminist thinks she wants and no matter what she thinks she’s doing, she is actually walking into a very dangerous trap.

We men are not responding to this self-empowerment with amazement and respect, we’re responding to it by licking our lips, by taking advantage, by rubbing our hands together, and by trying not to jinx this out of being. We are pretty well convinced that what is happening won’t last: the Manolo Blahnik feminist fancies herself the aggressor, the buyer, the pursuer, the seducer. And we men are what she is after.

All we see is, “man that girl is fine — I’d like some of that.”

As men in such a seller’s market, we don’t have to choose. We can date another willing girl every night. We can push sex much faster than we ever could believe. The three-date rule? Ha! That’s the official rule, but now the first date counts from the night we first met. Oral sex on the first date has sort of become de rigueur — if you want a second date.

Instead of getting control, the Manolo Blahnik Feminist has relinquished control to us men.

And even worse, this is a very dangerous game. We men are bigger, stronger, and not all of us are so nice. I personally have a lot of experience with women who are survivors — survivors not just of dating or their 20s, but survivors of sexual abuse and rape.

I have loved them, I have befriended them, and I worked through relationships with women who have survived sexual abuse and rape.

Its always an ugly story and the world is never the same. We just have not received the memo. This kind of exciting, naughty, passionate, irresponsible, reckless indulgence in “raunch culture” is going to result in one hell of a cultural hangover.

Many women will be unable to recover from this self-indulgence with any semblance of faith, trust, hope, or intactness.

And many men, too.

When it comes right down to it, who would have any of the right stuff to even have faith in marriage, the family, and children after indulging in such self-destructive, self-loathing chaos?

Not I.

I am not sure if modern women have it very good. Not nearly as good as would be expected. I attended college at a high point for feminism an academia, when a woman would still identify with being a feminist.

Not any more.

Not Liberating, After All
How did feminists end up in bed with Hugh Hefner?

BY WENDY SHALIT
Wednesday, September 21, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT

Ariel Levy attended Wesleyan University in the 1990s, and she doesn’t feel the better for it. It was a place where “group sex, to say nothing of casual sex, was de rigueur.” It was a place where they had “coed showers, on principle.” When Ms. Levy suggested to a department head that it would be nice to have at least one course in the traditional literary canon, she was dismissed with icy contempt. Yet elsewhere on campus a professor of the humanities taught a course on pornography featuring, um, detailed textual analysis.

It was all supposed to be so liberating. But it wasn’t, as Ms. Levy argues forcefully in “Female Chauvinist Pigs.” It was merely the academic groundwork for what she calls “raunch culture,” now so ubiquitous that we take it for granted. Young women wear shirts emblazoned with “Porn Star” across the chest. Teen stores sell “Cat in the Hat” thong underwear. Parents treat their daughters’ friends to “cardio striptease” classes for birthday parties. This is liberation?

Ms. Levy is baffled. “Why,” she wondered, “is laboring to look like Pamela Anderson empowering?” Why did female Olympic athletes pose for Playboy before the summer 2004 Games? Why did Katie Couric feel the need to point to her cleavage and gush “these are actually real!” when she guest-hosted “The Tonight Show” a couple of years ago?

Some sort of pervasive pressure, apparently, requires “everyone who is sexually liberated . . . to be imitating strippers and porn stars.” Ms. Levy describes the perfect distillation of this impulse–a social group called CAKE that hosts steamy, hooking-up parties in New York and London. CAKE makes big bucks advertising “feminism in action”–it claims to be the place where “sexual equality and feminism finally meet”–but its events are indistinguishable from those held at the Playboy Mansion.

The surface logic of such conduct is fairly simple, notes Ms. Levy. “Women had come so far,” or so the thinking went, that “we no longer needed to worry about objectification or misogyny.” If male chauvinist pigs “regarded women as pieces of meat, we would outdo them and be Female Chauvinist Pigs: women who make sex objects of other women and of ourselves.”

