Thursday, June 30, 2011

30/06 Is Pornography Driving Men Crazy?


2011-06-30

NEW YORK – It is hard to ignore how many highly visible men in recent years (indeed, months) have behaved in sexually self-destructive ways. Some powerful men have long been sexually voracious; unlike today, though, they were far more discreet and generally used much better judgment in order to cover their tracks.
Of course, the heightened technological ability nowadays to expose private behavior is part of the reason for this change. But that is precisely the point: so many of the men caught up in sex-tinged scandals of late have exposed themselves – sometimes literally – through their own willing embrace of text messages, Twitter, and other indiscreet media.
What is driving this weirdly disinhibited decision-making? Could the widespread availability and consumption of pornography in recent years actually be rewiring the male brain, affecting men’s judgment about sex and causing them to have more difficulty controlling their impulses?
There is an increasing body of scientific evidence to support this idea. Six years ago, I wrote an essay called “The Porn Myth,” which pointed out that therapists and sexual counselors were anecdotally connecting the rise in pornography consumption among young men with an increase in impotence and premature ejaculation among the same population. These were healthy young men who had no organic or psychological pathology that would disrupt normal sexual function.
The hypothesis among the experts was that pornography was progressively desensitizing these men sexually. Indeed, hardcore pornography’s effectiveness in achieving rapid desensitization in subjects has led to its frequent use in training doctors and military teams to deal with very shocking or sensitive situations.
Given the desensitization effect on most male subjects, researchers found that they quickly required higher levels of stimulation to achieve the same level of arousal. The experts I interviewed at the time were speculating that porn use was desensitizing healthy young men to the erotic appeal of their own partners.
Since then, a great deal of data on the brain’s reward system has accumulated to explain this rewiring more concretely. We now know that porn delivers rewards to the male brain in the form of a short-term dopamine boost, which, for an hour or two afterwards, lifts men’s mood and makes them feel good in general. The neural circuitry is identical to that for other addictive triggers, such as gambling or cocaine.
The addictive potential is also identical: just as gamblers and cocaine users can become compulsive, needing to gamble or snort more and more to get the same dopamine boost, so can men consuming pornography become hooked. As with these other reward triggers, after the dopamine burst wears off, the consumer feels a letdown – irritable, anxious, and longing for the next fix. (There is some new evidence, uncovered by Jim Pfaus at Concordia University in Canada, that desensitization may be affecting women consumers of pornography as well.)
This dopamine effect explains why pornography tends to become more and more extreme over time: ordinary sexual images eventually lose their power, leading consumers to need images that break other taboos in other kinds of ways, in order to feel as good. Moreover, some men (and women) have a “dopamine hole” – their brains’ reward systems are less efficient – making them more likely to become addicted to more extreme porn more easily.
As with any addiction, it is very difficult, for neurochemical reasons, for an addict to stop doing things – even very self-destructive things – that enable him to get that next hit of dopamine. Could this be why men who in the past could take time-delayed steps to conduct affairs behind closed doors now can’t resist the impulse to send a self-incriminating text message? If so, such men might not be demons or moral ciphers, but rather addicts who are no longer entirely in control of themselves.
This is not to say that they are not responsible for their behavior. But I would argue that it is a different kind of responsibility: the responsibility to understand the powerfully addictive potential of pornography use, and to seek counseling and medication if the addiction starts to affect one’s spouse, family, professional life, or judgment.
By now, there is an effective and detailed model for weaning porn-addicted men and restoring them to a more balanced mental state, one less at the mercy of their compulsions. Understanding how pornography affects the brain and wreaks havoc on male virility permits people to make better-informed choices – rather than engage in pointless self-loathing or reactive collective judgments – in a world that has become more and more addictively hardcore.
Naomi Wolf is a political activist and social critic whose most recent book is Give Me Liberty: A Handbook for American Revolutionaries.
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30/06 天声人語 - 震災から百カ日の「卒哭忌(そっこくき)」を過ぎて

2011年6月30日(木)付

悲しみの中にめぐる月日。震災から百カ日の「卒哭忌(そっこくき)」を過ぎて、暦はきょうで今年を折り返す。雨の向こうに明日を見たい6月の言葉から▼北限の茶摘みとされる岩手県陸前高田市の気仙茶(けせんちゃ)。被災で収穫が危ぶまれたが、地元の高校生の協力で一番茶を摘んだ。自宅を流されて諦めていたお茶農家の紺野隆治(りゅうじ)さん(96)は「茶摘みが出来てうれしい。必ず戻って、体が動く限り茶栽培を続けたい」▼仙台市の小中学校の約8万人が「仙台七夕まつり」の飾り作りを始めた。震災で自宅に住めなくなった山内優希さん(14)は「前向きに歩いていけるよう、きれいな吹き流しを作りたい。仙台はこんなに元気なんだぞって知ってもらいたい」。みちのくの夏を祭りが彩る▼将棋名人戦で、羽生善治名人を森内俊之九段(40)が下した。歴史に残る名勝負を制して「羽生さんは自分を一番引き上げてくれた人。羽生さんがいたから今の自分がある」。同い年の好敵手の言や良し▼「私はもう一度写真を見た/みんな笑っている/幸せそうに笑っている/愛する家族がいたはずだ/たくさんの夢があったはずだ」。沖縄の中2嘉味田朝香(かみだともか)さん(13)が、慰霊の日の戦没者追悼式で自作詩を朗読した。「奪った戦争を/私は許さない」と声は続いた▼11日に全国各地で脱原発のデモがあった。広島市の石井千穂さん(33)は3歳の長男を連れて参加した。「将来、あのとき何もせんかった、と悔やみたくないから」。誰もが真剣に、未来を考え始めている。

30/06 Genkai mayor OK's restart of N-reactors / Saga governor maintains cautious view


SAGA--The mayor of Genkaicho, Saga Prefecture, gave his approval for restarting two reactors at the Genkai nuclear power plant in his town during talks with the industry minister Wednesday morning.
Genkaicho Mayor Hideo Kishimoto is the first municipal government head to give the green light for resuming operations at reactors halted since start of the crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant run by Tokyo Electric Power Co. There are 35 such idled reactors nationwide.
However, Saga Gov. Yasushi Furukawa expressed reservations over restarting the Nos. 2 and 3 reactors at the Genkai plant when he met Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Banri Kaieda Wednesday afternoon.
Kaieda first visited the Genkaicho town office at 10:15 a.m. and met for 15 minutes with Kishimoto, and other local leaders, including Toshiyuki Sakai, mayor of nearby Karatsu. Kaieda had come looking for agreement to resume operations of the two reactors at the plant run by Kyushu Electric Power Co.
During the meeting with Kaieda, Kishimoto said he approved of restarting the reactors.
"If the national government guarantees [safety at the plant], I'd like to convey my agreement to the utility before too long," the Genkaicho mayor said. Kyushu Electric would be officially informed of the mayor's decision in early July, town officials said.
That afternoon, Kaieda met the Saga governor to seek his understanding for putting the reactors back online, but the governor was more cautious than the small-town mayor. "I'll continue to make my decisions based on views of the prefectural assembly and the town hosting the reactors," Furukawa said.
This is the first time an economy, trade and industry minister has visited a municipality hosting a nuclear plant to seek approval for resuming stalled reactors.
Kaieda visited the Genkai nuclear power plant in the prefecture and inspected the emergency safeguards the plant has taken against earthquakes and tsunami before meeting with the town leaders.
"The national government is responsible for making a sustained effort to maintain safety," he told Kishimoto and Sakai. "It's a difficult call but I would like to have your understanding over resuming operations."
Kaieda later held talks for 30 minutes with Furukawa at the Saga prefectural government office. "Are nuclear plants really safe?" Furukawa asked Kaieda. "Who decided to stop the Hamaoka plant? That place was supposed to have been confirmed safe."
"The loss of power caused by the tsunami was the direct cause of the problems [at the Fukushima plant]," Kaieda said. "Sufficient safety measures have already been taken at the Genkai plant under government leadership."
Kyushu Electric normally supplies about 40 percent of its electricity through nuclear power, but three of its six reactors have been idled, including one at the Sendai nuclear plant in Satsuma-Sendai, Kagoshima Prefecture. The two reactors at the Genkai plant were scheduled to resume operations in early April. The town assembly unanimously approved a statement June 17 calling for the reactors to be restarted.
===
Satsuma-Sendai mayor positive
SATSUMA-SENDAI, Kagoshima--Hideo Iwakiri, mayor of Satsuma-Sendai, said Wednesday for the first time he would approve resumption of operations of the No. 1 reactor at the Sendai nuclear power plant in the city if certain conditions were met.
"I think [the reactor] could be restarted if the operator observes the safety standards set by the national government," Iwakiri said.
(Jun. 30, 2011)

