About that "affluenza."

Those who think the rich teenager — who, driving drunk, killed 4 persons — should have gotten a harsher punishment than 10 years probation are focusing on the expert testimony he presented in his favor. A psychologist named G. Dick Miller testified that having grown up in affluence, "He never learned that sometimes you don’t get your way... He had the cars and he had the money. He had freedoms that no young man would be able to handle."

Miller used the term "affluenza" — a portmanteau of "affluence" and "influenza" — to refer to the young man's psychological deficit.

Affluenza, Miller acknowledged to CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Thursday, is “not a medical term.” The psychologist said that it means “You have too much and you don’t know how to distribute it.” At Cooper’s prompting, Miller acknowledged that the boy was “a spoiled brat.”

The affluenza claim rightfully strikes the most absurd note since Dan White’s infamous 1979 “Twinkie defense.” Psychologists have loosely used the term for years to describe the emotional pitfalls unique to children raised in affluent settings.

Of course, psychologists will have a lot to say about the afflictions of rich people, since rich people are more likely to have money to throw into long, luxurious sessions with psychologists. And rich people have the money to put on a strong defense in a criminal trial, replete with expert testimony framing their deficiencies in the most compellingly sympathetic form.

It's the judge's responsibility to give this testimony the weight it deserves. The problem here is not that rich people have money to dump into a strong defense in a criminal proceeding or that psychologists have coined a catchy/cutesy term for the woes of the rich. It is the judge — Texas State District Judge Jean Boyd — who is accountable for anything that went wrong in the case of Ethan Couch. And we don't know the weight she put on Miller's testimony or the notion of "affluenza."

I don't know how Boyd has treated other teenagers. Perhaps she's deeply informed about the deficiencies of the teenage brain and has shown mercy to a great many poor and working class teenagers and her sentencing of Couch is — within her record — a model of equal treatment of the rich and the poor. Maybe she knows the research that has led, for example, to articles like this — "Developmental Psychologist Says Teenagers Are Different" — in the New York Times.

That's a 2009 interview with Laurence Steinberg, "a developmental psychologist at Temple University in Philadelphia... one of the leading experts in the United States on adolescent behavior and adolescent brain biology." He says:

I’m not one of those people who labels adolescence as some sort of mental illness. Teenagers are not crazy. They’re different.

When it comes to crime, they are less responsible for their behavior than adults. And typically, in the law, we don’t punish people as much who are less responsible. We know from our lab that adolescents are more impulsive, thrill-seeking, drawn to the rewards of a risky decision than adults. They tend to not focus very much on costs. They are more easily coerced to do things they know are wrong. These factors, under the law, make people less responsible for criminal acts. The issue is: as a class, should we treat adolescents differently?

Asked whether the criminal justice system is "beginning to take these differences into account during sentencing," Steinberg says:

It’s been coming up in cases. I went to Washington in November to watch the oral arguments in two related cases before the Supreme Court that ask: should someone who committed a crime as a teen be subjected to life imprisonment without a chance for parole, ever?

With these cases, and another in 2005 where the high court threw out the death penalty for adolescents, I was scientific consultant to the American Psychological Association on its amicus brief. What we said in the death penalty case — and now — was that we have considerable evidence showing that adolescents are different from adults in ways that mitigate their criminal responsibility. But since 2005, there’s been a lot of new scientific evidence supporting this position.

At the link you can see links to the U.S. Supreme Court cases and descriptions of the neuroscience research about the teenage brain.

Speaking of brains: Let's try to think clearly about this case and the larger context. Don't get too distracted by the word "affluenza" — which no one said was an actual disease. Don't impulsively slot this into a class warfare template. Remember that the criminal defendant has a right to present the evidence in his favor. And the responsibility for sentencing lies squarely with the judge, but don't succumb to impulsive emotion as you judge the judge.

"He wasn't a violent person, he was just verbally aggressive."

Said of the latest school shooter.

And here's news of his Facebook postings:

"I was wondering to all the neoclassicals and neoliberals, why isn't the market correcting itself?" he wrote. "If the invisible hand is so strong, shouldn't it be able to overpower regulations?"

