#MeToo Strikes Again

It’s the fallout of the #MeToo movement. Wives of senior male executives are telling their husbands not to mentor young women. The risk is too great. The reward too small.

In some cases the wives object to their husbands’ taking business trips with comely young female colleagues. These women take the cultural temperature and do not want to risk home and hearth. Can you blame them?

The key here is that #MeToo has compromised business opportunities for young women, partially because men do not want to take the risk, but in great part because their wives tell them not to do so.

So, a man who finds himself in this position has written to Carolyn Hax. Unfortunately, Hax misses the point entirely and launches a feminist rant about the injustice of it all.

First, the letter:

What is your take on the "Billy Graham rule"? I am in my early 60s and have been married for 30 years. I have a business conference each year that is sponsored in part by one of my clients and is the premier networking event in my field. I am expected by my partners to attend.

I work closely with a female employee, who is also married and is 20 years my junior. My associate works on all my client matters and is expected to attend with me.

This conference has become a major source of discord with my wife, who objects that I travel with a female employee. There is absolutely nothing inappropriate between this employee and me. We travel to and from the conference together, stay in separate rooms and have dinners together, sometimes with clients or colleagues, sometimes alone. My wife has falsely accused me of having a romantic relationship with this woman and/or looking to begin one.

I have always been faithful to my wife and have given her no reason to think otherwise. She rants that all men will stray given the opportunity, and I believe her frame of reference is skewed by the experience of her sister, whose husband cheated on her.

I am hurt and resentful of the untrue and outrageous accusations. Not appearing at the conference is really not an option for me, professionally, nor is telling my employee she is no longer able to attend. She has a professional need to be there, and after all, it is not her fault my spouse has unsubstantiated concerns.

How do I address this dilemma? By the way, my wife has attended such conferences, which I have no issue with. She dismisses that comparison because she does not attend with a male colleague, although there are obviously men attending.

Between a Rock and a Hard Place

Hax recommends that the man threaten his wife with divorce. As I said, she simply went off the rails. It might be a better idea to invite his wife to accompany him… and to allow her to spend her time exploring a new city.

We do not know how well the wife knows said female colleague, but it is not impossible that the younger woman has her eye on the husband… and that the husband, being a male, has completely missed the cues.

As a general rule, when a woman’s instincts are telling her something, non-women do well to grant them credence.

The more important point is that the endless discussions about sexual harassment in the workplace, often eminently justified, folded into hyperbolic rhetoric about destroying men… have produced a result that is not beneficial for women. 

Regrettably, Hax has taken leave of her rational faculties and considers the wife’s concerns a cause for divorce. Punish the woman for trying to protect her marriage. Isn’t sisterhood great?

Should She Accept Their Apologies?

Should you make amends to those you have wronged in the course of your life? 12 Step programs recommend that you do so. Up to a point, it's a good idea. And yet, it is not an absolute.

For my part I agree with New York Times Ethicist columnist Kwame Anthony Appiah… to the effect that there is a statute of limitations on apologies. If the apology does not accomplish a purpose, if it does not repair a relationship that you have damaged, if it only brings up old pains… you should forgo it.

Consider Appiah’s view in the light of this letter, sent to Miss Manners. I am presenting it for what it tells us about the state of mind of an abuse victim, a woman who was mercilessly bullied as a schoolgirl. Now, she has reached middle age and has overcome the torments of her childhood. Apparently, she still lives in the same community and occasionally receives half-hearted apologies from those who abused her in the past.

And, she does not want to hear them. She believes that they serve no purpose. So she writes to Miss Manners to ask her advice. How can she dismiss expressions of regret without being rude?

I was generally not treated well during childhood. I was plain and was a very quiet, shy, bookish kid who simply would not fight back. I suffered brutal bullying — including serious physical abuse, mocking, name-calling and social isolation — at school, at home and in the neighborhood where I grew up. I was friendless and blamed for my lot by my family, rather than helped to manage things better.

Away from the stress and sadness of that life, I did blossom into a pretty young woman and, with the positive attention that won me, was able to put my unhappy past where it belonged — for the most part, anyway. I was able to learn the skills needed to get along in this world. Now that I'm middle-aged, people who know me describe me as sweet, kind, thoughtful, giving and polite, though still shy and quiet.

In my heart, I forgive the people who made things so difficult for me, but I have no wish to socialize with them, either.

