1. They were invited to the White House.

This is the most basic of the Salahis' bullshit claims, founded on an email exchange they had with Pentagon aide Michele Jones. As the AP's Julie Pace and Eileen Sullivan reported last night, the crashers "asked a national television audience to take their word that the e-mail exchange would show that they were invited to the dinner for the visiting Indian prime minister." In fact, Jones emailed the day before the dinner to say "it doesn't seem likely" the Salahis could attend. The morning of the dinner, Jones wrote that she would "call or e-mail as soon as I get word one way or another." She later left a voicemail stating that they weren't invited. The Secret Service confirms the couple weren't on the guest list, and that the guard who admitted them "was persuaded by the couple's manner and insistence as well as the pressure of keeping lines moving on a rainy evening." In other words, he was had.

2. Their phone died.

The Salahis claim their cell phone battery died just in time for them to miss Ms. Jones's voicemail message saying they couldn't get an invitation to the White House. But since they explicitly told Jones to reach them by phone, and they were waiting to hear about an event that was extremely important to them, wouldn't they go to the trouble of keeping their phone charged? And don't these polo-playing socialites each have a cell phone?

3. They decided to show up at the White House "to just check" if they were invited.

Tareq and Michaele Salahi say they went to the White House at 6:30 on the night of the dinner "to just check in, in case it got approved since we didn't know, and our name was indeed on the list!" First of all, they weren't on the list. Second of all, if they were really planning to just drop by and see, would Michaele Salahi have invested in a sari (assuming she didn't just have one lying around)? Would she have spent seven hours getting ready in a Georgetown hair salon, with a camera crew from The Real Housewives of DC taping all the while? Also, who shows up at a party to check if they're invited? Note to the Salahis: if you're not sure, that's a good sign the answer is "no".

4. They were keeping tabs on Harry Reid's holiday plans.

This is less bullshit and more just plain creepy. According to the AP, Tareq Salahi wrote to Michele Jones "with a list of people he said were invited to the dinner but unable to make it, including Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and his wife." How on earth did he get this list? Why was he snooping into Harry Reid's party plans? The same question comes up again and again in relation to the Salahis: who does this?

5. They run a major nonprofit.

The web site of America's Polo Cup, the Salahis' yearly event, says it is "patroned every year by the President of the United States." And Tareq Salahi claims the 2007 event raised $250,000 for the charity Journey for the Cure. But it appears no president has ever attended the Polo Cup. And Journey for the Cure only donated $15,000 in 2007 — an amount dwarfed by the more than $100,000 the Salahis owe vendors and service providers they never paid for their work at the event. Also, "patroned?"

6. This is "the most devastating thing that has ever happened" to them.

Tareq Salahi claims the fallout from the crashing has been "the most devastating thing that has ever happened" to his wife, and that "our lives have really been destroyed." But what about when they were escorted out of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation Dinner in September after they were found sitting in someone else's seats? They seem to have recovered from that mortification enough to crash another party just a few months later. And concerning their general devastation, Lisa de Moraes of the Washington Post says it well:

Michaele is ready for her close-up:

"It's been really unbearable to go through," she wailed from the Four Seasons hotel in Georgetown, where she had arrived nearly two hours earlier so people could put on her perfect makeup and dress her spectacular hair.

"Our lives have been destroyed," she added blondly.

The Salahis have received the fame and attention they so brazenly sought. It's hard to believe that's "unbearable."

WH Gate-Crashers Went Without Confirmed Invitation [AP]
Gatecrashers' E-mail Shows No Confirmed Invitation [Washington Post]
Who's Sari Now? [NYT]
Salahis Insist They Didn't Crash White House Dinner [LA Times]
A New Field Of Inquiry: Salahis' Polo Cup [MSNBC]
Who Are These People? The Climbers At The Gate [Washington Post]
The Salahis Get A Taste Of Reality TV: An NBC Interview [Washington Post]

[Washington, D.C., December 1. Image via Getty]

WASHINGTON - DECEMBER 01: Michaele Salahi smiles as she leaves the Halcyon House in Georgetown on December 1, 2009 in Washington, DC. Michaele and Tareq Salahi are under investigation for allegedly crashing a White House state dinner for the visiting Indian prime minister without invitations. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

