Tuesday evening roundup and rant

More parsing of moochergate here, here, and here. That last one a home run by Alexandria Petri.

Let's quit the introvert bashing. That means you, Maureen Dowd.

Speaking of rare home runs, there's finally a Shouts and Murmurs that breaks the boring streak, and since we're on baseball analogies, hits it out of the park.

Bankrate's guide to tipping.

Milk (including soymilk) diminishes the antioxidant value of tea.

Neuroscience is a wonderful thing; don't succumb to pop-science simplifications. From that clarifying article, a great excerpt:

Love — for both men and women — does rely on the same circuitry that engenders addiction. It’s the same circuitry that fuels the desire to persist in frustrating tasks like parenting as well. Like addiction, both love and parenting involve continuing with behavior despite negative consequences. But that’s a good thing: we need to be a little bit irrational to stay with partners who are far from perfect and to deal with children who can easily drive adults mad.

and,

That’s because the brain circuitry that drives us to love and to parent — the same region that can be derailed during addiction — isn’t the only part of our brain. Even in the throes of addiction, romantic obsession or the early chaotic days of parenting, we’re still capable of choice, and none of the neuroscience data proves otherwise. “Just because genes or a molecule modulate a behavior, it doesn’t mean that genes or molecules determine that behavior,” says Young. “People who are in love will generally engage in behavior that they wouldn’t normally do, but I don’t think that means they’re less responsible.”

and so,

The brain and female sexuality are extremely complicated — and reducing them to simplistic formulations that deny women their humanity fails to do justice to either feminism or science. Properly contextualized, neuroscience can add to our knowledge of sexuality, but not if it’s twisted to support sexist ideas about women as “animals” who are so addicted to love that they become zombies.

You may want to take this together with this study (in more equal societies, women care less about wealth and men less about appearance) and perhaps this study (arousal helps us overcome aversion to actions we'd otherwise find gross). Oh, and in conjunction with that first one, consider the recent findings about fathers' age in connection autism and schizophrenia risk. And consider all that in conjunction with yesterday's ramble. Because even though I'm not mad as hell, I'm not going to take it anymore. It being well-meaning lectures (from friends, dating "experts," etc.) about how [straight] women are too picky and need to get over it, because we need men more than they need us.

An ex-boyfriend from many years ago once said about a friend of mine (and yes, I know I should have walked away then, if not when he tried to convince me that Manuel Noriega could not have been from Panama) that she should be scared. Sound familiar? Lori Gottlieb turned it into a book. Women, in his view, got uglier and less fertile while men got richer, so time was on their side. But the first and third studies linked in the above paragraph undermine that whole thing, and the middle study reminds us that arousal is important. Taken together, the studies tell us this: we ladies no longer need you, so we're gonna hafta want you if there's gonna be a relationship. (And--see yesterday's ramble--if we're gonna want you, you'd better get your @$$es to the gym and then to Banana Republic; sweat pants are v@&!^@ killers). Oh, and read a book or do something with yourself, because so is being boring. Have you been too busy working--whether to make money or save the world--to develop a personality? I appreciate your work ethic and/or sense of social responsibility, but that's not enough to make me want to date you.

But let's get back to the physical aspect of this, which is not the most important part, but the one that got me going yesterday. I was talking to an acquaintance/coworker about this, wondered to her whether I should feel guilty about being turned off by chubby guys. She pounced (not on me):

All I ask is commensurate with what I bring to a relationship. I work out six days a week. I have three degrees. I can support myself. I am not asking that I date a bodybuilder; I'm not asking to date only within MENSA; I'm not asking for a football player with a football player's salary. All that I ask is that a guy put a little bit of pride and effort into his appearance, and that he be somewhat educated.

Those were her words, and actually, I feel less strongly about these equivalences than she does; I find that people can bring different things to a relationship. A guy can have fewer degrees and be less buff and still be an amazing guy (but then be an amazing guy--that's what really matters!). A guy can bring different things to the relationship than you do. I allow for that. The point is, you have to bring something to the relationship.

The other point is, you can't defy the laws of nature--in this case, of chemistry. You cannot, in this day and age, be out of shape and boring and still expect the ladies to flock to you (see that second article about the need for arousal).

So you--you exes, internet trolls, well meaning friends--can stop lecturing women about how we'd best settle. You (guys out there) are going to have to shape up and man up, so that, since we no longer need you, we'll want you.