AKA, why “Just do what feels right” is bad advice.

10:29AM – I, a female-bodied person, attempt to hold the door for a very nice man also heading into the conference room.  Turns out he is John Van Epp, one of the keynote speakers, who repeatedly insists I go inside first.  Off to an awkward start.

10:41 AM – Richard Fitzgibbons is not coming due to a snow storm.

10:45AM – Wonder if the featured T-shirts claiming none of the conference participants are jerks is ironic.

10:46 AM – Rachel Wagley: “Deconstructing second wave feminism.” Wait, you mean TLR knows what that means?  Also: challenging the norms of marriage is apparently a bad thing. Because women are still property. Duh.

10:48 – Rachel Wagley: even the “lower under-classes.”

10:49 – Called terms like “wooing” and “suitors” “archaic” and said “even TLR doesn’t use those terms.”  TLR, not stuck in the fourteenth century!

10:51 AM – Hubris. learn the meaning.

10:51 AM – John Van Epps. Very nice man. Also bifflers with Focus on the Family. But nice. Also kind of hit on Rachel Wagley. Told her she didn’t have to stay on the stage while he was speaking, told her to “go sit down.  Get a cup of coffee or something,” albeit in a friendly way.  Also that her staying on stage was oxymoronic to “love and fidelity” because she’s just so pretty and distracting.

10:56AM – While telling an anecdote about an elementary school female student in one of his former presentations, he relates that it takes three days to know a boy but thirty years to trust one.  This garners a laugh, to which he responds jovially, “Out of the mouth of babes, a little bit of wisdom.”  I was expecting the conference to be misogynistic, but men are apparently likewise targets of sexual stereotyping.  Equal opportunity.

10:57AM – Token people of color in the powerpoint presentation!

10: 58 AM – “Why are wasting this good male material…”

10:59 AM- What makes someone difficult to be in a relationship with? Selfish. Stubborn. Inflexible. Manipulative. Insecure. Non-Communicative. Narcissistic. We’d like to add our own: Closeted.

11:04 AM – Movie clip: Jerry McGuire.  Showed the clip from the beginning of the movie, where Jerry is breaking up with his ruthless, fellow-agent girlfriend.  We’re meant to look at this caricature in a comedy movie and analyze what her “issues” are.

11:09AM – “Somebody smacks you around, don’t rationalize it.”  Q: What is the most likely indicator of future violence?  Answer from the crowd: Past violence.  Well, it’s good that information is getting disseminated, at least.

11:12 AM – Poor past dating stories sharing. You get a free t shirt for sharing. No volunteers? “We don’t believe in dating. That’s why we’re here.” He’s a funny guy.

11:20 AM – 2nd death joke of the morning. First his wife, now our grandparents?

11:22 AM – “… and I needed to be fixed…” <3 words out of context. “I’d just come out…” “Head knowledge.”

11:25 AM – slide: “The HEAD: Explore the five key areas of a potential dating partner.” Accompanied by the RAM model.

11:29 AM – “You don’t just marry an individual.  You marry their whole family.”  Advocates vetting the whole family of a potential spouse before getting married.  Gives as an example the fact that your potential spouse may have (*gasp*) ugly people in the family, and cautions that your wife’s beautiful face may not get passed down to your children.  I can’t believe we’re even talking about this.

11:30 AM: “It’s now taboo to have taboos.” Because being accepting is a bad thing…

11:35 – The RAM model: Know. Trust. Rely. Commit. Touch.

11:42 – Love in economic terms, must know how safe your investment in a person is.  The key to the RAM method is avoiding risk.  You do this by making sure that you know someone before you trust them, trust them before you rely on them, can rely on them before you commit to them, and are committed before you touch them.  Well actually it’s that the level of each relationship link should not exceed the level of the previous link.  This is the SAFE ZONE (his actual words).

11:45 – Penal language!  Impose a 90-day probation period if your relationship is going too quickly.

11:46 – Attributes date rape in part to people moving too quickly through the stages of a relationship.  …Sigh.  Slippery slope into ‘gray rape’ and ‘misunderstandings’ and all kinds of bullshit from there.  BOO.

11:53 – He talked about the apparent misapprehension that if you just wait longer to marry then you’ll be better at it/less likely to divorce.  He showed a graph showing that this is not the case!  That if you don’t get married in your early to mid twenties that you’re less likely to get married… because there are less available partners!  Smacked of a scare tactic:  lock down a partner while the getting is good.