"'You big fat pig' is all Marsha Coupe heard before she was kicked in the face." So begins a BBC article exploring why fat people are so frequently and openly abused — emotionally and, yes, physically. Although the piece is extremely (and somewhat shockingly) sympathetic to fat people, one thing that contributes to fat hatred can be found before it even begins: The traditional headless fatty photo. The BBC's is of a man's naked, hairy torso, spilling out over his jeans, and, as headless fatty photos usually are, it is sure to evoke disgust. Further down in the article, there's a picture of Martha Coupe's battered face, which is unsettling and a bit grainy, but a far more accurate depiction of the article's subject than a disembodied gut — with a tape measure around it, no less. One evokes sympathy for an abused person, and the marginalized group she belongs to. The other dehumanizes a fat person, quite literally reducing him to nothing but a big old gut, and — given the prevalence of anti-fat sentiment outlined in this very article — is likely to make people laugh at best and recoil at worst. People responsible for choosing the images that accompany articles like this (and producing B-roll for TV reports on obesity) really need to think about the messages they're sending — and recognize that they're bigoted shits if that actually is the message they mean to send. (Note: There are some more understandable reasons for choosing such photos, and the one I've chosen here — of longtime fat activist Marilyn Wann — isn't perfect, though I do love it. I'll elaborate on this in comments.)

With that out of my system, let's move on to the text. It's pretty fabulous overall, quoting people who actually know something about size acceptance and citing thoughtful explanations for anti-fat attitudes and abuse. They even get bonus points for not falling into the "it's the last acceptable prejudice!" trap (please see rule 11 if you were thinking of doing that in comments here), while making it clear that it very much is a widely acceptable prejudice, with real consequences for real people.

Some key points:

• "Often the assumption is that overweight people have lost their self-control." Says Fat Is a Feminist Issue author Susie Orbach, "Most people want to be slim, but this perceived physical perfection is difficult to hold on to and they fear losing control of it...They project that fear and unhappiness on to people who are bigger and that often translates into abuse and attacks. It's a way of people disassociating themselves from what they fear the most — getting fat."
• It's based on the simplistic and inaccurate assumption that fatness is always the result of laziness and greed. Psychologist Ros Taylor: "There is true aggression towards overweight people and it comes down to fear and a complete lack of understanding of the issue. People think 'I can control what I put in my mouth so why can't they'. But we're not all the same, we don't all start from the same point."
• The government and media (pick your government and your media; it's certainly as true here as it is in Britain) have created a full-fledged moral panic about fatness. Martha Coupe: "The government and the press have created an atmosphere where people think they have a legitimate right to go up to an overweight person and tell them how to live their lives. To them we are all the anonymous pictures of fat people they see in the papers and are the cause of all society's ills, as well as a drain on the NHS. We deserve what we get. We're not people with feelings." (See? She even told you why headless fatties are problematic!)
• People tend to have unconscious but powerful negative reactions to those they find unattractive. Weight specialist Dr. Ian Campbell: "It's innate in people to dislike what they see as a lack of attractiveness. It makes them think such people are worthy of derision. Very young kids have been shown to have a bias against their overweight peers."

That last point is fine, as far as it goes, but in addition to the fact that our big brains can override kneejerk negative reactions once we recognize that they're irrational (which the article does point out), what we find attractive is certainly dictated in large part by the culture, not just some sort of vaguely defined "innate" characteristics (which it does not). I've seen this slide into a bullshit evo-psych argument far too often. "We want people who look healthy! Fat people look unhealthy! IT'S HARD-WIRED CAN'T CHANGE IT PUT DOWN THE FORK IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT." Yeeeah, except for how any amount of fat equaling ill-health in the collective consciousness is a very recent development. Throughout history, being relatively famine-proof was more likely regarded as a big advantage. Women with pelvises bigger than their heads were almost certainly regarded as more likely to be fertile. And even in fairly recent history, what was widely considered attractive was a hell of a lot different than it is now. Noting that negative reactions to "unattractive people" are not completely within the average person's control — at least until she takes a moment to apply reason — is one thing. Implying that this means we all have an instinctive aversion to fatties is quite another. The idea that fat people are categorically, universally unattractive is a function of fat hatred, not a reasonable explanation for it.

Speaking of which, Elizabeth Bluemle has a terrific post over at Publishers Weekly about fat characters in children's literature, which further elucidates how subtle but unmistakable — and frequent — messages about fatness can turn an irrational prejudice into the prevailing wisdom.

While we have all become accustomed to popular culture's celebration of thin, what I didn't expect is that books - the refuge of the chubby kid, the place where people understand the value of what lies beneath the surface, a land of acceptance and tolerance for difference - would come around to betray their readers. But you can hardly open an [advanced reading copy] these days without coming across one of the following:

* snide comments about a character's weight or about fat in general when they have nothing to do with the plot or theme of the story;
* descriptions of fat used deliberately as shorthand to indicate a character's villainy, isolation, absurdity, and/or repulsiveness;
* books with assumptions about fat people carelessly tossed off as though they are truths rather than opinion.