Pierson also appears to mock Republicans on another Facebook post, writing "you republicans are so cute" and posting an image that reads: "The Republican Party: Health Care: Let 'em Die, Climate Change: Let 'em Die, Gun Violence: Let 'em Die, Women's Rights: Let 'em Die, More War: Let 'em Die. Is this really the side you want to be on?"

Enclothed cognition.

A term for "the mental changes that we undergo when we wear certain clothing."

"It’s all about the symbolic meaning that you associate with a particular item of clothing," [Northwestern researcher Hajo] Adam said. And he thinks the study’s results can be applied to many more fields, including activewear and fitness. "I think it would make sense that when you wear athletic clothing, you become more active and more likely to go to the gym and work out."

The linked article is almost entirely about athletic clothing, and there's almost nothing about the researchers' study and the term "enclothed cognition" which amused me enough to start this post. The insight seems so obvious — dressing the part will help you play the part — that it seems funny to have a term for it.

What I think would be fun to talk about is articles of clothing that you have used to alter your perceptions. And have you rejected items of clothing that you thought would skew your perceptions in ways you didn't like? Remember to exclude the idea of how others perceive you and how their response to you will affect you. It's just you. You and that item of clothing. Like this:



ADDED: Here's an Amazon link to a page where you can buy a nice porkpie hat, like the one Walter White uses to achieve enclothed cognition in "Breaking Bad." I searched only for "porkpie hat" and did not mention anything more "Breaking Bad"-related than that, but the Amazon page showed not only other elements for a Walter White costume (jacket, glasses, yellow coveralls) but also packets of blue raspberry rock candy.

"Didn’t I find, like Paul Theroux, 'the quest for manliness essentially rightwing, puritanical, cowardly, neurotic, and fueled largely by a fear of women'?"

"Yes, absolutely, and this belief did nothing to change the fact that I have wanted and sometimes tried in life to feel more manly. In fact, I was trying as I rendered judgment on the Wilderness Collective video, because one of the easiest ways to feel manly is to feel superior to other men’s efforts to feel manly."

From Ben Crair's TNR piece titled "Bro Fall/I lost my masculinity in Brooklyn, so I climbed a mountain to get it back." The Paul Theroux piece he quotes is "The Male Myth." I'm going to concentrate on the Theroux article, a NYT op-ed from 1983. What I love about it being 30 years old is that it's (presumably) underblogged. So let me begin the catching up on blogging "The Male Myth."

I have always disliked being a man. The whole idea of manhood in America is pitiful, a little like having to wear an ill-fitting coat for one's entire life. (By contrast, I imagine femininity to be an oppressive sense of nakedness.)...

Even the expression ''Be a man!'' strikes me as insulting and abusive. It means: Be stupid, be unfeeling, obedient and soldierly, and stop thinking. Man means ''manly'' - how can one think ''about men'' without considering the terrible ambition of manliness?...

The youth who is subverted, as most are, into believing in the masculine ideal is effectively separated from women - it is the most savage tribal logic - and he spends the rest of his life finding women a riddle and a nuisance....

Femininity - being ladylike - implies needing a man as witness and seducer; but masculinity celebrates the exclusive company of men. That is why it is so grotesque; and that is also why there is no manliness without inadequacy - because it denies men the natural friendship of women....

The quote in the post title fits here. He goes on to speak of his personal struggle becoming a writer in a country where writing seems insufficiently manly, which supposedly is why male American writers invent protagonists who drinks heavily and hunts or wrestles and so forth.

There would be no point in saying any of this if it were not generally accepted that to be a man is somehow - even now in feminist-influenced America - a privilege...

And this is also why men often object to feminism, but are afraid to explain why: Of course women have a justified grievance, but most men believe - and with reason - that their lives are much worse.

Well?

Uptalking is not just for females.

It's catching on amongst the males. 

"One possibility is that this is an extension of a pitch pattern that we actually find in most varieties of English which is used when you're making a statement but you're [also] asking indirectly for the interlocutor to confirm if they are with you," Prof Arvaniti said.