Well, Ms. Levy is having none of it, and she is not the only one. Even Erica Jong seems to feel that something has gone wrong. Known for popularizing the idea that a woman may want consequence-free sex, Ms. Jong today declares: “Being able to have an orgasm with a man you don’t love . . . that is not liberation.” It isn’t? Someone should tell this to Annie, a blue-eyed 29-year-old who admits to Ms. Levy that she “used to get so hurt” after a night of sex that didn’t yield an emotional bond. Now she has gotten over it, or tried to: “I’m like a guy,” she brags.

How did this happen? Why did feminism sell its soul to the sexual-liberation movement in the first place? After all, the original feminists were fighting to be taken seriously. Hugh Hefner, by contrast, said that his ideal girl “resembles a bunny . . . vivacious, jumping–sexy.” There seems to be a contradiction here.

Ms. Levy’s answer is that, after a brief and failed fight against pornography, feminism joined forces with Hef & Co. to fight for abortion rights. This is a plausible explanation, as far as it goes. Abortion has indeed assumed a primary importance in both feminist “rights” thinking and in the whole culture of soft-core libertinism: Mr. Hefner is a big fan of abortion, for obvious reasons.

But something else may be going on. Feminism grounded itself, in its early days, in the idea that there were no differences between the sexes. A girl wanting to keep her virginity was bad, for sexual reticence amounted to asserting a separate standard, a Victorian one at that. To Hef, modesty was a “hang-up,” and to the feminists it was a “patriarchal construct.” Ms. Levy believes that feminism was on the right track but then veered off-course: “What has moved into feminism’s place . . . is an almost opposite style, attitude, and set of principles.”

But maybe feminism’s foundations were weak from the start. Everyone in Ms. Levy’s book–whether it’s middle-class girls who feel anxiety about appearing “hot” or grown women who confess to Ms. Levy that “accumulating sex for its own sake . . . is not that sexual”–shows that a woman’s experience of sex and love is very different from that of an adolescent boy or a man. Indeed, the more a woman imitates a man, the clearer these differences become.

Paris Hilton tells Rolling Stone: “My boyfriends always tell me I’m not sexual. Sexy, but not sexual.” (Ms. Levy reports that on one of the infamous videotapes she takes a cellphone call during intercourse.) Plainly, the sexual revolution has not brought fulfillment for women. Even its mascots experience boredom, and for the civilians there is distress and heartache.

It may be that, like Ms. Levy, a lot of feminists now regret getting in bed with Mr. Hefner. Yet if you mention the word “modesty” within 20 feet of them their heads spin around like Linda Blair in “The Exorcist.” This is where they get stuck. Only if feminism can embrace the more traditional ways that men and women have courted throughout the ages can it have anything practical to offer young women. To the extent that feminists dismiss as worthless anything that is perceived as “backtracking,” they only help to perpetuate the “raunch culture”–even as they deplore its effects.

Take a beach scene that Ms. Levy recounts, when the male “friends” of two girls pressure them to take off their suits. Soon surrounded by a circle of 40 screaming men, the girls say “no way!” but eventually give in and spank each other to appease the crowd.

Such a girl requires, in addition to perhaps Mace, a compelling alternative to the Female Chauvinist Pig. Otherwise she may well give in to social pressure–not to mention professorial nonsense–and then wonder what’s wrong with her when she is not happy with the pig in her bed or the pig she has become.

Ms. Shalit is author of “A Return to Modesty: Discovering the Lost Virtue.” You can buy “Female Chauvinist Pigs” from the OpinionJournal bookstore.

September 20, 2005

Many Women at Elite Colleges Set Career Path to Motherhood http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/20/national/20women.html?ex=1127966400&en=3f7348e314a603ee&ei=5070&emc=eta1

By LOUISE STORY

Cynthia Liu is precisely the kind of high achiever Yale wants: smart (1510 SAT), disciplined (4.0 grade point average), competitive (finalist in Texas oratory competition), musical (pianist), athletic (runner) and altruistic (hospital volunteer). And at the start of her sophomore year at Yale, Ms. Liu is full of ambition, planning to go to law school.