Former classmates and neighbors approach me to sort of apologize for their past treatment of me, and to let me know how wonderful everyone from the old neighborhood is now. How do I politely make it understood that, while I hold no grudge, I am just not interested in reliving that pain?

The psycho world attaches a special curative power to reliving painful traumas. It is wrong. I have often noted, even in the previous post, that it is a bad idea to identify yourself by the traumatic pain you have suffered. The letter writer properly wants to put it all behind her. Miss Manners concurs and invites her to simply walk away from those who insist on offering half-hearted apologies. Receive it as a blank screen, as though it did not concern her.

She writes:

Politely acknowledge what your classmate or neighbor says without elaborating, responding, or showing either interest or anger. Then, before they can elaborate, excuse yourself — by crossing the room, not answering the follow-up email, or not friending them on social media — and go on with your new life.

Such gestures might well make the bully feel slightly better, even virtuous. But they are too little, offered too late. They can only cause more pain. The damage has been done. 

One might even believe that the people who bullied and abused this woman are merely doubling down on their abuse. They are making it more difficult for the victim to forget it all, to forget how they saw her in high school. And how they still see her. 

Time to move on, and to reject their false solicitude. 

Should Rape Victims Name Themselves?

I did not intend to return to the story of Emily Miller. As you recall Ms. Miller was raped by one Brock Turner outside of a Stanford University frat party. Turner was tried and convicted… and received a sentence that many felt was far too lenient. The court and the media had carefully protected Miller’s identity, the better not to allow the world to define her as a crime victim.

Miller herself thought otherwise. She wrote an account of her experience in a new book, thereby identifying herself and inviting people to envision her in appalling scenes.

I applauded the court for having found a way to protect the identities of rape victims, because this will make it far easier for many of them to come forth. And yet, Miller seems to believe that the victim should be named.

As does New York Times commentator Lisa Ko. I am revisiting the case because Ko’s comment passes as wisdom these days. It is wrong-headed to an extreme:

Ms. Miller writes: “I am not Brock Turner’s victim. I am not his anything. I don’t belong to him. I am also half Chinese. My Chinese name is Zhang Xiao Xia, which translates to Little Summer.” In naming herself, Ms. Miller takes control of the narrative on her own terms and opens up more space for others who choose to do so. She is no longer anonymous, and the power of this specificity lies in its creation of an even stronger sense of solidarity.

Miller does not take control of the narrative. She does not even take possession of it. She casts herself as a character within the narrative, one who suffered an unspeakable indignity. Had she remained anonymous, her identity would have been protected. She would not have been shown to be a rape victim. Perhaps the sense of solidarity with other victims is a consolation, but Miller is going to find it impossible to shake the association with the rape. The point is not to belong to a group of rape victims, but to overcome the crime, to put it behind her. It's called healing.

Now, Miller will never be able to put the rape behind her, because everyone will know about it. Some will commiserate with her. Precious few will be able to see her as other than a victim. She has chosen this fate for herself, for political reasons, because she  believes it will reduce the number of rapes. So she is martyring herself for a cause.

And yet, as noted in a prior post, the best thing we can do to prosecute rape more effectively is to protect victim anonymity. With her appalling political gesture Miller has eliminated one of the rationales for the new policy. She is saying that it is a good and positive thing to be exposed as a rape victim. Ko concurs, and we are all worse for it.

Fighting over Household Chores

The study was conducted by a company that sells coffee maker cleaners. The company is called Durgol. The study was reported by something called the South Western News Service. SWNS. I have no idea what that it. It was reprinted in the New York Post. I know lots about the New York Post, a hometown newspaper. 

The study involves why couples get into fights. You might have thought, because all sorts of therapists have been telling you, that couples fight because they are having too much bad sex. Or, not enough sex. Nothing is quite as lucrative as selling sex to couples. Better yet, selling it and pretending that you are enhancing mental health.

Naturally, you would be thinking of the issue in terms of married couples. As it happens, married couples are passe… Now, the correct term is “living companions.”

This saves us the indignity of defining the nature of their relationship. And it also saves us the embarrassment of seeing which living companion, the one of the male gender persuasion or the one of the female gender persuasion, is producing all the ruckus over the dirty dishes, the unvacuumed shag rug and the dirty laundry lying on the floor next to the hamper.

To be fair, for all I know, the problem arises when people are living with roommates. But I suspect that living companions is not designed to cover up the nature of roommating, but of marriage and cohabitation.