That theory entails the inference that males are increasingly feeling a need for assurance that there is agreement and acceptance.

"There’s the kind of boneheaded explanation, which is that a lot of people with PhDs are stupid..."

"... and like many stupid people, they associate complexity with intelligence. And therefore they get brainwashed into making their stuff more complicated than it needs to be," said David Foster Wallace in an old interview.

I think the smarter thing to say is that in many tight, insular communities—where membership is partly based on intelligence, proficiency and being able to speak the language of the discipline—pieces of writing become as much or more about presenting one’s own qualifications for inclusion in the group than transmission of meaning. And that’s how in disciplines like academia—or, I’ve read some really good legal prose, but when it’s really, really horrible (IRS Code stuff)—I think that very often it stems from insecurity and that people feel that unless they can mimic the particular jargon and style of their peers, they won’t be taken seriously and their ideas won’t be taken seriously. It’s a guess.

More of that sort of thing in "Quack This Way: David Foster Wallace & Bryan A. Garner Talk Language and Writing," a newly published book.

"This is where the obesity-as-disease concept leads us – to a situation in which people demand that medicine shoulder the responsibility."

Karen Hitchcock, an Australian doctor who works in a bariatric surgery clinic, writes about the medicalization of the obesity problem.

I ask a young 200-kilo [440-pound] patient what he snacks on. “Nothing,” he says. I look him in the eye. Nothing? He nods. I ask him about his chronic skin infections, his diabetes. He tears up: “I eat hot chips and fried dim sims and drink three bottles of Coke every afternoon. The truth is I’m addicted to eating. I’m addicted.” He punches his thigh.


Addicted. The word is useless in my clinic, a mere barrier to any hope of self-determined change. My patient is not addicted; he’s a very lonely, unemployed young man who has gradually become socially isolated to the extent that the only thing available to him for comfort and entertainment is food. He has no friends, no money to buy other consumables, little education, no partner, no job. Some days he doesn’t leave his bed. The choice for him is to eat this food or experience no pleasure. The surgeon and I discuss his situation, concerned that he may overeat after the band has been fitted. We tell him that surgery may not be appropriate for him, given his situation. The patient is perturbed. “Well, what are you going to do for me if you won’t do the operation? Don’t you have some kind of ethical responsibility to help me lose weight?”...

For whatever reason, the majority of human beings respond to advertisements inviting them to enter a pleasure state by eating a day’s worth of calories in one sitting, again and again. In the face of this, we are stuffed. We could say, “You are free agents, totally free, so pay for your own consequences.” We could make people pay at the point of choice, via a food tax, or we could limit choice. The other option, always unspoken, is: let us have our cake. Let’s just eat and eat, get fatter and fatter, and work out how best to live with it. This is where we are heading now: fatness, outside of morality, as an accepted consequence of the world as we have made it.

Much more to consume at the link. 

"I think a lot about what it means to exist as a Female-Identified Woman in this world when people very, very close to me use 'rape' as an ordinary verb, like feel or eat or think or do."

"The answer is not that I surround myself with Bad People, and certainly not that I involve myself with those who intend harm."

These are smart people; they have great jobs, work hard. Some of them have known struggle. Others were raised in big, happy, wealthy families. They’re decent. They’re in love. Passionate. Artists. Good people who will be there when you call them. People who have families and buy presents for babies. People who can quote a whole movie. People who matter.

So why do they feel the need to reappropriate such a word as “rape”?
By their definition, they use “rape” to signify the “incessant want of something:”

“I’m going to rape that pizza.”
“I’m feeling kinda rapey about that restaurant.”
“Oh my god I would rape a six pack right now.”
“That dump I took raped my butthole.”

This is the first I've heard of this problem. So... what do you think?

Is this usage similar to the casual, metaphorical use of other verbs of violence like "kill"— That joke killed me — and "murder" — The Lions murdered the Packers yesterday?

Or is "rape" a special case because there are, out there, rape victims whose PTSD might be triggered and potential rapists may lose their last shred of restraint and human decency?

