Kim Jong-il enjoyed the life of a spoiled playboy — fast cars, fast women, cellars of vintage French wines and a passion for Rambo and Daffy Duck videos. He was also said to take pleasure in caviar, Hennessy Cognac and his troupe of 2,000 dancing girls, recruited from the country’s high schools as teenagers to perform in “pleasure groups” in the dictator’s 32-odd villas and palaces — before being pensioned off at 25. Each pleasure group was composed of three teams: a “satisfaction team,” which performed sexual services; a “happiness team,” which provided massage; and a “dancing and singing team.” Visitors were treated to choreographed stripteases, though only Mr. Kim was allowed to avail himself of the other services.
Ian Vandaelle, “Inside the world of Kim Jong-il: The Glorious General and his ‘pleasure groups’”, National Post, 2011-12-20
December 20, 2011
QotD: Inside the world of Kim Jong-Il
December 18, 2011
December 17, 2011
Megan McArdle: There is no “quick fix” for poor communities
If the “nudge” notion of government worked, it’d be pretty creepy:
If poor people did the stuff that middle class people do, it’s possible — maybe probable — that they wouldn’t be poor. But this is much harder than it sounds. As John Scalzi once memorably put it, “Being poor is having to live with choices you didn’t know you made when you were 14 years old.” Which often means, he might have added, spending your whole life doing the sort of jobs that middle class people sometimes do when they’re 14. It isn’t that people can’t get out of this: they do it quite frequently. But in order to do so, you need the will and the skill — and the luck — to execute perfectly. There is no margin for error in the lives of the working poor.
And some problems are collective problems. It’s all very well to say that poor women shouldn’t have kids unless they can find a solid man to help raise them. (And I agree that this is a superior strategy). But men with solid jobs are rather scarce in many poor communities, not least because we’ve imprisoned so many of them. What you’re asking poor women to do is actually, for most of them, to not have babies. This is an easy edict to deliver from a comfortable middle class home where you have all the kids you want. It probably sounds pretty shitty, however, to the poor women who you are blithely commanding to spend their lives alone.
[. . .]
What I am struggling to say is that however much those choices are now inflected by what went before — and the problems of other people in their families and communities — they are choices. We understand that the middle class girl I grew up with is driving her situation by behavior that is probably not very amenable to outside influence. Why do we assume that people who grew up poor are somehow more pliable simply because similar choices are influenced by decades of generational poverty?
As adults they are the products of everything that has happened to them, and everything that they have done, but they are also now exercising free will. If you assume you know the choice they should make, and that there is some reliable way to entice them to make it, you’re imagining away their humanity, and replacing it with an automaton.
Having higher wage jobs available would give people more money which would be a good thing, and it would solve the sort of problems that stem from a simple lack of money. But it would not turn them into different people.
Public policy can modestly improve the incentives and choice sets that poor people face — and it should do those things. But it cannot remake people into something more to the liking of bourgeois taxpayers. And it would actually be pretty creepy if it could.
November 23, 2011
BC Supreme Court upholds law against polygamy
I’m somewhat surprised that the court upheld the existing law: I’d expected them to strike it down as overbroad.
Polygamy remains a crime in Canada, B.C. Supreme Court Chief Justice Robert Bauman ruled Wednesday. In his ruling, Bauman said the law violates the religious freedom of fundamentalist Mormons, but the harm against women and children outweighs that concern.
Bauman reserved judgment on the landmark case in April, after hearing 42 days of legal arguments during the unusual reference case, with opposing parties arguing the right to religious freedom and the risk of harm polygamy poses to women and children.
The constitutional issue was referred to the B.C. Supreme Court by the provincial government after polygamy charges laid against Bountiful, B.C., Mormon leaders Winston Blackmore and James Oler were stayed in 2009.
While this particular case involved Mormons, the majority of people whose marital arrangements would be affected are Muslims: there are an unknown (but growing) number of polygamous marriages among recent Muslim immigrants to Canada. If the existing law had been struck down, there would have been a scramble among regional and local government agencies to cope with the expected increase in demands for appropriate housing and support from newly legal multi-spouse families.
November 16, 2011
The gender wage gap won’t go away
Kay Hymowitz explains that even with the best will in the world, the wage gap — often referred to as the 75-cents-on-the-dollar phenomenon — between men and women will persist:
Let’s begin by unpacking that 75-cent statistic, which actually varies from 75 to about 81, depending on the year and the study. The figure is based on the average earnings of full-time, year-round workers, usually defined as those who work 35 hours a week or more.
But consider the mischief contained in that “or more.” It makes the full-time category embrace everyone from a clerk who arrives at her desk at 9 a.m. and leaves promptly at 4 p.m. to a trial lawyer who eats dinner four nights a week — and lunch on weekends — at his desk.
