The Plaid Pladd

Yay Hate Book club! Where Brian and I read the same book we think we’re going to hate!! Read his review here!

For the second round of Hate Book Club, Brian and I decided to read the famous 90s bestseller Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus by John Gray, which is the name a particularly unimaginative serial killer on the lam would choose to try to start a new life as a relationship counselor. I’m not saying that’s what happened here, but I’m not NOT saying it either.

The book offers some pretty basic relationship advice, under the premise that men and women are actually aliens from completely different planets, and need to learn to understand each other’s language and values as such.

One rule of Hate Book Club is that we say three nice things about the book, and I like to get that over with right away so that I can forget it ever happened:

1. John Gray is super repetitive and fond of lists, which makes his chapters easy to skim.
2. Talking about “Martians” and “Venusians” instead of men and women does a little to hide the offensiveness of a lot of his blanket assertions.
3. I like that he generally encourages empathy, which I think is the key to being a good person.

In general, I think the advice to try to see things from someone else’s point of view is excellent. Everyone has different ways of coping, thinking, and communicating, and many disagreements can be prevented by trying to determine the reasons behind someone’s action or reaction rather than just getting mad because it doesn’t conform to your own expectations. Of course, I completely disagree that these differences are based on gender, and think stressing the supposed dichotomy between men and women sets relations back further than this book helps.

Men and women seldom mean the same things even when they use the same words. (61)

This is the kind of attitude Cosmo has all the time (“Decode his man brain!”), and I hate the assumption that men and women are polar opposites with no hope of ever understanding each other without the “professional” help of John Gray or magazines. This attitude tries to force the spectrum of human behavior into a strict binary that doesn’t exist. Plus, usually it is based on ridiculous outdated stereotypes:

To fully express their feelings, women assume poetic license and use various superlatives, metaphors, and generalizations. Men mistakenly take these expressions literally. (61)

Remembering that within every man is a knight in shining armor is a powerful metaphor to help you remember a man’s primary needs. Although a man may appreciate caring and assistance sometimes, too much of it will lessen his confidence or turn him off. (152)

The strange and beautiful Venusians were a mysterious attraction to the Martians. Where the Martians were hard, the Venusians were soft. Where the Martians were angular, the Venusians were round. Where the Martians were cool, the Venusians were warm. In a magical and perfect way their differences seemed to complement each other. (43)

No mention is ever made of same sex couples, of course. The main difference between men and women, as reiterated over and over, was that women show love by trying to help and men show love by fixing things without assistance. If you offer to help a man, you are basically calling him a woman! ULTIMATE INSULT

To honor him by not offering advice would have been a gift equivalent to his buying her a beautiful bouquet of flowers or writing her a love note… The next time he was lost, instead of offering “help” she restrained herself form offering any advice, took a deep relaxing breath, and appreciated in her heart what Tom was trying to do for her. Tom greatly appreciated her warm acceptance and trust. (15)

When a woman in a similar caring and concerned way says to a man “What’s the matter, honey?” he may feel insulted or repulsed. (86)

How dare you try to help me? I am insulted and repulsed! Similarly, women need men to take care of them. Otherwise they get all depressed and emotional, as women do:

To deal with their depression (without men) the Venusians were busy sharing their feelings and talking about their problems. As they talked they discovered the cause of their depression. They were tired of giving so much all the time. They resented always feeling responsible for one another. They wanted to relax and just be taken care of for a while. (47)

People like me, who have trouble envisioning themselves in the narrow stereotype he defines as “woman”, just have some weird hormone problem, probably:

Generally speaking, about 10 percent of women will relate more to being from Mars. This is often simply a result of being born with higher testosterone levels than most other women. (xix)

He doesn’t mention what it means if men identify with the women stereotypes. John Gray often reminds me of Mark Driscoll, author of the last book we read for Hate Book Club, in that a lot of the advice seems to set the bar really low. For instance, from a list of “Ways to score points with a woman”:

77. When listening to her talk, use eye contact
…
87. Verbally say thank you when she does things for you(208)

Does John Gray envision all men as socially inept cave people who have never interacted with another human or learned some basic manners? From the same list:

33. Wash before having sex or put on cologne if she likes that. (205)

Women love some basic hygiene.

Just like Mark Driscoll wanted us to think he was superior because he decided not to cheat on his wife (“become the adultery guy”), John Gray explains what a great guy he is when he decides not to “head for the door” (xxvi) after getting into an argument with his sick wife after she’s taken care of their newborn all day. You didn’t leave your wife and child to fend for themselves while still weak and semi-helpless? Good for you, John Gray, someone give this man a medal. Clearly he is a more empathetic human than the rest of us. We have much to learn from his wisdom.

