Must Reads

Two news articles that you should check out:

Governor Schwarzenegger cuts 100% of the domestic violence budget in California.

&

The issue of school and education for girls under Taliban rule.

Vulgar Email

I was waiting for an important email this morning, so when my computer beeped to indicate I had a new message, I naturally got excited. This wasn't the email I was hoping for, however. I opened the message, titled, "your friend recommended this article" (because it isn't abnormal for friends to send me articles to read and write about here). But that's not what it was...

The message read:

Enter her twat like a bull

Smart men prefer this solution for giving girls true satisfaction!

SERIOUSLY?!

There is so so much wrong with that. And I get it, spam emails aren't intended to be works of Jane Austen. But for some reason what bothered me most about this particular message was that "smart men prefer this solution for giving girls true satisfaction." Men really shouldn't be entering girls' "twats" like bulls (or in any other way, either...). Ew.

Platonic Friendship

Can men and women be (just) friends?

I first began thinking about this question years ago after watching the quirky and timeless classic, When Harry Met Sally. The movie revolves around the idea that men and women can never be just friends because "the sex part always gets in the way." They try to navigate through the conversation by setting obscure rules like they can only be friends if both are in committed relationships because then "the pressure of possible involvement is lifted."

Aside from being a heteronormative question, assuming that all men are attracted to women, it is also a question engrossed in strict gender roles and stereotypes. For these two reasons I hoped this would cease to be debated in 2009, when apparently we live in a post feminist society where men and women are equal and free thinking... (that was snark if you couldn't tell).

Fast forward to today as I engaged in my sleepy morning let's-get-the-day-started routine, pouring coffee and turning on the often trite Good Morning America. In the segment I linked they too discuss this "timeless question" of an impossible platonic friendship between men and women. The segment was an obvious scheme to promote Steve Harvey's new book, Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man (which i won't link because of the strict gender roles and stereotypes that even the title doesn't fail to perpetuate). For 'empirical evidence' GMA referenced a study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology that found that an opposite sex friendship can end in an affair 15% of the time. (emphasis mine.) What about the other 85% of the time? That sure doesn't seem like enough statistical evidence to back up the claim to me...

The whole "timeless question" leaves me more than prickly. It assumes that men can't think with their appropriate brain and that they are sexually attracted to every woman they meet. It also ascertains that women are 1) naive and 2) not sexually driven. This sort of thinking is damaging for men because it sets men up to be the ultimate perpetrators. They are always on the prowl and are singly sex minded. It promotes the idea that it's always a man's responsibility to get into a woman's pants and it's solely a woman's role to guard her virginity, pureness, sex, whatever.

For women it's a double whammy. Not only are women once again regarded as naive, helpless, and meek, doing whatever they can to protect their one and only precious commodity, but they are determined to not have the same sex drive that their male counterparts posses.

Continuing to think in the heteronormative way in which this question is presented, I think that mature and responsible men and women can absolutely have platonic relationships that don't deteriorate into a let's rip each other's clothes off and make passionate love in the bedroom situation. I think the dynamic between opposite sex friends has to be different, and that your partners have to be involved in the friendship (for example, it shouldn't be a secret friendship because that sets up a sketchy relationship from the beginning). But all in all, i think it is entirely possible for heterosexual men and women to have close friends of the opposite sex.

Readers, what do you think?

(cross-posted at feministing community where there is some discussion going on in the comments sections)

The Latest for Afghan Women

Afghanistan passes 'barbaric' law diminishing women's rights: "Rehashed legislation allows husbands to deny wives food if they fail to obey sexual demands."

A new law was recently passed in Afghanistan that allows Shia men to deny their wives food if their wives refuse their husbands' sexual demands. Another element of this new legislation grants full guardianship of children to their father exclusively.

Human Rights Watch noted that these laws contradict Afghanistan's constitution and called on leaders to repeal the new legislation.