Right on, Elizabeth Bluemle. It's been a while since I read any children's literature (although Lizzie Skurnick frequently tempts me to revisit old favorites), but I notice this shit in grown-up books all the time — throwaway bits of fat hate, often apparently meant to endear author to reader, because of course everyone finds fat people ridiculous/disgusting/other than fully human, amirite? Jane Fallon's novel Getting Rid of Matthew was completely ruined for me because of that shit. It's couple hundred pages of smart, funny writing that's almost perfectly suited to my taste, and only a couple of lines that felt like she'd slapped me in the face for no obvious reason beyond "hur hur, fatties!" But they did, in fact, feel that way, and that's really not what I'm looking for in a book.

Having read Martha Coupe's story, I guess I can be grateful that I've never actually been slapped, kicked or punched in the face for being fat. But she is far from the only one who has, and we can't pretend that such abuse is somehow separate from the moral panic over obesity, the fiction that looks-based hatred is hard-wired, the way our collective guilt about overconsumption is projected onto fat people, the automatic equation of fatness with laziness and greed, and a million little fat jokes that people "didn't really mean anything by." Of course, that's exactly what the BBC commenters try to do — I only read about a dozen, but most are along the lines of, "Look, it's shameful and illegal to beat someone up, but fat people are still a huge problem for society to solve!"

Be better than that, Jezzies. Be smarter than that. And above all, please be kinder than that. Fat people are not a blight on society; we're human beings. Acting like we're some abstract problem to be solved only contributes to the kind of hatred that left Martha Coupe with a bruised and bloodied face, just because she dared to take up as much space as she needs.

Why Are Fat People Abused? [BBC]
Fat, But [Publishers Weekly]

You've probably heard about Ben Mezrich's frenetic new Facebook tell-all, the cumbersome The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook, a Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal. As XX's Megan Angelo discusses, apparently it paints the wunderkind Harvard founders, Mark Zuckerberg and Eduardo Saverin, as a couple of crass frat boys manqués, who use their newfound success to objectify women in a way normally denied to the average tech nerd. As the book tells it, Zuckerberg founded the networking juggernaut after being spurned by a girl, with the immortal words, "***** is a bitch. I need something to take my mind off her." As Angelo puts it,

he connection between not getting any and inventing Facebook would seem preposterous, if Mezrich weren't so consistent in portraying Facebook's founders as sexually frustrated. He measures each step of Facebook's success in sexual currency. When the site goes viral at Harvard, Saverin and Zuckerberg take two girls into a bar bathroom and have sex in adjoining stalls, and when it picks up buzz on the venture capital circuit, Zuckerberg goes home with a Victoria's Secret model. Even more damning: When Facebook is still in its early stages, Zuckerberg fantasizes about displaying girls' photos next to shots of farm animals and having people choose the more attractive image.

Damning indeed. The problem, of course, is that the book is apparently unreliable. Yeah, maybe it's not a shocker that the subjects should distance themselves, but the chorus of those condemning the author's sensationalistic methods has gotten loud enough that his publicist has clarified,"this is not reportage. It is big juicy fun." Charges of inaccuracy plagued Mezrich's last bestseller, Bringing Down the House, and as the Times remarks, he admitted to "fabricating" characters and situations for that book. Various situations in the latest, already earmarked for a movie, have already been debunked and accused of inaccuracy.

However dubious the author's claims to journalistic integrity, however, it's hard to credit that he could have fabricated the general ethos of sexism out of whole cloth - and it's not that hard to believe. And Angelo's larger point - that this sort of boys' club misogyny dominates Silicon Valley - is well-taken. But the issue becomes, for me, what to do about it. I doubt any of us uses Facebook because we particularly admire its founders or its original mission of excluding all but Ivy Leaguers. This, of course, is not the same thing as objecting to an institution because we find the beliefs or actions of founder offensive, but at the same time, what we've learned is that these dudes are dicks. As far as I know, they haven't backed these beliefs up with offensive activism, money to despicable organizations, or policies bar women they deem unattractive. (Had they gone through with that farm animal thing, well, yes, a boycott would be in order.) Had people known all this when the organization was founded? Maybe it wouldn't be so big. But we didn't, and it is, and they've sold.

And Facebook, whatever its petty intents, has eclipsed them: the recent response to the Iranian revolution is proof of this. If it still caters to appalling or infantile groups, it has also become a vehicle for women to speak out and congregate, for the like-minded to connect, for freedom of expression. In some ways, this is the best revenge. It's always tricky to know whether to condemn something that was founded on something bad, or complex (like Planned Parenthood, not to give Facebook that kind of credit) but has grown beyond it. One could argue that today, we shouldn't tolerate such recent antecedents. But by the same token, the evolution - and the repudiation - has been swifter than in earlier times. That also is the effect of the internet. And the fact that these guys' names will be (even if unfairly) linked in the public mind with the work "douchebaggery" is, too.