So will she join the long tradition of famous Ivy League graduates? Not likely. By the time she is 30, this accomplished 19-year-old expects to be a stay-at-home mom.

“My mother’s always told me you can’t be the best career woman and the best mother at the same time,” Ms. Liu said matter-of-factly. “You always have to choose one over the other.”

At Yale and other top colleges, women are being groomed to take their place in an ever more diverse professional elite. It is almost taken for granted that, just as they make up half the students at these institutions, they will move into leadership roles on an equal basis with their male classmates.

There is just one problem with this scenario: many of these women say that is not what they want.

Many women at the nation’s most elite colleges say they have already decided that they will put aside their careers in favor of raising children. Though some of these students are not planning to have children and some hope to have a family and work full time, many others, like Ms. Liu, say they will happily play a traditional female role, with motherhood their main commitment.

Much attention has been focused on career women who leave the work force to rear children. What seems to be changing is that while many women in college two or three decades ago expected to have full-time careers, their daughters, while still in college, say they have already decided to suspend or end their careers when they have children.

“At the height of the women’s movement and shortly thereafter, women were much more firm in their expectation that they could somehow combine full-time work with child rearing,” said Cynthia E. Russett, a professor of American history who has taught at Yale since 1967. “The women today are, in effect, turning realistic.”

Dr. Russett is among more than a dozen faculty members and administrators at the most exclusive institutions who have been on campus for decades and who said in interviews that they had noticed the changing attitude.

Many students say staying home is not a shocking idea among their friends. Shannon Flynn, an 18-year-old from Guilford, Conn., who is a freshman at Harvard, says many of her girlfriends do not want to work full time.

“Most probably do feel like me, maybe even tending toward wanting to not work at all,” said Ms. Flynn, who plans to work part time after having children, though she is torn because she has worked so hard in school.

“Men really aren’t put in that position,” she said.

Uzezi Abugo, a freshman at the University of Pennsylvania who hopes to become a lawyer, says she, too, wants to be home with her children at least until they are in school.

“I’ve seen the difference between kids who did have their mother stay at home and kids who didn’t, and it’s kind of like an obvious difference when you look at it,” said Ms. Abugo, whose mother, a nurse, stayed home until Ms. Abugo was in first grade.

While the changing attitudes are difficult to quantify, the shift emerges repeatedly in interviews with Ivy League students, including 138 freshman and senior females at Yale who replied to e-mail questions sent to members of two residential colleges over the last school year.

The interviews found that 85 of the students, or roughly 60 percent, said that when they had children, they planned to cut back on work or stop working entirely. About half of those women said they planned to work part time, and about half wanted to stop work for at least a few years.

Two of the women interviewed said they expected their husbands to stay home with the children while they pursued their careers. Two others said either they or their husbands would stay home, depending on whose career was furthest along.

The women said that pursuing a rigorous college education was worth the time and money because it would help position them to work in meaningful part-time jobs when their children are young or to attain good jobs when their children leave home.

In recent years, elite colleges have emphasized the important roles they expect their alumni – both men and women – to play in society.

For example, earlier this month, Shirley M. Tilghman, the president of Princeton University, welcomed new freshmen, saying: “The goal of a Princeton education is to prepare young men and women to take up positions of leadership in the 21st century. Of course, the word ‘leadership’ conjures up images of presidents and C.E.O.’s, but I want to stress that my idea of a leader is much broader than that.”

She listed education, medicine and engineering as other areas where students could become leaders.

In an e-mail response to a question, Dr. Tilghman added: “There is nothing inconsistent with being a leader and a stay-at-home parent. Some women (and a handful of men) whom I have known who have done this have had a powerful impact on their communities.”

Yet the likelihood that so many young women plan to opt out of high-powered careers presents a conundrum.

“It really does raise this question for all of us and for the country: when we work so hard to open academics and other opportunities for women, what kind of return do we expect to get for that?” said Marlyn McGrath Lewis, director of undergraduate admissions at Harvard, who served as dean for coeducation in the late 1970′s and early 1980′s.

