Chart Of The Day: Whose Wages Are Stagnating?

I'd been fooling around with Census data a bit over the last week. Here's an interesting chart using Census Table P-36. Full-Time, Year-Round All Workers by Median Income and Sex: 1955 to 2010

Median income for full-time working men first hit 50,000 (in inflation adjusted 2010 dollars) in 1973, and it has been essentially flat ever since (breaking 50k for the second time in 2010.) However, the median income of full-time working women has gone up 35% since 1973. The percentage of full time workers who are women has also increased gradually throughout that time, from 30% in 1973 to 43% in 2010. (In absolute numbers, obviously both the number of male and female full time workers has increased significantly during the same period.)

No one is a Monolith

One of the points that Darwin makes about the economy is that there is no "there" there. Broad swaths of individual behaviors that seem to follow the same trend are often lumped together, the better to aid analysis or to make points, but that doesn't negate the fact that each economical decision is made by an individual actor making choices that are tailored to that individual's needs and wants. Economic analysis strays onto shaky ground when it starts to assert that certain trends indicate monolithic tendencies on the part of every member of some group.

I write about myself, because that's what I know, but recently I've been surprised to discover various things about myself on the internet, ascribed to me by insightful people who know what I am like because I happen to fall into some specific categories. I was unaware of what a bitch I am simply by virtue of being a woman until I read the angry reactions to Elizabeth Duffy's excellent piece on the Manosphere. "Woman" is a monolithic group: we all know what they're like! Because I fit into the 50% of humanity with breasts, a guy on the internet can tell you all there is to know about me and my motivations, and how to manipulate me in order to bed me. Truly, pop psychology is a rare gift to mankind.

But I'm not just a Woman, I'm a Catholic Woman. And not just a Catholic Woman, but a Sexually Experienced Catholic Woman. The Guttmacher Institute has something to say about that: “Among all women who have had sex, 99% have ever used a contraceptive method other than natural family planning. This figure is virtually the same, 98%, among sexually experienced Catholic women.” I was about to get excited about being in the 2% -- it's almost like being a member of that other monolithic group, the 1%! -- but Mollie Hemingway does the statistical analysis to show the shocking evidence that the Guttmacher Institute, the stats arm of Planned Parenthood, doesn't even accurately summarize its own (skewed) survey. Turns out Catholic Women aren't such a monolithic group after all.


Moving down to smaller groups, I was a bit dismayed to hear someone claim recently that she wasn't a Super Homeschooler because she was a Non-Crafty Mama. By all means, let us create more sub-groups the better to neatly pigeon-hole mothers according to some ephemeral characteristic, because it's not compelling enough simply to be a mother as part of where one is at one's stage of life. One doesn't have to be a mother to get this treatment. The irritation of our female readers at the facile assumptions in the comments of this post of what it is to be a woman with a career show that "women with a career" is not a monolithic group, but a very diverse set of individuals making individual choices.


There's a reason for labels: they make things simple, for better or for worse. My brother was once involved with a girl whom he would not call his "girlfriend" because "we're more complex than that". Not surprisingly, that relationship failed. I did note that he never had any hesitation in describing his now-fiancee as his "girlfriend" -- the label was a good and convenient shorthand for the way he felt about her, and she about him. It's important to note, though, that her being a "girlfriend" had nothing to do with some vast mythical group called "Girlfriends" and everything to do with her relationship to a specific person, my brother. 


It's easy to pontificate on Women, or Catholics, or Mothers, or what have you, and to ascribe group attributes based on the sum of the decisions of people who fall into these categories. Analysis gets more complicated when one holds that a person is irreducible to the categories they inhabit. I fall into the above three categories. I also fit into the smaller groups of People Who Bite Their Nails, Children of Divorce, and People Who Hate Oreos. None of these completely define who I am, though some labels are more over-arching than others. Categories are necessary for discussion, but they're only discussion starters. 


I am a person who is a mother, a wife, a Catholic, a reader, a nail-biter, a fan of watching SNL sketches on YouTube, a blogger called MrsDarwin. But these shorthand labels don't fully tell anyone who I really am. I am simply me: my name is Cat, and I am irreducible. 

Not Everyone Has To Get Married (Or Go Into The Religious Life)

Mary at the blog Young and Catholic has a good post up responding to a reader question about Church teaching on contraception versus NFP. Her handling of the NFP issue is great, but I was struck by the framing of her reader's question, because it struck me as getting at a common impression one can get from being around conservative Catholic circles. Her reader writes:

I’m an 18 year old female college student, and I have just gotten back in touch with Catholicism…

…I’ve thoroughly enjoyed getting back into my faith, but there is something that REALLY continues to rub me wrong. I’ve prayed and prayed about it, but I am not getting any answer. I’ve researched it, but just hear the same things over and over and it just doesn’t sit right with me, and that is the issue of contraception. I’ve read humanae vitae, I’ve researched “natural family planning”, and it all still leaves me completely unsatisfied still. I see where the Church is coming from on this issue, however, I feel that God has called me to do something else with my future besides staying at home with my “loving” husband and having a billion children…And then I went to the church and asked my female minister about it. The gist was this: If you have the financial capability, happiness, and wealth, your job is basically to be popping out children.

This just honestly does not sit right with me…Some women love being mothers, and being a mother is certainly an honorable duty, but I don’t think I’m cut out for it. I’m very ambitious and have goals of working for the Department of Defense, not sacrificing all my happiness because the Church says I should.

She goes on to ask about why the Church teaches against artificial birth control, and as I say, Mary's answer is great. However, I think the other thing worth touching on is the impression people sometimes get that from a Catholic point of view you should either be in the religious life or else you should be married and having lots of kids.

But the Church does not teach this. People may well be called to an active single life in the laity. The Church has absolutely no problem with this. If Mary's correspondent wants to pursue an ambitious career, in the Defense Department or elsewhere, without having to worry about getting home on time to spend a few hours with a spouse, that's absolutely fine!

Where the Church does become more countercultural is in saying that sex has an inextricable connection with procreation, and that the only proper place for sex is within marriage. Thus, marriage is a state that should be open to children. During the marriage ceremony, the couple is asked if they will be open to the blessing of children. This isn't just a matter of, "If you accidentally get pregnant, will you keep the baby," (though that's important.) Rather, if a couple seriously intends never to have children, the Church would see that as an obstacle to contracting a valid marriage. Marriage is for the purpose of starting a family. It's not just a romantic relationship, but a familial one. (This does not mean that there's something invalid about the marriage of a couple that is not physically able to have children. This may be a source of sadness to the couple, but it certainly doesn't mean their marriage is defective or invalid. The problem is if a couple actively does not want children in the first place.)