30/06 よみうり寸評 - 思えば、これが〈家族合わせ〉の時代と重なる


6月30日付

 昔、子供の遊びに〈家族合わせ〉というのがあった。かるた、トランプの類の札遊びで明治から昭和前期まで全国で流行した◆戦後は間もなくすたれたから、今や、知る人も少ない。決まった構成はないが、1家族5、6人ほどで、父母、兄弟姉妹などが、別々の札に描かれていた◆家族は何組かあり、職業別に家長の氏名がある。銀行員なら石部金吉、警官なら民尾守など。家族ごとにその一家全員をそろえたものが勝ちのゲームだった。これが遠い昔の遊びになったのは無理もない◆総務省がきのう発表した2010年国勢調査の抽出速報集計によると一人暮らし世帯の割合が初めて3割を超え、家族類型別のトップになった◆何と一人暮らし世帯が「夫婦と子供」の世帯を上回ってしまった。未婚者や高齢者の増加が一人暮らしの数を押し上げたらしい。少子高齢化はいよいよ深刻な様相だ◆1920~55年の35年間、日本の家族規模は平均5人強でほぼ横ばいだった。思えば、これが〈家族合わせ〉の時代と重なる。
(2011年6月30日13時41分  読売新聞)

30/06 編集手帳 - 語彙 ごい や技巧を超えた一語一語が読む者の目を立ち止まらせてやまない


6月30日付

 駆け出しの頃、陳腐な表現は使うなと、先輩記者に教えられた。宿舎の甲子園球児は「底抜けの笑顔」で食事を「ペロリとたいらげ」てはならず、景気のいい商店主は「えびす顔でうれしい悲鳴」を上げてはいけない、と◆さすがにもう、その種の失敗はしないが、「歯の根も合わぬ」寒さや「めまいのする」空腹は、いまも油断すると顔を出す◆〈夜は、画用紙一まいでねました〉(名取市・閖上小4年 玉田礼菜)。〈(もらった1個のおにぎりを)十分ぐらいかけて食べました〉(南三陸町・志津川小6年 小山嘉宣)◆「被災地のこども80人の作文集」と副題の付けられた雑誌『つなみ』(=「文芸春秋」臨時増刊号)には、紋切り型とは無縁の「寒さ」があり、「空腹」がある。〈4月10日におとうさんが、みつかり一週間後おとうさんのかそうをしました。とてもざんねんでした〉(石巻市・渡波小2年 鈴木智幸)。おそらく「かそう」(火葬)という言葉は、生まれてから口にしたこともなかっただろう。語彙ごいや技巧を超えた一語一語が読む者の目を立ち止まらせてやまない◆言葉の力とは何だろう。
(2011年6月30日01時15分  読売新聞)

30/06 Những chuyện chưa hề được tiết lộ về Củng Lợi


30/06/2011 | 14:13:00

Củng Lợi. (Nguồn: Internet)
Sở hữu vẻ đẹp mang đậm chất Á đông đầy lôi cuốn và quyến rũ, Củng Lợi không chỉ tỏa sáng về tài năng diễn xuất, Củng Lợi còn là gương mặt quảng cáo rất sáng giá và là người đại diện của các thương hiệu mỹ phẩm, thời trang lớn trên thế giới. Nhưng ít ai biết rằng Củng Lợi cũng đã từng phải thi ba lần đại học.

Củng Lợi sinh năm 1965 tại Thẩm Dương, Trung Quốc. Từ nhỏ Củng Lợi đã ham mê ca hát và luôn tỏ ra hứng thú với các điệu nhảy. Củng Lợi luôn ước mơ trở thành một ca sỹ.

Mùa hè năm 1983, Củng Lợi bắt đầu thi lên đại học. Cô đăng ký vào khoa nghệ thuật của Học viện sư phạm Sơn Đông.

Vào thời đó, đây là trường về nghệ thuật nổi tiếng nhất khu vực tỉnh Sơn Đông, Trung Quốc. Thế nhưng, Củng Lợi đã không thể thực hiện được nguyện vọng khi cô không đủ điểm để vào trường.

Sau một năm sống bàng quan với số phận, Củng Lợi lại tiếp tục bước vào cuộc thi đại học vào năm 1984. Tuy nhiên, Củng Lợi lại thất bại.

Hai lần thi trượt đại học, bố mẹ Củng Lợi đã không còn ủng hộ ước mơ theo đuổi con đường nghệ thuật của cô. Để giảm bớt gánh nặng kinh tế cho gia đình, Củng Lợi vừa đi làm, vừa ôn lại các môn học để đợi đợt thi đại học lần ba.

Nhờ sự giới thiệu của bạn bè, Củng Lợi được nhận vào làm tại một đơn vị thuộc Nhà xuất bản tỉnh Sơn Đông. Sau đó, cô đã quen và nhận được sự chỉ dạy nhiệt tình của Quân Đại Vỹ, một đạo diễn kịch.

Củng Lợi tiến bộ rất nhanh, cô được học từ ca hát đến diễn kịch. Khi gần đến kỳ thi đại học, Củng Lợi vẫn định đăng ký và Học viện nghệ thuật Sơn Đông nhưng Quân Đại Vỹ đã khuyên cô nên đăng ký vào Học viện hý kịch TW. Và cuối cùng Củng Lợi đã quyết định đăng ký cả ba trường Học viện hý kịch TW, Học viện hý kịch Thượng Hải và Học viện nghệ thuật Sơn Đông.

Lần thi đại học thứ 3, Củng Lợi vẫn thiếu 11 điểm so với điểm chuẩn để vào trường. Nhưng do cô biểu hiện quá xuất sắc ở phần thi nghệ thuật nên các thầy cô chấm điểm không đành lòng để mất một tài năng như vậy.

Họ đã gửi đơn lên Bộ giáo dục yêu cầu đặc cách cho Củng Lợi được thông qua trong kỳ thi này. Và cuối cùng Củng Lợi đã được vào Học viện hý kịch TW sau bao gian nan.

Thầy giáo Lương Bá Long nhớ lại: "Lúc đó cả Học viện nghệ thuật Sơn Đông cũng muốn có được Củng Lợi."

Vào năm đại học thứ hai, Củng Lợi đã lọt vào mắt xanh Trương Nghệ Mưu. Ngay sau đó, vị đạo diễn nổi tiếng này đã mời cô vào vai chính Cửu Nhi trong bộ phim "Cao lương đỏ."

Sau hơn 20 năm trong nghề, Củng Lợi gặt hái được nhiều giải thưởng tầm cỡ như Nữ diễn viên chính xuất sắc tại Liên hoan phim Venice lần thứ 49 cho vai chính trong phim "Thu Cúc." Cô còn giành được giải thưởng Cành cọ vàng cho vai diễn trong bộ phim "Farewell my Concubine" (1993) của đạo diễn Trần Khải Ca.

