almost giving hope to her belief in some fundamental capacity for growth and change in how we could be with each other, some unplugging-from, something transformational. Humans in crisis/chaos as a gift of feminism/scary unscripted territory tend to be more open to therapeutic suggestion for growth – change seems like a good idea at the time. But we are loaded with so much.

The barriers to authentic and autonomous intimacy and relatedness are ancient and about risk and vulnerability against safety and trust, more deeply about unconscious archetypes and their normative constructs of fecundity for women and of status for men. In our wildness, death was invited by the gravid female and by the unguarded, empathic male. Acts of love and relatedness become calculated risks.

"But really, that's a terrifying remark. and THAT is what guys don't get- what I was just saying about physical power.

Actually I DO get it. That is the REASON (along with the fact that they are the ones who get pregnant) why women have such biologically based different attitudes towards sex than men do. Figuring out what to do about it is the problem."

dick dworkin

No way out, of course. As if, anymore than death herself, the costs to unencumbered intimacy and freedom imposed by procreation - and its nearly pathological need for mating systems, male competion, pair-bonding, sacrifice of self to offspring - could be interrupted!

Until I become the name of my group, who am I?

No one, unknown, afraid of my self.

1. A person with female secondary sex characteristics just gained mobility at the top of the corporate/military system, and

2. our handsome boy’s global war machine just got a bit tougher and smarter.

And some say that women aren’t making gains in this world.

but - in some important ways - like whom we would aspire to be if we were less terrified of sexuality, authenticity, choice, and of the controlling, judging, projected pathology of patriarchy that Ms. Sawyer got paid to execute.

Ashley’s psychodynamic narrative would be intellectually satisfying to Dr. Phil, is what she believed was expected of her, and just doesn’t work. Rather than explaining anything, the absence of the dad only points to the prohibited questions that might otherwise have provided insight: what was the quality of attachment and relationship with the parent (biomom)?; who else was around (mom’s boyfriends) and what did Ashley see (learn) from those relationships?; how did the dad’s betrayal affect the mom and how did the mom’s emotional response come across to Ashley?; how did Ashley weigh mom’s response against the fairy tale of marriage she learned as a child?; why did the brother need to bail out?

Absent experienced or witnessed abuse, what Ashley primarily experienced and introjected growing up was the pathology of marriage - that is, the predictable spirit- and growth-crushing consequences of patriarchy’s demand that women trust their well being, safety, and fulfillment to a socially-enforced legalistic/moralistic binding contract that trades their sexual freedom, identity, and self for escape from fear of social shame, the weapon Ms. Sawyer desperately and clumsily tried to wield.

Ashley seems to have learned something from her experiences, and that separates her from Ms. Sawyer and most women, who seem content to defend and embody patriarchy. Her profession is dangerous and in some ways maladaptive, yet she remains in control of her sexual behavior and commitments. She has diminished her life by forfeiting trust and constricting freedom in order to support herself financially, but she is not trapped in a fairy tale without a happy ending.

a sign of moral and intellectual development, would indeed be a remarkable attribute to find in or ascribe to someone excitedly driven to sublimate tribal aggression in televised boys team sports. But then again, one wonders how vetting is proceeding for which new church to attend, wherein to receive sanctioned and proper guidance and direction from the God of our Nation, and proper edification for one's wife and for one's girls.

I needed that. I miss the real Heather.

- Barack Obama, winning your heart and mind

OK, let’s say that a lot of you weren’t really duped, weren’t really supporting Mr. Change as substantive or structural change all along and saw right through the cult of personality (although that does leave aside the bet-hedging on the appointments, right?, like, what was the suspense about if it was clear all along?).

But overall, I do detect a quite strong odor of, Yeah we got duped, now how do we frame this like we didn’t? Like that would be healthy!

So what now about the character issue, that is the . . . ahem . . . lying?

I wonder which Salon writer will be first to tackle that?

Ever scan the wires or MSM headlines? Try it unplugged.

There’s sublimated tribal aggression comfortably constructed as “politics”, “sports” or “country”.

There’s antisociality and Social Dominance Orientation usefully constructed as “success” and “political ideology”.

There’s sexual repression, aggression and control constructed as shock at this week’s “out-of-control” starlet.

There’s the pathological expression of male-male competition constructed as “economic news”.

And then there are the rips in the matrix, appearing as “Gunman shoots ______ in ________” or “Church leaders scramble to address charges of sexual abuse” or “Leading authority on _____ admits taking _____ from ______” or “Wall Street ______ indicted on charges of _____”, or “Presidential pardons expected for _______.”

Open up the tired eyes.

Awake from the dream.

From the Saturday NYT piece in which Our Boy’s intelligent and strategic center-right, hawkish appointments are rationalized:

“there’s going to be no time for experimentation,” a member of the Obama foreign policy team said.

What was it Naomi Wolf’s been saying about perceived crisis and power?

or could the picture accompanying this piece be entitled, “Boy Caught Fibbing”?