Now, of course, this is not a lot of comfort if what someone wants is to get married and have the love and companionship of a spouse, but not have to worry about the responsibility of having children, which given our culture's assumption that every healthy person must want to get married, and that sex has no natural relation to having children, is going to be a much more common desire than not getting married at all so you can focus totally on your career. (And given that the correspondent is very young, she may well chase her dreams for ten or fifteen years and then realize that she now feels very differently about having children. That's fine too.) Because within the conservative Catholic subculture there are a fair number of people who get married comparatively young and have a lot of kids (and so spend a lot of time defending that lifestyle), I think people can get the impression sometimes that that is the only "really Catholic" way to live. And it's not.

Because I Love You...

Find the rest of my sentimental sentiments at Ben Kling's site.

Speaking the Same Language

It's Valentine's Day again, and for the fourteenth year in a row Darwin and I are doing absolutely nothing to mark the day. It's not a judgment against the day or against people celebrating love, but a personal preference. Valentine's Day as celebrated simply doesn't resonate with either of us, and when I say, "Don't get me anything", I really mean it. For the past three gift giving occasions (my birthday, Christmas, and Darwin's birthday) we decided not give each other presents. It was wonderful. No last-minute shopping, no extra expense, no fuss, and neither of us showed the other up by buying a gift anyway.

It's not that I don't like presents. Everyone likes getting a gift. It's simply that not receiving a gift doesn't indicate a lack of love to me, nor is it proof positive of love if I do get one. They're fun because they're superfluous.

This fell into place when I took the Five Love Languages assessment.

3	Words of Affirmation
11	Quality Time
0	Receiving Gifts
6	Acts of Service
10	Physical Touch

Obviously, gifts are simply not in my Love Language paradigm. It makes sense that I should score higher in Quality Time than in any other category. I'd rather spend time talking to Darwin than doing anything else, which is wonderful for our relationship and bad for my housekeeping ethic. He's in danger of being late to work almost every morning because we're talking in the kitchen. We sit up way too late because we need to spend time together after the kids go down, and their bedtime gets pushed back because we talk while making dinner, and through dinner, and after dinner.

Happily, when Darwin took the quiz our scores matched up almost point for point.

The quiz isn't just for married couples; there are options for singles and children and parents of teens. I also found the Languages of Apology quiz very enlightening.

4	Expressing Regret
16	Accepting Responsibility
0	Making Restitution
0	Genuinely Repenting
0	Requesting Forgiveness

Accepting Responsibility

You have chosen Accepting Responsibility as your primary Apology Language. What you are looking for in an apology is maturity. You most want to hear the offending party say, I was wrong and I take responsibility for my actions.

 That's pretty accurate. I find it uncomfortably intrusive when people ask if I'll forgive them or how they can make it up to me. That sounds like groveling. But I do appreciate it when someone 'fesses up to his or her faults and takes responsibility, and that's how I tend to apologize when I need to.

Readers, I'd be interested to hear your scores and if you think they're an accurate reflection of your own personalities and relationship styles.

The Weekend in Books and Movies

The three youngest were at Grandma's this weekend, and the house was quiet. Too quiet. In the silence I had to face the disturbing fact that if I only had two children who were 9 and 8, there would be little to goad my natural laziness into action. Secure in the knowledge that the big girls could take care of themselves and weren't likely to fall off the piano bench or write on the walls (I wouldn't put it past them to drag chairs into the pantry to get on the high shelves, but at least they can do it safely), I took the opportunity to read three biographies of the Marx Brothers, simultaneously. They mostly bore each other out. Sometimes they bore each other aloft. Aloft to ask you to leave if the dialogue doesn't improve.

'Atsa no good.

And because we didn't have to spend vast swaths of the evening settling small fry, we watched movies. The girls had been clamoring for Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban -- not a bad outing, if you have to watch a Harry Potter movie. They finally kicked out the director of the first two soppy movies, and found someone who understood tone, and pacing, and how to let young actors act and not mug.

You know what's lousy? When you re-watch a movie that you thought was kinda okay, and it turns out to be a real dog. I hadn't seen You've Got Mail for about 12 years, and I had remembered as being sweet and fluffy. I remembered wrongly. Underneath its fantasy veneer of life on the North Upper West Lower East Side ("I'll lose my job and have to move to Brooklyn!" one character wails) there's an undercurrent of sleaze so palpable that I couldn't wade through it without a drink to brace me up. The spectacle of Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan cheating on their live-ins as glibly as possible was appalling. I turned to my Manhattan as a corrective measure after the jokes about cybersex at the five-minute mark.

Apparently, nothing in romantic comedies has any consequences except being a big-business capitalist who delights in screwing small operations out of a living by opening big box stores in liberal enclaves. I found it difficult to suspend disbelief so much as to buy Tom Hanks' nice guy act when his character was schtupping the most self-absorbed, shallow, high-powered publishing exec. (In the words of Groucho, "What do you think of in bed at night, you beast?") Never do we see Meg Ryan all hormonal from her birth-control pills, even though she's sleeping with a luddite newspaper columnist but declares she doesn't have children because she's not married. Or maybe they use condoms, because the columnist is all righteous about the detrimental effects of new-fangled technology. Tom Hanks and his father make familial banter about how many times Dad ran off with the nanny, with no undercurrent of bitterness or accusation. Both Tom and Meg are able to cozily roll up their old significant others, even though we see no hint of the sniping, weariness, and jabbing that usually accompanies the death throes of a relationship. You never saw a more bloodless breakup than Meg Ryan and Greg Kinnear being chipper about the other's new prospects. Oh, my aching teeth.

As a corrective, the next evening we watched The Best Years of Our Lives, the 1946 best-picture winner about the very current topic of WWII vets readjusting to their previous lives and relationships. The raw honesty of the movie was heart-wrenching, especially in the thread that focused on Homer Parrish (Harold Russell). Russell was a real-life veteran who'd lost both his hands in a training accident, and he received two Oscars for his role as a maimed sailor trying to prove his family or the girl next door that he can manage just fine with his prosthetic hooks.. Fredric March plays a banker who's been away for so long that he has to become reacquainted with his wife (the wonderful Myrna Loy) and grown children, and Dana Andrews is a skilled pilot who returns to find his brief marriage disintegrating and his former job as a soda jerk demeaning. I am no softy, but I found myself crying through the entire movie.