The Appallingly Sexist Origins of Facebook [XX]
A New Book on Facebook, Some of It Fact-Based [NY Times]
Inside Ben Mezrich's Accidental Billionaires [Baltimore Sun]

Salon's Thomas Rogers visits Conrad's book signing in New York, and opines that Conrad's success hinges on her blandness. He writes,

Much of the appeal of Lauren Conrad, like the Bella Swan character in the "Twilight" novels, is that she's a near-perfect cipher for young women. It's her very blankness that made her so well-suited for "The Hills" — and a much better choice of star than the woman who will replace her on the show, Kristin Cavallari — because she doesn't create drama. Drama happens to her. It's a feeling that many junior-high-age girls (and some grown-ups) can easily identify with: I'm just trying to be nice — so why is everybody being so mean to me?

Her book, LA Candy, tells the story of Jane Roberts, another nice girl who "just wants to live her life as honestly as possible — and plan celebrity parties, dammit — but is foiled by the producers' meddling and the distorting lens of the camera." It remains to be seen whether the two books that are slated to follow, and the related movie that may result, will help Conrad parlay her Hills experience into lasting fame. She has one big problem: if her appeal is her sheer reactivity, her status as a blameless girl who shit just happens to, then she risks wearing out her welcome she appears too savvy. People might buy that Jane/Lauren just kind of stumbled into a reality show, but will they believe that she stumbled into a book contract, a movie deal, and whatever lies beyond? And if they don't, will they still like her?

Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt, of course, don't need to worry about maintaining their image as nice people, since much of their fame relies on people totally hating them — and their nine-zillionth return to I'm A Celebrity ... Get Me Out of Here! is unlikely to change this. In the past, they've seemed aware of the loathing they inspire (how can you say the things Spencer says and not know that you're an asshole?), which makes their recent decision to start talking about Jesus all the time sort of confusing. Jason Boyett catalogs their religious performances, including Heidi's no-doubt-inspiring prayer session with Patti Blagojevich. He also quotes non-reality-star Christians like magazine editor David Sessions, who says,

As far as I know, Heidi and Spencer haven't done anything but yell about Jesus on TV, which makes them look like tacky opportunists and makes religious people in general appear ridiculous. Most Christians would look at their prissy, entitled, hateful behavior-it's all right there on tape-and conclude that anyone who took their beliefs very seriously wouldn't behave in such a fashion.

See, everyone knows Heidi and Spencer are horrible. So why are they trying to associate themselves with a religion that's supposed to be about virtue, charity, and loving thy neighbor? Boyett offers a possible explanation. He says that 46% of non-churchgoers agree with the statement, "Christians get on my nerves." Is it possible that Heidi and Spencer are actually trying to annoy people more? Whatever the case, only time will tell which media strategy pays off better: Lauren's nice-girl schtick, or Speidi's manufactured evil. Until then, they remain locked in an epic struggle between kind-of-goodness and irredeemable obnoxion, a struggle as old as time itself, or at least as old as television.

The Unbearable Lightness Of Lauren Conrad [Salon]
The Gospel According To Speidi [Daily Beast]

As I've stated before, I'm not a great personal advocate of the institution to start with, and the more people like Katherine Jean Lopez and Ace of Spades shit all over feminists like Jessica Valenti for agreeing to try to make it something less of a wholly religious, patriarchal institution that strictly exists for the subjugation of women and their sexuality to men and their sexuality, the less keen I am. And then I read about how asswipes like Tucker Carlson thinks fucking can save a bad marriage and Dennis Prager thinks women should just submit to their husbands who, without the bounds of matrimony and civilization, would devolve into rape-y chickens, and I frankly begin to worry a lot about being involved with people to whom the institution is important. And let's not even get me started on the Wedding Industrial Complex.

You know what small things give me hope about marriage? Watching people who don't — and can't — take the availability of the institution to them for granted fight for their right to get married. Watching the enthusiasm with which, in a variety of non-traditional outfits, same sex couples flocked to courthouses and simple ceremonies, flush with the pleasure of having the state sanction their love and their relationship. Watching the emotions and pride in people's eyes when they can take part in a state institution that they thought their love for another human might permanently bar them from. Scrolling through pictures of same sex weddings on newswires was enough to make even me think that there might really be something to this whole marriage idea that wasn't encapsulated in Being A Princess For A Day and rom-coms and sad little people clinging desperately to an institution that has failed to live up to the expectations of more than half of the participants in it.

