A Sound of Sheer Silence

Friend of the blog Liz Bruenig directed my attention to this article by Geoffrey Miller, discussing polyamory.   I've been thinking about this topic for a while, and this was the spur to put thoughts to electronic paper.  One thing about the article is, I think, inarguable--this topic is going to be with us for a long time to come, and is going to be more and more prominent in time.  Dr. Miller's article is a serious and thoughtful piece, and it deserves to be taking seriously and thoughtfully, which I hope to do here. Before getting into my views--and I know this is obnoxious, but please bear with me--I want to lay down a few markers.  First, my position is that marriage is fundamentally a human institution.  I recognize that this is a controversial position, especially among Christians of a moderate to conservative orientation (of which I consider myself, whether or not others would consider me so).  But I think that if you look at the concrete "facts o...

{I wrote this about a month ago, when the Bruenig piece was current, and then decided not to post it.  After thinking about what I wrote today , I changed my mind.  This is basically unedited from that original draft, except for a few typo fixes.} Friend-of-the-blog Elizabeth Bruenig, who is now a columnist for the Washington Post (yay!), wrote an excellent and thoughtful piece about the recent Aziz Ansari  incident/revelations.  Bruenig's position, if I might summarize it, is that the Sexual Revolution brought with it the notion that sexual interactions should be treated in essentially the same way as any other sort of social interaction.  And, in the context of other, normal social interactions, it is considered to be appropriate and praiseworthy to try to meet the needs and wants of other people.  So, as an example, if I am in a group that wants to go out and eat sushi, but I don't really care for sushi all that much, I might keep my objections to myse...

1. I was on a business trip Wednesday in Atlanta, Georgia, and it was raining.  I had a meeting and a walk to get to that meeting, so I went into the hotel gift shop and bought an umbrella.  I bought the smallest and least expensive (I would say cheapest, but it was not cheap) umbrella they had, without really looking at it.  After I had completed the purchase and got ready to get out into the rain, I noticed that it was a Kate Spade umbrella, one of those transparent plastic bubble-type domes.  As I made my way through the streets of Atlanta, I felt overwhelmingly, profoundly self-conscious.  I noticed I wasn't willing to make eye contact with dudes carrying their more macho black umbrellas, as if I was avoiding their judgment for my umbrella and its femininity. How dumb is that?  Here I am, in a city that I know no one, which I hadn't been to in fifteen years and probably won't be back to for another fifteen, and I am worried about what random strange...