Not too promising coming from the one who's supposed to change Washington.Obama's change of heart was more closely tied to his self-interest than McCain's. If he entered the public financing system, he would have denied himself hundreds of millions of dollars. Money is the mother's milk of politics. More of it allows Obama to better get out his message, organize, and send himself across the country. (He can even cook up a jazzy presidential seal for himself. Next: cuff links.) The self-interest that may motivate McCain's drilling proposal, by contrast, is more indirect. For McCain to benefit from his flop, voters have to believe in his drilling idea and then vote for him at least partly because of it.
Obama's is also exposed because he initially pledged to work against his self-interest on this very point. His promise to take taxpayer funds was always conditional—he'd do it if McCain did, too—but he and his aides said he would "aggressively pursue" negotiations with McCain to work something out. He even said he'd sit down with McCain to find a way. When it came down to it, though, the negotiations that took place don't qualify as aggressive. Obama's lawyer met with McCain's lawyer for a single 40-minute session. That was it. The Obama camp says they quit because it was clear McCain wasn't interested in a deal. But the evidence for this seems to rely in large part on interpreting McCain's position rather than probing and testing it through serious negotiations. Giving up after one meeting seems a little weak, particularly for a candidate who, in the foreign-policy context, says that he will never fear to negotiate.
The final problem for Obama is that he didn't spin his decision very well. He claimed that he had to refuse public funding because McCain was being supported by unregulated 527 groups while his campaign wasn't. That's not so. Right now, Democratic-leaning groups funded by unregulated donations are helping Obama more than Republican groups are helping McCain. Obama also claimed that McCain and the Republican National Committee were fueled by contributions from Washington lobbyists and special interest PACs. Factcheck.org labeled his claim a "large exaggeration and a lame excuse" for opting out of public funding.
Last Thursday, on my lunch break, I stopped by Waldenbook's display of $3.99 paperbacks. The only book that caught my eye was called A Return To Modesty: Discovering the Lost Virtue by Wendy Shalit. Some brief flipping through the pages hinted at an interesting read. It did not even necessarily seem to be coming from a religified Bible-verse-touting perspective, and I was interested in what sort of secular or practical arguments would be expounded in favor of modesty and in criticism of our sexualized culture and all of its problems, for the book did not seem to be concerned with modesty in our often narrow application concerning clothing, but as an overall attitude toward sex and sexuality.
Well, there is certainly a religious element to Shalit's beliefs, but that is not what drives her book. It's more along the lines of, "Free love and the sexual revolution were supposed to make us all uninhibited and happy, but instead it's lead to problem after problem after problem and so many miserable, unsatisfied people.... hmm, maybe the old, moral generations of the past were on to something!"
The book is not perfect, and contains some weak arguments, stereotyping, naivete, and repetition. But there are also plenty of thunderous, thought-provoking challenges and truths, and it's an easy, inspiring read that I recommend to all. Shalit spends a great time on feminism, coherently arguing that the equality that was supposed to remove the differences between the genders and free women from the oppression of men has only made women more powerless and oppressed by men, removing the cultural system that once protected them and destroying the ability of men to relate to women as men:
"Women then didn't need their boyfriends to protect them, nor have to 'prove themselves worthy of respect,' because men respected all women as ladies, not only their girlfriends. Today, we are taught that this 'every woman is a lady' ideas was sexist, that it made women into property, but sometimes it seems that abandoning it has made women all the more into property. Because men no longer treat all women as ladies, my 22-year-old friend needed her boyfriend on the street to give off everyone-stay-away-she's-mine vibes, as it were. Maybe treating all women respectfully was not subordinating, after all, but precisely a way of conveying that they were not mere property - that they didn't have to be 'owned' by one man to deserve respectful treatment."
She notes how the pressure has turned to women being expected to have sex with their men even if they don't yet want to. When comparing advice offered in magazines of different ages, she reveals, "In 1905, a man who was too presuming wasn't 'fit to be welcomed' in society, while in 1997 the problem is the woman's. Now it is up to her to invent various arbitrary maneuvers to alleviate her discomfort, whereas before it was the man's job to demonstrate he was worthy of her."
In an earlier age, it was the man who had to prove himself worthy of a woman's love and attention; now women have to worry about satisfying their men, many of whom who will without a second thought move on to someone else who's more fun or who doesn't start talking about marriage and commitment once she finds that she has an emotional attachment to this man she's been sleeping with - an emotional attachment that cannot seem to be gotten rid of no matter how hard our society tries to promote casual sex. Perhaps there's a reason for that, Shalit offers.
She explains how women now have to deal, in greater degrees than ever before, with such things as stalking, date rape, and sexual harassment - things which legislation, focusing only on the symptoms, cannot prevent or cure, and things which were restrained by an earlier respect by males for "female modesty," or a woman's prerogative to own her sexuality until she chose to share it.