But then I read Sam Schulman's recent Weekly Standard piece in which he defends marriage as not — I swear to fucking God — about love or individual commitment or promises meant not to be broken (he ought to know, he's on his third). In fact, the very idea that marriage is about love and commitment, to Schulman, is an idea gayer than the Stop H8 movement. Schulman then defends straights-only marriage on the grounds that it is the only institution that, for centuries, has more-or-less successfully subjugated women and kept men from sleeping around — unless you're Sam Schulman, Dennis Prager, Newt Gingrich or Rush Limbaugh, in which case it apparently doesn't keep one from having multiple sex partners and wives. Yup, Schulman thinks that marriage should only be for the straights, to keep us from fucking each other too much.

An example of the kind of marriage that Schulman decries:

The relationship between a same-sex couple, though it involves the enviable joy of living forever with one's soulmate, loyalty, fidelity, warmth, a happy home, shopping, and parenting, is not the same as marriage between a man and a woman, though they enjoy exactly the same cozy virtues. These qualities are awfully nice, but they are emphatically not what marriage fosters, and, even when they do exist, are only a small part of why marriage evolved and what it does.

The entity known as "gay marriage" only aspires to replicate a very limited, very modern, and very culture-bound version of marriage. Gay advocates have chosen wisely in this. They are replicating what we might call the "romantic marriage," a kind of marriage that is chosen, determined, and defined by the couple that enters into it.

Basically, Schulman says that the only things about the institution of marriage that make it remotely attractive to anyone uninterested in conservative religion and the subjugation of women don't require marriage and, in fact, might not exist at all.

And lest you think that I'm getting too paranoid that this guy wants to slap a chastity belt on us — or, rather, that he'd like to buy my dad one to slap on me — this is what Schulman explicitly defines as the purpose of marriage.

The first is the most important: It is that marriage is concerned above all with female sexuality. The very existence of kinship depends on the protection of females from rape, degradation, and concubinage. This is why marriage between men and women has been necessary in virtually every society ever known. Marriage, whatever its particular manifestation in a particular culture or epoch, is essentially about who may and who may not have sexual access to a woman when she becomes an adult, and is also about how her adulthood—and sexual accessibility—is defined. Again, until quite recently, the woman herself had little or nothing to say about this, while her parents and the community to which they answered had total control. The guardians of a female child or young woman had a duty to protect her virginity until the time came when marriage was permitted or, more frequently, insisted upon. This may seem a grim thing for the young woman—if you think of how the teenaged Natalie Wood was not permitted to go too far with Warren Beatty in Splendor in the Grass. But the duty of virginity can seem like a privilege, even a luxury, if you contrast it with the fate of child-prostitutes in brothels around the world.

Just to break this down:

• Parents (probably fathers) and marriage protect women from rape.
• Pre-marital sex is degrading to women.
• Marriage basically only exists to determine who can fuck certain women.
• A woman's only choice (and that of her family) is to protect her virginity until marriage or end up a child prostitute.

Not content to simply sound the horn of Jericho at the walls of his precious institution, shattering the illusion of many Americans that the institution is about love, fidelity, building a life together or even an equitable and state-recognized partnership, Schulman decides to dance on the ruins.

This most profound aspect of marriage—protecting and controlling the sexuality of the child-bearing sex—is its only true reason for being, and it has no equivalent in same-sex marriage. Virginity until marriage, arranged marriages, the special status of the sexuality of one partner but not the other (and her protection from the other sex)—these motivating forces for marriage do not apply to same-sex lovers.

Yup, marriage is solely about controlling who can impregnate the woman and has nothing to do with male sexuality... and that's why The Gays shouldn't be allowed to corrupt this precious institution of virginity-fetishization and control of women's sexuality. No wonder feminists keep saying same sex marriage is a feminist issue, if it can go so far as destroy this bullshit idea of the institution.

Also, by the way, according to Schulman, letting The Gays marry means that everyone will fuck their relatives and encourage interracial and inter-ethnic marriage (and, God, how I wish I was kidding).

Incest prohibition and other kinship rules that dictate one's few permissible and many impermissible sweethearts are part of traditional marriage. Gay marriage is blissfully free of these constraints. There is no particular reason to ban sexual intercourse between brothers, a father and a son of consenting age, or mother and daughter. There are no questions of ritual pollution: Will a hip Rabbi refuse to marry a Jewish man—even a Cohen—to a Gentile man? Do Irish women avoid Italian women? A same-sex marriage fails utterly to create forbidden relationships. If Tommy marries Bill, and they divorce, and Bill later marries a woman and has a daughter, no incest prohibition prevents Bill's daughter from marrying Tommy. The relationship between Bill and Tommy is a romantic fact, but it can't be fitted into the kinship system.

