Men's hyper-rigidity has doomed them to dropping out of the labor force in disturbing numbers, says Mr. Brooks, echoing Ms. Rosin. They more and more find themselves collecting disability compensation, and they are ceding the lead in jobs and, in some cases, even pay to women.
All because women are more adaptable.
Brooks contrasts Ms. Rosin's hypothesis with the older theory that men and boys have disadvantages that are at once cultural and genetic/neurological: so they fidget and daydream in school; they aren't "emotionally sensitive and aware of context" as adults; they can't "communicate smoothly" as employees.
I don't really know whether Rosin's hyper-rigidity thesis explains why little boys get more D's and F's in school than little girls do. Perhaps the old theory and the new hypothesis are both telling us something we need to know.
But Brooks's column says something else that is of great interest to me:
Rosin also reports from college campuses where women are pioneering new social arrangements. The usual story is that men are exploiting the new campus hookup culture in order to get plenty of sex without romantic commitments. Rosin argues that, in fact, women support the hookup culture. It allows them to have sex and fun without any time-consuming distractions from their careers. Like new immigrants, women are desperate to rise, and they embrace social and sexual rules that give them the freedom to focus on their professional lives.
"Desperate to rise" seems a bit wide of the mark. Desperate? Yet I bet Brooks is right that the hookup culture in colleges is chosen by women as a surrogate to committed relationships that might truncate their professional aspirations.
* * * * *
What if as a woman professional — specifically, a university professor — you are breast-feeding a baby, and you need to teach a class at baby's feeding time?
Under normal circumstances, working mothers can cope by pumping their breasts and feeding baby on expelled milk while in public. But American University professor Adrienne Pine ran into a situation where her baby was sick one morning and she had no good child-care options, so she brought her infant along to a 75-minute class she was teaching. I'm guessing that pumping was for some reason not an option in this situation. Once in the classroom, the baby grew restless, and "Pine breast-fed her while continuing her lecture in front of 40 students." So says this article in The Washington Post.
That sparked a controversy. "Some students [who were interviewed] said breast-feeding doesn’t belong in the classroom."
This was a feminist anthropology class, and Pine has since written that "I fed my sick baby [in it] without disrupting the lecture so as to not have to cancel the first day of class. I doubt anyone saw my nipple, because I’m pretty good at covering it. But if they did, they now know that I too, a university professor, like them, have nipples."
A sign of the times, I think. Beyond that, I'm not sure how I feel about this.
* * * * *
Another Washington Post story points up that both women and men today are, uh, desperate to enhance those bodily features that distinguish them from the other sex. "NJ woman charged with fatal penis enlargement injection pleads not guilty to manslaughter" says a 23-year-old man died the day after Kasia Rivera, 35, injected silicon into his penis, supposedly to lengthen it.
 |
| Kasia Rivera, charged with reckless manslaughter in penis-enlargement botch |
Enhancement procedures performed by unlicensed practitioners or people with no medical training are more commonly seen among women ... Liquid silicone is sought on the black market by women seeking to enhance their figures, even though it is not approved for cosmetic injections. Besides liquid silicone, injections of substances including paraffin, petroleum jelly and hydrogel have been illegally used to enlarge women’s breasts, hips and buttocks.
Many men resort to other techniques to enlarge their penis. As far as I know, none of them work.
But why? Why the need for a bigger sex organ (men), bigger boobs and booties (women), and buffer bodies (both sexes)?
Both sexes, I think, realize they have to attract and then hold onto mates not just once or maybe twice in a lifetime, but maybe once or twice in a college semester. There's a continual lottery going on, from both sexes' point of view. A survival-of-the-sexiest, if you will.
It's a reflection of how long it takes to get a first-class education these days, a factor that affects both sexes, but also of the gender-specific need of today's women to hold firmly onto men's interest while at the same time keeping them at arm's length as they go for that advanced degree.
Meanwhile — dare I say it? — men feel increasingly emasculated. A bigger male member seems entirely in order. It makes them (us) feel more of a man.
As a 65-year-old, unmarried Catholic man, I personally favor chastity and abstinence. But I think it's unrealistic to expect that of young women and men who must wait many long years for marriage and children, owing to how long they're in school.
That same situation as it affects women, primarily, seems to be driving all I reported above. Young women must be abstinent — fat chance, for most of them — or use contraception. If contraception fails, then abortion is in order. Those are two realities today that Catholic authorities resent and reject.
But they and many other Catholics likewise resent the hookup culture, not to mention the seemingly excessive emphasis women and men are putting on their physical attributes.
And professors breast-feeding in front of their students will seem, to most Catholics, an affront to common decency.
We Catholics really need to come to grips with how much society has changed! That much I'm sure of, and for that change in Catholic attitude, I earnestly pray ...
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