Clearing the Desk Linkfest

Sorry for my extreme silence on the blog. Life has been busy. But I've piled up a big list of links to share with you all, and am finally together enough to post them. I am so glad Julian brought up the Kay Hymowitz article, and will write my thoughts about it shortly. But I wanted to clear the decks first of all these piled up links. The final 3 have something to do with the Hymowitz article, too.

NOBODY GETS MARRIED ANYMORE by Gerry Garibaldi, City Journal:

Here’s my prediction: the money, the reforms, the gleaming porcelain, the hopeful rhetoric about saving our children—all of it will have a limited impact, at best, on most city schoolchildren. Urban teachers face an intractable problem, one that we cannot spend or even teach our way out of: teen pregnancy. This year, all of my favorite girls are pregnant, four in all, future unwed mothers every one. There will be no innovation in this quarter, no race to the top. Personal moral accountability is the electrified rail that no politician wants to touch.

ZIONIST SECT MARRIES GAY MEN TO LESBIAN WOMAN, by Yair Ettinger, Haaretz via First Things:

Rabbis from the religious Zionist community have launched an initiative to marry gay men to lesbian women - with some surprising successes.

...Etti and Roni, both religious, were married five years ago. Though they were honest with each other about their sexual orientations from their first meeting, to the outside world, they portray themselves as a normal heterosexual couple. Today, they have two children, and are thrilled with the results.

"It's incredible," they wrote. "Six years ago, we didn't think we would ever be this happy. We thought everything was black, that we'd lost our chance of a normal life. But today, things are good for us. There are gaps, but that's true in every case. And we fill them with the great love we give to and receive from our children, and also enjoy the simple human love we give each other, such as any two people can give and receive."

SLACKING AS SELF DISCOVERY by Rita Koganzon in The New Atlantis:

Extrapolating primarily from the statistics on the increasing age of marriage and childbearing in the United States and refusing to lament them, Arnett argues forcefully that emerging adulthood is a positive development. Free from external constraints (and often supported financially by their parents), twentysomethings have the opportunity to try an array of temporary jobs, relationships, educational paths, and residences to find which of these are most to their preference. In winnowing down the options, they are also able to “find themselves,” a discovery that will serve them well as adults, assuming they ever decide to become adults. Armed with the self-knowledge gained from a decade of working at Starbucks, joining the Peace Corps, and sharing a basement studio in Brooklyn with four other emerging adults, those at the end of emerging adulthood will better make the family and career decisions they had been putting off, resulting in a future of greater life satisfaction and stability.

...If this all sounds a bit confused, fluffy, and New Agey, Robin Marantz Henig, the author of the Times Magazine piece, has Arnett’s studies and vague neuroscientific speculation about brain maturation to back it up. Emerging adulthood, she argues, isn’t merely a description of the way a narrow sliver of affluent and well-educated people are choosing to spend their twenties, but a seismic shift that will have political consequences.

THE POWERLESSNESS OF THE SINGLE WOMAN by Drs. J.R. Bruns and R.A. Richards II, in Psycology Today:

These same forbidden themes of women's desire for marriage and their frustrations with men and dating have been box office magic in recent "Chick Lit" movies like "Bridget Jones Diary " and "Sex In The City". Feelings of fear, powerlessness and alienation are safely released as long as it is in fiction or pictured on the silver screen.

It turns out that today's liberated women want to marry. The problem, as Whitehead points out, is that the social infrastructure that was designed to help young women meet marriageable men no longer exists. Once upon a time the American courtship rituals of the Senior Prom and sorority formals accomplished their task of getting young men and women paired off. That era disappeared along with platform shows, bell bottom pants and mood rings.

Since many women are pursuing marriage after they have left high school and college with their pool of available men, these single women must take on this chore by themselves. Instead of dating and mating with men they grew up with or at least shared classes with, many are now dating and mating with strangers.

This new system is tailor-made for the mirage man. He doesn't even have to promise young single women to go steady to achieve his short term goals. He either "hooks up" or is "joined at the hip." The "hook up" is friends with benefits, meaning sex without commitment. The other option is "joined at the hip", where a couple that doesn't know each other very well commits to a sexual relationship and spends all their time together. Neither hooking up or being joined at the hip leads to many strong relationships that can weather the storms of life...