In any event, no matter what you think, it turns out that more than a few living companions fall out over who is doing or not doing which chores. You thought it was all about sex. It’s really all about chores.

Here is the Post report:

Conducted by OnePoll on behalf of Durgol, the survey examined the division of chores between respondents and those they live with.

Forty-two percent said they share the chore responsibilities in the home, but that doesn’t mean it always works out as it should.

Messiness definitely gets to people, seeing as the average respondent recleans two items a week that someone else tidied first.

Sometimes that cleaning frustration spills over into fights. Sixty-seven percent admitted to getting in an argument about chores —and the average respondent bickers about cleanliness just over three times a week.

There’s all sorts of little things that can under people’s skin, but 45 percent named leaving dishes in the sink as the number one pesky, messy culprit.

Other common annoyances included: leaving the toilet seat up (38 percent), leaving cabinet drawers ajar (37 percent), forgetting to completely close the fridge (29 percent) and leaving caps off items in the fridge (27 percent).

Leaving cups and dishes around the home (26 percent), forgetting to turn off the lights (25 percent), not closing chip bags (25 percent), overloading the garbage can (25 percent) and playing loud music (25 percent) rounded out the top 10 irritants.

Obviously, the representative of the company that makes cleaning products recommends that people use the right cleaning products. We report it because, why not?

In truth, if we had to decide which of two members of said domestic partnership is more concerned about the open chip bags… you do not need to guess. As for which partner is more likely to fly into a rage because the toilet seat was left up, again, this is not a mystery.

In truth, women care far more about the tidiness of their homes. Women define themselves, in some part, by their ability to make a home. I recognize that the concept has gone out of style, thanks to you know who, but still, human behavior does not just change because you want it to change. 

In short, feminists insisted that men must do their fair share of household chores. But, men do not care about said chores. Women do. Besides, women prefer to exercise control and authority over their homes, attitude that does not exactly work well with the idea that men should be doing their fair share.

As a formula, dividing household chores equally between men and women does not work. Empowering women to scream at their husbands for not tidying up after meals is a formula for a broken relationship. Imagining that you can cure it with good sex is delusional.

Will anyone imagine that this merely proves the value of the old division of household labor? Not a chance.

The Party of Stupid

Roger Simon is merely stating the obvious when he says that Donald Trump has driven Democrats stark raving mad. (via Maggie’s Farm)

How can you tell that they have lost their minds? Simple… their commentary on yesterday’s released transcript was written before they read the text. When someone’s opinions are taken to be unimpeachable dogma, he will never allow a mere fact to interfere with his maniacal conviction. 

If you know what someone is going to say before he opens his mouth, you are dealing with someone who is mentally defective or just plain stupid.

Simon suggests that the Democrats believe that impeachment is the only way they will defeat Trump. But, he identifies another important reason. They are trying to distract the public from paying attention to the egregious crimes and misdemeanors committed by the Obama administration.

Kimberly Strassel exposed it last week when she saw the press being agog over the absurd House hearing with Corey Lewandowski while completely ignoring the testimony given by the Justice Department Inspector General, Michael Horowitz.  You see, Horowitz has integrity, he knows what he is talking about, he has written an extensive report into FISA abuse that is likely to make Democrats look very bad indeed. And we cannot have that.

Simon adds these important points:

Why have the Democrats, to put it bluntly, gone berserk? Why are they risking a backlash of cosmic proportions (other than appeasing their psychotically-inflamed base, of course)?

One, distraction. They live in absolute fear of the coming revelations about the Russia probe, from Inspector General Horowitz but even more from the DOJ's John Durham, who can actually put people in jail. The Dems know -- if they have a brain (and a few do) -- these revelations are likely to point up the line at the leaders of the Democratic Party all the way to President Obama. They were all involved to one degree or another with illegally spying on or undermining Trump and his administration and supporters before and after the election. The extent of this we are only beginning to understand.

To put it mildly, not good. Whether you call this treason is up to you, but you can be sure Middle America (i. e. those elusive independent voters) will not appreciate it.

We must also keep in mind that the Democratic Party is now being led by certifiable imbeciles. Yelling impeach, impeach, impeach is the limit of their mental capacity. As for the business of government, they are simply not up to the task. The issues are too complex. They require negotiation and compromise... capacities that they are singularly lacking.

