gender

This week as David Brooks and Gail Collins discussed "Who Decided That This Election Should Be About Sex?" Brooks laid bare the core of the Conservative philosophy:

I do think it’s consistent to be economically libertarian and socially paternalistic. In fact I’d argue dynamic capitalism requires a stringent and coherent social order to help guard against its savageries — tight families to educate children, anti-materialist values to police rampant consumerism, a spiritual public square to mitigate the corrosive culture of greedy self-interest.

Free market beliefs and socially conservative beliefs require each other, so long as those socially conservative beliefs are traditional, not theological. I’m for traditional values, with government playing a small role to support them. I get worried when some politician begins trying to legislate his faith’s version of Natural Law.

This statement seems almost unintentionally revealing to me. Isn't it interesting to see what makes it into his statement of core values and what gets left out?

The puzzle of boys

For today’s story, we will travel far afield from the typical domains of politics or science or law that have so often provoked our thinking into an often overlooked area of human relations:

To which gender do you belong?

It’s a simple question, or so common sense would tell us—either you’re male, or you’re female.

As it turns out, things aren’t quite so simple, and in today’s conversation we’ll consider this issue in a larger way. By the time we’re done, not only will we learn a thing or two about sex and gender and sexuality, we’ll also learn how to offer a community of people a level of respect that they often find difficult to obtain.

I went to a reception for my cousin and his new bride last weekend. My aunts asked me when I was going to have kids, since I've been married a whole 7 years now (well, in 10 days.) I told them I wasn't going to, which brought on the "but who's going to take care of you when you get old?" line of questioning.

As posted below. Sue Myrick refused a Charlotte Observer request for the racial and gender make-up of her staff. Instead in what the Observer calls a "snide" remark, her press secretary said that they would release the information if the paper released the names and political affiliations of their reportes. Here is the Observer's response:

Myrick owes the newspaper and the people of North Carolina an apology, and she should release the information immediately. A taxpayer should not have to cut a deal with a public official to get the kind of public information that The Observer requested.

Love it when Republicans get called on their bullshit. The Republican leading the field for Governor in '08 is already stumbling. Could be a long road ahead.

North Carolina and South Carolina Senators and Congressmen were asked by the Charlotte Observer about the demographic makeup of their staffs. The results were not so suprising. Women and minorities still lack positions within the staffs.
. However, there are some choice bits from North Carolina's Officeholders.

First, our representative Myrick had so few women and minorities that she chose not to report:

Rep. Sue Myrick and several other members of Congress from the Carolinas declined to tell a newspaper the number of women and minorities on their staffs, with Myrick saying such information is "not important."

"We don't judge people on color," Myrick, a Charlotte Republican, told The Charlotte Observer. "We judge them on - if someone is perfectly capable, that's what we've always done."