SEX IS CHEAP by Mark Regnerus in Slate:

We keep hearing that young men are failing to adapt to contemporary life. Their financial prospects are impaired—earnings for 25- to 34-year-old men have fallen by 20 percent since 1971. Their college enrollment numbers trail women's: Only 43 percent of American undergraduates today are men. Last year, women made up the majority of the work force for the first time. And yet there is one area in which men are very much in charge: premarital heterosexual relationships.

When attractive women will still bed you, life for young men, even those who are floundering, just isn't so bad.

ON DATING NICE CATHOLIC GIRLS by Max Lindeman on Patheos:

I was approaching carved-wood status, though not quietly, when I met—really met—my first nice Catholic girl. It was at a vocational discernment retreat. I was standing on the monastery porch, peering through the French doors toward the living room, wondering whether I should bolt now and apologize later, or vice-versa. I heard tires on gravel. Turning, I saw a girl step out of a Honda wearing a tight pair of jeans. They were not, I hasten to add, skinny jeans; they were cut '80s-style, high at the waist.
When the girl faced me, I saw that her glasses, too, were cut in the style of the Reagan Revolution: square, in every sense. But her legs—timeless. Perhaps her ensemble seems to spell out a mixed message? Not for me. I read: I am beautiful, but either don't know, or don't care.

Why, you could be my vocation, I thought, as she skipped past me, smiling.

It's moments like this when I love the Church. The world condemns bolts of magical thinking as lunacy. The Church dignifies them as the beginning of discernment. In I went.

What Women Want

Male Friendship

Last weekend I had a fascinating discussion about male friendship, spurred by this article describing the modern misconception of the relationship between Cardinal Newman and his dear friend Fr. Ambrose St. John:

[Newman] was not afraid to be very close indeed to a few people. "The best preparation for loving the world at large, and loving it duly and wisely," he wrote in a letter, "is to cultivate an intimate friendship and affection for those who are immediately about." Hence his deep friendships with those "immediately about" him: John Bowden as a student, Richard Hurrell Froude and Frederic Rogers while a don at Oxford, and Ambrose St John as a Catholic priest.

St John had been in Oxford with Newman; they became Catholics together, and were ordained priests in Rome at the same time. When Newman founded the Oratory in 1848, St John was one of the first members. Being 15 years Newman's junior, when he died suddenly aged 60, Newman was devastated. "I have ever thought no bereavement was equal to that of a husband's or a wife's," he wrote, "but I feel it difficult to believe that any can be greater, or any one's sorrow greater, than mine." Some 15 centuries earlier, St Augustine in his Confessions wrote in the same way about the death not of his mistress, but of his best friend. "My eyes sought him everywhere, but they did not see him; and I hated all places because he was not in them, because they could not say to me, 'Look, he is coming,' as they did when he was alive and absent."

The article concludes with a eye towards the failing of modern culture with regards to understanding male friendship:

Do we – can we – today applaud such friendship? Do we – can we – make room, now, for such "evidences of sweet brotherly love"? Men and women often have intense friendships with members of their own sex, friendships that have no sexual component; yet we are losing the vocabulary to speak about them, or we are embarrassed to do so.

(If you have a strong constitution, you need only look at the comments to discover the veracity of his complaint.)

A favorite professor, Anthony Esolen, has written extensively on this topic. His most developed expression is found in Touchstone Magazine, and is available to read online. Here's a snippet. Do read it all, and let us know your thoughts, friends!

Shakespeare, or his narrative persona, expressed in his sonnets a passionate love for an unnamed and not too loyal young man, so Shakespeare must have been homosexual—despite the absence of evidence, and despite his persona’s explicit statement in sonnet 20 that the young man’s sexual accoutrements are of no interest (or use) to him whatever.

The bachelor Abe Lincoln long shared a bed with his closest friend, Joshua Speed, and later wrote letters expressing, with what seems a touch of self-deprecating irony, his fear that he would be lonely once Speed had taken a wife. Lincoln therefore must be homosexual. No matter that men (and women too) commonly shared beds, and also commonly spoke of their friendship in strong, earthy language that now embarrasses. The poet Edmund Spenser, celebrator of his own wedding in one of the most brilliant poems in English, used to share a bed with his friend and fellow scholar at Cambridge, Gabriel Harvey. There you go.

