Baumgartner: Seriously high standards
By Alice Baumgartner
The Yale Daily News
Published Monday, February 8, 2010
Editor's Note: Post-Modern Love is a new column about relationships and sex at Yale. It will appear each Monday, with Alice Baumgartner '10 writing one week and Elisa Gonzalez '11 writing the next.
If I had composed the first epistle to the Corinthians, it would have said that love is not kind but mercenary. Or, at least it is at Yale. I have relationships for the same reason I attend classes: I expect to get something out of them. No one says it better than Marla Singer, when at the end of Fight Club she accepts a wad of cash from her schizophrenic ex-lover. “I’m not...
#1 By Shopping list 5:17a.m. on February 8, 2010
Short, bald and a smoker? Cross Henry James off your list---which unfortunately sounds like a shopping list.
Capitalism has done its work well.
Even Yale won't be able to fix that.
PK
#2 By P.S. Sex Talk 5:37a.m. on February 8, 2010
So let me ask:
Has "making out" come to mean the opposite of "making in"? In other words, does it include the safe-sex techniques of outercourse?
Here's an antique jargon from the Roman Catholic 1950's:
Necking; Petting; Heavy Petting.
Nice little triptych.
PK
#3 By awesome! 9:20a.m. on February 8, 2010
It's about time, opinion editor! You've finally stepped up your game and gotten people who can not just write, but write extremely well! Great column, keep up the good work.
#4 By Yep. 11:42a.m. on February 8, 2010
I love reading good writing.
#5 By Y09 12:09p.m. on February 8, 2010
Nice work - great column!
#6 By ehhh 12:47p.m. on February 8, 2010
i don't object to anything said in the article, but who go the idea that this was good writing?
#7 By Gabriel 1:14p.m. on February 8, 2010
"Do we take dating too seriously? After all, we take everything too seriously."
Love you, Baumgartner.
#8 By Unseen by ABG's Vision 1:56p.m. on February 8, 2010
@6 I "go" the idea that this was good writing after alternating between cracking up and nodding my head vigorously throughout the entire article. Where did you "ge" the idea that it wasn't?
#9 By Yale '10 2:23p.m. on February 8, 2010
"Do we take dating too seriously? After all, we take everything too seriously."
I've actually felt the opposite about Yalies in regard to relationships among other things. Seriousness in the essay seems to be to treat things, including humans, as commodities (this sort of instrumentality is seen as "practical" or "serious"). This sort of seriousness, much practiced by us busy Yalies who feel that really valuable activities involve those which produce something, isn't really seriousness at all. In the case of love and sex, seriousness involves, I think, caring and passion in a way which lists and notions of "productivity" can't capture.
#10 By Lynwood 2:44p.m. on February 8, 2010
I love this. Wise words oh-sage-one-Baumgartner.
#11 By FailBoat 3:16p.m. on February 8, 2010
This is my favorite thing I've read in the YDN in about a month.
#12 By Wenbo Li 3:52p.m. on February 8, 2010
This is a wonderful article, Alice!
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