Newsletter
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Sexual Ethics
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Prenups
07 Nov 2011 by Dalma / No Comments
A woman who appeared on my cable show not long ago revealed, when I announced that fifty percent of all American women will live with or marry a man with children, the following (familiar, alas) story.
She’s close to retirement and has been saving for years. Her adult son doesn’t need money, so her small stash supports the household she shares with her boyfriend of five years, a twice-divorced man whose money mostly goes to his two young children by his second wife. My guest agreed to this arrangement, feeling strongly that his children should be his first priority, and that they could manage their household expenses together.. BUT, she says, “in this protracted downturn, none of his money goes to our household; it all goes to his (second) ex-wife’s. I’m wondering where to draw the line. He does, after all, live here. He did, after all, make a financial commitment, albeit a small one, to our life together.”
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Sexy Parents, Sanctimonious Kids
28 Sep 2011 by Dalma / 2 Comments
I wrote a long time ago, in response to the fact that so many women were leaving their marriages: “In the past 25 years women have bloomed. How can we still be talking about fitting modern wives back into an ancient institution, rather than enlarging an ancient institution to make room for modern wives?” I said this on television shows, much to the horror of many hosts, who got so mad that women were leaving (and not men, as I suppose they thought was better). that they blamed me for writing about it.
Well they must be really mad now, because America isn’t even a married culture anymore. That picture of ourselves talk-show hosts and politicians and so many others insist on—the happily married American couple–is a very nice picture, but it has little to do with us in the US. No, as I’ve said a million times, we’re now a dating culture. What’s more, the Pew Research Center points out that nearly four-in-ten survey respondents in the 2010 Census said they believed that marriage is becoming obsolete.
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Who’s Sabotaging Teenage Girls?
14 Sep 2011 by Dalma / No Comments
In any story, whether we read it or see it on film or in a store window, we have to know who is speaking. Whose voice is telling us what story? Whose point of view is it? A great story at the moment, spoken by the Census, is about women’s increased power. Women are now the majority of the workforce; the majority of managers; the majority earners of undergraduate and graduate degrees; the majority owners of wealth.So, who is narrating the story of this photo in Victoria’s Secret window in Fairfield, Ct.? (We added the type to illustrate where it might have been more appropriately shown) Odd that the moment when women are powering ahead, storefronts and magazine covers feature skinny young girls not only made up to look like fashionable adults, but posing in a way that clearly suggests subjugation—as does the girl above. Whose viewpoint is this, do you think? Who’s telling girls about to inherit a legacy of unprecedented power that their REAL power lies not in their education and their upcoming careers, but rather, in looking like baby hookers, pouting and bruised and with their arms up in their air as if in chains? Are storeowners telling this story so they can sell underwear? Perhaps. Photographers, who want to make their mark? Maybe.
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“So, Georgia, Are Those Flowers Really Vaginas?”
15 Aug 2011 by Dalma / No Comments
In reading Deborah Solomon’s interesting review of the new book, “My Faraway One: Selected Letters of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Steiglitz”in this Sunday’s New York Times Book Review, I was struck once again by how free literary and artistic men have historically felt to reveal themselves in all their egomaniacal splendor or horror (think Picasso, Hemingway, Styron, Faulkner, Keroac, to name a few) while literary and artistic women have kept silent about themselves (from Austen on).. Steiglitz, the famous photographer and gallery owner, wrote letters that Solomon says “read like an exercise in negative self-salesmanship,” endlessly revealing his hypochondriacal, egomaniacal, wounded self without inhibition to the woman he first hoped to and then did marry. O’Keeffe, by contrast, throughout their friendship and later marriage “retained her armor of discretion,” Solomon says. She remained silent about her deepest self in these letters–just as she remained silent when critics asked whether those luscious flowers of hers depicted women’s sexual organs.
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Honesty about Infidelity? Not on Your Life!
10 Jul 2011 by Dalma / No Comments
Last week, a Portland, Oregan documentarist interviewed me about my feelings about open marriage. He’s making a documentary about marriage, and he wants to share his idea that couples should ditch sexual exclusivity and, moreover, be open and honest about it. A few days later I read Mark Oppenheimer’s article in last Sunday’s New York Times Magazine (“Married with Infidelities,” July 3, 2011) quoting Seattle-based sex columnist Dan Savage, also a married man who believes in both sexual nonexclusivity and openness about it. I’ve spoken with hundreds and hundreds of people about infidelity, and I want to point out something I’ve learned over the years from women who tried being open about their infidelity: The “openness” playing field is not level. However free men feel to tell their wives about their indiscretions, wives should—and I mean this—shut up about theirs.
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