And by they way, what's with this delusion that the people around you are good? Do you realize how much trouble has been caused in the world over the millennia by indulgence in this cognitive distortion?

And what is your test of goodness? Artists?! Artists get the goodness stamp of approval? Here's an artist I read about this morning: Ian Watkins. It's much more likely that artists think the rules don't apply to them and feel superior to the conventions of your boring fussy little world.

And "People who can quote a whole movie"?! First, what movie? Second, why is the memorization of movie scripts a test of goodness? It's nice to find someone who can approximate lines from movies you like, but who is this dubious character who launches a full recital of — what? — "Scarface"?

"For his senior thesis, he turned the Bill of Rights into a play. 'I made each amendment into a character...'"

"'The First Amendment is a loudmouth guy who won't shut up. The Second Amendment guy, all he wanted to talk about was his gun collection. Then the 10th Amendment, the one where they say leave the rest for the states to decide, he was a guy with no self-esteem.'"

From the Wikipedia article on David E. Kelley, the TV writer and producer (who made "Ally McBeal," "Boston Legal," and a lot of other shows). The play in question was written while he was an undergrad at Princeton. He later attended Boston University School of Law and was a lawyer before he branched out into TV writing.

How did I end up on that article, of all articles? I got there from the page on Michelle Pfeiffer (who happens to be his wife), and I was reading about her because we were talking about the movie (which I love) "The Witches of Eastwick," which we were talking about because the Susan Sarandon character in that movie is an elementary school music teacher who has some scenes with the band that are reminiscent of the school band scenes in "The Music Man." (Sarandon is inspired by the Devil, and the Music Man is a bit of a devil, a trickster palming off a fake system for kids playing musical instruments.)

And we were talking about "The Music Man" because Meade was singing "'Til There Was You" as a consequence of my asking for more examples of songs about nature seeming to express the feelings of the singer, such as "Close to You," which begins "Why do birds suddenly appear every time you walk near." I rejected "'Til There Was You" as an example of what I was looking for, since it's not a fantasy about nature, but a true statement of the singer's increased awareness of the beauty of nature. "There were birds in the sky/But I never saw them winging/No, I never saw them at all/'Til there was you."

The "Close to You" fantasy is really the same idea, expressed subjectively. The birds seem to appear because love has heightened the singer's awareness of the existence of birds, but she doesn't seem to understand, as does Marian the Librarian (the lovely Shirley Jones, whom you can cause to suddenly appear if you click on that last link, above). The "Close to You" singer (let's pick Karen Carpenter) presents herself as baffled by the phenomenon. She asks "why?" Marian/Shirley is the fully/overly rational woman, the librarian with book-learning of the existence of birds, and she too has some fantasy — the notion of never having seen birds at all before the arrival of love. She means: I never really saw them. Or perhaps: Seeing without the emotional lift of believing that the birds are about this love of mine is not really seeing.

So continue this long train of thought with me as we circle back to the Bill of Rights and talk about the infusion of human emotion into that which is not human. Do you picture the rights as human entities with feelings and motivations, and if you do — or force yourself to do it — is the 10th Amendment a guy with no self-esteem?

I am outraged at the disparagement of the character of the 10th Amendment!

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

The man who knows the scope of the job he's been hired to do and doesn't spread himself thin taking over things that other workers have been doing for a long time — and know how to do better — isn't a sad sack. It's the guy with the inferiority complex who feels he's got to take over everything. Mr. 10th Amendment is smart and competent. He knows he's got plenty of important work that needs to be done well, he sticks to that, he has the integrity to resist seeking brownie points for doing extra work, he's not a jerk who can't trust the other workers to do things well enough, and he's not an egomaniac who thinks he's got the one right answer that must be applied to everyone regardless of the different ideas they might have and good experiments they might like to try.

I know you need a villain to pump some drama into your play, but I think in a theater piece about the Bill of Rights, the villain should be the federal government. The rights are all heroes. In my play.

Based on these 45 self-portraits...