Now we're back to the grind. The house is full of noise, and we'll probably find time this week to re-watch Horsefeathers and Animal Crackers before we ship 'em back to Netflix. That's quality entertainment.

Here's each of the Marx Brothers singing "Everyone Says I Love You", from Horsefeathers.



Think it's too late for me to strike up an anonymous correspondence with Groucho and his cigar?

Oh yeah? OH YEAH?

"Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each." --Henry David Thoreau

Allergies much, Thoreau?

Money Can Buy You Love

Paul Krugman has been putting up a number of posts over the last week expressing his annoyance with Charles Murray's new book Coming Apart and its emphasis on the social breakdown which underlies inequality in America. Broadly speaking, Krugman seems to think that Murray is obscuring the "real problem" that that top 1% of Americans make so much money by talking instead about the problems that the bottom 40% are suffering in relation to family breakup, illegitimacy and plummeting marriage rates.

In a post yesterday he says:

Lately inequality has re-entered the national conversation. Occupy Wall Street gave the issue visibility, while the Congressional Budget Office supplied hard data on the widening income gap. And the myth of a classless society has been exposed: Among rich countries, America stands out as the place where economic and social status is most likely to be inherited.

So you knew what was going to happen next. Suddenly, conservatives are telling us that it’s not really about money; it’s about morals. Never mind wage stagnation and all that, the real problem is the collapse of working-class family values, which is somehow the fault of liberals.

But is it really all about morals? No, it’s mainly about money.

To be fair, the new book at the heart of the conservative pushback, Charles Murray’s “Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010,” does highlight some striking trends. Among white Americans with a high school education or less, marriage rates and male labor force participation are down, while births out of wedlock are up. Clearly, white working-class society has changed in ways that don’t sound good.

But the first question one should ask is: Are things really that bad on the values front?
...
[T]he truth is that some indicators of social dysfunction have improved dramatically even as traditional families continue to lose ground. As far as I can tell, Mr. Murray never mentions either the plunge in teenage pregnancies among all racial groups since 1990 or the 60 percent decline in violent crime since the mid-90s. Could it be that traditional families aren’t as crucial to social cohesion as advertised?

The thinking here seems particularly tone-deaf: Confronted with the fact that among the least educated and lowest earning Americans, illegitimacy has skyrocketed, marriage has become far less common, attendance of religious services has dropped, etc. Krugman concludes that since crime and teen pregnancy are down, it must be that people aren't much bothered by those social trends. Rather, the big thing that's worrying them is that their wages in inflation adjusted terms have been flat for the last few decades.

If anything, he's sure that the causality must run the other way: since men with only a high school education are finding it increasingly hard to get good jobs, this must account for the collapse in marriage, rise in illegitimacy, etc. If we could just give those people more money, they'd be happy. That marriage stuff -- maybe it's just not so important to them.

Of course, causal systems among people are inherently complex. Doubtless, the economic difficulties of those at the lower end of the education spectrum lead to family breakdown. However, more importantly, family breakdown leads to economic and educational problems. Krugman's blithe "nothing to see here" waves away the far more human topic into order to get back more quickly to discussing the fiscal policy issues he'd rather discuss when it comes to inequality.

Seven Quick Takes

1. Welcome, Spirit Daily readers! Thanks for dropping by to read my review of How Far Can We Go? A Catholic Guide to Sex and Dating. Feel free to browse around.

2. There's a tattoo parlor here in town. 

Now tell me, would you choose this emporium if you desired to have something permanently inked on your body?

3.  Business Daily has a interesting piece analyzing the negative social consequences of cheap and easy access to birth control.

Is this all due to the Pill? Of course not. But the idea that widely-available contraception hasn't led to dramatic societal change, or that this change has been exclusively to the good, is a much sillier notion than anything the Catholic Church teaches.

4. My oldest, 9 1/2, was wandering around the other day, singing "Gonna find my baby, gonna hold on tight..." Fortunately, that's the only words to the song Afternoon Delight she knows, because that's what I start singing before I remember that Afternoon Delight really isn't appropriate for little ears.

We have the same problem with more obscure songs, too. Everyone in the family knows the chorus to "Sherry Monocle" by Mr. B the Gentleman Rhymer, because the chorus is merely a repetition of "A rah-pah-pah-pah! A rah-pah-pah-pah!", set to a catchy tune. It's the words before it that are completely inappropriate.


Chorus at around 1:00.

That's why we find ourselves singing to the baby:

I thought you were a tease!
But you had... some snoogly snoogly knees!

Not quite what the original says, and bad verse to boot, but it's clean. Anyone else have to make up lyrics on the fly for the non-corruption of the young?

(And yes, I also sing "Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence"while washing dishes, so it's not all depravity here.)

5. Betty Duffy writes over at Patheos about the Manosphere, that segment of the internet devoted to solving the eternal problem of antagonism between the sexes by utilizing "Game Theory" to manipulate women into doing what the man wants.

I cannot offer an apology for feminism. I have not been able to align myself with the women's movement because my sexual ethics, which are informed by my Catholic faith, are incompatible with the feminist stance on birth control, extra-marital sex, and abortion. 

Neither can I get behind the manosphere. For feminism to have gained a foothold, men had to collude with it, and without doubt, it's been in the interest of men to do so. So the message of the manosphere rings disingenuous. They would like for women to remain sexually available but to kindly shut up. 

The anger toward the opposite sex that embitters both parties can only create a swiftly moving pendulum of rancor that never allows men and women to do what they were meant to do from the beginning of time, which is to complement one another.

Betty has received some very angry and crude comments from very angry and crude men, bitter about the legacy of feminism and blaming her for it.

Anyone who is interested in engaging with the Manosphere through a more Catholic framework should check out Blogging Bellita, a single Catholic girl who's trying to take on the insights of the Manosphere without being poisoned by its bitterness. Bellita and I don't see eye-to-eye on the value of the Manosphere, but she always has an open mind and is trying valiantly to engage charitably with this sector of humanity.

6. Here's the recipe for cracker bread pizza crust, requested by several readers. This is adapted from the recipe for Lavash crackers from The Bread Baker's Apprentice: Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread.

