Lines in the Sand

Iraq AGAIN? Didn’t we just FIX that place?

One of the reasons we in America have trouble caring about the Middle East is that we have something quite a few other places in the world don’t: stable borders. When’s the last time a map of this hemisphere actually changed? When was our last real border dispute? “54-40 or fight?” The Confederacy tried to create a new country, but that failed. We still can’t rule out Texas seceding from the Union, I suppose, but it’s unlikely. Our best security feature is the oceans on either side of us.

The irony is that while we’re called the New World and the Middle East is considered the cradle of civilization, most of the countries we see on the map there today haven’t been there all that long. The most stable of them, Israel, has only been a country since 1948. Syria, Iraq and Lebanon were places, but they weren’t really countries until occupying Western powers created borders for them in the early 20^th century. Is Iraq behaving like it’s really a country right now? I think it was Joseph Biden who said some time ago that Iraq could actually be three countries – and some thought he was nuts.

It wasn’t all that long ago that the Turks controlled everything in that area. It was called the Ottoman Empire. A friend of mine jokes that these days, the Ottoman Empire is just a furniture store in New Jersey.

Now we have an extremist Islamic faction that wants to create a new state encompassing Syria and Iraq (not a new idea, BTW), at which they could very easily succeed. Then there are the Kurds, who control portions of Iraq, Syria, and even Turkey. I’d be willing to bet that they’re going to end up, when all is said and done, with their own country.

The human cost of all this instability is beyond belief. Aside from the deaths and injuries, millions have been displaced from their homes in Syria. Now, Iraqis who are on the wrong side of the religious factional fence are fleeing theirs in large numbers. These folks may not even be sure what country “home” is now. This is literally a very foreign concept to us on this side of the pond.

It is my belief that whether we like it our not, the West is going to have to get involved in this mess in some way (As an aside, it’s very interesting that we’re jumping up and down because the ISIS group is beheading people, while we didn’t say boo when the Syrian government turned a mechanized army on civilians). I don’t know what form that involvement will take, but we’re going to find we can’t just stand by and let the region shatter.

Yet it seems clear that the map is going to be changing pretty radically again in a short period of time, and the cartographers at the National Geographic better keep their digital paintbrushes wet.

Gender Wars, Take 2?

This is a subject about which I may have some unwelcome things to say, and how many friends I will have at the end may be slightly in question.

There has been much talk since the Isla Vista shooting about misogyny, the prevalence of rape on college campuses, and similar topics. #YesAllWomen, says the hashtag, will be sexually harassed, if not assaulted outright, by a man at some point. Men counter, but not all men are like that (which usually means “I’M not like that!”). But enough are.

Among the most debated issues is dress. Rape victims are naturally offended when the cops ask them what they were wearing. Of course, it shouldn’t matter what a woman was wearing, there is NO excuse for sexual assault of any kind. But can it be a factor?

Taking up a different crime for a moment: The same cops often tell us around the holidays not to leave a wrapped gift in the back seat while we’re away from the car. Someone may break in and steal it. Of course, it’s a crime, and most wouldn’t do it. But the temptation may prove too much for somebody, who may even feel entitled to steal.

When it comes to dress, most women in my experience, especially the attractive ones, know that dress sends a message, and they usually know exactly what message they want to send, especially if it’s a first date – or a job interview. They want to be attractive, of course, but there are degrees and intentions. I’m not talking about wearing short skirts or showing cleavage here. Sometimes it’s the exact opposite: a beautiful woman may dress down somewhat and cover more, because she wants her beauty to be just an a-ttraction, not a dis-traction. Or, she wants to send the right socioeconomic message.

Hugh Hefner and others succeeded in liberating Americans from sexual repression, but he also opened the door wide to the fetishization (don’t make me say that fast) of women. The media, including music and games as well as TV, print, film and the Web, create strong impressions in young straight men’s brains, often long before flesh-and-blood females do. The sad part is that men and women usually learn to be gender warriors long before they learn to be friends.

We go on and on about how human civilization is speeding up global warming, and the steps we must take to protect the planet. What is modern culture doing to our souls? Why is it all of a sudden so much more dangerous for women? Why do some men feel such sexual entitlement in what seems like an otherwise free and equitable country?

Am I saying here that women should be walking around in burkas and men in black suits? Or that men who assault shouldn’t be held accountable? Not at all! What I am saying is that just as things are way out of balance in our physical environment, they are similarly out of balance in our cultural one. What can we do to restore that balance? And in the meantime, don’t parents have the responsibility to raise both male and female children to respect others -- and how to navigate safely through what can sometimes be a dangerous world?

A Time and a Place

I’ve been reading about the #YesAllWomen movement, which has now attracted well over a million followers (I’ve never known exactly what to do with hashtags, but I have to pay attention to this one). Even trying to write about it is like walking into a very dense minefield, but here goes.

The movement, as many of us know, was touched off by the Isla Vista killer, who preceded his attack on women at UC Santa Barbara with a long manifesto about it not being fair that women weren’t attracted to him and that he was still a virgin at 22. So here we are, talking about the prevalence of misogyny.

I’m hearing an echo. “Not all men will harass women, but at some point, all women will have been harassed by a man” sounds a little like, “Not all Muslims are terrorists, but most terrorists are Muslims.” Was the killer a sexual terrorist, who has thrown us into a new period of suspicion and mistrust between the genders?

Where did the killer’s misogyny come from? His sense of entitlement to the sexual favors of females? Sexual attraction is natural and beautiful, but we’re Americans, we’ve never quite learned what do with it and where it belongs in our lives. Why was virginity a “thing” with the twisted young man in Santa Barbara? Why was losing it a goal (used to be that keeping it was – and BTW, when did virginity get to be a male issue, anyway?).

After Isla Vista, we’re scrambling to find who’s to blame for the killer’s feeling that women owed him something. In a radio interview I heard, one analyst suggests that it could be Hollywood, for producing streams of films in which the nerdy, unattractive guy gets the beautiful girl. No wonder, he argues, that clumsy young men have a sense of entitlement. I don’t know if I’d go there, but do the media bear some responsibility? Does the same art that has the power to educate us about ourselves infuse us with a sense of, “If it’s happening for him, why can’t it happen for me -- right now?”

Ours is not a culture of patience. Still a virgin at 22? I wish someone could have told that Santa Barbara guy that if he had just been able to wait a bit, some woman would come along and find him attractive. He wouldn’t even have to deserve it.

In the really old days, losing virginity wouldn’t have been a big deal for a young man. The experienced older man was there to accompany the younger one to the bordello. It’s terrible to say, perhaps, but there was something honest about this approach. Instead of steaming himself up about being a virgin at 22, why couldn’t Mr. Isla Vista have just paid for it somewhere and gotten it over with in 20 minutes?

Whatever happened to courtship? A young woman I know told me a while back that while she was constantly bedeviled by much older men being attracted to her, she had to concede that older men knew how to treat women, and most young men these days had no clue.

Courtship is not an alien concept. It is built into much of the animal kingdom by instinct, with rituals among some birds being unbelievably complicated. There are no short circuits with those species -- it’s a process. And at the end, there is a time and a place for the sexual act.

I persist in the idea that human beings, whether we realize it or not, have very similar wiring. Here’s hoping that more of us – especially men – will learn that the best sex is part of a real relationship, which takes a while to develop – usually more than the two hours in a movie.

In the meantime, in the words of Rodney King, can’t the genders all just get along?