Year: 2013

Heidi Julavits is entranced by Christa Parravani’s memoir, her, about the death of her identical twin Cara:

Briefly their story is this. Until Cara died, she and Christa functioned as a single entity split between two bodies. As children, the twins vowed that if one perished the other would commit suicide. “The unharmed twin would take her life by whatever means she possessed: Drano, phone cord, knife, swan dive from a cliff.” (Parravani cites the following statistic: 50 percent of “identicals” die within two years of the death of their twin.) …

Cara matured into a drug abuser and the less stable of the two; Christa, by comparison, was driven and even-keeled. Then, at the age of twenty-four, Cara was raped and nearly killed while walking her dog in the woods.

What had been transpiring gradually—the twins’ healthy separation into two adult women—was violently hastened. “The moment my sister fell under her rapist’s hand, he untwinned us: the bodies were the same but Cara became lost in hers. My body became a vessel of guilt, reminded us both of the past . . . joyful giving of sex, ripe exposed youth, and the naïve belly that still tickles at touch.” The trauma precipitated a drug-addiction tailspin from which Cara never recovered. The twins’ relationship became untenable. “She hates you for reminding her of what she was,” the author writes. “You fear her for showing you what you could become.” Christa, after trying repeatedly to help Cara get clean, adopted the tough-love approach. Cara’s final angry words to her gauntlet-throwing sister were, more or less, if I die now it will be on you.

And then, as Charlotte Brontë might have it, Cara died. (As Charlotte Brontë would not have it, she died of a heroin overdose, in a bathroom.) But contrary to sisterly suicide pacts and the rules of metaphysics, both sisters, in a sense, lived on. “While she was alive I was vibrant, responsible, steady, and holding her up,” writes Parravani. “I was her opposite. In the wake of Cara’s death, I became her.”

(Photo: “Blizzard” by Christa Parravani, from the series Kindred)

Gavin Mcinnes and his tight jockeys settle the question (NSFW):

A reader chimes in:

The article you posted about the social construction of sexual desire is another great example of how the novelty of counterintuitive claims is actually counterproductive in scientific realms. That men have a stronger (even uncontrollable) sex drive is a culturally reinforced stereotype, yes, but one based in fact. At every level of scientific understanding the fact is confirmed. The sex drive is largely regulated by the production of testosterone. Men produce significantly more testosterone than women, and correspondingly have a greater sex drive. Evolutionary biologists and psychologists note that as childbearing has substantially less cost for males as compared to females, it is to their reproductive advantage to engage in more sex and have more offspring.

If it is culture, and specifically Protestantism, that has defined the female sex drive, you might ask why none of the 40% or so of the world that practices non-Abrahamic religions report a particularly ravenous female population. A published psychology article on sex differences in the sex drive notes (pdf) that in India (Hindu) they also find a significantly higher sex drive in men. Men, as opposed to women, will have sex with “Untouchables”, despite the cultural taboo.

That the author can find a few literary references to the contrary I would suggest is the result of two factors:

1) most authors from antiquity were men, who may be projecting their desires or pandering to their audience 2) there is a very old stereotype of women having less control over their passions (i.e., emotions) in general. For much the same time period that the author is drawing upon to support her contention (ancient greece – mid-20th century), “hysteria” (excess emotionality) remained a recognized medical condition suffered (almost exclusively) by women. That sexual desire might be among the domains that the “weaker sex” could not control would fit nicely with this stereotype.

I do not mean to entirely dismiss social construction/social learning theories. They are very relevant for many topics, but in this case they decidedly incorrect. This is a case in which the wealth of evidence actually supports the stereotype.

Osnos explains:

Over the years, I’ve spoken to many of the American diplomats involved in negotiations with China and North Korea, and their consensus is clear: for all of North Korea’s instability, China still prefers the status quo to a post-Kim North Korea that could very well end up under the control of Seoul or Washington. So China and the U.S. remain far apart. “Our threat assessments are fundamentally misaligned,” a former American negotiator told me.

From China’s perspective, even if Kim is losing control of the situation, he has not lost it yet, and so China considers anything short of that to be alarmist. As long as North Korea is not threatening Beijing, this is a prisoners’ dilemma we will be facing on our own.

To appease China and hasten North Korea’s end, Beinart wants to America “to pledge formally that America will never station troops on what is now North Korean soil”:

Beijing keeps propping up Pyongyang. According to a February article in Foreign Policy by Fudan University’s Shen Dingli, there are three main reasons. The first is that China fears North Korea’s implosion could send tens or even hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing across the two countries’ 800-mile-long border. The second is that North Korea’s collapse might prompt the millions of ethnic Koreans living on the Chinese side of the border to try to secede and join their kinsmen in a reunified Korea. The third is that if America’s ally South Korea swallows its northern twin, China could suddenly find itself with the U.S. military on its southeastern border.

There’s little the Obama administration can do to allay Beijing’s first two fears. But it can do a lot to allay the third.

One of the smaller aspects of Margaret Thatcher’s unlikely rise to power is relatively unknown to Americans. That’s the story of how she became leader of the Conservative Party in 1975. And the truth of the matter is that it was an inspired strategy on her part and a huge miscalculation by her opponents. She was, truth be told, never supposed to have become party leader. It was her very unelectability that elected her. It was the mother of all bluffs.