3 cups flour (preferably bread flour)
1 tsp. salt
2 tsp. instant yeast (or 1 packet of yeast in a packet, whatever that is)
2 tbsp. ground flax seed (optional, but essential for making a quick dough taste like it's risen for hours. Flax seed is a great staple for quick bread bakers.)
2 tbsp. honey (optional, oil the tablespoon first)
2 tbsp. vegetable oil
1 cup water

1. Mix dry ingredients, then add wet ingredients and stir until dough forms a ball.
2. Sprinkle flour on counter and transfer dough to counter. Knead dough for about ten minutes, or until ingredients are evenly distributed. Lightly oil bowl (I use the same bowl I mixed in) and transfer dough to bowl, rolling it around to to coat it with oil. Cover with plastic wrap.
3. Ferment at room temperature for 90 minutes, or until dough doubles in size. (I fudge this regularly, if I'm short on time. You can also put the oven on warm and stick the bowl in there.)
4. Preheat oven to 475 degrees. Transfer dough to floured counter. Cut in half. Let one half rest and roll or press out other half of dough to fit a sheet pan. Top with sauce, cheese, and whatever you desire, but don't overdo it.
5. Bake for about 10-12 minutes, until cheese is bubbly and crust is getting golden and crispy. Make other half of dough into pizza as described in step 4 and bake in the same manner.

7.  This.

"Material Cooperation" and the HHS Contraception Mandate

There's nothing like a public policy debate on a sex-related issue to get a lot of people doing amateur moral reasoning, and I can't help getting into the action a bit. One of the questions I've heard a lot about Catholic institutions' reluctance to cover contraception as part of their health care plans is: "They're already paying their employees, and a lot of their employees are probably going out and buying birth control with that money. How is it any different to make them pay for health coverage that covers all birth control 'free' than it is to simply give them a money and let them buy birth control if they want to?"

The moral concept at play here is one of degree of moral cooperation. The old Catholic Encyclopedia provides a nice summary under it's entry for "Accomplice":

A term generally employed to designate a partner in some form of evildoing. An accomplice is one who cooperates in some way in the wrongful activity of another who is accounted the principal. From the viewpoint of the moral theologian not every such species of association is straightway to be adjudged unlawful. It is necessary to distinguish first of all between formal and material cooperation. To formally cooperate in the sin of another is to be associated with him in the performance of a bad deed in so far forth as it is bad, that is, to share in the perverse frame of mind of that other. On the contrary, to materially cooperate in another's crime is to participate in the action so far as its physical entity is concerned, but not in so far as it is motived by the malice of the principal in the case. For example, to persuade another to absent himself without reason from Mass on Sunday would be an instance of formal cooperation. To sell a person in an ordinary business transaction a revolver which he presently uses to kill himself is a case of material cooperation. Then it must be borne in mind that the cooperation may be described as proximate or remote in proportion to the closeness of relation between the action of the principal and that of his helper. The teaching with regard to this subject-matter is very plain, and may be stated in this wise: Formal cooperation is never lawful, since it presupposes a manifestly sinful attitude on the part of the will of the accomplice. Material complicity is held to be justified when it is brought about by an action which is in itself either morally good or at any rate indifferent, and when there is a sufficient reason for permitting on the part of another the sin which is a consequence of the action.

With this in mind, I think it should be clear there is a big difference for an organization which considers contraception to be immoral between providing employees with health care coverage specifically for buying contraception and providing them with money which they can choose to use for anything they want. The former clearly restricts their actions only to getting something which, according to a Catholic view, is immoral anyway. The latter is simply the just act of paying a worker for his labor, and leaves the worker in charge of deciding how to spend that money. Even if in both cases the worker ends up getting birth control, the proximity of the employer to the buying of birth control is clearly much greater with the contraception mandate than with simply providing his workers with money.

I'd argue that this distinction is actually really clear to us even on subjects which don't involve any clearly immoral action if we start applying it to things that we think of as strictly option. Suppose, for example, an employer provided bicycle coverage to all his employees. Any employee could get a free bicycle. Of course, if you don't want a bicycle, you don't have to get one. People strongly in favor of bicycles might think this was just awesome, but a lot of employees might see this as interfering and overly benefiting the people who are bicycle fanatics. However, a lot of people might see this as a inconsequential "perk" that the company offers and not worry about it too much, though they would certainly see the company as encouraging cycling.

Now let's apply the same model to something that is legal but a little more controversial. An employer announces that they will provide "2nd Amendment Coverage" to all their employees. Any employee who wants can get a "free" Glock 9mm pistol as part of this coverage. He or she can also get unlimited ammunition. Of course, no one is required to get a gun, and the company is not encouraging anyone to do anything illegal or dangerous with these guns. Guns are perfectly legal, and any employee who wanted to could obviously go out and buy a Glock and ammunition for it with his salary if he wanted. However, I think basically everyone would agree that this "2nd Amendment Coverage" would represent the company far more directly being involved in gun ownership and gun promotion than a company which simply payed its workers and didn't prevent them from buying guns with their salaries. This employer would be engaged in "material cooperation" with gun ownership and gun culture in a way that other employers were not.

Suppertime, resolved

So here's the last-minute dinner: cracker-bread pizzas. The cracker-bread recipe is quick, and the addition of flax seed, which we keep as a staple, gives the crust a nicely nutty taste even though it doesn't have time to develop lots of flavor over several hours of rising. We always have mozzarella and pasta sauce on hand. The rectangular pizza is pepperoni, which was left over from last week's pizza making (and zealously guarded against young snackers) and the round pizza is bell pepper (frozen, from Trader Joe's) and kalamata olives (another staple; we buy them in gallon jars from GFS). Darwin bought salad and croutons on his grocery run on the way home from work, and we drank water.

Suppertime, I guess

Darwin and I think alike, so it turns out we were about to cross-post about food. However, he's writing interesting analysis, and I was just going to complain about how there was nothing to eat and what was in the pantry was boring, anyway. We're being frugal, and it's kind of dull, to tell the truth. Plus, what's inexpensive is not necessarily what's quick, and contra Darwin, I don't always get dinner started before he gets home, especially when I'm feeling under the weather.

Anyway, I'm completely uninspired by our bare pantry. Guys, what are you eating for dinner tonight? I don't care how lame it is -- we're all supportive here! And if there's a cookbook you recommend, lay it on me.

The "Food Stamp Diet" and How It's Different From Being Poor

Every so often one hears about people doing the "food stamp diet" in order to see what it's like to be poor in America. The idea is to subsist for some period of time (often a week) on the amount typically given to members of the "food stamp" program. Here's one example, prepared by the Food Research and Action Center back in 2007. That one challenges you to live on $21/week. Here's an annual challenge run by the San Francisco Food Bank. There the amount is $33.04 per person per week.