It is a complicated issue and one that most schools have not addressed. The women they are counting on to lead society are likely to marry men who will make enough money to give them a real choice about whether to be full-time mothers, unlike those women who must work out of economic necessity.

It is less than clear what universities should, or could, do about it. For one, a person’s expectations at age 18 are less than perfect predictors of their life choices 10 years later. And in any case, admissions officers are not likely to ask applicants whether they plan to become stay-at-home moms.

University officials said that success meant different things to different people and that universities were trying to broaden students’ minds, not simply prepare them for jobs.

“What does concern me,” said Peter Salovey, the dean of Yale College, “is that so few students seem to be able to think outside the box; so few students seem to be able to imagine a life for themselves that isn’t constructed along traditional gender roles.”

There is, of course, nothing new about women being more likely than men to stay home to rear children.

According to a 2000 survey of Yale alumni from the classes of 1979, 1984, 1989 and 1994, conducted by the Yale Office of Institutional Research, more men from each of those classes than women said that work was their primary activity – a gap that was small among alumni in their 20′s but widened as women moved into their prime child-rearing years. Among the alumni surveyed who had reached their 40′s, only 56 percent of the women still worked, compared with 90 percent of the men.

A 2005 study of comparable Yale alumni classes found that the pattern had not changed. Among the alumni who had reached their early 40′s, just over half said work was their primary activity, compared with 90 percent of the men. Among the women who had reached their late 40′s, some said they had returned to work, but the percentage of women working was still far behind the percentage of men.

A 2001 survey of Harvard Business School graduates found that 31 percent of the women from the classes of 1981, 1985 and 1991 who answered the survey worked only part time or on contract, and another 31 percent did not work at all, levels strikingly similar to the percentages of the Yale students interviewed who predicted they would stay at home or work part time in their 30′s and 40′s.

What seems new is that while many of their mothers expected to have hard-charging careers, then scaled back their professional plans only after having children, the women of this generation expect their careers to take second place to child rearing.

“It never occurred to me,” Rebecca W. Bushnell, dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania, said about working versus raising children. “Thirty years ago when I was heading out, I guess I was just taking it one step at a time.”

Dr. Bushnell said young women today, in contrast, are thinking and talking about part-time or flexible work options for when they have children. “People have a heightened awareness of trying to get the right balance between work and family.”

Sarah Currie, a senior at Harvard, said many of the men in her American Family class last fall approved of women’s plans to stay home with their children.

“A lot of the guys were like, ‘I think that’s really great,’ ” Ms. Currie said. “One of the guys was like, ‘I think that’s sexy.’ Staying at home with your children isn’t as polarizing of an issue as I envision it is for women who are in their 30′s now.”

For most of the young women who responded to e-mail questions, a major factor shaping their attitudes seemed to be their experience with their own mothers, about three out of five of whom did not work at all, took several years off or worked only part time.

“My stepmom’s very proud of my choice because it makes her feel more valuable,” said Kellie Zesch, a Texan who graduated from the University of North Carolina two years ago and who said that once she had children, she intended to stay home for at least five years and then consider working part time. “It justified it to her, that I don’t look down on her for not having a career.”

Similarly, students who are committed to full-time careers, without breaks, also cited their mothers as influences. Laura Sullivan, a sophomore at Yale who wants to be a lawyer, called her mother’s choice to work full time the “greatest gift.”

“She showed me what it meant to be an amazing mother and maintain a career,” Ms. Sullivan said.

Some of these women’s mothers, who said they did not think about these issues so early in their lives, said they were surprised to hear that their college-age daughters had already formed their plans.

Emily Lechner, one of Ms. Liu’s roommates, hopes to stay home a few years, then work part time as a lawyer once her children are in school.

Her mother, Carol, who once thought she would have a full-time career but gave it up when her children were born, was pleasantly surprised to hear that. “I do have this bias that the parents can do it best,” she said. “I see a lot of women in their 30′s who have full-time nannies, and I just question if their kids are getting the best.”

For many feminists, it may come as a shock to hear how unbothered many young women at the nation’s top schools are by the strictures of traditional roles.