Just like it's important to keep Irish women from making out with Italian women, it's important to keep some bisexual man's future daughter from marrying his ex-lover, as though there's some current prohibition on me marrying my mother's ex (not that she had one). Actually, it seems to me there were at least two movies based on the concept of that happening. But, you know, whatever! People will start fucking dogs!

Schulman, having thus totally proven his point that social conservatives spend way to much time thinking about fucking dogs and family members, then goes on to say this:

Third, marriage changes the nature of sexual relations between a man and a woman. Sexual intercourse between a married couple is licit; sexual intercourse before marriage, or adulterous sex during marriage, is not. Illicit sex is not necessarily a crime, but licit sexual intercourse enjoys a sanction in the moral universe, however we understand it, from which premarital and extramarital copulation is excluded. More important, the illicit or licit nature of heterosexual copulation is transmitted to the child, who is deemed legitimate or illegitimate based on the metaphysical category of its parents' coition.

Now to live in such a system, in which sexual intercourse can be illicit, is a great nuisance. Many of us feel that licit sexuality loses, moreover, a bit of its oomph. Gay lovers live merrily free of this system. Can we imagine Frank's family and friends warning him that "If Joe were serious, he would put a ring on your finger"? Do we ask Vera to stop stringing Sally along? Gay sexual practice is not sortable into these categories—licit-if-married but illicit-if-not (children adopted by a gay man or hygienically conceived by a lesbian mom can never be regarded as illegitimate). Neither does gay copulation become in any way more permissible, more noble after marriage. It is a scandal that homosexual intercourse should ever have been illegal, but having become legal, there remains no extra sanction—the kind which fathers with shotguns enforce upon heterosexual lovers. I am not aware of any gay marriage activist who suggests that gay men and women should create a new category of disapproval for their own sexual relationships, after so recently having been freed from the onerous and bigoted legal blight on homosexual acts. But without social disapproval of unmarried sex—what kind of madman would seek marriage?

Let us now take it for a given that Schulman knows no actual same sex couples well enough to have been invited into their emotional lives where — surprise, asshole! — there are tons of questions of love, fidelity, commitment and the right time to engage in intercourse. That's the whole fucking reason they want to be able to participate in the fucking institution. But, hey, since no one can be threatened with a shotgun for having impregnated someone else's daughter through "illicit" sex (which will get less exciting but more "noble" after marriage, as though the beast with two backs is somehow an ennobling act) it's not for The Gays! Also, Schulman's wife should probably watch her back, as he just said the only reason he married her was because he couldn't otherwise fuck her, which is probably why he has two ex-wives.

At this point, he's basically just urinated on the ruins of the institution, but oh yes, now it's time to straight-up defecate on them, and someone's been eating his fiber. Schulman's final argument is that marriage is just a way for dudes to find new hunting partners in their father-in-laws and wives to find new book club participants (fucking gag me with a spoon), and since gay people are inevitably rejected by their parents, this doesn't happen in same sex marriages, so they shouldn't get married.

Even in modern romantic marriages, a groom becomes the hunting or business partner of his father-in-law and a member of his clubs; a bride becomes an ally of her mother-in-law in controlling her husband. There can, of course, be warm relations between families and their children's same-sex partners, but these come about because of liking, sympathy, and the inherent kindness of many people.

Oh, yes, and let's not forget how all women are harpies who set out to "control" their husbands and sons. I love how Schulman starts out defending it as a way to control women's sexuality, and ends up deciding that it's just a way to control men. If he's this concerned with power dynamics, I hope his wife's got some lovely fetish gear under the bed.

Oh, and the final nail in the coffin of same sex marriage, as far as Schulman's concerned, is that same sex couples are all too old.

In contrast, gay weddings are rather middle-aged affairs. My impression is borne out by the one available statistic, from the province of British Columbia, showing that the participants in first-time same-sex weddings are 13 years older, on average, then first-time brides-and-grooms. This feels about right. After all, declaring gay marriage legal will not produce the habit of saving oneself for marriage or create a culture which places a value on virginity or chastity (concepts that are frequently mocked in gay culture precisely because they are so irrelevant to gay romantic life).

Yes, undoubtedly, Schulman is an expert on "gay culture" having obviously been so friendly with so many LGBT people in his short, well-examined life.

And, so, Schulman says, The Gays will eventually grow tired of getting married, as so very many breeders have done — except for Schulman, who just gets tired of being married to individual women, one at a time.

