The XX Factor: What women really think.

Where Everybody Knows Your Name

 Moe,

I think your response was both perceptive and accurate. And you referenced freaking Fukuyama, which I just have to respect. If we weren't on the same page before, we are now. Except maybe about the whole we-drink-because-of-the-pill thing, 'cause, I mean, we get fat because of the pill, everyone around us wants to drink because of the pill; it doesn't usually drive me to bemoan my lack of social capital. Maybe the lack of chocolate chips in my belly... but not my lack of social capital.

No, no, I got your real point, and I deeefinitely found it a little sobering (or not!  ha, ha?) that the only place where the Royal We can find trust these days is in the poorly lit, boozy confines of the last social institution standing. Or kind of standing, if you're frequenting the right bar.

After reading your post, a friend of mine raised a point I thought you'd find interesting: He said that the lack of trust in circulation these days is a result of the decline of our "stabilizing institutions" (his term) and the trust they once fostered. He came up with four institutions: the family, the community, the church, and the government, all four of which, he argued, were mindful of their proper roles and capable of serving humanity at some point and time.

Not recently, perhaps. Regardless, we don't trust those institutions any longer, and so we've withdrawn from them (possible explanation for the  disappearance of the moral hazard?). We've gone in search of new communities and found them online—which is the other place, I'd argue, we go to find trust besides the bar. But when we sign off, you're right, we go where everybody knows your name/ and everybody's glad you came. And with a buzz and the hope of "getting out there and making some bad decisions" (great wisdom from the mouth of Vince Vaughn!), we find ... trust? Or ... something like it. I guess everything really does look better after a few drinks.

I suppose it'll have to do, anyway, until those old stabilizing institutions step up their game and figure out a way to regain a little trust themselves. 

Until then, we'll be at the bar.

Alcoholics Synonymous

Moe,

We came away from that piece yesterday with entirely different thoughts. You reacted to the condemnatory tone and the assertion that hard-drinking women are drinking to be like men (which I thought was a shaky point, too). I reacted to the fact that, from what Morris said, these self-proclaimed feminists seem to be drinking their way to self-fulfillment.

Today, I have a somewhat different reaction. I don't think it's about gender, feminism, or equality. More than ever, both women and men are looking for a way to tune out the drone of their daily lives and just have a little fun—looking for a place where they feel free and soothed and courageous and everything else Morris said. 

But self-fulfillment doesn't come from a bottle. When the buzz wears off, life and all of its pressures are still there, waiting. Another drink or two or 20 won't ever erase that fact. (Not to mention that, as you might have heard once or twice, heavy drinking destroys your liver and kidneys and lends you all the professionalism of a college frat boy.) The only "equality" here is that, male and female, we've got the same problem, and we need to find another way to deal.