These amounts vary not only due to region and inflation over time (food inflation has actually been pretty high over the last five years, grocery store prices are up 6% from last year) but also because these are different attempts to model how the food stamp program works. Food stamp benefits are based on the idea of supplementing a family's income so that the family can (according to the program's rationale) afford to consume the amount of food budgeted according to the "thrifty plan" from the USDA "cost of food at home" guidelines. Of course, since food stamps can't be used for anything other than approved food items, and they're given to people who are already very short of money, the effective result is that people are often trying to get all their food off just the food stamp amount, even if the program is assuming it's only a supplement.

What got me thinking about the topic is that I saw one of these "hunger challenges" linked to some time ago, via some Catholic organization which was encouraging people to take part "in solidarity with the poor". I saw the amount mentioned in the San Francisco challenge of $33 per person per week and thought, "Wait a minute, for our family of seven that would be $231. That's more than we spend per week on food, and we're around the top 20% line in family income." In normal times, we were spending around $200/wk on food. Since we've been on a tight budget paying off the boiler, we've managed to get that down to $100-$150 depending on the week (including household cleaners, diapers, toilet paper, paper towels, etc.)

So, is being on food stamps really cushy? Are these challenges just designed wrong? Being a chronic number cruncher, I had to get into it a bit.

First off, it seemed like the challenge was designed for one adult to take, so I wanted to make sure that I was translating it to family terms right. Here's my formula: The 2011 San Francisco Food Bank challenge (based on average food stamp benefits in CA for that year) was based on $33 per person per week. The USDA thrifty plan budgets $41.50 per week for an adult male between 19 and 50. Based on that, I'm assuming a payout of 80% of the estimated thrifty plan cost. Now I need to figure out how much our family would be budgeted according to the thrifty plan:
1 male 19-50 at $41.50
1 female 19-50 at $36.80
1 child age 1 at $21.10
1 child age 2-3 at $23.10
1 child age 4-5 at $24.00
1 child age 6-8 at $30.70
1 child age 9-11 at $35.00
Total: $212.20

Now you discount by 10% because we're a family with 7 or more members: $190.98

Now you assume we only get 80% of that budget as a food stamp allotment: $152.78

That now puts the amount pretty much in line with what is a doable but tight food budget for our family. Having established that, my further thoughts fall into three categories:

How Do We Keep Our Food Budget at Food Stamp Levels?
Even when we were feeling fairly flush, and not trying to keep our food budget super low, we never spent all that much more than $200 per week on groceries, and while averaging $120/wk for the last while has taken concentration, it doesn't really take that much deprivation. I think part of that probably comes from that fast that MrsDarwin and I both come from fairly frugal backgrounds, so our cooking instincts are low cost. Here are some of the keys to keep things cheap:

- It's winter, so we're having a lot of soups: a carton of broth and a pound of dry beans with various things thrown in for body or flavor can easily feed all seven of us for about $5 and leave enough to put away several servings of left overs.

- Using meat as a flavoring, not a dish. We're never into big hunks of meat eaten strait at the best of times, as a matter of cost and of culture. (Plus we're helped along at the moment by a large quantity of pig which resides in our freezer since MrsDarwin's mother gave it to us for Christmas. We're making it last and loving it.)

- Starch is your friend. When it comes to filling up lots of hungry young Darwins, pasta and rice are essential. For those of us decidedly not trying to grow, the recourse is portion control rather than subsisting on proteins and vegetables.

- No sodas or juices. Milk and water are the orders of the day for the young Darwins. (And I've cut back the beer budget to virtually nil so as to do my part.)

- Make it from scratch. We never bought much prepared food, but now we've taken that down to virtually nothing.

- Shop where it's cheap. You'd think that dealing with pricing, I'd always do this, but neither of us particularly likes looking for coupons or going to havens of extreme low price. (We tend to stick to our mainstream supermarkets and Trader Joe's.) However, since having to cut back we've started going to Aldi and it has allowed us to cut back a lot in certain areas. (Butter at $1.90/lb, milk at $1.99/gal, etc. Got to love German efficiency.)

Ways People Taking This Challenge Should Make It More "Real"
One of the things that makes the "Food Stamp Diet" promotional materials look deeply silly at times (especially to anyone who's actually lived on a lower middle class budget) is the ways in which people doing it seem to be out of touch with what most people on low budgets eat and where they shop. For instance, the 2007 set of promotional materials designed for congressmen warns participants, "A gallon of milk costs close to $5, a box of cereal is more than $4 and one apple can cost .60 to $1 each. These numbers add up quickly." I can't imagine where they're shopping, but I pay $1.99/gal for mild, $1.99 or less for a box of (non sugary, house brand) cereal, and $1/lb or less for apples.

So if you're going to take the food stamp diet challenge, at a minimum stop going on about organic and the fat content of your ground beef. Buying organic is, rightly or wrongly, a luxury and one way of consuming less fat is to eat less meat rather than spending a lot of money on extra lean meat.

Also, for those who really haven't experienced how "the other half" lives, try committing to doing all your shopping at places like Wal-Mart, Aldi, Family Dollar, etc. You'll get more food for your money, and you'll also find yourself standing in line with people who really do use food stamps. Whole Foods and the local farmers markets are not where the poor shop.

Why We Still Have It Way Better Than Most People On Foodstamps
All of this could easily make it sound like it's pretty easy to get by on food stamps, indeed that the poor have it pretty easy. That is not necessarily my point here, so let me run through a couple ways in which it's far easier for us to live on this food budget than it might be for many real families among the working poor:

- Economies of scale matter. Even the 10% discount that the USDA applies to the budget for families of 7 doesn't make up for the fact it's much cheaper on a per person basis to feed a large family than just 1, 2 or 3 people. Feeding two people on $44/week would be a lot harder than feeding seven people on $152/wk.

- An intact family with a stay at home parent helps a lot. One of our keys to living cheaply is that MrsDarwin is at home and able to get dinner started before I get home, make the kids lunches from scratch, etc. It would be much harder for a family with only one adult and a couple kids, or even with two working adults to stick to the same budget. Time is money, and as a single income family we have more time for certain things. (Of course, in some families, a parent, grandparent or other relative might fill this second adult slot.)

- We have the time and transportation to shop at three different stores during the course of the week and to bring in a week's worth of supplies from each store. If we had to shop day by day, or only at stores near public transportation, it would cost us more.