Since gay relationships exist perfectly well outside the kinship system, to assume the burdens of marriage—the legal formalities, the duty of fidelity (which is no easier for gays than it is for straights), the slavishly imitative wedding ritual—will come to seem a nuisance. People in gay marriages will discover that mimicking the cozy bits of romantic heterosexual marriage does not make relationships stronger; romantic partners more loving, faithful, or sexy; domestic life more serene or exciting. They will discover that it is not the wedding vow that maintains marriages, but the force of the kinship system.

Schulman knows a lot about how getting married doesn't keep a relationship together. In one sense — not the kinship system bullshit — he is right. Wedding vows and state approval don't alone make a spouse faithful or a relationship work or the spark remain intact — and that goes the same for everyone participating in any relationship, as the thrice-married Schulman well knows.

But in the mean time, unlike Schulman's rants about controlling my uterus, having boring sex, controlling my husband and not fucking my relatives, same sex marriages will destroy the institution to which Schulman has so proudly submitted 3 separate times in order to gain sole access to some sweet, sweet pussy for some period of time before he becomes utterly bored with it. You know, 'cause otherwise who would get married if they could just have sex?

Every day thousands of ordinary heterosexual men surrender the dream of gratifying our immediate erotic desires. Instead, heroically, resignedly, we march up the aisle with our new brides, starting out upon what that cad poet Shelley called the longest journey...

And that's why gay people shouldn't get married, so that Schulman can't have more sex. Actually, that's probably the sole legitimate argument against same sex marriage Schulman made the entire time: if keeping same sex couples from entering into state-enforced contracts with one another really would keep Sam Schulman from having more sex with women, it might be worth considering.

The Worst Thing About Gay Marriage [The Weekly Standard]

Earlier: Conservatives Think Feminists Should Stay Away From Marriage
Tucker Carlson's Guide To Not Getting Divorced
Conservative Dennis Prager Knows It's Not Rape If His Wife "Submits"
Dennis Prager Still Thinks Women Should Just Give It Up Already
Dennis The Menace

(Remember, kids: Don't do drugs!) In this episode, Rich and I answer questions about eyebrows, kegels, and men's asses. Got a burning question? Send it to potpsych@jezebel.com. (Or send us your phone number! We wanna talk.)

What's the Best Way to Covertly Scratch Your Vadge from Pot Psychology on Vimeo.

First off, let me just say, having examined the pictures, I'm not buying. None of the nude pictures reveal her face (or her tattoos), the physical proportions are off and the pictures that do include her face have it partially shadowed. Furthermore, the decor in the non-nude pictures that look the most like her doesn't match that in the photos without a face, and the layout of the rooms in the two photographs are strikingly different.

That said, what's more striking than the fact that the pictures aren't definitively Rihanna is the timing. For the first time since Chris Brown reportedly beat the shit out of her, Rihanna has been publicly out and about: She made two appearances in New York this week, looking beautiful, poised and anything but miserable. And then: these pictures. It certainly looks to me like someone - perhaps a certain woman beating turdmuffin we all know and hate - is trying to shame her back indoors, away from the cameras and out of the spotlight. I hope it doesn't work. But here's the thing: even if they're not real, some damage has already been done; how is Rihanna supposed to "prove" that she doesn't appear in these snapshots if certain unquestioning and influential bloggers are saying she does?

The Department of Family and Protective Services in Texas reports that 12 girls between the ages 12 to 15 were sexually abused "with the knowledge of their parents" and spiritually "married" to older men within the Mormon breakaway group. Of the girls, 7 of them had one or more children:

The report, an unusual step taken to help satisfy expected questions from the state Legislature when it convenes in January, summarized individual investigations and the history of the case. The findings, though shared with law enforcement, are separate from the ongoing criminal cases.

The individual investigations, which covered 146 families, concluded that 91 families had children who were abused or neglected. Crimmins said that conclusion confirmed what investigators initially suspected — that girls were being forced into underage marriages and other children were exposed to that harm.

The case "is about sexual abuse of girls and children who were taught that underage marriages are a way of life," the agency said in its report. "It is about parents who condoned illegal underage marriages and adults who failed to protect young girls — it has never been about religion."

Authorities say that an additional 262 children were listed as neglected because their parents failed to remove their children from a situation where the child would be exposed to sexual abuse.

Meanwhile, FLDS spokesman Willie Jessop said that the the department has made "many allegations that it's never been able to back up" and that the department "needs to learn how to say we're sorry instead of trying to justify their actions."

So far a dozen FLDS men, including the sect's prophet—Warren Jeffs— face charges of sexual abuse and bigamy based on evidence gathered from the ranch. The agency has also identified 124 "perpetrators" who were either parents who arranged illegal child marriages or men who married a young child.

