sometimes cary's advice is more abstract than "helpful" (in the strictest sense of the word ;)) but in this case the abstraction is absolutely correct and useful. regardless of whether his ocd is causing this or not (he should get treatment if it's making problems), the effects of his actions are misogynist in exactly the way that cary describes. it's always been hard for me to pinpoint exactly why i feel so nauseated at the whole pick up phenomenon (which it sounds like this radio guy would find very familiar), but cary really made it clear.

from my personal experience and the experiences of many women i know, since women are socialized to put others' needs before their own and to care for others (i'm not particularly feminine and wasn't when i was a child either, but let's just say that when my mother worked late my dad made me fix him dinner because he couldn't be bothered to do it himself), they often struggle to carve out enough self-interest to protect themselves in difficult situations. i stayed for months in a relationship i was unhappy with because my then-boyfriend threatened to kill himself if i left him. i have had less trouble focusing on my own needs in relationships since then. but it continues...recently i had to comfort a friend who has moved away because she felt like she couldn't reject a man's advances towards her and cried when she came home from a date with him. and this is a woman in law school! an educated, capable woman! this is hardly the perspective that these awful PUA men think women have. shame on them.

i wonder when ("if" is probably more realistic) these guys will realize that no one has been scared of the spectre of "creeping socialism" since oh say, 1990. i think that if you took the average person on the street and asked them "to what extent are you currently afraid of socialism" the answer would be one variant or another of "what?" (if anyone has some recent polling on this issue, please share.)

didn't they notice that no one cared when mccain was upset about socialism during the campaigns? don't they realize that not everyone furiously masturbates to red dawn every night before dinner? where have these folks been for the last 20 years?

i love forwarding this stuff to my folks who were actually born and spent a majority of their lives living in the soviet union before moving to the US. they get a good laugh out of it.

a valid take on this issue. although an equally valid (more entertaining tho, sorry) perspective comes from wonkette and its commenters: http://wonkette.com/406605/rich-american-households-forced-to-do-chores

at any rate, i think you're right. actually what i think is most interesting about this is that many households used to solve the problem of "who is going to do the chores...the wife doesn't want to do them all because she's no longer oppressed...the husband doesn't want to do them because they are below him...so instead of having a difficult discussion about feminism and how the personal is political and how labor is gendered, we will solve the problem by paying someone to do the goddamn chores." i like to read advice columnists and back before the hobo days, the columnist would frequently write to couples who were experiencing this problem "if it's that hard to figure out who should do what, just hire someone." maybe now, as emily bazelon for slate wrote, those difficult conversations will have to begin again.

of course for those of us who have been too poor the whole time to even contemplate getting some servants (and who find the idea of servants to be pretty awful in general), we've had those discussions lots of times with many different partners who regardless of their feminist attitudes refused to believe that their laziness about chores (or preference to eat out all the time instead of cook, or whatever) was due to their inherent laziness and not to the fact that they valued "women's work" so low that they were unwilling to do it. it had nothing to do with the fact that a woman (their mother) cleaned after them whenever they made a mess as a child. that doesn't socialize someone in a fucked up way, not at all. no, they're just lazy overall. yea that's it.

in conclusion, my mother recently informed me that my father has been dying her hair for upwards of a year now. apparently he really likes it. and this is a man who didn't even know how to operate a dishwasher until about 2 years ago. not like my mom was hitting the salons before...in the russian community, a woman who works as a hairdresser supplements her income on the weekends by going to other russian folks' houses and doing haircuts and whatnot.