Every time their favourite Martian went into his cave, they would go shopping or out on some other pleasing excursion. Venusians love to shop. (81)

So wise

My final reaction to this book:

And, because, every Hate Book Club review has to have a graph:

Don’t forget to read Brian’s review too!

Previously: Real Marriage

Welcome to Hate Book Club!! A book club Brian Reinhart and I formed to read books we think we’re going to hate, and then review them on our respective blogs. Here are the rules of Hate Book Club:

1) We have to choose books neither of us have read before
2) We have to say THREE (3) positive things about the book
2a) They can be sarcastically positive
3) Each review must include one graph
4) Final opinion of the book must be summed up in gif form

Hopefully this project will also allow me to poach some readers from Brian’s seriouspants blog. Hello, Person Who Probably Has An Opinion About David Foster Wallace! Let me show you what a gif is:

It’s basically the same as the postmodern art you enjoy, you’ll be fine.

Anyway, the first book we chose for Hate Book Club was Real Marriage: The Truth about Sex, Friendship, and Life Together by Mark and Grace Driscoll. If the name “Mark Driscoll” sounds familiar to you, it’s probably because you remember the controversy recently when he referred to women as “homes for penises.” Definitely a guy you want to take relationship advice from!!

Let’s get the compliments out of the way so I can begin to block out the memory of thinking anything nice about this guy:

1) He uses the Oxford comma throughout his entire book.

Working in the academic publishing industry has taught me that serial comma use is far from universal, despite the fact that not using it makes you seem like an illiterate assface (YEAH, I SAID IT, New York Times stylebook, BRING IT). If you don’t use the Oxford comma, I hate you. It’s pretty much that simple.

I still hate Mark Driscoll, but I have other reasons.

2) He taught me a story about Martin Luther I didn’t know.

In the early morning hours one Easter, twelve young runaway nuns climbed into empty fish barrels and were smuggled out of their convent. Their unlikely hero was a renegade monk they had written to, imploring him to rescue them so they could marry and one day become mothers. The escape was a daring and successful adventure, and it led to a most unusual friendship and marriage. The hero monk? Martin Luther. (19)

Okay, to be fair, I didn’t fact check this story at all, because I was afraid I’d then have to think up another compliment for Mark Driscoll and I have a lot of other things to do right now. So, regardless of this story’s veracity, it is fun and would make a great historical action movie.

3) He stresses that friendship is the basis of marriage.

Okay, now that that’s out of the way, let’s get to my hates:

On the first page of the preface, Driscoll pretty much sets the tone for how you’re supposed to take his marriage advice:

Don’t say, “I [we] tried that, and it did not work.” If it’s rooted in biblical wisdom, keep trying until it works or you die. (xi)

OR YOU DIE. His marriage advice will either work OR KILL YOU. No other options.

This book has a lot of advice you’d expect from an evangelical Christian, including a staunch adherence to traditional gender roles:

Admittedly, a wife working before kids are born, or who finds a way to make money from home without neglecting her first God-given responsibilities of Christian, wife, and mother is acceptable. But men, you should make money. You should feed your family. (52)

Stay-at-home Dads are truly an abomination in the eyes of God.

These gender roles are totally legit because women are the weaker sex, and therefore need to be protected by men from the harsh realities of the world outside the home:

But since a husband is one with his wife her weakness is his weakness, which means he needs to honor and protect it rather than exploit it. Because she is a crystal goblet and he is a thermos means she is not only delicate but also precious. (49)

But, don’t worry, all this lady-oppression is totally rooted in the Bible so you can’t argue with it.

This assignment of the husband to the role of covenant head is not something rooted in culture that can be changed, but rather something rooted in creation that is unchanging. (54)

His list of Biblical evidence for that begins with:

1. God called the race “man” and “mankind” 2. By naming Eve, Adam was exercising authority over her as God commanded (55)

Ah yes, basing sweeping theological arguments on the exact vocabulary in a document that has been translated so many times it is basically like playing a 3000-year game of telephone. “It’s called MANkind.” This argument brought to you by the same people who brought you “Adam and Eve, NOT ADAM AND STEVE.” Classic.