Củng Lợi luôn được xem là nữ diễn viên hàng đầu của điện ảnh Trung Quốc và là một trong những tên tuổi châu Á thành công nhất tại làng điện ảnh Hollywood./.
Lan Phương (Vietnam+)

30/06 Neo-Nazi violence up in eastern Germany: Report

Jun 30, 2011


Neo-nazi violence is on the rise in eastern Germany even though overall national figures are down, Die Welt newspaper reported quoting an official report due out on Friday. -- PHOTO: AP


BERLIN - NEO-NAZI violence is on the rise in eastern Germany even though overall national figures are down, Die Welt newspaper reported quoting an official report due out on Friday.
While acts of neo-Nazi violence dropped by 14.5 per cent nationwide in 2010 compared to the previous year, they were up 4.8 per cent in the five eastern states which used to form former communist East Germany, the paper said quoting a yearly report by the Office for the Defence of the Constitution.
Out of a total of 706 violent acts by extremist right-wingers, 306 - or 40 per cent - were carried out in the economically depressed former East Germany which is home to just 15 per cent of the country's population.
The eastern state most affected by violence in 2010 was Saxony-Anhalt where a neo-Nazi party this year narrowly failed to win the five per cent of the vote needed to enter the local parliament.
The Office for the Protection of the Constitution, a domestic intelligence service, said the number of extreme right-wingers had fallen by 1,600 to some 25,000 nationwide.
But those judged potentially violent rose by 600 to 5,600, it added. -- AFP

30/06 Saudi bans domestic workers from Indonesia, Philippines

Jun 30, 2011

RIYADH - SAUDI Arabia announced on Wednesday it would stop granting work permits to domestic workers from Indonesia and the Philippines, following hiring conditions imposed by the Asian countries.

The ministry of labour said it would 'stop issuing work visas to bring domestic workers from Indonesia and the Philippines, effective from Saturday' due to 'the terms of recruitment announced by the two countries', according to a statement carried by state news agency SPA.

'The ministry's decision coincides with its great efforts to open new channels to bring domestic workers from other sources,' said the statement in English quoting the ministry's spokesman Hattab bin Saleh al-Anzi.

Last week Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono denounced the beheading in Saudi Arabia of an Indonesian maid and accused Riyadh of breaking the 'norms and manners' of international relations. His comments signalled Indonesia's growing anger over the treatment of its manual labourers in the Gulf countries, after a spate of cases of abuse and killings.

Ruyati binti Sapubi, 54, was beheaded on June 18 after she was convicted of killing her Saudi employer, prompting Indonesia to recall its ambassador in Saudi Arabia for 'consultations'. Indonesia also announced a moratorium on sending migrant workers to Saudi Arabia, where hundreds of thousands of Indonesians toil as maids and labourers.

Saudi Arabia and the Philippines have also clashed over the working conditions of Filipino domestic workers in the oil-rich kingdom. Earlier this year the Philippines asked Saudi Arabia to guarantee higher pay for Filipino housemaids but the request was turned down. -- AFP

30/06 Philippines to query Saudis on maids 'ban'

Jun 30, 2011


Saudi authorities announced the new policy, which also affects maids from Indonesia, after failing to agree on hiring conditions imposed by the Asian countries. -- PHOTO: REUTERS


MANILA - THE Philippines is to ask for clarification from Saudi Arabia after it announced it would stop granting work permits for Filipino domestic staff, President Benigno Aquino's spokesman said on Thursday.

Philippines officials will also look for other markets for workers in the event that the freeze, announced in Riyadh on Wednesday, is put into full effect, Aquino spokesman Edwin Lacierda told a news conference.

Saudi authorities announced the new policy, which also affects maids from Indonesia, after failing to agree on hiring conditions imposed by the Asian countries.

Labour Secretary Rosalinda Baldoz 'is sending a labour attache to Saudi Arabia to verify these things', Mr Lacierda said.

Some 1.3 million Filipinos work in Saudi Arabia, a key market for the nine million-strong overseas-based Filipino work force.

There had been rising concern in Manila that the dispute could impact on the economy of the Philippines, where a fifth of the workforce is jobless or looking for more work. 'There are other countries that would be ready to absorb those that cannot be accommodated by Saudi Arabia, so the Secretary of Labour already anticipated that,' Mr Lacierda said. -- AFP

Read more
Saudi bans domestic workers from Indonesia, Philippines

30/06 Cambodia maids barred from 'abusive' Kuwait

Jun 30, 2011

PHNOM PENH - CAMBODIAN recruitment agencies have decided not to send maids to Kuwait after complaints by human rights groups of abuse by employers, a recruitment official said on Thursday.

Impoverished Cambodia is one of Asia's biggest exporters of maids abroad, a valuable source of foreign exchange.

Mr An Bunhak, president of the Association of Cambodian Recruiting Agencies, said Cambodia had not yet sent any maids to Kuwait and the agencies had decided against so doing because of the country's record of abuse.

'We have received a report from our embassy in Kuwait about abuse of maids and also the report from Human Rights Watch,' Mr An said.

'We would only send there when there is safety,' he said.'According to studies, the respect for maids has not been good so we will not send them to Kuwait and we are doing studies on another country,' he said, referring to Qatar.

Human Rights Watch says domestic workers in Kuwait who try to escape abusive employers face criminal charges for 'absconding' and are unable to change jobs without their employer's permission. Indonesia, which has come under fire for its use of the death sentence, has barred its citizens from working in Saudi Arabia after an Indonesian maid was beheaded for murdering her Saudi employer. -- REUTERS

30/06 Ex-showgirl denies running Berlusconi 'brothel'

Jun 30, 2011


At a pre-trial hearing in Milan this week, a prosecutor accused Nicole Minetti (above), a local councillor for the People of Freedom party in the northern Lombardy region, of procuring young women for the 74-year-old Mr Berlusconi. -- PHOTO: AP


ROME - A FORMER showgirl turned local politician for Silvio Berlusconi's ruling party denied on Thursday accusations from prosecutors of being a 'brothel manager' for the Italian prime minister.
At a pre-trial hearing in Milan this week, a prosecutor accused Nicole Minetti, a local councillor for the People of Freedom party in the northern Lombardy region, of procuring young women for the 74-year-old Mr Berlusconi.
Interviewed by Italian daily Corriere della Sera, the 26-year-old brunette denied the charge, saying she was 'completely extraneous to the facts.' 'Me in a brothel? When I was born they didn't even exist,' she added.
Mr Berlusconi is a defendant in a separate trial on charges of paying for sex with a 17-year-old girl and then using the power of his office to try to cover up the crime - the latter charge punishable by up to 12 years in prison.
The prime minister and the girl in question, a nightclub dancer named Karima El Mahroug, better known by her stage name of 'Ruby the Heart Stealer', have denied having sex during allegedly raunchy parties at his villa near Milan.
'All this is absolutely false,' Ms Minetti told Corriere della Sera. -- AFP

30/06 Người dân Mỹ càng ngày càng trở nên "phát tướng"


30/06/2011 | 20:47:00

Số người Mỹ bép phì đang tăng nhanh. (Nguồn: Internet)
Mặc dù đã cắt giảm phần lớn khẩu phần mỗi bữa ăn, song kích thước vòng bụng của người dân Mỹ vẫn tiếp tục tăng lên do họ ăn nhiều bữa hơn.

Đây là kết quả một công trình nghiên cứu do các chuyên gia thuộc trường Đại học North Carolina của Mỹ tiến hành và công bố ngày 29/6.

Các nhà khoa học đã điều tra thói quen ăn uống của người dân Mỹ trong giai đoạn 1977-2006.

Kết quả cho thấy, số lượng bữa ăn chính và bữa ăn phụ của một người Mỹ trưởng thành đã tăng từ 3,8 bữa lên 4,8 bữa/ngày.

Với những người thích ăn uống, số bữa chính và bữa phụ mỗi ngày của họ tăng từ 5 lên 7 bữa. Những đối tượng thuộc diện này chiếm 10% số người được khảo sát.