Examine the issues that cry out for attention. Simon says:

The president is engaged in negotiations of tremendous significance with the Chinese and trying to neuter as much as possible the violent mullahs of Iran, but the Democrats don't care. In fact, they would prefer he fail, and seem to be doing everything in their power to make it so. To call that un-American is an understatement. Actually, it's despicable and deeply immoral, not just for the citizens of this country, but for the world. What children!

Q. E. D.

Climate Scientists School Greta Thunberg

Given the media obsession with a sixteen year old Swedish truant, it has managed to ignore this story. You might imagine that all the world’s climate scientists are on board with the climate change dogma. Apparently, such is not the case. The world's best climate scientists are decidedly not on board.

Breitbart News reports:

Just as 16-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg addressed the U.N. Climate Action Summit in New York accusing world leaders of robbing her of her future, scientists were begging the United Nations to keep hysteria from obscuring facts.

“Climate science should be less political, while climate policies should be more scientific,” the declaration states. “Scientists should openly address the uncertainties and exaggerations in their predictions of global warming, while politicians should dispassionately count the real benefits as well as the imagined costs of adaptation to global warming, and the real costs as well as the imagined benefits of mitigation.”

The scientists underscored the importance of not rushing into enormously expensive climate action before fully ascertaining the facts.

“There is no statistical evidence that global warming is intensifying hurricanes, floods, droughts and suchlike natural disasters, or making them more frequent,” they declared.

“However, CO2-mitigation measures are as damaging as they are costly. For instance, wind turbines kill birds and bats, and palm-oil plantations destroy the biodiversity of the rainforests.”

The signatories of the declaration also insist that public policy must respect scientific and economic realities and not just reflect the most fashionable frenzy of the day.

Breitbart continues:

In particular, the scientists criticize the general-circulation models of climate on which international policy is currently founded as “unfit for their purpose.”

“Therefore, it is cruel as well as imprudent to advocate the squandering of trillions on the basis of results from such immature models,” they propose. “Current climate policies pointlessly, grievously undermine the economic system, putting lives at risk in countries denied access to affordable, continuous electrical power.”

“We urge you to follow a climate policy based on sound science, realistic economics and genuine concern for those harmed by costly but unnecessary attempts at mitigation,” they declare.

Let’s see… the current climate change mania is based on a supposed scientific consensus. So now we read the judgments of 500 leading climate scientists… and everyone will ignore it.

If we are doomed, it won’t be because of the climate. 

The Climate Crisis Is Making Her Crazy

The more I think about it the more the current climate crisis seems like something the pharmaceutical industry ginned up as a marketing campaign. More depression, more mental anguish equals more meds. It must surely count as one of the most cynical ploys in recent marketing history.

Better yet, for a people that counts itself as enlightened, that believes that its superior reasoning capacities have saved it from religious dogma, living your life as though you are a character in the Book of Revelation must count as totally retrograde and reactionary. It is not an accident that young Greta Thunberg sounds like a fire and brimstone preacher, or that she supports Antifa and other radical leftist causes. And that she knows nothing about science.

So much for having overcome religion. We overcame it, our Enlightenment thinkers have told us, because we now base our faith on science, not dogma.

And yet, if any of them had any sense they would know, as Wittgenstein famously suggested, that there is no such thing as a scientific fact about tomorrow. We hypothesize about tomorrow’s weather, but said weather is not a fact until tomorrow comes. As for the future of the climate, we are in the realm of prophecy.

As for the scientific consensus, scientific facts are not determined by consensus. They are determined by experimental verification, by testing a hypothesis. If many of the world’s leading climate scientists, like Richard Lindzen, believe that the hysteria is completely overblown, perhaps we should give his views more weight than we give to those of a truant who knows nothing of physics.

So, we have a burgeoning cult whose members assert their membership by driving themselves crazy in order to turn their lives into testimony to the truth of a girl who should be back in high school. We should feel sorry for them. We should wonder how they got sucked into this maelstrom. We do not, but, fear not, Polly does. I am referring to the author of the Ask Polly advice column in New York Magazine.

To prove her surpassing virtue a woman who says she is “In Heat” writes to Polly to share her anguish over the coming climate apocalypse. Why would she not write to the highly challenged Polly. After all, water finds its own level. Doesn’t it? 

If In Heat wants empathy, she will find it with Polly. Here, not so much. 

She is riddled with guilt for being a white climate destroyer. And because she is making things so much worse for people in the developing world. Seriously, folks. She believes that she herself is one of the causes that is bringing about the apocalypse. Apparently, it makes her feel ever so influential.