- We know that we do in fact have plenty of cash flow, even if we are trying to devote most of it to paying off a big expense rather than groceries. So we don't have any of the chronic anxiety of not being sure we'll be able to make ends meet.

Doug Kmiec Says HHS Policy May Cause Him To Oppose Obama

In the future, everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes, however in the mean time, you can always try to get a reprise of your brush with newsworthiness. Self anointed high-profile Obama supporter (and now former ambassador to Malta) Doug Kmiec seems to be trying for this dubious honor by getting back into the national political scene to announce that unless he hears a very good explanation out of the Obama Administration for their HHS policy refusing religious conscience exemptions to Catholic institutions, he may not be able to support Obama in 2012.

Douglas Kmiec, Obama’s former ambassador to Malta, is strongly opposed to Obama’s new mandate that Catholic hospitals and universities provide contraception in their employee health plans.

Kmiec, who served in the Reagan administration, noted that he urged Obama last year to grant an exemption, explaining that such a move “would be an opportunity to be more sensitive to religious freedom than the law requires.”

Asked whether he will back Obama in 2012, Kmiec replied in an email, "Until I have an opportunity to speak with the president, I am for now (unhappily) without a candidate."
...
He told The Hill that "there were several ways to reimburse employees of Catholic institutions for the expense which did not implicate any of the ethical concerns of the theologians. Why exactly did we not walk down a path that would have led to common ground — namely, coverage without ethical objection? That’s what I need answered before deciding on 2012. I find it most troubling to be tossed into this dilemma since as a Republican with independent, if not latent Democratic, tendencies, I am very proud of the president’s success on the healthcare initiative and his withdrawal of troops from Iraq..."

I have to admit, I'm impressed with some of the members of the Catholic left who've suddenly grown and spine and decided that this is the bridge too far for them and they won't support the Administration if it doesn't back off its HHS ruling on conscience exemptions. However, while it never does well to question why people are late to the barricades (we can use all the allies in the "culture war" that we can get) I must admit that I'm kind of perplexed by the reaction.

Figures like Kmiec have shown themselves willing to sell huge moral issues like abortion, euthanasia and gay marriage down the river of political expedience in return for little gestures of "fair mindedness" from Obama and the Democratic party. I figured, naturally enough, I think, that this was because they simply cared a lot more about the package of political issues which define the Democratic party than they did about these moral issues, and that the crowing over gestures of accommodation was just so much window dressing. This sudden feeling of betrayal over an issue which, while grave, is certainly less shocking than Obama's strong support for far more pernicious evils almost makes it appear that it was, all this time, the window dressing that they valued.

But why?

My Nose vs. The Meth Labs

Since it seems we're cold blogging, I'll just pass on Megan McArdle's lengthy post on the proposal being pushed in some quarters to make pseudoephedrine prescription only, since the current sign-the-book-and-show-your-drivers-license approach does not appear to deter the medicine's use in meth labs.

The Summer (and Winter) Catarrh

Darwin and I have taken it in turns to be stricken by sinus afflictions provoked by... what? We don't know, and yet we suffer. Presently mine takes the form, not of the more popular runny nose, but of sinus headache which presses against my eyes and my back molars, and in the evening my face stops up completely. I can breathe clearly, however. Darwin is not always so fortunate, though he doesn't get the headache. Usually, however, he responds better to medicine than I do. Sinus medicine, even the non-drowsy stuff, makes me feel weird and druggy and heavy. I'm not on the stuff today, but I'm tired. And today Darwin is being hit hard by the drugs, and at work, which is too bad. At least I can lay down when the stuff makes me too stupid to move.

All of which is to say, don't look to us for anything substantive today. Instead, read E.B. White's essay on The Summer Catarrh, and pity those of us who snuffle and throb our way through life.

Warren Buffet's Secretary Should Try Turbo Tax

I just finished filing my taxes.

President Obama can rest easy tonight, though. My effective tax rate was just 3.14%, less than 1/5th of Warren Buffet's 17.4% effective tax rate. Since Warren Buffet also makes well over 300x more than I do, this means that he paid in excess of 150,000% more in taxes than I did. Not too bad a job of soaking the rich from where I sit. But he might want to spring for a copy of TurboTax for his secretary, since it sounds like the poor lady is missing a deduction or two.

Komen Foundation Reverses Course, Promises to Keep Funding Planned Parenthood

The last two days have been a huge publicity storm for the Komen Foundation as supporters and opponents of abortion squared off over the foundation's decision to stop providing grants to Planned Parenthood to fund breast cancer exams. Today, Komen apparently decided that offending the pro-abortion half of the country wasn't enough, and decided to offend the pro-life half as well by reversing their decision and pledging to continue funding Planned Parenthood:

"We will continue to fund existing grants, including those of Planned Parenthood, and preserve their eligiblity to appy for future grants," Nancy G. Brinker, the agency's ambassador, said in a statement.

"We want to apologize to the American public for recent decisions that cast doubt upon our commitment to our mission of saving women's lives."

In addition to disgust that the pro-aborts got their way on this one, I have to say that I'm simply staggered by the utter PR incompetence of this whole circus. Perhaps the hope on Komen's part had been that they could drop Planned Parenthood quietly and thus widen their support base without offending pro-aborts. Whatever the thinking that led to this high profile flip-flop, the result is not merely the appearance of lacking principle but also that those with strong feelings on both sides are now deeply distrustful of the organization.

UPDATE: LifeSiteNews is claiming (on the basis of statements by Austin Ruse of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute) that this is all basically smoke screen on the part of the Komen Foundation in order to get Planned Parenthood off their backs, and that all they're doing is promising to allow Planned Parenthood to continue applying for grants (at which point they may well not select them.)

Austin Ruse, the president of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, who has been very closely following the Komen decision-making process, told LifeNews that the statement is not really a change in position but he says the sentence “We will continue to fund existing grants, including those of Planned Parenthood, and preserve their eligibility to apply for future grants, while maintaining the ability of our affiliates to make funding decisions that meet the needs of their communities” is “troubling” for pro-life advocates.

“This represents nothing new. We have known and have reported that they are continuing five grants through 2012. This is a reference to that. The second clause about eligibility is certainly true. Any group can apply for anything. It does not mean they are going to get anything,” Ruse told LifeNews.