“They are still thinking of this as a private issue; they’re accepting it,” said Laura Wexler, a professor of American studies and women’s and gender studies at Yale. “Women have been given full-time working career opportunities and encouragement with no social changes to support it.

“I really believed 25 years ago,” Dr. Wexler added, “that this would be solved by now.”

Angie Ku, another of Ms. Liu’s roommates who had a stay-at-home mom, talks nonchalantly about attending law or business school, having perhaps a 10-year career and then staying home with her children.

“Parents have such an influence on their children,” Ms. Ku said. “I want to have that influence. Me!”

She said she did not mind if that limited her career potential.

“I’ll have a career until I have two kids,” she said. “It doesn’t necessarily matter how far you get. It’s kind of like the experience: I have tried what I wanted to do.”

Ms. Ku added that she did not think it was a problem that women usually do most of the work raising kids.

“I accept things how they are,” she said. “I don’t mind the status quo. I don’t see why I have to go against it.”

After all, she added, those roles got her where she is.

“It worked so well for me,” she said, “and I don’t see in my life why it wouldn’t work.”

Thanks to Carrie for sending me this article.

My dear friend commented on this part of the article, “And when it comes right down to it, who would have any of the right stuff to even have faith in marriage, the family, and children after indulging in such self-destructive, self-loathing chaos?”

Her response was, “….Therein lies the pitfall…. Once you start tasting of that forbidden apple, the garden of romance can all too easily dissapear! This, i think, is why many parents of our generation divorced — lack of faith in love is a direct result of the “free love” movement. Someone needs to warn the young!!! They need to be made aware of the booby-traps. Otherwise we are all just walking around with broken flowers, feeling numb to the pain we don’t even realize we are entitled to have.”

TashaF left a comment in response to Why Men Date Younger Women in Their Own Words, “I’m 22 and my boyfriend is 34. He used to date older women until he met me. I make him feel alive again…I let him be a man instead of treating him as if he were my personal pet or child. Theres nothing wrong with a man that wants a change of pace, and a more dominant role in the relationship. I make him smile and worry less with my simpler view on life. Face it, the older the women is, the more baggage that she carries.” What do you think?

I was going to do a switcheroo on the Order of Confirmation to officially confirm myself a bachelor.

I consider the Order of Confirmation Holy so I decided not to defile something I respect and believe.

I guess I am growing up.

What is “a confirmed bachelor?” Well, aside from being double-secret code for being “gay” here are some other definitions.

a confirmed bachelor – a man who has decided on principle never to marry.

Also, on Everything2

Confirmed Bachelor

The phrase, ‘confirmed bachelor’ typically refers to a distinguished gentleman, occasionally but not necessarily homosexual, that shows little interest in cultivating any sort of serious long-term relationship with a woman.

Confirmed bachelors commonly have very rich and visible social lives — we’re not talking about crotchety old men, rather, attractive, suave, sophisticated public figures who apparently have for their own reasons chosen not to tie the knot.

Well-known confirmed bachelors include Paul Lynde, Liberace, Leonard Cohen, and presently, George Clooney.

Women who fail to marry by a certain age have been known previously as spinsters or old maids. These titles should be considered depreciated, however.

Come over and visit the conversation going on in the comments over at I Am Attracted to Whom I Am Attracted. Very interesting.

After reading the comments for Well What Should She Do?, I am concerned…

“What heterosexual man do you know who WOULDN’T pounce on an opportunity for free lovin’ from any woman (gawky or otherwise) where she has practically drawn a road map for him to follow? He’s gay, babe,” commented Anon.

I have never had sex with someone just because she wanted to have sex with me. Never has my desire been, “just because.” I can’t even conceive of it, actually. I am not an opportunist, a bottom-feeder, or, like dogs, an indiscriminate eater.

Actually, after having gone on a metric billion dates, if she doesn’t do it for me right away, it probably will never happen.

Is this odd? Is this strange? I am not saying I never hook up or play, but it is only and always with someone to whom I am attracted, and not merely just physically.