Các chuyên gia cũng rút ra kết luận, mặc dù khẩu phần mỗi bữa không có nhiều thay đổi trong những năm gần đây, song tổng lượng calo lại tăng lên.

So với những năm cuối thập niên 70 của thế kỷ trước, đến năm 2006, lượng calo người dân Mỹ hấp thụ vào cơ thể mỗi ngày đã tăng thêm tới 570 calo. Thủ phạm chính gây ra hiện tượng này là những loại đồ uống có đường.

Hơn 2/3 người trưởng thành và 1/3 trẻ em Mỹ hiện bị thừa cân hoặc mắc bệnh béo phì.

Đây là nghiên cứu đầu tiên về thói quen ăn uống của người dân Mỹ có tính tới các yếu tố như khẩu phần ăn, lượng calo hấp thụ vào cơ thể, số bữa ăn và lượng calo tiêu thụ mỗi ngày./.
(TTXVN/Vietnam+)

30/06 Sôi động làm phim ngắn


Thứ Năm, 30/06/2011, 03:33 (GMT+7)
TT - Ngày 21-6, Hồng Ánh đóng xong những cảnh quay cuối cùng của bộ phim Ngày chủ nhật bình thường. Nữ diễn viên nổi tiếng của nhiều bộ phim nổi tiếng: Ðời cát, Người đàn bà mộng du, Trái tim bé bỏng, Trăng nơi đáy giếng... vừa vào vai thứ chính trong bộ phim ngắn (15 phút) này.
Nữ diễn viên Hồng Ánh trong phim ngắn Ngày chủ nhật bình thường - Ảnh: đoàn phim cung cấp
Có thể nói chưa bao giờ không khí làm phim ngắn sôi động và lan tỏa mạnh như lúc này trong cộng đồng các bạn trẻ yêu thích điện ảnh.
Chuyên nghiệp hơn trong tài chính
“Chuyên nghiệp” là nhận định chung của những ai nhận được bản giới thiệu về dự án phim Ngày chủ nhật bình thường của bộ ba Trương Minh Quý (đạo diễn - sinh năm 1990), Nguyễn Thị Dạ Thương (phó đạo diễn) và Văn Quý Ngọc Ái (sản xuất). Sự cẩn thận, chỉn chu đến từ nội dung, phác thảo kịch bản phim cho tới việc giới thiệu hình ảnh minh họa bộ phim, thông tin về các đoàn làm phim cũng như những quyền lợi của nhà tài trợ khi tham gia dự án.
Ðược biết, tính đến trước thời điểm chính thức bấm máy là ngày 20-6, dự án phim này đã nhận được quá nửa số tiền cần để sản xuất từ các mạnh thường quân, trong đó có cả những doanh nghiệp vốn không liên quan gì nhiều đến điện ảnh.
Nhóm Fast Food Film lại chọn cho mình một con đường khác. Bành Quang Minh Nhật - đại diện nhóm - cho biết: “Hiện nhóm đang trong giai đoạn củng cố tài chính bằng cách thực hiện các video clip quảng cáo. Tuy nhiên, nhóm vẫn ấp ủ mong ước làm một bộ phim ngắn với thời lượng 10-30 phút để đem đi tranh giải ở các liên hoan phim.
Có lẽ khát khao này phải chờ đến cuối năm nay khi mọi cơ cấu tổ chức, hoạt động cũng như năng lực từng thành viên, cộng với sức bật tài chính đã tiến bộ thì Fast Food Film mới có thể tiến hành”. Fast Food Film hiện nay có thể coi là một nhóm làm phim ngắn, độc lập với lực lượng hùng hậu nhất khi quy tụ 34 thành viên ở khắp các bộ phận. Thêm nữa, ba bộ phim ngắn gần đây của nhóm là Siêu trộm nhang, Tan hợp - hợp tan và Câu chuyện siêu nhân đã được HTV ngỏ ý mua lại để phát sóng với giá 5 triệu đồng/tập phim.
Gần với cuộc sống
Nhìn vào các bộ phim ngắn đã và đang được thực hiện gần đây, có thể thấy sự gần gũi hơn với đời sống thường nhật. Còn nhớ tại Yxineff 2010, những bộ phim đoạt giải lại là những bộ phim hết sức giản dị.L.O.V.E của Vũ Ngọc Phương là một câu chuyện về sự đứng lên, mạnh mẽ trở lại của một cô gái sau khi mất đi người yêu của mình, đã đoạt giải Bình chọn của khán giả. Nghĩ về anh của Vũ Quang Huy (San Jose, Mỹ) - trau chuốt về bố cục, hình ảnh - lại là những rung cảm của một cô gái mới lớn trước một chàng trai là khách hàng thường xuyên của cô tại cửa tiệm hoa.
KT Ðoàn - nữ đạo diễn trẻ của bộ phim ngắn Ngã từng gây ấn tượng tại tiệc phim Yxineff 2010 - đang bắt tay chuẩn bị cho bộ phim thứ hai và cũng là phim tốt nghiệp có tên VỡVỡ đơn giản chỉ là câu chuyện về một cô gái ở lại với những cảm xúc trống vắng của mình sau một cuộc tình không lành lặn...
Hoặc như Trần Lý Trí Tân cũng vậy, bốn bộ phim ngắn mà Tân đang hăm hở thực hiện từ giờ đến cuối năm đều là những chuyện Tân lượm lặt được trong những lần la cà quán xá vỉa hè và quan sát đời sống:Bắp ế - 17 phút - là câu chuyện giữa người đàn ông bán bắp và một cô gái bán hoa hết thời; Ông già chuyện - 5 phút là câu chuyện về một ông lão hay kể chuyện cho những người xung quanh nghe mỗi sáng sớm; Alô - 15 phút - lại là một tình huống lạ kỳ như một thanh niên nhặt được chiếc sim điện thoại... hay câu chuyện về một người đàn ông luôn tìm cách chống lại những tác động tiêu cực của xã hội(Khoan cắt bêtông - 5 phút).
Còn đề tài Phạm Phú Hiển chọn cho bộ phim Tôi không phải người nuôi các ông nằm trong tổng thể dự án lớn 89.600km+ lại là một câu chuyện về an toàn giao thông và cảnh sát giao thông. Phim đã xong khâu tuyển diễn viên và đang trong những ngày hoàn thiện kịch bản để có thể bấm máy trong vài ngày tới đây.
Sự lan tỏa mạnh mẽ

Mai Như Ngọc - thành viên của nhóm 57 Bananas và đang công tác tại một tờ báo điện tử cũng như theo học về chuyên môn điện ảnh tại Hà Nội - cho biết: Hiện nay tại Hà Nội có trên dưới 40 nhóm làm phim với số thành viên dao động từ 2-11 người/nhóm, trung bình mỗi nhóm có 5-7 thành viên.

Còn tại TP.HCM, theo nữ diễn viên Hồng Ánh - giám đốc Blue Productions: con số tại TP.HCM là không thể đếm được bởi các bạn hoạt động khá riêng lẻ theo từng dự án. Nữ diễn viên này cũng cho biết một con số rất đáng khích lệ là sau gần một tháng phát động dự án tuyên truyền về an toàn giao thông mang tên 89.600km +, đã có hơn 30 kịch bản gửi về, từ đó chị cùng cộng sự đã chọn được năm kịch bản để tài trợ thiết bị và thấp nhất là 30 triệu đồng cho kinh phí sản xuất.