Of course, like any adherence to strict gender roles, men are treated as equally infantile, with a lot of urging to MAN UP and provide for your family economically, emotionally, and spiritually. Driscoll wants us to return to a simpler time when boys became men by achieving important life hurdles in quick succession:

1. leave your parents’ home
2. finish your education or vocational training
3. start a career-track job, not a dead-end-Joe job
4. meet a woman, love her, honor her, court her, and marry her
5. parent children with her

Then he poetically sums up how the “invention” of adolescence and socio-economic circumstances have LED OUR CULTURE ASTRAY:

But the fools’ parade hijacked the march to manhood. (42)

Come on, sixteen-year-olds, why are you wasting your time on the JV soccer team, when you should already have married and impregnated your junior prom date?? GET WITH THE PROGRAM. The MAN program.

Naturally, Driscoll has to caution his readers to follow his advice, unless you want a horrifying secular marriage:

For many men and women, the questions are: Is my spouse keeping up his/her looks, making his/her share of the income, doing an equal amount of the chores, and having enough sex with me, or not? And if at any point I do not believe my spouse is keeping up his or her end of our business arrangement, I simply nullify the deal and file for divorce to the terms of a prenuptial agreement in which the divorce was organized before the marriage began. (54)

I mean, really, he’s got me there. The second I suspect I’m doing more dishes than Steven I whip out our prenup, which, because I’m a feminist, just says “I get everything, sucka!”

But you pretty much expect all this in an advice book about marriage written by a hardcore Christian, right? Perhaps more interesting was Driscoll’s discussion of his own background:

Growing up, my goal was to get out of my neighborhood and enjoy a new and better life… I did not want to get trapped by gangs, drugs, alcohol, crime, or manipulative women. (6)

Hmm… one of these things is not like the others.

He started dating his eventual wife Grace in highschool, who somehow found the courage to be with him though, at the time, she was a Christian and he was not. Then Driscoll undergoes a dramatic conversion after God prevents him from going to a frat party. But just because they were both Christians doesn’t mean the Driscoll marriage was all Happily Ever After. For instance, both seemed to have trouble overcoming pesky secular ideas about equality and getting back to basics, gender role wise:

Grace was pregnant with our first child and suffering… which culminated in me apologizing for not bearing the entire financial burden for our family. She gladly came home from work(11)

Making issues even worse, I (Grace) realized I hadn’t really followed the Genesis command to leave my family and cleave to Mark as my new family… I called my parents “my family,” which made Mark feel as if he and I weren’t family. I had to learn to pray and work through our conflict differently, plan some of our own traditions and memories, set healthy boundaries of privacy, and refer to Mark as “my family” and others as our “extended family”.(10-11)

Sorry, Mom and Dad. I have to cleave to Steven. You’re my extended family now. No word on if the dude’s parents are family or “extended family” though.

Sometimes Driscoll’s treatment of his wife is disgusting, but the reader is clearly meant to side with him:

In this season we shifted into ministry-and-family mode, neglecting our intimacy and failing to work through our issues. This became apparent to me when my pregnant wife came home from a hair appointment with her previously long hair (that I loved) chopped off and replaced with a short, mommish haircut. She asked what I thought, and could tell from the look on my face. She had put a mom’s need for convenience before being a wife. She wept. (11)

Yep. SHE’s wrong for cutting her hair and putting “mom” before “wife” or “my happiness” before “being attractive to my husband.” Your short hair is why you can’t keep a man, ladies. You are right to weep.

Then God grants Driscoll a vivid dream about his wife cheating on him when she was 17, and she later admits that IT WAS TRUE. Then he shuts her out for ten years as punishment for something she did when she was 17, repeating multiple times that, had he known, he would never have married her. Driscoll paints himself as a victimized martyr through all this:

So I put my head down, kept my pants on, and decided not to be the porn or masturbation or adultery guy (13)

Props for not becoming “the adultery guy,” Driscoll. That was so big of you.

Also, my favorite thing I learned from this book:

Emotional adultery is having as your close friend someone of the opposite sex who is not your spouse. (25)

OH GOD I AM AN ADULTERESS FIRE UP THE BRANDING IRON AND SLAP THAT A ON MY FOREHEAD:

Near the end of the book, Driscoll addresses the most common sex advice questions he gets from Christians, asking whether certain things (porn, sex toys, etc) are okay or not from a Biblical standpoint. This section was surprisingly boring, and I can sum it up in chart form:

All in all, this book was fun to read aloud, especially to an engaged couple I was counseling as a dutiful wedding officiant. This book didn’t really shock me with its contents, I guess because I kind of knew what to expect going in. Sadly, nothing about it really lived up to a “penis homes” level of ridic, so my reaction was just generally:

Don’t forget to read Brian’s writeup here.

Yay Hate Book Club!!!!