11:55 – Sex outside marriage = higher divorce rates. “Still, involvement with just one sexual partner other than her husband during the dating years raised her risk of divorce three times higher than those who only had sex with just her husband.”

11:56 – more sexual partners = higher risk of infidelity? “Characteristics of premarital conduct, in particular age at sexual debut, and number of premarital partners, were associated with the probability of extramarital sex later in life.”

11:59 AM – “What I do in Vegas doesn’t stay in Vegas.” “Present Practices Program Future Patterns.

12:00PM – Partner Selection: Get to know… FACES. Family Background. Attitudes & actions of conscience. Compatibility potential. Examples of other relationships. Skills of relationships.

12:07 PM – “Relationships are structures to promote growth and character.”

12:14 PM – Discussed conscientiousness as the number one predictive factor of a stable marriage.  Told an anecdote about his daughter going on a movie date, and when they came out of the movie theater it was pouring rain.  He says “race you to the car” and then combs his hair in the car before opening the door for her.  Chivalry is dead?  Gendered conscientiousness?  I’m just so confused.  Are you supposed to be equal partners in what life throws at you, or not?

12:19 – Advocates using your head to determine relationships so you can “Follow your heart without losing your mind.”

Q & A:

Q:  Should you only date people with the goal of marriage in mind?

A:  Referenced a study which stated that people who kept marriage as a proximate goal engaged in relationship patterns differently than people who weren’t actively considering marriage.  So knowing how people build relationships now is shaping ways that you think and function and is going to shape the way you approach marriage in the future.  Relationships are generally helped if you put marriage back into dating.

Q:  To what extent should you be autonomous when going through the dating process, and to what extent should you look for help from friendships/family about dating?

A:  References his conference “It takes a village…” that addresses this issue.  Advocates a transgenerational approach that includes cross-pollination of ideas (that he agrees with).  Points out that people are generally struggling all over and advocates teaching the RAM method at different age cohorts and depending on the method to get you through.  If you watch tv and reality shows, you see high-risk behaviors going on all the time and minimize the pain failed relationships cause.  Age doesn’t guarantee wisdom, sometimes doing it wrong just teaches you how to do it wrong better.

Q:  Didn’t get through all of FACES acronym.  Can you talk about Compatibility potential (C)?

A:  Compatibility is a studied scientific category.  Personality, sense of humor, values, and lifestyle (hobbies and interests).

Q:  Non-monogamous dating?  Serially monogamous dating?

A:  Either you’re gonna be serious and exclusive or you’re hooking up is more pervasive dichotomy, he thinks.  Talks about how you can’t engage in sex/touch without risking emotional devastation, etc.

—-

[we totally missed the second session]

—-

Dr. Linda Malone-Colon

Hooking in, not hooking up: friendship and intimacy as the foundation for fidelity and strong marriages

3:37 PM – she’s gonna talk about the MARRIAGE CRISIS! Wait, how come I’ve never heard of this before?

3:39 – talking about a picture taken at the time she was two. Claims that at the time of that picture being taken, she’d never known or imagined anyone who didn’t live in a two-parent, nuclear family type home. She just said she was two.

3:42 – Marriage Index – 1. % of Adults married. 2. % of married adults who report they are “very happy” in their marriages. 3. % of first marriages intact. 4. %

3:48PM – apparently 72% of black children are born out of wedlock. Does this have anything to do with the fact that 1 in nine black men ages 20 to 34 is behind bars? or the fact that a black male born today has a 1 in 3 chance of going to prison at some point in his life? not according to this woman.

3:55 PM – “Occasionally, some blacks become offended by these statistics on blacks.” says that black marriages are failing because they’re moving away from core values?

3:58 – Activity: Go into your heartspace and see what it is you want to be satisfied with in your intimate relationships. Responses? To please God. To help me get to Heaven.

4:11 – Hooking In: Going within and reflecting on what one hopes their most intimate relationship will satisfy emotionally and perhaps spiritually within them.

4:20 – “Thing deeply about gender roles.” She does say to make sure that they’re just, but it’s based on the assumption that gender roles are good and necessary. Also, on the assumption that there are two genders.

4:25 – It’s getting very grossly gendered: women focus on body image, men on manhood. I feel uncomfortable.

4:26 – she teaches a class where female students talk about what they love about men, and men talk about what they love about women.

Q: What do we tell friends who are hooking up?

4:38 – Acknowledges high incarceration rates among blacks, but doesn’t say anything about doing anything about it! just says that fewer black men and more black women = black men are more promiscuous. oy vey.

4:45 – marriage is political. who knew?