Ðiều đáng vui là không chỉ có những bạn sinh viên đang học tại các trường điện ảnh mà ngay cả những bạn học sinh THPT cũng rất hăng say đến với điện ảnh theo cách của mình, mày mò với những chiếc máy ảnh có chức năng quay và chia sẻ tác phẩm qua YouTube.
HÀ NGUYỄN
VŨ MÁNH CƯỜNG (chủ tịch Tiệc phim ngắn trực tuyến Yxineff):
Phương tiện biểu đạt suy nghĩ của bạn trẻ
Tôi cho rằng năm 2010 vừa qua là một năm quan trọng nền móng của phim ngắn Việt Nam. Ngoài tiệc phim Yxineff lần đầu tiên được tổ chức, còn có các cuộc thi như 48 giờ hay Liên hoan phim Ong Vàng tạo điều kiện cho các nhà làm phim trẻ có cơ hội thử sức và chia sẻ tác phẩm. Ngoài ra còn có các chương trình như Doclab của Viện Goethe, trại sáng tác Varan hay các khóa học tại Trung tâm hỗ trợ tài năng điện ảnh trẻ TPD đều hướng tới các nhà làm phim ngắn.
Với sự cộng hưởng đó, phim ngắn đã không còn đóng vai trò một phong trào hay một xu hướng, mà đơn giản là một phương tiện biểu đạt suy nghĩ của các bạn trẻ. Trong vô vàn cách thể hiện cảm xúc và cách nhìn nhận về cuộc sống, phim ngắn được yêu thích bởi nó gắn bó mật thiết đến sự phát triển của kỹ thuật số, đồng thời là con đường ngắn nhất để trở thành nhà làm phim.
* Diễn viên HỒNG ÁNH:
Tôi không câu nệ
Tôi không câu nệ phim ngắn hay phim dài. Ủng hộ các bạn trẻ, có phim tôi còn làm phó đạo diễn cho các bạn. Tôi nhận lời đóng phim của Trương Minh Quý vì đã xem một bộ phim ngắn của Quý, tuy còn một vài hạn chế do kinh phí nhưng cũng đã nhìn được một số điểm đáng để hi vọng vào tương lai của đạo diễn trẻ này.
Nhưng không phải bạn trẻ nào làm phim cũng có được sự điềm đạm nhưng quyết liệt của Quý. Cái khó khi làm việc với các bạn trẻ là thiếu kinh nghiệm nhưng lại hay bảo thủ, mơ mộng và chưa chuẩn bị kỹ khâu sản xuất. Ngay cả khi xác định làm phim ngắn là một cuộc chơi thì cũng cần cố gắng chơi hết mình, chơi đến cùng chứ đừng “tay chơi nửa mùa”.

30/06 The Price of Liberty: Weeds


OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Norfolk, England
Stina Löfgren
AS the United States celebrates the Fourth of July, perhaps we English finally should let you in on a little secret. You didn’t quite win total independence: we left behind a covert occupation force, in the shape of our weeds, which rapidly became your weeds, pesky and persistent.
They came as stowaways in those first shiploads of cattle and seed corn and none-too-hygienic European settlers. The New World’s ancient landscapes, unused to gung-ho farmers and trampling cattle, didn’t stand a chance. As East Coast forests were cleared, a riot of foreign weeds — dandelion, groundsel, dock — took over, promptly followed by European grasses. It came as a shock to me to discover that Kentucky bluegrass — which I’d thought as American as the haze over the Appalachians — was none other than our backyard meadow grass, which assuredly never looks blue under our gray skies.
While we’re at it, I should apologize for our Charles Darwin, who made a joke in rather poor taste at the expense of his friend the American botanist Asa Gray. “Does it not hurt your Yankee pride,” he asked, “that we thrash you so confoundedly? I am sure Mrs. Gray will stick up for your weeds. Ask her if they are not more honest, downright good sort of weeds.” (Mrs. Gray’s reply was impeccable: American weeds, she said, were “modest, woodland, retiring things; and no match for the intrusive, pretentious, self-asserting foreigners.”)
But this intrusive colonialism is of course the weeds’ way. They wouldn’t be the plants they are if they were not assertive, hugely adaptable, cosmopolitan. They’ve tagged onto the coattails of global trade, agricultural adventure and gardening fashion, so that there is no real sense in which a weed can be said anymore to “belong” to any one nation. They are citizens of the world — or at least of the world of frenzied environmental disturbance that humans spin around themselves. I find it oddly comforting to see familiar home weeds like bindweed and bracken in Manhattan back lots. Perhaps Americans feel similarly pleased to find North American fleabane (whose seeds are thought to have ended up in Europe inside a stuffed bird) flourishing on the stonework around the Bank of England. The commonest city weeds are now virtually identical across the planet. They seem to have the botanical right stuff for urban environments: streetwise and opportunistic, resilient fillers of metropolitan dead spaces.
But it would be stretching our “special relationship” too far to suggest that our shared weeds make up a kind of agreeable green commonwealth. Vagabond plants can change their behavior dramatically when taken away from their native habitats, and all their traditional predators and constraints. In Britain the magenta sprays of purple loosestrife have made it one of our best-loved riverside flowers. It’s elegant and well behaved and knows its place. It figures in the margins of John Everett Millais’s unforgettable painting of a floating Ophelia, Hamlet’s rejected love interest, before she drowns. But it was inadvertently introduced to United States shorelines with dumped ships’ ballast in the early 19th century and has become quite a different character, monolithic and invasive.
This is not, of course, the fault of the weeds. From the Japanese knotweed that jumped the walls of big country houses to become Britain’s most notorious plant demon to the casually ditched aquarium plants now suffocating Florida’s lakes and rivers, we create our own weed nuisances. This has been true since the very beginnings of civilization. We’ve opened opportunities for a whole range of adaptable plant species to gate-crash our ordered lives by the reckless way we treat the earth. It’s time, I think, for a new perspective on them, for a curiosity about why they are there and a more critical view of our own role in their fortunes.
And it’s here, I feel, that American attitudes toward weeds have a lot to teach us Europeans. I learned the strict protocol of poison ivy recognition and respect from a farmer in Maryland — a mantra for which there is no equivalent for any of our toxic weeds. I’ve enjoyed the conspiracy theories and black jokes about kudzu vine in the South. (“Shut your windows at night.”) I give thanks for Thoreau’s “Bean-Field” essay in “Walden,” the best literary defense of the ecological role of weeds. And for the incomparable Euell Gibbons, whose books revived weed foraging in Britain. All these approaches seem to me to accept that weeds are part of creation too, and that we need to find a way of living with them.
Richard Mabey is the author of “Weeds: In Defense of Nature’s Most Unloved Plants.”

30/06 Married, With Infidelities

By MARK OPPENHEIMER
Last month, when the New York congressman Anthony Weiner finally admitted that he had lied, that his Twitter account had not been hacked, that he in fact had sent a picture of his thinly clad undercarriage to a stranger in Seattle, I asked my wife of six years, mother of our three children, what she thought. More specifically, I asked which would upset her more: to learn that I was sending racy self-portraits to random women, Weiner-style, or to discover I was having an actual affair. She paused, scrunched up her mouth as if she had just bitten a particularly sour lemon and said: “An affair is at least a normal human thing. But tweeting a picture of your crotch is just weird.
Illustrations by Ciara Phelan; Photographs from Corbis.
Photograph by Sven Hagolani/Corbis (woman and child); Jonas Ingerstedt/Corbis (man)