Since I have had all of these questions, I am going to ask Dr. Sadie Allison some of the best ones since she is a sex advice goddess.

If you have any questions for her, let me know, and I will pass them on…

Now that I think about it, I have never hooked up with someone who was good on paper. I have never hooked up with someone for whom I have not felt strong chemistry. I have never done it “just because.”

Is that typical guy behavior? I know lots of guys, and more of them than not feel the same with as I do.

To me, people who do shit just because they can are fools, are dangerous, are short game, are pathetic, and are the kind of chaos-seekers who are never quite aware of all the bodies and hearts and hurt they leave swirling in their wakes.

Both men and women.

I generally think these things through and have insight and circumspection even when drunk and even when in the throws of passion. When people tell me they did it because they just got swept away in the moment, I just assume that that person is feeble-minded, foolish, easy, stupid — well, I am joking, I actually think they’re in denial and want to shirk responsibility.

That’s what I think.

I love this picture of Dr. Sadie Allison, Pleasure Doctor. Dr. Sadie is a lot of fun to ogle. Dr. Sadie will be beautiful, inspirational, educational, and live this Sunday on Talk Sex with Sue Johanson on the Oxygen at 11PM Eastern.

Here is the love note I received from the sexy, beautiful, brilliant, and charming Dr. Sadie just now:

SUBJECT: O Baby! See Your Doctor On TV
FROM: Dr. Sadie Allison, Tickle Kitty

Hi Again Tickle Fan!

How can you revive the heights of passion—without waking the baby?

Come find out this Sunday evening when your Pleasure Doctor appears LIVE on “Talk Sex with Sue Johanson” at 11E/10C/9P on the Oxygen Network

The topic? “The Baby Came—Now It’s YOUR Turn!??? Get my advice on sex after the baby and see the toys, techniques and turn-ons guaranteed to reenergize your lovelife.

Or come right now to Tickle Kitty and get those toys at 15% off with FREE lube and your own Tickle Kitty Magnet, too! At checkout, use coupon code: “AfterTheBaby15???

Set your TiVo now, or tune in Sunday, Dec. 3rd. See you there!

- Dr. Sadie Allison
Your Pleasure Doctor
http://www.ticklekitty.com

P.S. Forward this email now to all your friends with new babies so they can discover (and save!) too.

A question for my readers from well what should i do, “I’ve liked this one guy for about a year and i’ve already asked him out but he won’t say yes . . .”

” . . . and my best friend is next doors neighbors with him and she knows that he has never had a girl friend and we have a lot in common and hes really hot and we would get along great and hes perfect because we are the same height and were both tall and its really hard to find boys that are the same height and hot.”

So, what do you think? What’s your advice for well what should i do? Well, what should she do?

A couple months ago I received an email in response the resume I posted on Craig’s List from Dr. Sadie Allison, America’s Pleasure Coach, proprietor of TickleKitty and the Tickle Kitty store.

David and I met Sadie for drinks at the Beach Chalet while I was in San Francisco on business. The three of us talked for a couple hours. Sadie has penned three sex-help books, Tickle Your Fancy, Toygasms!, and Tickle His Pickle. Before we left, we received all three books, and an assortment of strawberry and au naturel Slippery Kitty.

Sadie was super cool. Dr. Sadie sent me home with lots of books and lots of lube. In fact, on the night of the big Grotto halloween party the following weekend, Oliver, Emily, and I handed out the assortment of strawberry lube and plain lube as well as the books in lieu of candy, which I failed to buy. Emily is so cute she makes me cry so it was less creepy for her to hand out these things to all the pretty people who attended the party. It was a serious hit.

Meet Dr. Sadie Allison, America’s Pleasure Coach

People have personal coaches for sports, careers, fitness, finances—even makeovers. Now a new coach is being welcomed into America’s homes to show women, men and couples how to enjoy more fulfilling, passionate sex. Meet America’s Pleasure Coach, Dr. Sadie Allison.

“There’s still so much that people want to learn about sexual pleasure, but don’t know where to turn,” says author Sadie Allison. “They find when they reach for my how-to sex help books, more than just the light bulb turns on!”