... and only these self-portraits, which drug would you pick if:

1. You wanted to produce the best artwork?

2. You had to take the drug all the time and would always feel the way it makes you feel?

3. You could take the drug sometimes, when you were in the mood for it, as a variation on normal, undrugged life?

Don't worry about the illegality of some of the drugs. The question is only about the drug experience as understood through the artist's depiction. Don't factor in other things you may know about the drugs. Restrict yourself to the evidence in the self-portraits. Pick ONE drug per question.

I won't ask which is the last drug you'd take on this list of 45, because more than half of them seem like an obviously very bad idea.

I'll give my answers later because I don't want you to be under the influence... of Althouse.

It's unusual for men to describe their feelings about losing a child to abortion.

Last summer, we had some heated discussions on this blog about men who feel bad that, unlike women, they don't have the choice to abort a baby they don't want (and may be forced to support that unwanted child).

But what about men who don't want the child aborted and lose their own child against their will? Or men who support the abortion but then have regrets? Think of all the social and psychological pressure to keep silent. But, here, 3 men tell their stories.

The sentences above were written before reading any of the 3 stories, which turned out to be less profound than I thought they'd be. Highlights:

1. "If I said things like I’d be a good father to the child or even if I told her I was against abortion, I feel she would’ve kept it."

2. "In terms of being supportive, I made it very clear I was not in support of bringing a baby into the world.... No matter what decision she makes, especially if she makes the decision you kind of wanted in the beginning, you can’t seem too joyous about it, and as a matter of fact I wasn’t very joyous about it. So I was walking very carefully with this thing."

3. "Even though to me I was like, this is her decision, she really empowered me. We were on the phone a lot. I still felt like I was making these decisions on something that ultimately wasn’t my decision to make, so being conscious of the fact that this is not my body, I won’t be going through the changes."

The woman's choice really is empowering for the man, is it not? Leaving aside the problem discussed last summer — that a man might end up with a child he'd have nipped in the embryo — the man can say it was all her doing and he wasn't even allowed to intervene. He can decide that there's no moral responsibility at all and even feel righteous about his nonintervention on behalf of the child.

"We are machines, we are robots, we plug our scanner in, we're holding it, but we might as well be plugging it into ourselves."

"We don't think for ourselves, maybe they don't trust us to think for ourselves as human beings, I don't know."

"There is nothing remotely challenging, for most of Gladwell’s readers, in this story; it is the sort of uplift in which they already believe."

"The dominant narrative for the last three centuries has been one in which the power of elites and rulers is progressively overcome by the moral force of the common man and woman who sticks up for what is right. Far from being a forbidden truth, this is what everyone thinks. Here we can glimpse one of the secrets of Gladwell’s success. Pretending to present daringly counterintuitive views to his readers, he actually strengthens the hold on them of a view of things that they have long taken for granted. This is, perhaps, the essence of the genre that Gladwell has pioneered: while reinforcing beliefs that everyone avows, he evokes in the reader a satisfying sensation of intellectual non-conformity."

From John Gray's TNR article "Malcolm Gladwell Is America's Best-Paid Fairy-Tale Writer/The heavily-footnoted uplift of 'David and Goliath.'"

Here's the book, "David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants," in case you nevertheless want to buy it.

If not, maybe this is a good place to remind you that you can always show a little love for the blog called Althouse whenever you need to do some shopping, by using the Althouse Amazon Portal (the link for which is always up there in the blog banner).

Have you been buying books that make you feel like you're getting something challenging and daring but that really are just reinforcing stuff you already believe and want to keep believing?

"But as you sit there sipping wine and eating pork belly, watching a marathon of The Sopranos — which sounds like a very nice evening..."

"... keep in mind that the distance between you and some imagined figure pounding Mountain Dew and Quarter Pounders while watching hours of Pawn Stars is not so vast."

Willa Paskin, tweaking the snobbish consciences of Slate readers who may have lost touch with old-fashioned it-will-rot-your-brain snobbery about watching too much television.

"SECRET: I DO NOT multitask! I give what I'm doing full attention, with integrity and focus."