“Your love to me was finer than the love of women,” laments David in a public song, when he learns of the death of his friend Jonathan. We know why. The godlike hero Gilgamesh and his friend Enkidu walk hand in hand into the dark forest of Humbaba. No wonder then that at Enkidu’s death Gilgamesh will weep inconsolably, letting his hair grow long, flinging away his royal robes, and leaving the city to wander in the wilderness.

St. Thomas More + Meg

Today is the feast of one of my very favorite saints and martyrs: St. Thomas More. I wanted to post today this letter to his daughter Meg, with whom he had a remarkable relationship. Meg's husband, Will Roper, ended up writing the first biography of More. This letter was written while More was in Prison

Although I know well, Margaret, that because of my past wickedness I deserve to be abandoned by God, I cannot but trust in his merciful goodness. His grace has strengthened me until now and made me content to lose goods, land, and life as well, rather than to swear against my conscience. God's grace has given the king a gracious frame of mind toward me, so that as yet he has taken from me nothing but my liberty. In doing this His Majesty has done me such great good with respect to spiritual profit that I trust that among all the great benefits he has heaped so abundantly upon me I count my imprisonment the very greatest. I cannot, therefore, mistrust the grace of God.

By the merits of his bitter passion joined to mine and far surpassing in merit for me all that I can suffer myself, his bounteous goodness shall release me from the pains of purgatory and shall increase my reward in heaven besides.

I will not mistrust him, Meg, though I shall feel myself weakening and on the verge of being overcome with fear. I shall remember how Saint Peter at a blast of wind began to sink because of his lack of faith, and I shall do as he did: call upon Christ and pray to him for help. And then I trust he shall place his holy hand on me and in the stormy seas hold me up from drowning.

And finally, Margaret, I know this well: that without my fault he will not let me be lost. I shall, therefore, with good hope commit myself wholly to him. And if he permits me to perish for my faults, then I shall serve as praise for his justice. But in good faith, Meg, I trust that his tender pity shall keep my poor soul safe and make me commend his mercy.


And, therefore, my own good daughter, do not let you mind be troubled over anything that shall happen to me in this world. Nothing can come but what God wills. And I am very sure that whatever that be, however bad it may seem, it shall indeed be the best.

"Womaning" Up

Oh, if only we had all of the time in the world to think about the philosophical and theological meaning of masculinity and femininity. I think we Magdalene Sisters and our readers have done a fine job thinking it through amidst our busy lives, and I'm sure there is more to come.

I've been trying to mull over these things during the busy school days as I watch young women who are about to graduate and go off to college. My "mother bear" instincts kick in, and I want to protect them from the trials they will no doubt encounter, but I also realize that my heartaches and growing pains only helped me to understand my Lord and His call for me even better. Those years between 18 and 22 were incredibly formative for me. I entered an adolescent and came out a woman (a young woman at that, but still, much different than when I had started).

My lofty hope in my job is to contribute to the transformation of our culture by instilling in young women during their adolescence a clearer idea of femininity. This is my response to John Paul II"s call for women to transform the world through our work.

However, as I am continuing to learn, great books, beautiful artwork and film, and fruitful philosophical discussions are really only about a quarter of the things that impress teenage girls in the classroom (a quarter seems to be generous in fact). My life, my example, carries more weight in their education than I had ever really considered. I do not say this out of pride, but rather out of awe, I think. I often forget that as a teenager my female teachers (well, the one that was rather young) had an impression on me not in the classroom per se, but in our discussions outside of class and in all that I learned about the way that she carried herself in relation to others.

While I consider the importance of my example in addition to the discussions we've had on men "manning up" in our culture, I'm becoming particularly intentional about "womaning" up in my own life. I should not expect from men what I myself am not willing to work on -- be it my manners, what I say and how I say it, etc. Whatever I am asking of men, they also should be asking of me (with regard to manners and virtue, not necessarily that which pertains to masculinity or femininity in themselves). In short, I'm inspired and intentional. In fact, I am working with three other women in an apostolate of a similar nature.

