This thing reminded me of that thing

DES: That’s the dark side of feminism—that men are swine, obsessed with large breasts and the sex act, devoid of any idealistic or romantic sensibility, when in fact, we have that idealistic sensibility in spades. For instance, you have no idea what men really think about women’s breasts…

ALICE What do men think about women’s breasts?

DES Well, it’s not something you just blurt out—it’s far more complicated and nuanced than that…. Okay, I’ll tell you a story. When I was in college, there was a girl I had a crush on who always had older boyfriends, invariably some senior. Finally they all graduated, and one night we went back to her room alone. Suddenly, her shirt was off and I was confronted with these breasts, which turned out to be…completely surprising and, frankly, disconcerting. They were rather large and…and not ugly, or especially strange shaped, but in all the time that I had thought about her, these breasts had never figured. She took off her shirt so quickly, there was no time for adjustment, and I said something arrogant about it, as if her abrupt unveiling about her large-ass breasts was somehow going to slay my swinish male self, as if I hadn’t already been slain on a much higher level.

— The Last Days of Disco (1998) 

and

One successful foray ended on the guest bed of a high school friend’s parents, with a girl who resembled a chunkier Reese Witherspoon drunkenly masticating my neck and cheeks. It had taken some time to reach this point–”Do most Harvard guys take so long to get what they want?” she had asked, pushing her tongue into my mouth. I wasn’t sure what to say, but then I wasn’t sure this was what I wanted. My throat was dry from too much vodka, and her breasts, spilling out of pink pajamas, threatened my ability to. I was supposed to be excited, but I was bored and somewhat disgusted with myself, with her, with the whole business… and then whatever residual enthusiasm I felt for the venture dissipated, with shocking speed, as she nibbled at my ear and whispered–”You know, I’m on the pill…”

— ”Privilege: Harvard and the Education of the Ruling Class,” by Ross Douthat (2005)

Felix: Letter to the editor of the day, Singapore edition →

felixsalmon:

Singapore has decreed that maids must be given at least one day per week off. This did not go down well with Thng Tien Guan, who wrote an aggrieved letter to the editor of the Straits Times:

I READ with disbelief that the Government has decided that all maids will get a weekly day off from…

"Even in terms of language they continued to use certain words which were definitely rooted in their original language (Hebrew). Words such as “ain’t,” which is derived from The African Hebrew word “ayne” which also means no, not, nothing, there is not, etc."

African Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem - Our Philosophy

"The nice thing about Central America compared to those other places is that it’s so convenient,” said Eddie Mahe, a Washington-based campaign consultant. ”Just an hour and a half from Miami and you’ve got a neat little war and guaranteed press coverage."

WASHINGTON TALK - POLITICIANS ABROAD - WASHINGTON TALK - POLITICIANS ABROAD - You Haven’t Been Anywhere if Not to Managua - NYTimes.com

"The Congressman said he noted the comments but still would like an answer to his question: What values do we share with the Argentine Government? According to two persons who were present, Haig replied: ”A belief in God."

Abroad At Home - WHAT KIND OF COUNTRY ARE WE? - Op-Ed - NYTimes.com (1981)

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Being from Israel and having spent time in more than a few Latin American cities, I feel like I’ve seen my share of security fears in action. But Guatemala City was the first place where I got fingerprinted to enter an ordinary corporate office, where people (Guatemalans) freaked out when I was going to walk two blocks down the street — in the daylight! — to find wifi, and where the owner of a hotel suggested she send a police escort for a morning walk.

Bogota was full of private security and snarling dogs, and in Sao Paulo people don’t stop at traffic lights at night, and in Israel you get used to handing over your bag before going to the beach. And yet I’ve never seen people so full of fear in their own city as in Guatemala, which is how this happened. 

"By the time it was over, government forces had taken the lives of Menchú’s parents, her two brothers and 200,000 other Guatemalans. And though this campaign may have been “unfortunate for her personal happiness,” D’Souza said, it was “indispensable for her academic reputation,” transforming Menchú into a fetish object onto which “minority students” could affirm their “victim status” and professors could project their “Marxist and feminist views onto South American Indian culture."

“It was heaven they burned.”  (See also, the scholar critiqued here suggested, without any evidence, that the Spanish massacre commemorated in this photo was actually a mass suicide. More people should be trying that excuse!)

Flansplaining

I swear to God I’m not walking around on vacation intentionally starting casual conversations about rape. They’re just coming to me!

But since they have…

I’m in Guatemala for a couple of weeks, the first part of which has been vacation and the second of which, beginning now, I’ll be doing some reporting about the economy and politics around immigration to the U.S. But part two and part one have already bled together just in chatting with people along the way, and both times the rape of women as a prerequisite to crossing the U.S.-Mexico border came up. 

A middle-aged Guatemalan man told me his friend, a Mexican trucker, bragged that he has the best job because he gets to “sleep with” a different woman every night. “He rapes them,” he said succinctly (los violara). I was fascinated by this because (1) It’s not surprising that his friend would tell him that, but it was relatively surprising, at least to me, that he would then volunteer that to me and (2) He used the word rape, which is what I think it is, but I could easily imagine others arguing that it’s simply prostitution, given that it’s so widely known as a hazard of crossing for women. 

Two days later, a wide-eyed eighteen year-old-girl told me that her dream is to come to the United States, but her parents had temporarily talked her out of it by saying that every woman who crosses is raped. Temporarily. She said her cousin had done it and she’d asked her, how can you sleep with some disgusting man? And her cousin had said she just closed her eyes and thought about her family. 

What do you think about that, is it worth it? I asked her. “I want to make my dreams come true,” she said.