She also links our culture's portrayal of sex and gender roles to heartbreaking, developing phenomena such as anorexia and self-mutilation - things which 90% of the time affect women and which were unheard of in previous generations. Even those who disagree with her conclusion will be hard-pressed to provide a better explanation for why so many young girls are now starving or cutting themselves in an age when their sexual freedom is supposed to leave them unoppressed and uninhibited, while instead it's leaving them unsatisfied and completely miserable. "Why are none of my grandma's friends anorexic?" Shalit asks (twice).
"Modesty" is about more than a religified "absence of cleavage," or whatever lines particular societies want to draw. That is missing the point; modesty is much richer than that. Modesty concerns the entire character of a woman who chooses to guard her sexuality, and of men who respect that modesty. Shalit is not beating a great, moral stick saying, "EVERYBODY NEEDS TO STOP HAVING SEX OUTSIDE OF MARRIAGE" - although she believes everyone would truly be happier; she is noting the sad irony that in this age of tolerance and freedom, women who do choose to save sex for a special relationship with someone who cares about them find it increasingly difficult to do so, as they face stalking, harassment, and intense pressure from all sides because no one anymore respects female modesty.
She contrasts modesty with prudery, which is merely the extreme stubborn opposite of promiscuity. "Promiscuity is really much closer to prudery... As types, they represent two sides of the same unerotic coin, which flips over arrogantly and announces to the world when it lands: 'Ha! - I cannot be moved.' Modesty is prudery's true opposite, because it admits that one can be moved and issues a specific invitation for one man to try."
"Women who dress and act 'modestly' conduct themselves in ways that shroud their modesty in mystery." It is the mystery which gives modesty its attraction, Shalit argues, and the lack of mystery that gives our accepted culture its inability to satisfy. Modesty prolongs the unknown, and there is a thrill of discovery that sexualized culture cannot hope to duplicate. "With no obstacles in the way of desire, what is left to desire?" With everything revealed, there is nothing to discover, and perhaps it's why we see increasing perversions (incest? necrophilia? bestiality? from hardcore to child pornography...) in any and every attempt to keep things interesting and rediscover the fun, or why every magazine on the rack promotes tips and techniques for great sex.
Technique. How that word disgusts me. Shalit discusses it in passing as another reference to how feminism and equality have led to more oppression of women: "Instead of saying goodbye, women are... buying that depressing title I keep seeing in bookstores, 203 Ways To Drive A Man Wild In Bed... In a different time her innocence would have been valued and the man would have been learning how to please her."
I grew up in a sheltered environment, and I still avoid explicit portrayals of sex and explicit jokes about it, although my reasons have changed. It's not that I think it's horrible, shocking, and bad, though that's surely an element; it's that I don't want to expose myself to too much of it and learn too many extra things before I actually get there. Quite frankly, it feels like ruining all the fun - like spoiling the end of a great movie before you see it. Anyone who's ever been in a relationship remembers the first thrill of discovery, where even the simplest and purest explorations of contact could leave one completely elated for days. I want to follow that thrill all the way to marriage, as She and I become one in a continual, deeper discovery of each other emotionally, spiritually, physically, and - yes - sexually. Why was the old Biblical euphemism for sexual intercourse "to know"? It's all intertwined; you can never stop getting to know someone.
I don't want to know beforehand all the techniques - that seems to imply something cold and heartless, something artificial and forced, a reducing to cause and effect or action and reaction, something that implicitly destroys the very passion it's supposed to foster (If they work so well, why do we have to keep being taught more?). I don't want her to have to worry about being "good in bed," and I don't want to worry about that either. I want a woman to love, to protect and care for, a woman who understands me with all of my shortcomings and quirks and loves me anyway, a woman to share in my passions and interests and calling and purpose. In that big picture, worrying about learning a few techniques to be better in bed seems almost comically irrelevant; I'm sure we'll figure things out just fine on our own.
Perhaps that's why study after study shows married people more satisfied with their sex life and why casual sexers are notorious for dumping after the fun of the initial encounter; there's nothing left for the man to discover when it's all revealed at the onset, and if there's no passion, no longing, no deep love and concern and care for the other person, there's no desire to further discover the entire character of the woman, so he moves on to someone else in a continual chase, trying harder and harder and getting diminishing returns.
Modesty is incredibly sexy. I don't simply mean a woman who covers up - although there is no greater turn-off than a woman who leaves little to the assaulted imagination. I mean a woman who does not want to parade her sexuality before many men, a woman who recognizes that she will form an emotional attachment with someone and wants to wait until she's sure she it's someone with whom she wants to form that attachment, a woman who is free to guard her sexuality despite everything culture has done to try to wrench it from her in the name of freedom. That kind of woman inspires me to want to protect her modesty - indeed, the modesty of all women - and to prove myself worthy of hers. And I know I'm not the only one.