I have been re-reading The Privilege of Being a Woman for my book club (which, by the way, it all centered on femininity and the feminine soul) and have been meditating on the following:

God has indeed created women to be beautiful. Their charm, loveableness, and beauty exercise a powerful attraction...

Let us "woman up" and use this power only to draw people to a greater knowledge of the One who made us to be so.

A Response to "Manning Up"

Surely this is tongue-in-cheek asks commentor Paul in response to Julian's post, Manning Up, which described the new retro-sexual manliness. He goes on to say:

Are we really taking our cues on what is masculine from the National Cattleman's Beef Association and Old Spice advertisements? I think skinny jeans are a dumb fad too but I would reject the idea that alternative is to reach for naive cliches.

As a man, I'm certain that masculinity is about more than this kind of nonsense. I open doors for my fiancee, I've got plenty of hair on my chest, but I don't eat beef since I'm a vegetarian. I also don't care for all the synthetic chemicals or artificial smell of Old Spice.
...
These kinds of stereotypical narratives go along way to obscure the true nature of masculinity. We don't like it when femininity is abused by bad stereotypes and marketing campaigns, etc. Why do we tolerate it for men?

No, this is not a rediscovery of masculinity, but an avoiding of the question by substituting nostalgia for all the crap that has been pushed by pop-culture in recent years.

I'll go out on a limb here (since every woman I know has been quoting this article and praising it left right and center), and say: Paul is right.

Don't get me wrong: I like to know guys who can fix cars, and who dress snappily (or ruggedly). I don't have much experience with metro-sexual guys--but I do know a lot of wimpy guys--guys who, when my battery died on my car, just stood there watching, totally unable to help. But more than that, I like guys who would open doors for me, who takes responsibility for their actions, and in whose presence I feel like a lady. I like gentlemen.

It is foolish to assume that just because a man smells like Old Spice and gets a straight razor shave that he is more of a gentleman. Miss Manners often confronts a similar predicament in her writings about manners. She never writes about mores; etiquette turns a blind eye to questions of morality, so long as immorality is discreet and mannerly. Now, Miss Manners would be the first to place etiquette in a substantial moral system, the two sets of principles dancing side by side in our lives--but she will not make moral judgements. Therefore, a perfect cad might also be a perfect gentlemen, according to the letter of the law of etiquette.

I see a similar thing going on here. People like McKay, who runs the Art of Manliness, seem to me to be on the right path: his blog encourages virtue as well as skill, prudence as well as courage. Their top posts in their "Relationship & Family" section are things like "Being the rock" and "How to Apologize Like a Man" and "How to be a Great Godfather"--not "how to avoid commitment" or "how to get some when she's holding out on me." This, it seems to me, is a good thing.

But to put that return to civility and gentlemanly (both in manners and mores) behavior in the context of fashion and "just another social movement" is a failure to understand what is really going on. If Mad Men is our barometer of masculinity, we're in real trouble.

Which is not to say that fashion doesn't have a role to play. The power suits of women in the 80s actually did what they set out to do: intimidate the male board members and vps enough so that women were taken seriously in business, rather than condescended to as just another skirt. (I am awfully glad that that road has been forged so that I can wear skirts to the office. I hate power suits, and don't really like pantsuits either.) But we'd be foolish to think that powersuits equal the worth of the modern woman. (And, for that matter, if I had to choose between a slightly chauvinistic Mad Man and the effeminate Rob Pattinson...I'd pick the one who can hold his whiskey and wears a snappy tie, for sure.)

In the article, McKay had my favorite line: "It's a man who looks to the past for inspiration about what it means to be a man, taking the best from that time and leaving the cultural garbage, like sexism, racism, and homophobia, behind." We can take Jimmy Stewart and Cary Grant as our guides, certainly. And also St. Peter and the chivalrous knights and Dante and maybe a touch of Super Man, too. With all these men, take what is good and make it your own.

Manning Up

I love men.

And I love Philadelphia (my hometown).

And I'm loving this article in today's Philadelphia Inquirer entitled "Manning Up," an expose on the return of the "retrosexual."