"Reason I've had success in clutteredmanic world," tweets Matt Drudge, whose task seems to be making the world more manic and cluttered for the rest of us. Ironic!

10 least-impressive details in this NYT "Motherlode" piece by a man who's giving himself permission not to berate himself for being fat.

1. The name of the column is "Motherlode," but it's more Fatherload.

2. The man pauses, shirtless, in the middle of doing a diaper change, to gaze at himself in the mirror and contemplate his body.

3. The recipient of the diaper change is not only old enough to speak in full sentences, but is mature enough to notice his father's self-esteem issues and to boost his ego with a line — "You look great" — that's in the traditional category "Things men say to their wives" not "Things sons say to their fathers." (The latter category should not include any complete sentences delivered during diaper changes. "Things sons say to their fathers" during diaper changes should consist of little more than "da da.")

4. A grown man, who tells us he's not overweight, not only shames himself over his body, he shames himself for shaming himself and calls it "body bullying."

5. A grown man who's ashamed of his self-shaming attempts to counteract the shameful shaming by engaging in another, presumably better form of obsessing about his body which he labels "ironic 'fat talk.'"

6. It's not until the 10th paragraph that we learn he is not married to the mother of the diaper-using 2-year-old boy, and the way we find out is through one of the examples of his "ironic 'fat talk.'" He says he's "fond of asking my lady friend if clothing items are 'gripping my curves.'" Lady friend. You have a child, man. And you think banter with your girlfriend will amuse us? We're reading the "Motherlode" column, and we're still wondering about this poor boy and the effect on him. We don't enjoy this sudden appearance of the coyly named "lady friend"!

7. Finally, in paragraph 12, we get concern for the boy, which comes in the form of worrying about his inheriting the dad's physical and mental tendencies (putting on weight and self-shaming).  The concern about the contagion of bad personality traits almost immediately brings this man back to his own needs: "And at what point does being a good parent and setting a good example drain us of our personalities?"

8. His realization that he needs to refrain from self-shaming for the sake of his son immediately brings this man back to benefits for himself: "I’ll think more positively about my body and myself."

9. He's picked up that "my body, myself" duality that's been pandered to women since the 1970s. You are your body, mister. Deal with it.

10. The last 3 paragraphs don't even mention the boy. They're only about the man and his "lady friend."

Who's giving up now? Early warning signs.

1. "The Art of Lying Down: A Guide to Horizontal Living," a book by Bernd Brunner that is an "ode to lying down... ranging from the history of the mattress to the 'slow living movement." It "makes an eloquent case for the importance of lying down in a world that values ever greater levels of activity," and presents lying down as "a protest."

2. A New Republic piece by Ben Crair about protesting against excessive activity by staying in bed. "When you’re in bed, everything seems too far away, even the other rooms of your apartment—and I live in a studio. My water intake dropped to almost zero, which I never noticed until I went outside on some errand and found myself desperately thirsty after a few minutes of leisurely walking. One evening, returning home, I planted my right foot on a step in the hallway, and lifted my left foot assuming it would follow, but nope: It went back down exactly where it had started."

3. There's this new essay in The New Yorker by Evgeny Morozov called "Only Disconnect/Two cheers for boredom," that begins with a reverie about a 1903 essay called "The Metropolis and Mental Life," that says closing the shades and "surrendering oneself to one's boredom on the sofa" is good response for people who "are pushed deeper and deeper into the hustle and bustle until eventually they no longer know where their head is." You'll need a subscription to read the whole thing, but I can tell you that Morozov is reading some new books that resonate with that old surrender-to-boredom-and-inactivity theme.

"why do i hate the sound of a dog cleaning itself?"

A search that brought someone to my blog this morning. What makes a person ask that question? You find a licking sound disgusting, but that's not the end of it. You ask why. That could be the beginning of some young person's serious intellectual exploration of human psychology. Or it could be just the next random thing that was just interesting enough to somebody who already had his fingers on the keyboard to do a little Google search.

By the way, the blog post of mine that came up in this Google search is quite helpful, giving you a key word: misphonia.