I assume, in this case, that the clerk is a woman and the lawyer a man for the simple reason that — and here is an average that proofers rarely mention — full-time men work more hours than full-time women do. In 2007, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 27 percent of male full-time workers had workweeks of 41 or more hours, compared with 15 percent of female full-time workers; just 4 percent of full-time men worked 35 to 39 hours a week, while 12 percent of women did. Since full-time men work more than full-time women do, it shouldn’t be surprising that the men, on average, earn more.
The other arena of mischief contained in the 75-cent statistic lies in the seemingly harmless term “occupation.” Everyone knows that a CEO makes more than a secretary and that a computer scientist makes more than a nurse. Most people wouldn’t be shocked to hear that secretaries and nurses are likely to be women, while CEOs and computer scientists are likely to be men. That explains much of the wage gap.
But proofers often make the claim that women earn less than men doing the exact same job. They can’t possibly know that. The Labor Department’s occupational categories can be so large that a woman could drive a truck through them. Among “physicians and surgeons,” for example, women make only 64.2 percent of what men make. Outrageous, right? Not if you consider that there are dozens of specialties in medicine: some, like cardiac surgery, require years of extra training, grueling hours, and life-and-death procedures; others, like pediatrics, are less demanding and consequently less highly rewarded. Only 16 percent of surgeons, but a full 50 percent of pediatricians, are women.
November 8, 2011
New frontiers in . . . paint colour names
I laughed at this idea at first:
Real men don’t paint their basements in Butterscotch Tempest. They colour the walls with Beer Time.
CIL Paints has launched Canada’s first “paint colours for men” collection, Ultimate Man Caves, designed to get men more excited about painting projects. Or, judging by the chosen names, at least get the Canadian paint company some free publicity.
CIL has renamed 27 of its paint chip names including Fairytale Green (Mo Money), Monterey Cliffs (Wolfden) and Cloud Nine (Iced Vodka).
A newly launched brochure offers an array of decorating choices for every room, from the “man cave” — “Featuring new CIL paint colour names for men such as Midlife Crisis, Brute Force, and Deathstar, the walls of this bathroom have ‘masculine’ written all over them,” — to the home theatre room — “The ultimate chill colour combo for having the guys over for pizza and the game . . . or to watch Die Hard for the sixteenth time.”
[. . .]
‘‘Studies show that while a larger percentage of women tend to choose paint colours for their home, it’s often men who give the colours a final nod.”
The original idea behind the campaign was to “do something hilarious,” she says. CIL held a Facebook contest in August asking people for manlier monikers in English and French and more than 15,000 responded. CIL’s marketing team chose their favourites (Ms. Goldman’s favourites are Old Sweat Pants and Pimpin’ the Trans-Am) to be featured in-store along with their 1,200 existing colours.
I thought it was silly until I remembered the last time Elizabeth and I painted a room in our house. She’d selected some paint colours that she thought would work well, and I immediately renamed them as “Luftwaffe Canteen” and “Feldgrau”. Not that I didn’t like them, but that the “official” names didn’t describe them accurately to me. Maybe CIL is on to something after all.
November 7, 2011
Another throwback to Victorian views of women as weak and in need of protection
Brendan O’Neill thinks much better of women than those pushing for censorship (or worse):
One of the great curiosities of modern feminism is that the more radical the feminist is, the more likely she is to suffer fits of Victorian-style vapours upon hearing men use coarse language. Andrea Dworkin dedicated her life to stamping out what she called “hate speech” aimed at women. The Slutwalks women campaigned against everything from “verbal degradation” to “come ons”. And now, in another hilarious echo of the 19th-century notion that women need protecting from vulgar and foul speech, a collective of feminist bloggers has decided to “Stamp Out Misogyny Online”. Their deceptively edgy demeanour, their use of the word “stamp”, cannot disguise the fact that they are the 21st-century equivalent of Victorian chaperones, determined to shield women’s eyes and cover their ears lest they see or hear something upsetting.
According to the Guardian, these campaigners want to stamp out “hateful trolling” by men — that is, they want an end to the misogynistic bile and spite that allegedly clogs up their email inboxes and internet discussion boards. Leaving aside the question of who exactly is supposed to do all this “stamping out” of heated speech — The state? Well, who else could do it? — the most striking thing about these fragile feminists’ campaign is the way it elides very different forms of speech. So the Guardian report lumps together “threats of rape”, which are of course serious, with “crude insults” and “unstinting ridicule”, which are not that serious. If I had a penny for every time I was crudely insulted on the internet, labelled a prick, a toad, a shit, a moron, a wide-eyed member of a crazy communist cult, I’d be relatively well-off. For better or worse, crudeness is part of the internet experience, and if you don’t like it you can always read The Lady instead.