Readers' Comments

How do we account for that revulsion, which many shared with my wife, a revulsion that makes it hard to imagine a second act for Weiner, like Eliot Spitzer’s television career or pretty much every day in the life of Bill Clinton? One explanation is that the Weiner scandal was especially sordid: drawn out, compounded daily with new revelations, covered up with embarrassing lies that made us want to look away. But another possibility is that there was something not weird, but too familiar about Weiner. His style might not be for everyone (to put it politely), but the impulse to be something other than what we are in our daily, monogamous lives, the thrill that comes from the illicit rather than the predictable, is something I imagine many couples can identify with. With his online flirtations and soft-porn photos, he did what a lot of us might do if we were lonely and determined to not really cheat.
That is one reason it was a relief when Weiner was drummed from office. In addition to giving us some good laughs, he forced us to ask particularly uncomfortable questions, like “what am I capable of doing?” and “what have my neighbors or friends done?” His visage was insisting, night after night, that we think about how hard monogamy is, how hard marriage is and about whether we make unrealistic demands on the institution and on ourselves.
That, anyway, is what Dan Savage, America’s leading sex-advice columnist, would say. Although best known for his It Gets Better project, an archive of hopeful videos aimed at troubled gay youth, Savage has for 20 years been saying monogamy is harder than we admit and articulating a sexual ethic that he thinks honors the reality, rather than the romantic ideal, of marriage. In Savage Love, his weekly column, he inveighs against the American obsession with strict fidelity. In its place he proposes a sensibility that we might call American Gay Male, after that community’s tolerance for pornography, fetishes and a variety of partnered arrangements, from strict monogamy to wide openness.
Savage believes monogamy is right for many couples. But he believes that our discourse about it, and about sexuality more generally, is dishonest. Some people need more than one partner, he writes, just as some people need flirting, others need to be whipped, others need lovers of both sexes. We can’t help our urges, and we should not lie to our partners about them. In some marriages, talking honestly about our needs will forestall or obviate affairs; in other marriages, the conversation may lead to an affair, but with permission. In both cases, honesty is the best policy.
“I acknowledge the advantages of monogamy,” Savage told me, “when it comes to sexual safety, infections, emotional safety, paternity assurances. But people in monogamous relationships have to be willing to meet me a quarter of the way and acknowledge the drawbacks of monogamy around boredom, despair, lack of variety, sexual death and being taken for granted.”
The view that we need a little less fidelity in marriages is dangerous for a gay-marriage advocate to hold. It feeds into the stereotype of gay men as compulsively promiscuous, and it gives ammunition to all the forces, religious and otherwise, who say that gay families will never be real families and that we had better stop them before they ruin what is left of marriage. But Savage says a more flexible attitude within marriage may be just what the straight community needs. Treating monogamy, rather than honesty or joy or humor, as the main indicator of a successful marriage gives people unrealistic expectations of themselves and their partners. And that, Savage says, destroys more families than it saves.
Savage, who is 46, has been writing Savage Love since 1991 for The Stranger, an alternative weekly paper in Seattle that syndicates it to more than 50 other newspapers. Savage’s sex advice puts me in mind of a smart, tough old grandmother, randy yet stern. It’s Dr. Ruth if she were interested in bondage and threesomes. And if she were Catholic: Savage was raised in ethnic-Irish Chicago, one of four children of a cop and a homemaker. He did some time in Catholic school, and his writing bears traces of the church’s stark moral clarity, most notable in his impatience with postmodern or queer theorizing or anything that might overturn the centrality of the stable nuclear family.
Savage is not a churchgoer, but he is a cultural Catholic. Listeners to “This American Life,” which since 1996 has aired his homely monologues about his family, might recognize the kinship of those personal stories to the Catholic homilies Savage heard every Sunday of his childhood. Less a scriptural exegesis, like what you get in many a Protestant church, the priest’s homily is often short and framed as a fable or lesson: it’s an easily digested moral tale. You can hear that practiced didacticism in his radio segments about DJ, the son that he and Terry Miller, his husband, adopted as an infant, and you can hear it in the moving piece he read about his mother, who, on her deathbed, said she loved Terry “like a daughter.”
Photograph by Sven Hagolani/Corbis (woman's head); other photographs from Corbis.

Readers' Comments

And you can hear it in the It Gets Better project, Savage’s great contribution to family values. Last September, in response to the reported suicides of several young men bullied for being, or seeming, gay, Savage prevailed on the very private Miller, whom he married in 2005 in Vancouver, to make a video about how their lives got better after high school. In the video, they talk into the camera about their courtship, becoming parents and how wonderfully accepting their families have been. “We have really great lives together,” Miller says at the end. Savage adds, “And you can have a great life, too.” Savage posted the video on Sept. 21. Within two months, there were 10,000 videos from people attesting to their own it-gets-better experience, viewed a collective 35 million times. The “It Gets Better” book, a selection of narratives, made The Times’s nonfiction best-seller list. In May, the It Gets Better campaign was featured in an advertisement for Google’s Chrome Web browser.
It Gets Better is, in the end, a paean to stable families: it is a promise to gay youth that if they can just survive the bullying, they can have spouses and children when they grow up. With Savage, the goal is always the possibility of stable, adult families, for gays and straights alike. He is capable of pro-family rants that, stripped of his habitual profanity, would be indistinguishable from Christian-right fund-raising letters.
How, then, can Savage be a monogamy skeptic? When Savage first began writing Savage Love, it was a jokey column, one in which he aimed “to treat straight sex with the same revulsion that straight advice columnists had always had for gay sex,” as Savage told me, when we met in Seattle in April. But he quickly realized that his correspondents were turning to him to save their love lives, not their sex lives.
Today, Savage Love is less a sex column than a relationship column, one point of which is to help good unions last. Sexual fulfillment matters in its own right, but mainly it matters because without it, families are more likely to break apart. It is for the sake of staying together — not merely for the sake of orgasms — that Savage coined his famous acronym, “G.G.G.”: lovers ought to be good, giving and game (put another way, skilled, generous and up for anything). And if they cannot fulfill all of each other’s desires, then it may be advisable to decide to go outside the bounds of marriage if that is what it takes to make the marriage work.
Savage’s position on monogamy is frequently caricatured. He does not believe in promiscuity; indeed, his attacks on the anonymous-sex, gay-bathhouse culture were once taken as proof of a secret conservative agenda. And he does not believe that monogamy is wrong for all couples or even for most couples. Rather, he says that a more realistic sexual ethic would prize honesty, a little flexibility and, when necessary, forgiveness over absolute monogamy. And he believes nostalgically, like any good conservative, that we might look to the past for some clues.
“The mistake that straight people made,” Savage told me, “was imposing the monogamous expectation on men. Men were never expected to be monogamous. Men had concubines, mistresses and access to prostitutes, until everybody decided marriage had to be egalitar­ian and fairsey.” In the feminist revolution, rather than extending to women “the same latitude and license and pressure-release valve that men had always enjoyed,” we extended to men the confines women had always endured. “And it’s been a disaster for marriage.”
In their own marriage, Savage and Miller practice being what he calls “monogamish,” allowing occasional infidelities, which they are honest about. Miller was initially opposed to the idea. “You assume as a younger person that all relationships are monogamous and between two people, that love means nothing can come between you,” said Miller, who met Savage at a club in 1995, when he was 23 and Savage was 30. “Dan has taught me to be more realistic about that kind of stuff.

