By Terez Williamson / Smartly Smitten
I freely admit I hate Valentine’s Day.
I hate the superficial sentimentality created around it. But most of all, I hate it is yet another holiday which has been hijacked by the voracious, for-profit appetite of corporations.
Christmas is the only other holiday advertisers spend more effort on to convince you the ultimate expression of love is the spending of money.
Unfortunately, they seem to be succeeding. [Read more…]
By Emma Garland
If something has annoyed me to the extent that I feel I have to take time out of my life to structurally complain about it, it must be truly dreadful. Thus is the premise of the ‘5 Reasons Why I Hate…’ series, in which I word-vomit over things I think society should put in the bin.
Unlike FRONT, which everybody loves because boobs, ‘Valentine’s Day is universally accepted as being crap. Here are some reasons why:
1. It’s not real.
Like all nationally celebrated holidays, Valentine’s Day has foundations in religion which have morphed over time into something sentimental. Apparently Chaucer is largely to blame for this transformation. You know, the original romantic with all the outrageous 14th century ideas of relationships as power struggles and treating women with respect etc. Advances in society mean that the idea of courtship and offering of things (confectionary, cattle, chastity belts…) to gain a woman has now given way to a world-wide challenge for greeting card companies to come up with the most diabolical puns that test the waters of how much shit your G/BF/crush is willing to take before leaving you/filing for a restraining order. [Read more…]
It happened again today. I “met” a man online that sounded like a nice person. He had many of the attributes I am looking for in a companion, or so he said, and I agreed to meet him for lunch in a well-known restaurant in North County. (He lives in San Marcos and it was a good halfway place for us to meet.) We were both early; another nice attribute. He obviously had been there before, not because the waitress recognized him, but because he knew his way around the restaurant and we sat at “his favorite table.”
We chit-chatted as we made our selection from the menu and then he asked me the question that I have been asked four times already in my online dating experience: “I said on my profile that I was 72; I am really 82. Do you think I could pass for 72?”
Well, guys, I am tired of being nice. So I told him the truth. [Read more…]
By Liz Langley / Alternet
Remember the Seinfeld episode where Jerry’s penis has an argument with his brain and loses? It’s a classic: we’ve all been torn between love/lust and logic. (If you haven’t, check for a belly button because this isn’t your home world.) This brilliant bit of comedy is totally relatable but a little misleading in one way: the brain is the one that sends signals to the penis in the first place. It’s pretty reliably running things, IMing the other body parts like crazy, regulating chemicals, making calculations and responding to stimuli, half the time without you even knowing about it. There’s a reason “the brains of the outfit” denotes someone who is really in charge.
So why does the brain sometimes signal us to do stupid things, especially in regard to sex and relationships? Isn’t that a little like one conjoined twin punching the other in the mouth? How does the brain decide who attracts us? What is it doing behind our backs, and how do we change as we mature?
Here are some of the ways the joys, quandaries and mechanics of sex are all in your head. [Read more…]
By Alex Henderson / Alternet
If the Christian Right had its way, the United States would be a fundamentalist theocracy in which contraception, homosexuality, abortion, sexually explicit hip-hop lyrics and all adult pornography were illegal. But making the U.S. that much of a theocracy would mean overturning a lot of major Supreme Court decisions. Over the years, the U.S. Supreme Court has had many rulings that helped to advance sexual freedom in the United States [Read more…]
Agence France-Presse
The US Supreme Court will hear arguments on March 26 and 27 on the sensitive topic of gay marriage, one of the thorniest social disputes in modern America.
Same-sex marriage is currently barred by a federal law, yet legal in nine states and the capital, Washington.
The court’s announcement last month that it would take up the issue received cheers from opponents and advocates of the practice alike, who said a ruling by the justices could help settle the topic. [Read more…]
By Alyssa Figueroa /Alternet
What if you were dating someone for seven months and just found out they were anti-choice — a position you vehemently detest?
Well, that happened to one woman who wrote in to Dan Savage’s love column on Wednesday. The woman told Savage that when she found out her boyfriend believed life begins at conception and is strongly against abortions, she almost broke up with him. But her boyfriend, who she described as a “sweet, loving guy and progressive in every other way,” said that disagreeing on an issue is fine in a relationship. But the woman was still left uneasy and turned to Savage for help. [Read more…]
By Scott Barry Kaufman, Ph.D. / Alternet
Every relationship begins with that first step. Some people never get past that first step. First impressions matter, and our opening few lines can either energize the interaction or cause the other person to look around for the nearest exit. Gratefully, psychologists have spent years of celibacy trying to understand the psychology behind pick-up lines for your own benefit.
In the ’80s Chris Kleinke and colleagues analyzed the effectiveness of 100 pick-up lines across a number of different settings, including bars, supermarkets, restaurants, laundromats, and beaches. They found three main categories of openers: [Read more…]
By Sarah Seltzer / Alternet
Savita Halappanavar, who died in Ireland after being denied a pregnancy termination, was a young wife eager to have more children when she learned that her pregnancy went wrong.
A Hindu, she organized celebrations for her expat community in Galway, one of Catholic Ireland’s more liberal cities.
Even as she begged the hospital to abort her doomed pregnancy, suffering and in horrible pain, they refused to do so until the fetal “heartbeat” faded away, telling her, “this is a Catholic country.” [Read more…]
In June 2011, I received a telephone call. The source of the call was as unexpected as the call itself. The caller identified himself as a deputy prosecutor from a small northern Colorado town and he asked me to confirm I was indeed who I was. Hesitant, I asked why before I said, “I am.” I had not been to Colorado since I was thirteen on a family vacation, and I am certain anything I did there was past the statute of limitation. I am still, however, very wary of prosecutors from anywhere. What he related to me was nearly unbelievable.
Seems the authorities had arrested a fella for rape. As abhorrent as that is, it did not really shake me, until he told me the name: Stephen Morehouse. I actually said the last name in unison with prosecutor, as the memory came flooding back. He did not need to ask if I recalled my encounter with Morehouse. He did ask, however, whether or not I would be willing to fly back to Colorado to testify against Morehouse. Here’s why. [Read more…]
By Howard
As a middle-aged professional man in San Diego, I began dating a few months after my divorce. And over the next few years, I dated dozens of women from the area – and a few from out of the area.
What I found during those years of dating was that something I call “middle-class sensitivities” got in the way of my efforts to develop genuine relationships with women. Even though I’m definitely from the middle-class, my life experience over the years before I became a professional took me on the road that many working class people travel – lowly-paid alienating jobs, worrying about having to pay bills, going from one paycheck to another, borrowing to pay the rent, etc.
So, I came to appreciate the outlook of working class people, people not accustomed to the vulgarities of middle class life, to its sensitivities, and people who look to the basics in life for their rewards and understandings of their society around them. Now, I am not – or at least try not to be — a male chauvinist pig; I picture myself a modern, urban and even urbane male, attuned to the centuries of second-class citizenship that women have suffered. [Read more…]
By Alison Sargent / Bitch Magazine via Alternet
When Jess came to the University of Washington as a freshman, she was a feminist economics major whose postcollege goal was to land a position at an organization dedicated to social entrepreneurship. Now in her early 20s and just a few years out of college, she is married, looking forward to a life as a homemaker, and involved full-time at the Seattle-based Mars Hill Church, one of the hippest, fastest-growing, and most conservative evangelical churches in the nation. [Read more…]