Abuse, Neglect At Polygamist Ranch [MSNBC]

Earlier: Authorities Take 400 More Kids From Polygamist Sect In Texas
Polygamist Sect Raided On Charges Of Abuse Of Girls

First things first, I should state that I am probably a bit biased: I have the shortest hair of all the Jezebel staffers, but I have also had very long hair. Hairstyles do not work universally: "sexy" long hair on one woman can look like a wet mop of Muppet hair on another; a cute pixie cut on one gal can look like a cry for help on another.

One good part of having short hair? It weeds out the slimy creeps, which brings me to the male "experts" that the Daily News found to weigh in on how un-sexy short hair is:

“If you cut your hair you might be making a statement that says, ‘I don’t want to be seen as a sex object,’ ” says sex therapist Dr. Aline Zoldbrod, who agrees that men are usually more sexually attracted to women with longer hair.

“Men love long hair; the touch and the smell stimulates our senses,” says Matt Titus, Manhattan dating guru and author of “Why Hasn’t He Called?”

“The three physical things that attract a man are a great body, beautiful long hair or great lips. So cutting off one third of your beacons of attraction doesn’t increase your chances of having Mr. Right approach you. It’s like sending a nonverbal message that you’re not interested in sex,” he declares.

Why does everything on a woman's body have to be some sort of signal to the male sex? Articles like this rub me the wrong way because they give men ownership over women's bodies. Suddenly, a hairstyle becomes a "statement" to men and women are basically being told that they should consider how men look at them when they are making choices about what to wear and how to style their hair.

And the thing is, men are not so simple when to comes to attraction to women. It's understandable why Mr. Titus wants to fit men into generalities: it helps him sell books if he can make women believe that all men are the same and he, and only he, has they key to unlock them.

It's interesting that the only man who approved of short hair on women in the Daily News article is a gay (just guessing!) hairdresser who, just a few months ago, said he "didn't love" short haircuts. Curious! I suspect that the inclusion of the hairdresser's opinion is meant to communicate that the only men who want women to cut their hair short is their gay hairdressers — because no straight man would ever think to look at a lady with a cropped 'do.

Edgy Pixies Haircuts Are Back, But Do They Kill Your Attraction? [NY Daily News]
Hairstylist Ricardo Rojas Doesn't Do His Own Hair [NY Mag]

Previously: Does Cutting Your Hair Mean You Don't Want Sex?

Dumenco calls this phenomenon reclaiming your inner "asshole". Apparently, once a man notices that he signed onto a life of drudgery and touchy-feeliness that is completely opposite to his nature, he is going to start lying to his wife or girlfriend, drinking too much, going to strip clubs, getting jerked off by sex workers and ignoring his parenting responsibilities to, Dumenco says, start "snatching a bit of unapologetic selfhood — manhood, damn it — back from the clammy clutches of coupledom."

Naturally, because coupledom is all about sublimating one's true self, a man could never just suggest to his wife that he needs a couple of hours of alone time, or wants to watch football with his friends or have an individual existence in addition to his marriage. Nope, all women do is make men go shopping and hold purses, talk about the arts and spend every waking moment with them.

Recast as nurturers, some of these guys are finding themselves almost indignantly nostalgic for that time, not so long ago, when husbands got to be babied by their wives—and never had to empty the Diaper Genie.

Oh, yes, that time, when one's wife stayed home, always had a hot meal waiting, never complained, raised one's kids for him, worshipped the ground he walked on, cooked, cleaned and didn't have a separate identity.

The only cure, after years and years of putting up with what Dumenco terms "their emasculation," is for men to behave like petulant, selfish children who were forced into their life choices by someone stronger than them. That cure, in fact, is to rebel against one's wife or girlfriend as though she is his mother, lying and doing things that he himself knows are wrong and self-destructive, in order to prove that he is not ruled by anyone but his own penis and sense of self-entitlement.

[New guy archetype Guy] Ritchie was just subscribing to the contemporary credo that a good husband shuts up and gets on with it—while secretly nursing (and sometimes even acting on) elaborate escape fantasies. The average guy's reality, though, is more likely to involve Internet porn (hello, David Duchovny). Or a visit to a strip club on a business trip. Or run-of-the-mill emotional infidelity—investing a little too enthusiastically in, say, a nonsexual but ego-flattering "work wife" flirtation, whether face-to-face or Internet-enabled (like sending inappropriate IMs to the accounting assistant).

Because, of course, the only way to face the horrible reality that one married the love of one's life is to act like a dick.

Welcome Back, Asshole [Details]

Related: Have You Become A Pig [Details]