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“It was four or five years before it came up,” Miller said. “It’s not about having three-ways with somebody or having an open relationship. It is just sort of like, Dan has always said if you have different tastes, you have to be good, giving and game, and if you are not G.G.G. for those tastes, then you have to give your partner the out. It took me a while to get down with that.” When I asked Savage how many extramarital encounters there have been, he laughed shyly. “Double digits?” I asked. He said he wasn’t sure; later he and Miller counted, and he reported back that the number was nine. “And far from it being a destabilizing force in our relationship, it’s been a stabilizing force. It may be why we’re still together.”
While his marriage opened up gradually, Savage says that “there’s not a one-size-fits-all way” to approach nonmonogamy, especially if both partners committed to monogamy at the start. “Folks on the verge of making those monogamous commitments,” Savage told me in one of our many e-mail exchanges, “need to look at the wreckage around them — all those failed monogamous relationships out there (Schwarzenegger, Clinton, Vitter, whoever’s on the cover of US magazine this week) — and have a conversation about what it’ll mean if one or the other partner should cheat. And agree, at the very least, to getting through it, to place a higher value on the relationship itself than on one component of it, sexual exclusivity.”
Not that heeding our desires always simplifies matters. One recent writer to Savage Love thought he would enjoy seeing his wife fool around with another man, and initially did: “Almost every kinky kind was being had and enjoyed.” But when his wife had vaginal intercourse with the other man, something happened. “It was as if all the air in the room was sucked out through my soul,” he writes. Savage’s reply is pragmatic: “If there’s a sex act — say, vaginal intercourse — that holds huge symbolic importance for you or your partner, it might be best to take that act off the menu.” The answer, to Savage’s way of thinking, is smarter boundaries, not hard-line rules about monogamy.
For most people, sex cannot be so transactional; it is bound up with emotional need — to feel we excite our partner above all others, to believe that we have primacy in their lives. The question is whether it’s possible to act on our desires sensibly, as Savage would have it, while maintaining the special equilibrium we trust our marriages, or long-term partnerships, to preserve. Do we know our relationships well enough to go outside them?
There have always been nonmonogamous marriages. In 2001, The Journal of Family Psychology summarized earlier research, finding that “infidelity occurs in a reliable minority of American marriages.” Estimates that “between 20 and 25 percent of all Americans will have sex with someone other than their spouse while they are married” are conservative, the authors wrote. In 2010, NORC, a research center at the University of Chicago, found that, among those who had ever been married, 14 percent of women and 20 percent of men admitted to affairs.
There is no agreement over how honestly we should discuss this reality with our own spouses. Some are nostalgic for the old hypocrisy, the code of silence, the mistresses and concubines men kept discreetly on the side. Clergy members may practice a kind of selective muteness: in their premarital counseling, they often do not stress the possibility of future affairs — but once an affair occurs, they vocally urge couples to tough it out. But what if they were to say, ahead of time: “You two love each other, and you promise you won’t stray, but you might. People do. And if you do, I hope you won’t think it’s the end of the world.”
Such straight talk about the difficulty of monogamy, Savage argues, is simply good sense. People who are eager to cheat need to be honest with their partners, but people who think they would never cheat need honesty even more. “The point,” he wrote on his blog last year, “is that people — particularly those who value monogamy — need to understand why being monogamous is so much harder than they’ve been led to believe.”

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How exactly does Savage think talking about monogamy’s trials make practicing it easier? In part, by reminding people to be good, giving and game. Straight talk about why we might cheat helps couples figure out ways to keep each other satisfied at home. If I promise my wife that I would never, ever, ever sleep with another woman, the conversation might end there, the two of us gazing into each other’s eyes (even if our minds might be wandering). But if I say, “I’ve been feeling sexually unfulfilled lately because I have a secret fantasy about trading dirty pictures with a woman” — well, then maybe my wife will e-mail me some of her. And so monogamy is preserved.
“If you are expected to be monogamous and have one person be all things sexually for you, then you have to be whores for each other,” Savage says. “You have to be up for anything.”
Savage’s straight-talk approach has an intuitive appeal: our culture places a huge premium on honesty, or at least on confessional, therapeutic, Oprah-fied admissions. We are told to say what is on our minds, so why not extend that principle to sex? Why not tell your spouse everything you want, even if that includes wanting another person? My sense is that this kind of radical honesty may work best for couples who already have strong marriages. Where there is love and equality and no history of betrayal, one partner asking if she can have a fling may not be so risky. Her partner either says yes, and it happens, you hope, with only the best consequences; or the partner says no, in which case their relationship endures, maybe with a little disappointment on one side, a little suspicion on the other.
That is the ideal situation. What if the revelation that a partner is thinking about others creates a shift, one that plagues the marriage? Words have consequences, and most couples, knowing that jealousy is real and can beset any of us, opt for a tacit code of reticence. Not just about sex but about all sorts of things: there are couples who can express opinions about each other’s clothing choices or cooking or taste in movies, and there are couples who cannot. I don’t mind if my wife tells me another man is hot, but it took me a long time to accept her criticism of my writing. We all have many sensitive spots, but one of the most universal is the fear of not being everything to your partner — the fear, in other words, that she might find somebody worthier. It is the fear of being alone.
Where a relationship is troubled, and one partner senses, correctly, that aloneness is an imminent threat, then the other partner asking for permission to have a fling is no neutral act. If you are scared of losing your partner, you may say yes to anything she asks, including permission for an affair that will wound you deeply. “The problem is that with many of these couples, one partner wants it, and the other says yes because she’s afraid that he will leave her,” says Janis Abrahms Spring, a psychologist and couples’ therapist whose book, “After the Affair,” is about couples badly damaged by infidelity.
Spring is inclined to a pessimism as strong as Savage’s optimism — after all, she works with couples who have ended up in counseling — but she offers a persuasive reminder that there may be no such thing as total honesty. Even when we think we are enthusiastically assenting to a partner’s request, we may not know ourselves as well as we think we do. This is true not just for monogamy but also for sexual acts within marriage. Some of Savage’s toughest critics are feminists who think he can be a bit too glib with his injunction to please our partners.
“Sometimes he can shame women for not being into things that their male partners are into, if they have male partners,” Sady Doyle, a feminist blogger, told me. “The whole good-giving-and-game thing is something I actually agree with. I don’t think you should flip out on your partner if they share something sexual with you. But I think sometimes it’s much harder for women to say, ‘I’m not into that,’ or ‘Please, I don’t want to do that, let’s do something else,’ than it is to say, ‘Sure.’ Putting all the onus on the person who doesn’t have that fetish or desire, particularly if the person who doesn’t have that desire is the woman, really reproduces a lot of old structures and means of oppression for women.”

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Spring and Doyle both hint at a larger truth about men and women, which is that, generally speaking, they view sex differently. While there are plenty of women who can separate sex from love, can be happily promiscuous or could have a meaningless, one-time fling, there are — let’s face it — more men like that. The world of Savage Love will always appeal more to men, even men who truly love their partners. Cheating men are often telling the truth when they say, “She meant nothing to me.” It really was just sex. And Savage tells us that, with proper disclosure and consent, just sex can be O.K.
But for many women, and not a few men, there is no such thing as “just sex,” for their partners or for themselves. What if a woman, or a man for that matter, looks outside marriage for the other emotional satisfactions that come along with sex? Savage has less to offer that person. He does not tell people to take long-term boyfriends or girlfriends. He is skeptical that group marriages, of three or more partners, can last very long. Nor could he have much to offer the person who feels a partner ought to constrain his urges. There is a reason that sex advice is easier to give than relationship advice. Satisfying a sexual yearning is easier than satisfying a hole in your life.
In an e-mail he sent me, Savage countered that “there are plenty of women out there who have affairs just for the sex.” But he agreed that there is something male about his perspective. “Well, I’m male,” he wrote. “And women, straight women, are in relationships with men. Doesn’t it help to know what we’re really like? Women can go on marrying and pretending that their boyfriends and husbands are Mr. Darcy or some RomCom dream man. But where’s that going to get ’em? Besides divorce court?”
Savage’s honesty ethic gives couples permission to find happiness in unusual places; he believes that pretty much anything can be used to spice up a marriage, although he excludes feces, pets and incest, as well as minors, the nonconsenting, the duped and the dead. In “The Commitment,” Savage’s book about his and Miller’s decision to marry, he describes how a college student approached him after a campus talk and said, as Savage tells it, that “he got off on having birthday cakes smashed in his face.” But no one had ever obliged him. “My heart broke when he told me that the one and only time he told a girlfriend about his fetish, she promptly dumped him. Since then he had been too afraid to tell anyone else.” Savage took the young man up to his hotel room and smashed a cake in his face.
The point is: priests and rabbis don’t tell couples they might need to involve cake play in their marriages; moms and dads don’t; even best friends can be shy about saying what they like. Savage wants to make sure that no strong marriage ever fails because an ashamed husband or wife is desperately seeking cake play — or bondage, urine play or any of the other unspeakable activities that Savage has helped make speakable. If cake play is what a man needs, his G.G.G. wife should give it to him; if she can’t bring herself to, then maybe she should allow him a chocolate-frosted excursion with another woman. But for God’s sake, keep it together for the kids.
If you believe Savage, there is strong precedent, in other times and in other cultures, for nonmonogamous relationships that endure. In fact, there has recently been a good deal of scholarship proving that point, including Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá’s “Sex at Dawn,” one of Savage’s favorite books, and Stephanie Coontz’s definitive “Marriage, a History.” Like Savage, Coontz says she believes that “people often end up exploding a relationship that was working well because one partner strays or has an affair that doesn’t mean anything.”