October 1, 2011
ESR on sexual repression
ESR looks at a recent New York Post article on the price of sex, and comes to a few depressing conclusions:
The New York Post has an interesting article up on the price of sex. Summary; more women are giving it up sooner. Between a shortage of men who are marry-up material, competition from other women, and porn, withholding sex to get commitment is no longer a workable strategy Tellingly the article says “those who don’t discount sex say they can’t seem to get anyone to ‘pay’ their higher price. Consequently, younger women are doing an awful lot of first-date or even no-date fucking, and the marriage rate is steadily dropping.
[. . .]
The first difficult thing to accept, after the sexual revolution, is this: sexual repression and the double standard weren’t arbitrary forms of cruelty that societies ended up with by accident. They were functional adaptations. By raising the clearing price that women charged for sex, they actually increased female bargaining power and raised the marriage rate.
Most people can process that one without wincing. But this next one is a hot potato: the ideology of sexual equality made the problem a lot worse in two different ways. The obvious one was that it encouraged women to believe they could and should be able to act like men without negative consequences — including rising to male levels of promiscuity. The less obvious, but perhaps in the long run more damaging consequence, was that it collided with hypergamy.
Women are hypergamous. They want to marry men who are bigger, stronger, higher-status, a bit older, and a bit brighter than they are. This is massively confirmed by statistics on actual marriages; only the “a bit brighter” part is even controversial, and most of that controversy is ideological posturing.
OK, so what happens when women get educated, achieve economic equality, etcetera? Their pool of eligible hypergamic targets shrinks; the princess marrying the swineherd is a fairytale precisely because it’s so rare. More women seeking hypergamy from a higher baseline means the competition for eligible males is more intense, and womens’ ability to withold sex vanishes even supposing they want to. Thus, college campuses today, and plunging marriages rate tomorrow.
September 27, 2011
Why even giving Saudi women a “token” vote is welcome
Saudi women will get the vote soon, which is a major development that is being greeted with jeers and yawns. Brendan O’Neill explains why it matters:
The granting of the right to vote to women in Saudi Arabia is a wonderful leap forward for democracy. Yet it has induced a weird concoction of cynicism and shoulder-shrugging indifference amongst the so-called sisterhood in the West, including in the upper echelons of human-rights groups who normally campaign for this kind of breakthrough. Amnesty International sniffily says “it is no great achievement to be one of the last countries in the world to grant women the vote”. Both Amnesty and the even more high-minded Human Rights Watch are serving up generous dollops of doom about this big shift in Saudi life, warning that having the vote is no “guarantee of rights” for Saudi women. Meanwhile, female members of the liberal commentariat pump out articles with headlines like “Why women in Saudi Arabia have a long way to go yet”.
Why are so many people so down on this development? Of course, the “democracy” which, from 2015, Saudi women will be allowed to take part in is far from perfect; like men, they will only get to vote in occasional municipal elections for advisers to the religious Shura Council. And yes, Saudi women’s lives will not magically transform overnight. In Britain in 1918, female suffrage was first only granted to women over the age of 30; it wasn’t until 1928 that women got the vote on equal terms with men. And it took many more years, decades in fact, for women to become full participants in society. Yet nobody, surely, would look back at the breakthroughs won by the Suffragettes in the 1910s and say, “Well, it was a big fat waste of time giving women the right to vote when many of them couldn’t aspire to anything more than housewifing drudgery”. Why do we say such things in relation to Saudi Arabia?
The reason the granting of the vote to Saudi women is a potentially brilliant development is because it implicitly recognises that these women are political beings, individuals with opinions and the right to express them (albeit in a limited fashion). Having recognised that fact, the Saudi authorities will now find it increasingly hard to justify and sustain the repression of women in other areas of social and political life. If Saudi rulers think they can grant women the right to vote and leave it at that — that there will be no further pressure for more reforms — then they must be even more insulated from reality and ignorant of history than we thought. History shows again and again that political concessions, even big ones, do not leave people satisfied, but rather fuel their aspirations for a better and freer life; they potentially make people angrier, in a good way, rather than happier.
September 1, 2011
August 30, 2011
Trivializing rape
Wendy McElroy points out how the underlying messages of the SlutWalkers have overwhelmed the original intent:
One message: It is fabulous for women to publicly flaunt their sexuality but an intolerable offense if men respond nonviolently. Wolf-whistles are taken as an attack. Disapproving or overly approving comments from men are an assault. But isn’t provoking a response the entire purpose of wearing fishnet stockings topped by a leather bustier?
Another message, as pointed out by Margaret Wente in the Globe and Mail: “Slutwalks are what you get when graduate students in feminist studies run out of things to do.” In other words, SlutWalks are an expression of privileged women who mistake a costume party for a political cause. While Iranian women fight for the right to pursue an education, North American feminists fight to reclaim pride in the word “slut.” SlutWalk is an extreme expression of mainstream feminism’s political impoverishment.