She was, after all, a woman – and in the mid-1970s, the idea of a female prime minister was not exactly congenial to the Tory party. She’d had a rough time as Education Secretary in the previous government. She was a minor figure in the grand scheme of things. So when she decided to challenge former prime minister Edward Heath for leadership of the parliamentary party, she was clearly understood to be acting as what’s called a “stalking horse.” She obviously couldn’t beat Heath, but she could reveal serious erosion in his support among his fellow Tory MPs, wound him in a first ballot, allow him to pledge to resign, and then have a new contest among his rightful, more established and palatable inheritors. Her strategy, conjured by her friend Airey Neave (later murdered by the IRA on the eve of her first election), was to tell MPs to vote for her just to get rid of Heath. Then they could have a real contest.

Neave told everyone as the vote approached that she didn’t have a chance – in fact, her weakness could mean a triumph by Heath which would end any way of getting rid of him as leader before the next election. And Neave was so successful in downplaying her chances and the party was so desperate to fire Heath, and the likely successors were so scared of getting too far out in front, that she won the first round overwhelmingly. So overwhelmingly in fact that the momentum continued and she went on to defeat the establishment candidate, Willie Whitelaw, in the second round.

Old school Tory MPs thought they were using this odd female politician to get rid of a flailing and failed leader. They didn’t realize until it was too late that she had been using them. And it’s worth recalling that her time as opposition leader was not that successful. As she moved toward the right, the centrist wing of her party got more and more nervous. Chauvinists were perturbed. If Callaghan had called an election in the fall of 1978, the polls suggest he would have won. But he dithered. And she pounced.

This was a woman who took risks. And her first move for the party leadership was one of the more stunning and unexpected rewards.

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Here’s one of several charts marking Thatcher’s impact on Britain. If you consider the success of a country measurable by the levels of emigration out and immigration in, then Britain became far more attractive a place to live after her eleven years. But here is where the paradox of Thatcherism truly comes to the fore. Thatcher campaigned on economic liberalization and social conservatism. Here’s what has happened to the marriage rate since her time:

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Thatcher’s fiscal conservatism did not survive her. Blair did what Bush did: spend, spend and borrow and borrow. Watch how she reduces the percentage of public spending as a percentage of GDP – from 49 percent to 39 percent – and then look how Labour let it rip – leaving Britain high and dry today:

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This is the one core difference between Thatcher’s Tories and Reagan’s Republicans. Thatcher actually cut spending significantly and durably. She never promised something for nothing.

More data on growing inequality in Britain and other less flattering statistics here.

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[Re-posted with several questions added by readers. If you have a minute to vote for your question preference, we would really appreciate it.]

Long-time readers of the Dish know Dreher well. But for everyone else:

Rod Dreher was a conservative editorial writer and a columnist for The Dallas Morning News, but departed that newspaper in late 2009 to affiliate with the John Templeton Foundation. He wrote a blog previously called “Crunchy Con” at beliefnet.com, then simply called “Rod Dreher” with an emphasis on cultural rather than political topics. … Raised a Methodist, he later converted to Roman Catholicism in 1993. He wrote widely in the Catholic press, but covering the Roman Catholic Church’s child sex abuse scandal, starting in 2002, led him to question his Catholicism, and on October 12, 2006, he announced his conversion to Eastern Orthodoxy.

You can follow Rod’s writing at his blog at the American Conservative. He also has a new book out, The Little Way of Ruthie Leming: A Southern Girl, a Small Town, and the Secret of a Good Life:

[The book] follows Rod Dreher, a Philadelphia journalist, back to his hometown of St. Francisville, Louisiana (pop. 1,700) in the wake of his younger sister Ruthie’s death. When she was diagnosed at age 40 with a virulent form of cancer in 2010, Dreher was moved by the way the community he had left behind rallied around his dying sister, a schoolteacher. He was also struck by the grace and courage with which his sister dealt with the disease that eventually took her life. In Louisiana for Ruthie’s funeral in the fall of 2011, Dreher began to wonder whether the ordinary life Ruthie led in their country town was in fact a path of hidden grandeur, even spiritual greatness, concealed within the modest life of a mother and teacher. In order to explore this revelation, Dreher and his wife decided to leave Philadelphia, move home to help with family responsibilities and have their three children grow up amidst the rituals that had defined his family for five generations – Mardi Gras, L.S.U. football games, and deer hunting.

Some praise for the book:

“If you are not prepared to cry, to learn, and to have your heart cracked open even a little bit by a true story of love, surrender, sacrifice, and family, then please do not read this book. Otherwise, do your soul a favor, and listen carefully to the unforgettable lessons of Ruthie Leming.” — Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love

“The Little Way of Ruthie Leming is Steel Magnolias for a new generation.” -Sela Ward, Emmy Award-winning actress and author of Homesick

To submit a question for Rod, simply enter it into the above Urtak survey after answering all of the existing questions (ignore the “YES or NO question” aspect and simply enter any open-ended question). To vote, click “Yes” if you have a strong interest in seeing him answer the question or “No” if you don’t particularly care. View the results here. Thanks for your help.