Bonus: Dog tongue pic, by Meade:

Judge Posner wrote a whole book and was, he says, surprised when everybody fixated on one sentence.

The "I plead guilty" one:

The sentence runs from the bottom of page 84 to the top of page 85, in a chapter entitled “The Challenge of Complexity.” The sentence reads in its entirety: “I plead guilty to having written the majority opinion (affirmed by the Supreme Court) upholding Indiana’s requirement that prospective voters prove their identity with a photo ID—a type of law now widely regarded as a means of voter suppression rather than of fraud prevention.” (The footnote provides the name and citation of the opinion: Crawford v. Marion County Election Board, 472 F.3d 949 (7th Cir. 2007), affirmed, 553 U.S. 181 (2008).)

And now he has to write a whole article to explain to the damned cherry-pickers what it means in context. Of course, he can't be surprised that any sentence that can be used by people who already have things they want to say will be used, especially on a hot issue like voter ID. Anything you say in a book of law can and will be used against you.

A judge doesn't have to write a book revealing ways of thinking about the cases that don't show up in the written opinions. He has a right to refuse to write anything other than the required cases, clamped into the conventions of judicial opinion writing.

But Judge Posner obviously loves to write his books. Who puts out more outside-of-the-opinions writings about what's really going on in the opinions than Richard Posner? He must love even when people get things wrong. People are talking about his writings, and that creates an occasion for more writing, and then people will talk about that too, as we're doing now.

All the best to the great Judge Posner — understood or misunderstood — innocent or guilty. Thanks for all the books, including the new one, "Reflections on Judging," which I'm downloading so I can — I plead guilty! — rip sentences out of context and work my will on them, cranking out the verbiage in this grand fellowship of graphomania.

"If you are truly a feminine woman at your core, but don’t know how to let your femininity surface, you will end up unhappy, feeling miserable and depleted."

"It takes a lot of energy to reject a part of you that is there whether you like it or not. And even if you think you are happy, something will feel like it is missing some day. Why? Because you’re rejecting a part of yourself. Being able to claim your feminine energy is at the heart of your own happiness, and most definitely the happiness of your relationship."

From a post titled "How Most Women Reject their Femininity (and How you can stand out from the crowd)" at a website called "The Feminine Woman," written by Renee Wade. I stumbled into this the other day as I was participating in a Facebook discussion that got onto the topic of feminine beauty, and I went on a search looking for examples of the most feminine-looking face (not the most beautiful feminine face).
I'd remembered reading about a study that found that people thought a man's face was most appealing if it was slightly more feminine-looking than the average male face. I was wondering if the most beautiful female faces would be those exactly at what is the average among women or tending slightly masculine or tending slightly feminine. I know that the most extremely male-looking faces are experienced as ugly, but what about the most extremely feminine faces? I wasn't even sure what that would be. A very small, pointed chin? A tiny, tiny nose and gigantic eyes? I really don't even know.

I got sidetracked onto that "Feminine Woman" site, which I thought raised some interesting issues that I'd like to talk about. I'm not saying Renee Wade is a reliable expert or an impressive theorist in the realm of gender studies. I had a flashback to the "Total Woman"/Marabel Morgan phenomenon of the 1970s, which was, even then, ludicrously uncool.

I'd like to put aside the notion that women should be feminine — because that's what God or nature intended or because it's traditional or the foundation of society or whatever you (or somebody else) might think.

I'm interested in individual expression, freedom, and happiness.

Let's hypothesize that there is something internal and psychological that we've been calling "femininity" (because it corresponds generally to having the female body type). You have as much or as little of it as you have for whatever reason. With that understanding, reread the quote that begins this post.

Now, the question becomes: What does it mean to be extremely feminine?

And: What would it be like if those who are psychologically at the extreme of femininity were to feel supported and encouraged to openly and proudly manifest their femininity? Try to answer this question without confusing it with the efforts of those who don't actually have this inward orientation but who are aspiring to images and stereotypes about femininity out of social pressure or as a means of competition for other things they may want.