Yet SlutWalkers proclaim they are performing a political service by protesting the trivialization of rape. Nonsense. They are using the ill-considered words of one ignorant policeman as a reason to throw a street party.
I do not begrudge anyone having a good time but as a woman who has experienced rape, I object to the political agenda being attached to a costume party. I object to the posters and attitudes that vilify men as predators. I do so because I was attacked by one man, not by mankind, and when I was helped, it was by men. I object to the notion that women do not bear any responsibility for controlling their circumstances, such as attire. I object to rape being trivialized by associating it with sluttiness and making it part of a celebration.
August 25, 2011
Review of Australian defence establishment extended
They’ve apparently been overwhelmed by complaints, so the original term is being extended:
A review into sexual abuse in the Australian military has received such a high volume of complaints that it is being extended, Defence Minister Stephen Smith says.
The government asked a law firm to begin a review following a sex scandal at an Australian defence academy.
Mr Smith said investigators were dealing with more than 1,000 allegations of abuse.
The review will now report back on 30 September, one month behind schedule.
Investigations began after two cadets from the Australian Defence Force Academy were accused of secretly filming a female cadet having sex and broadcasting it on the internet.
They have now been charged in connection with the incident, which raised questions about the treatment of women within the Australian defence establishment.
July 19, 2011
Of course, there’s no chance that anyone would abuse anonymous, unverified accusations
Their ad claims that “22% of married men have had at least one affair during their marriage”. That’s Cheaterville.com:
Cheaterville.com, which was launched in Canada over the weekend, has in excess of 10,000 profiles of suspected cheaters — including full names, photographs and hometowns of those accused of stepping out. Despite the fiery accusations included in the stories posted online, no checks are done and it’s up to the users to ensure the validity of content, which includes accusations of sexually transmitted infections and other pointed claims.
Norm Quantz, a relationship expert based just north of Calgary, said the site will undoubtedly attract viewers and anonymous posters from Canada, but questions its true value.
“It’s usually a panic in the moment they’re reacting to (by publicly venting), thinking that will help, but in the long run, it doesn’t help,” Mr. Quantz said Monday. “It actually hinders their ability to deal with the fact somebody is cheating on them and what the ramifications are for them and the relationship. It’s an inadequate, short-term solution to a long-term problem.
“The website will be a success . . . It will be a place for people to vent their anger, but I would caution them in the long term, because once it’s online, it’s there forever and there are usually more complex issues involved.”
July 7, 2011
“Bodice-rippers” guilty of perverting women’s lives
Apparently, The Guardian thinks that women are weak-willed and easily (mis-)lead, especially when it comes to their sex lives:
Mills & Boon’s romance novels should come with a health warning, according to a report published in an academic journal.
Blaming romance novels for unprotected sex, unwanted pregnancies, unrealistic sexual expectations and relationship breakdowns, author and psychologist Susan Quilliam says that “what we see in our consulting rooms is more likely to be informed by Mills & Boon than by the Family Planning Association”, advising readers of the Journal of Family Planning and Reproductive Health Care that “sometimes the kindest and wisest thing we can do for our clients is to encourage them to put down the books — and pick up reality”.
Her comments follow a recent claim that romance novels can “dangerously unbalance” their readers, with Christian psychologist Dr Juli Slattery saying she was seeing “more and more women who are clinically addicted to romantic books”, and that “for many women, these novels really do promote dissatisfaction with their real relationships”.
The Innocent Bystander’s Survival Guide
You know that it’s bound to happen, especially if you’re a comic nerd or rabid anime fan. Be prepared to survive:
9. If an acquaintance of yours seems to disappear everytime the Hero puts in an appearance, rub some of those brain cells together and see what comes up.
[. . .]
11. If you are a news reporter, find a happy medium between the people’s right to know and your right to not get kidnapped/held hostage/etc.
12. Likewise, if you are a policeman, bank guard, or night watchman, and your first shot bounces off of the intruder’s chest, try shooting other areas of the intruder’s body, like their face, groin, etc. If this also fails, do not waste the rest of your ammo on him/her/it, or risk your neck in hand-to-hand combat; instead, fall back and observe.
[. . .]
21. If a Superhero takes up residence in your city, a nice spacious estate in the country will help you to actualize your potential lifespan.
22. If you are a security guard for a vast, powerful corporation, try to get assigned to the Marketing or Personnel departments, rather than R&D.
[. . .]
49. No matter how hooked you are on phonics, don’t try to pronounce things you find inscribed in ancient artifacts.
H/T to Nicholas Rosen for the link.