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But, she says, we are to some extent trapped in our culture. It is one thing for the Inuit men to have “temporary wives,” whom they take along on trips when they leave their other wives at home, and for pregnant Bari women, in Venezuela, to have sex with multiple men, all of whom are considered responsible for the eventual child. Their societies have very different ideas about marriage. “I think you can combine a high tolerance of flings with a de-emphasis on jealousy in long-term relationships,” Coontz said, “but usually that is only in societies where friendships and kin relationships are as emotionally salient as romantic partnerships.”
In the 18th century, according to Coontz, American men could mention their mistresses in letters to their wives’ brothers; they could mention contracting syphilis from a prostitute. Men understood the masculine prerogative, and they countenanced it, even at the expense of their own sisters. “That would be unthinkable today,” Coontz said. “For thousands of years it was expected of men they would have affairs and flings, but not on the terms of honesty and equality Dan envisions. I can certainly see the appeal of suggesting we try and make this an open, mutual, gender-equal arrangement. I’m a little dubious how much that is going to work.”
It was not until the 20th century that Americans evolved an understanding of marriage in which partners must meet all of each other’s needs: sexual, emotional, material. When we rely on our partners for everything, any hint of betrayal is terrifying. “That is the bind we are in,” Coontz said. “We accord so much priority to the couple relationship. It is tough under those conditions for most people to live with the insecurity of giving their partners permission to have flings.”
There is one subculture in America that practices nonmonogamy and equality between partners: the sizable group of gay men in open, or semiopen, long-term partnerships. (A study published in 2010 found 50 percent of gay male couples in the Bay Area had sexual relationships outside their union, with their partner’s knowledge and approval.) But it is unclear if gay habits, which Savage thinks can be a model, will survive the advent of gay equality. Historically, gay men have treated monogamy more casually, in part because society treated gay coupledom as unthinkable. Now, however, gay men are marrying or entering into socially sanctioned partnerships. As they are absorbed into the mainstream of connubial bliss, they may lose the strong friendship networks that gay men once substituted for nuclear families — friendship networks that, according to Coontz, can make infidelity less threatening. In other words, as they take out joint mortgages and pal around with straight parents from the PTA, they may become considerably more square about fidelity. Living in their McMansions, they, too, may decide that the walls of their marriages must be guarded at all costs.
Judith Stacey, a New York University sociologist who researched gay men’s romantic arrangements for her book “Unhitched,” argues that gay men, in general, will continue to require less monogamy. “They are men,” she said, and she believes it is easier for them — right down to the physiology of orgasm — to separate physical and emotional intimacy. Lesbians and straight women tend to be far less comfortable with nonmonogamy than gay men. But what matters is that neither monogamy nor polygamy is humankind’s sole natural state. “One size never fits all, and it isn’t just dividing between men and women and gay and straight,” she said. “Monoga­my is not natural, nonmonogamy is not natural. Variation is what’s natural.”
I asked Stacey if, given the differences between men and women, she thought Savage’s vision was unrealistic for straight couples. Yes and no, she said: “I believe monogamy is actually crucial for some couples and totally irrelevant for others.” That does not mean that nonmonogamous couples are free to do as they please. Creating nonmonogamy that strengthens rather than corrodes a marriage is surely as much work as monogamy. Couples should make vows and honor them. Not all good relationships require monogamy, but they all require what she calls integrity.
“What integrity means for me is we shouldn’t impose a single vow of monogamy as a superior standard for all relationships,” Stacey said. “Intimate partners should decide the vows you want to make. Work out terms of what your commitments are, and be on same page. There are women perfectly happy to have agreements in which when you are out of town you can have a little fling on the side. And rules range from ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ to ‘I want to know’ to ‘bring it home and talk about it and excite our relationship.’ ”
Stacey and Savage each say that monogamy is the right choice for many couples; they are exalting options, not any particular option. As a straight, monogamous, married male, I happen to think this is a good thing: if there are people whose marriages work best with more flexibility, they should find the courage to choose an arrangement that works for them, society be damned. I also recognize, however, that we may choose marriage in part to escape the terror of choice. There are so many reasons to marry; we could call them all “love,” but let’s be more specific: admiring how she looks in a sundress, trusting her to improve your first drafts, knowing that when the time comes she will make the best mother ever. But another reason might be that life before her was so confusing. In all those other relationships, it was never clear when there was an exclusive commitment or who would use the L-word first or when a Saturday-night date could be assumed.

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Marrying has the virtue of clearing all that up: exclusive, you both use the L-word, Saturday night assumed. Simple, right?
Not long ago, I mentioned Savage to a psychotherapist who works with children. He said that the It Gets Better project had saved the lives of several of his patients. “They tell me they might have killed themselves if it weren’t for Dan Savage,” my friend said, as tears filled his eyes.
Hearing such reactions, and having been personally subjected by Savage to his earnest, ardent effusions about his wonderful husband and awesome son, it is tough to credit anyone who thinks Savage is a subversive figure. When I think of Savage, I think of his response to the mother whose ex-husband, her son’s father, was undergoing a sex change. Her son was angry, and she wondered what she should say to him. Savage said the boy was entitled to his feelings. “Children have a right to some stability and constancy from the adults in their lives,” Savage wrote. “Perhaps I’m a transphobic bigot,” but asking a father to wait “a measly 36 months” before having his penis chopped off “is a sacrifice any father should be willing to make for his 15-year-old son. Call me old-fashioned.”
Savage is old-fashioned, as bitterly hilarious as that might sound to gay-marriage opponents. After the news of the Arnold Schwarzenegger love child broke, I received an e-mail from Savage in which he expressed concern about the article I was writing. As I would expect, he framed his position in terms of respect for the family.
“I’m afraid,” he wrote, “it’s going to become: ‘This Savage person is krazy. Just look at what nonmonogamy did for Arnold! Look at the chaos that being nonmonogamous creates! Failed marriages, devastated children, scandal!’ But Arnold wasn’t in a nonmonogamous relationship. He was in a monogamous relationship. He failed at monogamy; he didn’t succeed at nonmonogamy.”
Savage does not believe people should live in toxic, miserable marriages. The Schwarzenegger family is surely beyond repair. But they are an extreme case: not all adultery produces secret families. Most of it is minor by comparison, and Savage believes that adultery can be one of those trials, like financial woes or ill health, that marriages can be expected to survive.
“Given the rates of infidelity, people who get married should have to swear a blood oath that if it’s violated, as traumatic as that would be, the greater good is the relationship,” Savage told me. “The greater good is the home created for children. If there are children present, they’ll get past it. The cultural expectation should be if there’s infidelity, the marriage is more important than fidelity.”
It gets better? It does. But it also gets very complicated. Savage is not arguing “let Arnold be Arnold.” He is imploring us to know the people we marry and to know ourselves and to plan accordingly. He believes that our actions mark us as a compassionate people, that in truth we are always ready to forgive an adulterer, except the one we are married to. He points out that the Louisiana senator, and prominent john, David Vitter — “who I hate,” he reassures me — is still in office, and that “Bill Clinton is a beloved elder statesman, and Eliot Spitzer is back on television.” We are already a nation of forgivers, even when it comes to marriage. Dan Savage thinks we should take some pride in that.
Mark Oppenheimer (mark.oppenheimer@nytimes.com) writes the Beliefs column for The Times. He is also the author of a memoir, ‘‘Wisenheimer: A Childhood Subject to Debate,’’ now in paperback. Editor: Vera Titunik (v.titunik-MagGroup@nytimes.com)
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: July 2, 2011
The article on Page 22 this weekend about marital infidelity misidentifies a disease contracted from prostitutes that men in the 18th century could write or talk freely about. It is syphilis, not smallpox.