Dr. Sadie’s secret? “Pleasure techniques presented in a fun, inviting way,” she says about her line of bestselling books. “I then tastefully illustrate all the techniques so people want to race home to try them.”

With over 500,000 copies in print, all of Dr. Sadie’s books, Tickle Your Fancy, Toygasms!, and Tickle His Pickle instantly zoomed up the charts and became national bestsellers, each receiving the prestigious Independent Publishers Best Sexuality Book Award. Dr. Sadie also created a line of FDA-approved pleasure lubricants, Slippery Kitty, and a popular line of sensual toys called Dr. Sadie’s Pleasure Kits, to suit every passion, occasion and experience level.

Dr. Sadie educates millions as a repeat guest on numerous TV and radio programs including E! Entertainment TV, Oxygen TV’s Talk Sex with Sue Johanson, Discovery Health Channel’s Berman & Berman, Playboy TV’s Sexcetera, Showtime’s Family Business, Dr. Drew and Adam Carolla’s Loveline, Howard Stern and more. She’s also a regularly quoted sex authority in national magazines such as Cosmopolitan, Redbook, Glamour, AVN, and Publishers Weekly, and is a sought-after speaker.

Dr. Sadie Allison is a graduate of San Diego State University with a B.A. in French and Marketing, and completed her Doctorate in Human Sexuality from San Francisco’s Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality. She’s a certified sexologist and member of the American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors & Therapists (AASECT). As founder and Kitty-In-Chief of Tickle Kitty, Inc., Dr. Sadie also runs a thriving publishing company and internet business (www.ticklekitty.com). She was born, raised, and still lives in the city by the bay, and spends her days writing, jogging across the Golden Gate Bridge and hosting dinner parties with friends.

Woman Turns Touchy Subject Into Touching Success Story

For Sadie Allison, it all began back in high school with a shy whisper from a curious girlfriend.

“How do I do it?”

The intensely personal question was about masturbating, a mystery no one had ever helped her solve. Ms. Allison, ever-comfortable with her own body, caringly answered her friend’s question. Then another. And another. News of her confidential advice-giving spread quickly, and she soon became known as the campus “Dr. Ruth”—a nickname that stuck through college. But Ms. Allison had questions of her own. Why was there so much confusion? Was there no trusted source her friends could turn to for advice on sexual pleasure?

After earning her B.A. in French, Ms. Allison moved on to a fast-paced sales career in high-tech, but never stopped thinking about the need for quality advice and information about sex. A passionate entrepreneur at heart, she decided to redirect her career to publish sex-help books. How could she have known that her first book, Tickle Your Fancy—A Woman’s Guide To Sexual Self-Pleasure would allow her to trade her life in Silicon Valley for a career in silicone toys?

Bypassing the big New York publishers, Ms Allison started Tickle Kitty in her tiny San Francisco apartment. “At first, it was just me, my dwindling savings, no publishing know-how, and a steady chorus of nay-sayers,” admits Ms. Allison. “But my goal was to reach out to enhance people’s sex lives—and it worked.”

In just a few years, Tickle Kitty catapulted to success: three bestsellers, a website filled with scores of upscale sex toys, publishing awards, original lines of pleasure kits and lubricants, as well as speaking engagements and TV appearances for the Kitty-In-Chief. “And a move out of that tiny apartment,” she adds proudly.

What’s next? “Everyone deserves more pleasure, and I’m happy to provide it,” says Ms. Allison, who always has new sex-help books in development. “I guess I’ll never be satisfied till everyone else is satisfied!”

Tickle Kitty’s Entire Mission Told In Just Three Words

How many CEOs can pack the full power of their corporate mission into three irresistible words?

For Sadie Allison, it’s easy: More Powerful Orgasms.

This arousing human desire is what makes her company Tickle Kitty purr. “We’re here to inspire positive change in peoples’ lives,” observes Ms. Allison, Tickle Kitty’s Kitty-In-Chief. “We clear out old inhibitions by providing the accurate information they need for more frequent, more intimate, more uninhibited sexual pleasure.”

