"The main sufferers who call its helpline with the problem are generally aged between 30 and 50 and are married" (emphasis added).

Letters thread: how many different types of distractions can we generate to protect from facing the relationship between marriage and degeneration of intimacy and libido?

intended or not - on this most sanctified, special and desperately needed day - that Opus, unable or unwilling to relate authentically as an adult to another adult in his past, must instead use a stand-in and a culturally-sanctioned script and cannot tolerate the distress generated by an accidental, off-script, real exchange in the here-and-now that might challenge him to grow out of his need for an idealized, caretaking “Mother”?

Just like children everywhere?

Happy Arrested Childhood Day.

seems to have frightened and distressed many children.

I love the way she declines to react, instead staying on message, unruffled and composed in the face of the insults and tantrums of her detractors. The videos are worth viewing for that alone.

is that it really says something about a man, that he would take charge, so purposefully and authentically, driven by such a deeply felt and authentic spirituality, that he would round up that wife of his, and those girls of his, everyone in their Sunday finest of course, get them all to a church of his choosing, where they will be intellectually stimulated and encouraged to grow, grow in their love of the Baby Jesus, to show their thanks for all of the good things their Magical Higher Power has provided to them, to demonstrate their Faith and Belief, their solidarity and belonging with all of the spiritually inclined in churches across this great Nation, and of course to receive the moral guidance and strength that can come only from without, from His Divine Wisdom, strength that will be needed in the coming years for decisions that could never come from within: which of our enemies must be bombed, which must not, when we must torture, when to attack, when to fund new prisons or a new crusade - that all says a great deal about a man.

to take the edge off as our decay downward accelerates than to load into the Matrix the transformed version of actually very unhappy, angry, sexually frustrated, substance-abusing misanthropes virtualized to ease our anxiety as Patriotic, valued working class heroes boldly using Strong, Forbidden Language and otherwise sublimating their disallowed and blocked drives in Exciting and Important (crabs! fossil fuels!) roles in The Economy?

ILTW: pretty much the best thing ever.

Ms. Traister’s consistently admirable and enjoyable writing and analysis are a high point for Salon. Her willingness to confront and reveal ambivalence, to tolerate challenge without reaction, and to achieve some level of detachment from doxa and tribalism are refreshing..

But I feel cheated that Ms. Traister, having so astutely analyzed the language of sexism, did not reflect more mindfully on her own use of language – and covert, latent meaning – in her tribute to HRC: ruthlessness, hawkishness, centrism, aggression, mercilessness and more fundamentally the constructs man and woman.

Because, as alluded to by readers jjm152 and jbbrooklyn, it seems apparent that HRC became credible as a contender for significant power precisely to the extent that HRC abandoned the feminine, i.e. to the extent that HRC’s femaleness became trivial and anatomical while this person constructed self as the only allowable social, political self that can gain power in Hierarchy – a male self that adopts the most pathological, maladaptive and celebrated of male traits, embracing aggression, culture of violence and control, antisociality, militarism and ultimately gratuitous mass killing in order to cement and maintain status and power.

Is that type of transformation about the advancement of feminism, or its death?

At age 39 or 40 this undifferentiated female was still allowing Daddy to quiz her on her sexual behavior and choices?

Perhaps the impulsive use of alcohol and the “Accidentally on Purpose” loss of control and high risk behaviors aren’t such a mystery?

“Either way, it feels now as though it was all on purpose.” Indeed it does. Lacking the courage to overtly and adaptively free herself from Daddy’s grip, her attempt was unconscious, impulsive, risky, and ineffective.

but has anyone ever explained in just what meaningful sense HRC is a “woman” or “female” other than in the trivial, anatomical?

It seems apparent that HRC became credible as a contender for significant power precisely to the extent that HRC abandoned the feminine, i.e. to the extent that HRC’s femaleness became trivial while this person constructed self as the only allowable social and political self that can gain power in Hierarchy – a male self that adopts the most pathological, maladaptive and celebrated of male traits - embracing aggression, culture of violence and control, antisociality, militarism and ultimately gratuitous mass killing in order to cement and maintain status and power. It was astute observation, not poor writing, that led Ms. Traister to use the descriptors: ruthlessness, hawkishness, centrism, aggression, mercilessness.

Is that type of transformation about the advancement of feminism, or its death?

Would someone care to explain the intended use and value of the construct “illicit sex” as related to autonomous adults who are not impaired?

I mean actually explain it, rather than endorse constructs introjected at childhood like “marriage”, “family”, “religion” or other expressions of psychosocial control and pathology.

Holy frak she’s on a roll. Too much truth. Make her stop.

Your distress, conflict, sense of divided loyalties, are unnecessarily manufactured for you and maintained by the astoundingly nonsensical and arresting fairly tales that create coercive, guilt- and fear-driven, and maladaptive orientations toward another individual constructed as a magical “dad” or “father”.

That is to say, you have yet to become an adult, at which point your distress will vanish. Good luck.

that criminal thinking errors would surface in a hierarchy that rewards and selects for criminal thinking and behaviors.

Shocked.

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