“What this is is an effort to get the mafia off of their backs. As James Taranto said in the Wall Street Journal yesterday, this is a classic shakedown operation. Give us money or we will destroy you. This is Komen’s attempt to save their organization, which we should know is in peril. Our side should know that nothing has changed.”

Jill Stanek, a pro-life blogger, also says pro-life advocates should not give up on Komen yet.

“If Planned Parenthood is found guilty of criminal investigations, several of which are ongoing around the states (Medicaid fraud in Texas and California; fraudulent reporting and illegal abortions in Kansas, and yes, the federal Congressional investigation, etc.), Komen’s criteria will still disqualify Planned Parenthood from receiving grants, as it should,” Stanek says. “This is Komen’s attempt to get the abortion mafia off their backs. Planned Parenthood and its thugs have engaged in typical shakedown: Give us money or we will destroy you.”
...
Ruse responded to that saying those grants will very likely be the last Komen makes to the abortion business.

“Komen has five outstanding grants going out this year to Planned Parenthood. We have known about them all along. After that, the door is shut,” Ruse said. “Nothing has changed since the decision was made in December to defund Planned Parenthood after these grants are finished.”

“Could these Planned Parenthood groups apply for future grants? Of course they could. Anyone can apply for anything. Will they get them? Highly unlikely for two reasons,” Ruse added. “First, Komen’s new policy says they do not fund groups that are under investigation or groups that do not provide primary care of women or research.”

“Second, Planned Parenthood’s vicious attacks against Susan G. Komen for the Cure has engendered a great deal of hurt and anger inside the organization,” Ruse told LifeNews. “Quite simply, Planned Parenthood is utilizing a scorched earth policy against Komen and burning all their bridges. Funding will never come back to them. Keep in mind also, that Nancy Brinker may be trying to make conciliatory gestures to her former friends. But she is discovering what we have known all along, that Planned Parenthood are dishonest thugs.”

Frankly, I don't know whether I buy this or not, and even if it's true it seems to me that the double talk is only going to hurt them more. However, one can only wait and see.

How Far Can We Go?

In my days as a young unmarried Catholic, I often suffered through chastity talks or had dating manuals pressed on me. The Protestant dating manuals (or, more accurately, not-dating, since apparently dating is right out in those circles, to be replaced by the nebulous concept of "courtship") were painfully earnest in their descriptions of hypothetical couples who were keeping their relationships 99.44% pure by following strict rules of behavior. Chastity talks were even more painful because you had to be there in person, squirming in your folding chair and wishing the floor would swallow you as the speaker hemmed and hawed, or, even worse, was wildly enthusiastic for Purity! There seemed to be no happy medium between  either rigid guidelines that seemed designed to minimize contact between a couple, or hazy exhortations to purity that gave one no practical guidance in the matter of a relationship rooted in reality.

After the discussion following this post about the proper level of physical interaction before marriage, Darwin ordered a book on the subject by Brett Salkeld, a fellow blogger and acquaintance. Brett and his co-author Leah Perrault know this sad scene all too well, and they have written a refreshing remedy and valuable resource, How Far Can We Go? A Catholic Guide to Sex and Dating.

Here are two famous answers to the question "How far can we go?"

• Keep both feet on the floor.

• Asking "How far can we go?" is like taking your girlfriend or boyfriend in your arms, walking to the edge of a cliff, and asking, "How close can I get to the edge?"

We had to write this book because we think both these answers are unsatisfactory. We think we can do better. The first answer is very practical, but anyone with a little imagination can get around it. In trying to set out an easy-to-follow guideline for Catholic couples, it ignores the question of Christian formation. It says that physical intimacy is only about how you act, and has no connection to the kind of person you are called to become.  

The second answer is much more dangerous. The foundation of the metaphor it uses is that sex is roughly equivalent to suicide! In other words, sex is dangerous and sinful. Any advance in physical intimacy is just getting you closer and closer to the edge of the cliff. When we give answers like this it is no wonder the world thinks the Church is down on sex! 

...One of the reasons that Christian books on sex and dating have given a misleading view about sexuality is that they ignore the essential communicative aspect of sexuality. Sexual sin is presented as crossing some vague boundary partway up an imaginary list of increasingly intimate physical acts. But, in the context of physical intimacy, sin isn't crossing an arbitrary line. Sexual sin is about using your body to lie to your partner (and probably yourself) about the nature of your relationship. There need to be one or two clear lines about what is appropriate for unmarried people, but those lines are not drawn to keep people from acts that impure in and of themselves. They are drawn to keep people from lying with the language of their bodies. This book, then, is not primarily about which acts are and are not permissible. This book is about learning to speak the truth with your body.

One thing I really appreciate here is that Salkeld and Perrault have a respect for their young audience, and don't treat the question "How far can we go?" as an attempt to find out how much whoopie one can get away with, but an honest query about what is right and appropriate at any point in a relationship. (I snickered out loud at their description of a youth group leader who answers this question from a young couple by saying, "I'll let you in on a little secret. Your relationship will do much better if, instead, you ask yourselves how pure you can be." If you haven't heard twaddle like that, you haven't been around the Authentically Catholic! youth scene much.) They emphasize from the start that their model of dating "presumes that those who use it are sincerely trying to live holy lives. If you're hoping to find loopholes so you can get away with as much as possible and still say you're following Catholic rules, this model isn't for you."

Just what is this model? It relies on honestly answering the question "How much of myself does God want me to give to this other person?"

Sex is not a shortcut to intimacy! If you want to have sex but don't want to get married, you need to look at your reason for not getting married. If it's not a very good reason [the financial demands of a big wedding being an earlier example], work through it and then get married. If it's a good reason, it's probably a good reason not to have sex. Sex speaks a profound language of the body that is both a sign and a source of the kidn of unity that married people share. If you're not ready for marriage, then you're simply not ready for the demands of a relationship that includes sex.  

If you understand our explanation of the Church's teaching on premarital sex, you should be able to follow our dating model. It works on exactly the same principle; physical gifts of self ought to reflect our self-giving in other areas of a relationship.