Discovering the key to greater erotic passion begins not with vibrating toys, but with vibrant knowledge. That’s Tickle Kitty’s specialty. “We create the how-to sex guides you wish you’d read sooner in life,” notes Ms. Allison, author of bestsellers Tickle Your Fancy, Toygasms!, and her latest gem, Tickle His Pickle. “These books are fun, informative and honest, so you can be inspired to explore all the sexual pleasure and fulfillment you have coming to you.”

Her tastefully illustrated books also serve to whet erotic appetites, inspiring people to seek out new pleasure toys and foreplay games they never knew existed. “Guess what?” exclaims Ms. Allison. “We offer those, too!” Tickle Kitty also serves up its own line of Slippery Kitty FDA-approved lubricants called Slippery Kitty, as well as a branded toy collection for grownups known as Sadie’s Pleasure Kits.

“When you relate to a person’s wants and desires with understanding, respect, thorough information, and just the right touch of humor, they get excited, inspired, and most of all, impassioned,” she says. “Finding or reviving your sexuality is the most glorious and natural way to feel better about yourself and your life.”

Corinne asked, “why go for someone younger that will be so co-dependent on you for everything when you can be with someone who is stable and independent?” And I responded…

In Why Men Date Younger Women in Their Own Words, Corinne commented:

“i think that older men or men in their 30′s forget that there are single women that have no baggage, that aren’t bitter, that have goals they want to attain, and still enjoy life and want no attachments. why go for someone younger that will be so co-dependent on you for everything when you can be with someone who is stable and independent. it just makes more sense. i wouldn’t want to be with someone younger just for that reason. I want common backgrounds, at least someone growing up from the same decade.”

And I responded:

“I think that when we’re looking for a wife, we men actually want someone who is dependent on us for everything, actuall, whereas when we’re looking for business partners and best friends, we look for someone “who is stable and independent.”

Don’t forget, that in the marriage ceremony, we are given you by your father. By the very nature of the ceremony of marriage, don’t we hope to get a woman who depends on us for everything?

Men want to be men, I think, and have the ability in a life where there are so few opportunities to be “the man,” I think men are looking to really have the opportunity to be the provider, to be the strong hunter, the cornerstone for the family.

Someone who is looked up to and admired as formidable and powerful by his little family.

I don’t know if stable and independent is something men ever consider as a selling point in a bride. Women should stop selling that as it is never anything that men are looking for in women, not when dating or when considering marriage.

We are afraid: we are afraid that we are non-essential, we’re afraid of being fungible, of being a sperm donor, of being the “wife” in the relationship. We are scared shit that you will end up rolling your eyes, regretting the decision, becoming bitter, nagging us, being disappointed, and not doing your job: providing the support it takes to make us the best men we can humanly become.

And of course we expect quid pro quo — we don’t expect this to just be one-way. We just want to make sure there is reciprocity from the get-go.

Otherwise, we feel like we’ll always be a disappointment to you and this feeling will either result in divorce, either out of your disappointment or because we push you away because we don’t feel the kind of sexual, emotional, personal, mental, and spiritual devostion — the adoration — we really in our heart of hearts, demand.

See, so that’s what is going on in our heads.”

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The Post has a new article about Dating in D.C., “according to recent Census Bureau data, the District has the lowest ratio of single men to single women in the nation. Kelly Ann Collins, chronicler of the D.C. singles scene … offer[s] advice to women fighting the odds.”

You would think it would be easy for a man to find his perfect match in DC, right?. More’s not better. I am so happy to have hung up my date shoes, focusing instead on business.

I have been on VOX since its launch but only last week did they open it up to anyone who wants to join.

So, watch my VOX step-by-step online video tutorial and then go ahead and join VOX and get involved. My VOX address is chrisabraham.vox.com — come say hello.

MM tells me that there is a news report on right now on her TV that says that Metro Washington DC area has the nations’s highest concentration of singles at 48%.

Also, of the entire nation, Arlington, VA, is the skinniest with Bethesda, MD, number 2. Interesting.