Girlfight!

I don't like being confused. I'm not good at it and it rarely results in any productive or life-affirming action. I get headaches, I sweat, I feel nauseous... it's not unlike the way I feel when affected by rohypnol, except without the usual lingering after-effects of fatigue, lack of mental focus and anal fissures.

Normally this isn't a problem for me as I've found certainty isn't that hard to fake. It's a simple matter of projection and insistence. I've had great success with this by simply removing the word "yes" from my vocabulary and replacing it with the most extreme versions of hyperbolic affirmation, the more out of keeping with the tone of the question the better. Some samples of the concept in action:

Waitress: Everyone still doing OK over here?
Me: You'd better fucking believe we are, sister.

or

Date: Do you like Thai food?
Me: 100% fuckin'-A.

or

Highway Patrolman: Did you know you were exceeding the posted speed limit?
Me: All the world's wars have been started by Jews.

Please note: I didn't say this is in any way an effective strategy for achieving the best result from any given social situation, I'm just saying it alleviates the stress of decision-making by making every interaction an ambiguity-free zone. The cost may be the occasional open-hand slap across the face, the odd night in jail or total alienation of everyone you ever thought may have loved you, but that's all lost time you'll more than make up in your life by never, ever being sucked into the achronal vortex of "Well, hmm, let me think about it..."

The approach is also obviously not universally applicable. Anything outside the dichotomous yes-no branch of the logic tree and you're pretty well screwed. The answer to "Do you want us to use the regular motor oil or the synthetic blend?" is never "Hoo-ah, betcher fucking ass." In fact, in that circumstance, it's probably best just to run.

I'm in a similar dilemma today when I heard that some DNC flack gave Mitt Romney's wife some shit for being a non-ambitious kept woman.

The resulting back and forth has been predictably unenlightening, as all campaign-year orchestrated outrage is. But the problem is I'm... confused.

See, the criticism is that by being an at-home parent, Ann Romney is somehow less of a contributor to her society than a woman working outside the home may otherwise be. Of course that's right from a purely physical standpoint as women holding jobs are, just as men are, required to function in a social environment separate from their family spheres, branching out into segments of the population they wouldn't otherwise necessarily impact.

But I'm pretty sure that's not the subtle sociological point Hilary Rosen was reaching for when she swiped out blindly. So fuck her already for being a clumsy, tin-eared media oaf. Plus, as a veteran at-home parent myself, retired now to the easy lifestyle of cubicle walls and weekly workflow review meetings, my immediate instinct is to press up against Ann Romney and offer her to all-encompassing embrace of my sweaty, physical protection. You know, out of solidarity. Solidarity can be sexy.

On the other hand, though, for all our sisterly bond of parenthood buys us, she's still... you know... Mrs. Mitt Romney. With all the baggage that entails. Her response has been to reassert the fierce, mammalian primacy of motherhood, but I think it's probably time we started seeing some of the color tones separated out from that presumably pure white light. Not all motherhood is created equal, let's be honest. With a family net worth approaching a quarter of a billion dollars, let's not pretend she was doing the same thing as the mother cutting up hot dogs to put in the spaghetti boiling on the hot plate. I'm not going to make a judgment one way or the other about which contribution has more value (although I reserve the right to heavily imply), but let's at least have the intellectual maturity to acknowledge that we're talking about two very different things. It's like comparing apples to... not even oranges. Like comparing apples to hot-dog-spaghetti. It doesn't make a lot of sense.

Plus, it's weird to me that there's an implied quasi-feminist indignation to the Romney response, like how dare we belittle or demean the contributions of this woman? But look, that's kind of hard to get on board with when you consider she's not even allowed to go to heaven unless Mitt says it's OK first.

I guess in the end what I'm saying is, am I maybe less confused about my position on this than I was when I first sat down to write this? You'd have to be some kind of brain damaged to even begin to fucking doubt it.