Over lunch last Friday, Representative Hodes discussed the risks associated with the 2010 midterm elections, but also the hope and potential of Democratic candidacy.  It was a wonderful event, and we thank him for coming to speak with us!

(And remember that his campaign manager, Valerie Martin, will be with us at our general meeting tomorrow night (Tuesday, February 9, 2010 at 8PM in the Adams UCR) to follow up on Representative Hodes’ visit and to talk about the many ways we can be involved in the upcoming cycle.)

Those demands? No surprises here – several slaughterhouses’ worth of pork for his district.

Two reactions here: first, this is a gift for the Obama White House, and they know it. Shelby is making friends like nobody’s business in D.C., and Republican obstructionism has its new poster child.

Second, maybe (my fingers are most devoutly crossed) this will spur a bit of Senate procedural reform. Maybe both sides of the Senate leadership will realize how incredibly embarrassing it is when our nation’s most dignified deliberative body is held up by what is essentially a 70-year old’s temper tantrum. Maybe.

It did not take a moralistic tone, as many abstinence programs do. Most notably, the sessions encouraged children to delay sex until they are ready, not necessarily until married; did not portray sex outside marriage as never appropriate; and did not disparage condoms.

Moral of the story: when you take away 90% of the things that suck about abstinence-only education, it turns out that abstinence-only education sucks about 90% less.

The author, James Wu, was mostly complaining about the individual mandate.  A common target.  So yes, we get it.  You’ll have to pay money.  What a tragedy, for a young, up and coming I’m going to guess businessman to have to actually put money into the healthcare system before he grows old and sick, or either gets in a severe accident or contracts a debilitating disease.  In which case no profit-seeking health insurance company would cover you under the current system.  And if, to counter that, we prohibit restrictions based on pre-existing conditions, we get what is called the free rider system, where people like you, who refuse to deny their own vulnerability until they desperately need health care, wait until such a moment to purchase health insurance rather than paying into the system with premiums for several years beforehand.  And as much as I might enjoy watching the nation’s health insurance companies crumble, I somehow doubt that would be a good idea.  So, if we want every person who needs health care to receive it, rather than in many cases a resounding “eff you” from the insurance companies, without the public option, a single-payer system, or socialized health care (yes, believe it or not, neither of the previous two – nor what is currently before the House – are in fact socialized medicine), we need the individual mandate.  We need the individual mandate.  WE NEED THE INDIVIDUAL MANDATE.  Got it?  Good.

Not to mention that Mr. Wu already lives in a state with an individual mandate.

In that case, he’s probably thinking about when he graduates.  And apparently starts a business that, right from the beginning, has a payroll of $400,000: “The Democrats’ healthcare plan would require all small business with payrolls over $400-000 – around one million employers – to cover healthcare or pay an 8 percent surcharge.  This means that the added bureaucracy and taxes of the current healthcare bill will stymie future innovation.”  Let’s see . . . .  No.  It doesn’t.  If the entrepreneurs you talk about can pay $400,000 in payrolls (which they probably can’t, at least not in the beginning), then they can afford to pay $32,000 for their employees’ health care.  Unless they really don’t care about their employees . . . well, I guess I see where that puts you.

Which brings us to the fundamental truth of the health care debate that Mr. Wu and all who take his side seem so good at avoiding: Health care is about helping the sick.  And sometimes, it will come at the expense of the healthy.  When you pay health insurance premiums, that’s not just to pay for your own illnesses, that’s so that the insurance companies (or, in nationalized systems, the government) can pay for other people who get sicker than you.  So the extra money you complain about having to pay will go to saving the life of a friend or neighbor.  Or, since you complain about limits on age rating, a friend’s parent (who couldn’t afford the costs if they were twice yours), and pre-existing conditions, a friend with acne.

So, no, it is not true for anyone that “the mandate will strip [them] of their rights.”  They will still have criminal rights, civil rights, freedom of speech, even the freedom to write whiny editorials.  Obamacare won’t “disincentivize small business growth”, at least not as much as much as employees becoming ill because the health insurance their employers didn’t pay for didn’t provide preventative care.  It won’t “increase premiums,” at least not if its cost-cutting measures work out, and as for the jobs it will “threaten,” people who are dead or critically ill can’t enjoy the fruits of employment.  And it may “directly impact [students'] lives and potentially map out their futures,” but most likely by preventing or curing maladies.  Because, in the end, coverage limits shouldn’t be determined by how much people “feel that they need complete coverage.”  Full coverage ought to extend to all who do need it.  Which is everyone.

So to answer your question, Yes.  Obamacare good for us.