The dating model the authors set forth is firmly rooted in responsibility and free will: not a "one-size-fits-all" set of rules (because every person and every relationship is unique), but guidelines for discerning at each step of a relationship the appropriate levels of not just physical intimacy, but spiritual, intellectual, social, and emotional intimacy All of these are often bound up with one another because humans are bodies and souls -- what effects one must effect the other. One of the most common-sense statements in the book is that intimacy needs to grow gradually over time, and the authors provide examples of couples at different stages of life and relationship -- high school students, couples in college, working college graduates, and high-powered career men and women -- to show how this discernment can play out in various ways. There's a fun set of graphs that examine how all forms of intimacy progress over the course of the journey from perfect strangers to spouses. The authors aren't shy about expressing the Church's teachings against common sexual pitfalls such as pornography and masturbation, and clearly explain the reasons for these teachings. They are unequivocal on the Church's teaching against premarital sex and activities that try to mimic the effects of sex, and devote the last chapters of the book to marriage and NFP.

I absolutely recommend this book -- I really think it's one of the best resources I've encountered for an honest and balanced treatment of what it means to be a faithful Catholic moving toward marriage. For what it's worth, I find the authors' discussion of sexuality and intimacy in relationships to be very true to Darwin's and my experience of having a real and intense and Catholic unmarried relationship while trying to steer a good course between prudery and prurience. This is the book I'll give to my own children to read when they're old enough for such discussions, and I can give no higher praise than that.

UPDATE: You can hear more about Brett and Leah's approach and speaking work at their website: http://www.howfarcanwego.com

FURTHER UPDATE: Here's a video of Brett Salkeld and Leah Perrault discussing "How Far Can We Go?"

The Awkwardness of Having a Body

In 2008 Steven Pinker, a professor of Psychology at Harvard, wrote about The Stupidity of Dignity. Pinker was angry that the President's Council on Bioethics had called for caution in approaching certain avenues of medical innovation because they might constitute an assault on human dignity. Besides venting his anti-Christian bias (and, to be fair, he does pull out a rather ridiculous statement by Leon Kass on the slippery slope posed by those who lick ice cream cones in public, though opposition to ice cream licking is not generally considered to be founded in theology), Pinker uses his platform to ridicule the concept of dignity and posit that autonomy ought to trump dignity in any bioethics discussion.

Why am I bringing up an article from 2008? I never read it at the time, but I did just read Christopher Kaczor's recent response to Pinker at Public Discourse. Kaczor takes on several of Pinker's statements about autonomy and answers them intelligently, but what struck me particularly was that he never fully addressed Pinker's mistaken concept of dignity.

Pinker says:

Dignity is a phenomenon of human perception. Certain signals from the world trigger an attribution in the mind of a perceiver. Just as converging lines in a drawing are a cue for the perception of depth, and differences in loudness between the two ears cue us to the position of a sound, certain features in another human being trigger ascriptions of worth. These features include signs of composure, cleanliness, maturity, attractiveness, and control of the body. The perception of dignity in turn elicits a response in the perceiver. Just as the smell of baking bread triggers a desire to eat it, and the sight of a baby's face triggers a desire to protect it, the appearance of dignity triggers a desire to esteem and respect the dignified person.
This explains why dignity is morally significant: We should not ignore a phenomenon that causes one person to respect the rights and interests of another. But it also explains why dignity is relative, fungible, and often harmful. Dignity is skin-deep: it's the sizzle, not the steak; the cover, not the book. What ultimately matters is respect for the person, not the perceptual signals that typically trigger it. Indeed, the gap between perception and reality makes us vulnerable to dignity illusions. We may be impressed by signs of dignity without underlying merit, as in the tin-pot dictator, and fail to recognize merit in a person who has been stripped of the signs of dignity, such as a pauper or refugee.

Dignity as a phenomenon? If that's how you define dignity, of course it's a useless concept for guiding important moral decisions. It fits, however, with every example Pinker provides of "dignity", which all have to do with surface-level attributes or social perceptions.

So, despite the best efforts of the contributors, the concept of dignity remains a mess. The reason, I think, is that dignity has three features that undermine any possibility of using it as a foundation for bioethics.
First, dignity is relative. One doesn't have to be a scientific or moral relativist to notice that ascriptions of dignity vary radically with the time, place, and beholder. In olden days, a glimpse of stocking was looked on as something shocking. We chuckle at the photographs of Victorians in starched collars and wool suits hiking in the woods on a sweltering day, or at the Brahmins and patriarchs of countless societies who consider it beneath their dignity to pick up a dish or play with a child. Thorstein Veblen wrote of a French king who considered it beneath his dignity to move his throne back from the fireplace, and one night roasted to death when his attendant failed to show up. Kass finds other people licking an ice-cream cone to be shamefully undignified; I have no problem with it.
Second, dignity is fungible. The Council and Vatican treat dignity as a sacred value, never to be compromised. In fact, every one of us voluntarily and repeatedly relinquishes dignity for other goods in life. Getting out of a small car is undignified. Having sex is undignified. Doffing your belt and spread- eagling to allow a security guard to slide a wand up your crotch is undignified. Most pointedly, modern medicine is a gantlet of indignities. Most readers of this article have undergone a pelvic or rectal examination, and many have had the pleasure of a colonoscopy as well. We repeatedly vote with our feet (and other body parts) that dignity is a trivial value, well worth trading off for life, health, and safety.
Third, dignity can be harmful. In her comments on the Dignity volume, Jean Bethke Elshtain rhetorically asked, "Has anything good ever come from denying or constricting human dignity?" The answer is an emphatic "yes." Every sashed and be-medaled despot reviewing his troops from a lofty platform seeks to command respect through ostentatious displays of dignity. Political and religious repressions are often rationalized as a defense of the dignity of a state, leader, or creed: Just think of the Salman Rushdie fatwa, the Danish cartoon riots, or the British schoolteacher in Sudan who faced flogging and a lynch mob because her class named a teddy bear Mohammed. Indeed, totalitarianism is often the imposition of a leader's conception of dignity on a population, such as the identical uniforms in Maoist China or the burqas of the Taliban.

Kaczor examines this section of Pinker's argument and makes good points about why autonomy has the same problems Pinker finds in dignity, but doesn't fully engage (I think) with Pinker's odd definition of dignity.

Having a body necessitates a certain awkwardness at time. Yes, it's awkward to get out of a small car. Sex is incredibly awkward when the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak, or when the flesh is willing but the spirit is weak. I have a pressing sinus headache today, which dulls all my reflexes and makes me feel unbelievably stupid today. Any of these examples can cause a person to look or act ridiculous (though in my current state of la tete lourde, I'm inclined to think that a sinus affliction is the most bizarre of the three). But none of them negates a person's dignity, which is (according to the Catholic thought that Pinker finds so jejeune) a worth that is intrinsic to humans, not something that can be peeled on or off or which alters according the whims of the perceiver.