If we did not have it in her own words, we would not believe it. You will note that Polly, who has the unfortunate habit of referring people to therapy-- see previous post-- does not recognize that In Heat could really use some serious professional help.

Anyway, here is a portrait of a true believing climate hysteric:

My fear of climate change is eating away at my sanity.

I feel very guilty that the developing world will pay most dearly for the carbon belched from us wealthy nations, but I also don’t want to give up plane rides to Italy, hamburgers, and cheap underwear made in Bangladesh.

When that whole anti-straw campaign was going on, I felt like I didn’t give a shit about straws, partly because I read an article saying that fishing nets are the biggest plastic threat to marine life, and partly because I want to continue to have my cake and eat it, too. (I have since bought metal reusable straws.)

Polly, I do all the right things: I drive an electric car. I fastidiously separate my recycling. I turn off the water when I shampoo and condition. I donate to Greenpeace.

And yet.

And yet even if everyone on Earth suddenly started separating their plastics, we’d all still be fucked for a very long time. The apocalypse is coming. Maybe that sounds dramatic, but that’s truly the crisis call that’s going on in my head. A quarter of the world is going to be facing a severe water shortage very soon, cities will face dangerous sea-level rise, food supplies will be strained. Need I go on? I feel like, why even pursue my dream career or find my dream man if we’ll all be living in bunkers in 30 years?

Feeling neurotically afraid of my carbon footprint every time I step into a plane, while fair, somehow also feels like another excuse for me to feel bad about taking up space in this world. I tend to make myself small to leave room for other people. I fear that if MY suitcase is too heavy, the plane will fall out of the sky. Like, what is that? I fear that as a white woman, being successful in my career will take away from the opportunities of someone less privileged. When considering approaching a guy, I think about all the other attractive women out there that he’d probably think are hotter, and step aside for them.

I want to live with a mind-set of abundance in all aspects of my life while still being responsible in a time of climate change without turning my hair gray from worry. Can you please help me navigate all this with a healthier perspective?

In Heat

Naturally, we suspect that the letter is a parody, something from the Onion. We comfort ourselves with the thought that no one is this far gone. Alas, if it seems so clearly to be a parody, it is probably true.

For her part Polly sees nothing wrong with this. She believes that In Heat has it precisely correct, that she is in touch with reality. In truth, In Heat is a cult follower, one who is ready to start baying at the moon. If that will stop the catastrophe, why would she not do it.

Here, a few words from Polly:

In the past few months, I’ve seen an uptick in letters about the climate crisis. To me, that’s a good sign. Outspoken climate crisis activists like Greta Thunberg and everyone involved in the school strikes for climate and the Sunrise movement are starting to make a difference in how we experience this rapidly unfolding catastrophe. Just watching this video about young activists coordinating their efforts around the world might help.

I watched it a few days ago and cried several times. I cry whenever I see kids marching or when I hear Thunberg or another young activist speak. But that makes sense: Sadness and helplessness are a big part of this movement, actually. People tend to associate activism with optimism and even delusion. But the people who get involved in major movements are people who don’t cut off their feelings about the dire state of the world. These are people who experience sadness and helplessness often. Instead of pushing those feelings away, they welcome them in until they’re driven to take action.

Gosh, the young and the deluded are feeling their feelings. You cannot get any more therapeutic than that. As for reality, they do not know and do not care.

So, Polly thinks that we can solve it all by sharing our feelings, and melding with our fellow cult followers:

Even as the world grows darker, we’re more isolated from each other than ever. We might connect on social media, but we don’t feel capable of asking our neighbors to come over and talk about the crisis we’re in. We’re taught to hide our emotions from the people we see every day. We’re told that strong emotions belong in movies or at concerts, where you pay a $20 or $200 ticket price to feel feelings in the company of other people. We’re instructed to handle our feelings of sadness and helplessness by going out for a nice meal or buying a new lipstick or getting a massage. We don’t feel justified in reaching out to each other in the midst of our terror and anguish.

Terror and anguish… over a fantasmatic Biblical prophecy. You know the old saying: Get a life. It’s time to dust that saying off and to bring it out of retirement. It’s not the climate that will do us in. It’s supposedly intelligent people giving away their material possessions in order to camp out in the woods, awaiting the impending catastrophe.

But then, the letter writer says she is in heat. Perhaps that is trying to tell her something.