I wish I could give each of you the print version, because it has a fabulous picture of a "Man Men"-type cartoon drawing of a man with little diagrams of everything from dating to grooming to chivalry. I'll leave you with a taste of a few of the characteristics of today's retrosexual man in this booming "menaissance," as the author calls it:

Diet: Eats beef, a lot. (Sushi is for wusses) At family gatherings, he always carves the family roast.

Grooming: Although he favors old-school straight razors (stubble is still welcome) and clean-cut hairstyles, the retrosexual rejects girlishly obsessing over his locks. And he would never step into a unisex salon, let along get his back waxed. Beneath his three-piece suit and Hanes undershirt is a full chest of hair. And like all real men, he smells of Old Spice.

Chivalry: No self-respecting grandfather would ever let a woman pay for dinner, and neither will this guy. Same goes for opening doors; these arms know it's the right thing to do. Turns out, manners are a turn-on.

Dress: Mad Man, yes. Skinny jeans? Can you get any less masculine? When he's not wearing his spectators, looking debonair like Cary Grant, he's looking rugged like Steve McQueen. You might even see him with a tool belt (for fixing things), a gun (for hunting), and a car jack (for rotating tires).

Kind of tongue-in-cheek, but kind of not.

I love it.

Calling All Men

Just a quick link to a fabulous read on recovering masculinity in our culture. Men, carry on! (P.S. It's from a professor who I dearly respect).

Thoughts? When work settles down I will write my own!

My New Favorite Blog: The Art of Manliness

Oh. my. goodness. What a site for good reading, and something so necessary for our men these days. While I am working, very humbly, with a few other ladies on learning and crafting the Art of Being a Woman, it's nice to know that this site exists. I am especially impressed with the first date page:

If you play music, play it softly and keep the list classy. AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long” or Sir-Mix-A-Lot’s “Baby Got Back” are not appropriate. Stick with some classic jazz or crooners like Frank Sinatra or Bobby Darrin. The music is pleasant, warm, and doesn’t distract from conversation. Remember to keep the volume down so you can hear each other talk. Oh, and don’t play NPR either. Sure, it will make you look “smart” and “enlightened,” but talk radio will kill the conversation between you two. Make a date with Terry Gross when you’re alone in the car and stuck in traffic.

I also enjoy the sections on manly hobbies, dress and grooming (particularly this post), and skills a man should (and can!) learn. This might be perhaps the most enlightening reading I've been exposed to in awhile.

Elsewhere

Just a quick post for me today. Here are some interesting links from around the web today:

--New Catholic Manliness by Todd M. Aglialoro on InsideCatholic:

Common experience nonetheless bears out the point: We may yet have a male-only clergy and hierarchy, but where the rubber meets the road -- in those mundane areas of church life where laity and institution most commonly interact -- the flavor is feminine. Whether you want to speak in terms of liturgy, ministry (lay and clerical), religious education, or sheer congregational numbers, official ecclesial power may not rest in the hands of women, but considerable unofficial influence clearly does, and has for some time. And we in the Church have been subject to its effects.

Not all these effects, as we shall see, have been bad. But one of the worst has been a subjugation of traditional masculine virtue: the concept of distinctly and properly manly Catholicism repressed, stigmatized, covered up, or otherwise forgotten for lack of practice.

--Wathcing Couples Go By by Herbert Stein on Slate:

look particularly at the women in those couples. They are not glamorous. There are no Marlene Dietrichs, Marilyn Monroes, or Vivien Leighs among them. (It is a sign of my age that I can't think of the name of a single living glamorous movie actress.) Some of them are pretty, but many would be considered plain. Since they are on their way to the Kennedy Center, presumably to attend a play, an opera, or a concert, one may assume that they are somewhat above average in cultural literacy. But in other respects one must assume that they are, like most people, average. But to the man whose hand or arm she is holding, she is not "average." She is the whole world to him.

--Also, The Love and Fidelity Network, which reaches out to college students to encourage a life of chastity and support for marriage, has a new blog. And it's great.

--Finally, check out this wonderful homily by Archbishop J. Augustine DiNoia, O.P., on Genesis 2. It's all so good, I can't possibly quote it. Read it here.