Hey Leo,
What is a woman with "low standards"? (and why would she have "low standards")?
Biblitz replies:
A woman with 'low standards' like a man with no standards is someone who demands very little of a partner in a relationship
and quite often gets it - in the teeth! Here are two prime examples to
illustrate!
Hey Biblitz,
I'm sure many of you have fallen on hard times with this recession. My wife and I have both lost our jobs and now we are
surviving on welfare payments. Me and my wife are in no hurry to get back into the workplace. Now, 2 years ago when my daughter
was 14, she asked me if she could have pole-dancing lessons. I outright refused at first, because I thought the last thing a
thirteen year old girl should be doing is dancing seductively. She showed me how it is done, and, let me say I was impressed.
She seemed to enjoy it, and it keeps her figure nice and thin. So I accepted and she's been having lessons for the past 2
years.
Well now she has grown into a shapely, attractive 16 year old, who looks very mature for her age. She expressed that she would
like to become a stripper, as she is very popular with boys already and she thinks that this will be easy money. I, as her
father am happy for her to follow her dreams. However, becoming a stripper at the tender age of 16 sounds a little seedy. Do you
think i should let her?
Biblitz replies:
Everybody knows or should know by now that strip joints are run by bikers, who are not known to be especially tender
employers. She'll be working in an environment that promotes exploitation of ever-younger women including, of course,
prostitution, drugs and so on. The sex trade she wants somehow to join is a
predatory business that will chew her up and spit her out, leaving her for dead (if she isn't already when the boys get
through with her), with few, if any, transferable skills.
What's most disturbing is the fact that she seems to embrace all this. Why, I wonder? Why have you allowed patriarchal
culture to take her prisoner, convincing her that her REAL and TRUE value as a woman is measured most accurately by the number
of losers with hard-ons at the end of a lonely night in some filthy hole? .. Does this prospect not worry you at all?
She likes to dance. Fine. Dance away at the studio. The real work for her (and for all of you) is convincing her to
stay in school long enough to learn how to solve the kind of problems that left her parents on the public rolls. You, at least,
have had a roll or two of the dice and, mercifully, you live to fight another day. At 16, she's just getting started. Consult
your higher self and do your best to make sure she gets her chance. Once it's gone, it's gone forever.
I am a single parent raising a teenager. In the last year I have found out that my 15 year old daughter smokes cigarettes,
marijuana, drinks at parties, has sex, gotten numerous piercings and 2 tattoos. I am at the end of my rope. I really feel like
I hate her. She is an embarrassment and seems to have no common sense whatsoever. Some stuff I knew about earlier in the year,
recently the other stuff I got from a msg that was sent to me via Facebook from an 'anonymous' source ... Sounded like someone
from her highschool was trying to rat her out but that is besides the point. I know it to be all true and everything that comes
out of her mouth is a lie. I really feel like I hate her. I dont want to be around her, what to do?
I'm not trying to fix a our relationship. My daughter disgusts me for being a skank and mutilating her body. I dont want a
child like that. I dont even want to waste money with a therapist. She is what she is and I'm just looking for a way out. If
that sounds harsh then so be it. I thought I raised her right with the right values and morals and to be a good person. I guess
not. I understand that stupid teenagers will do stupid things but this is over the top. I'm looking for solutions to get her out
of my sight. waiting til she's 16 and kick her out or hand her over to child custody? I've given up.
Biblitz replies:
One never knows for sure which is worse: being a teenage girl in a culture with no boundaries ('it's all good') or the
parent of one. The bad news: If you kick her out and she applies for public funding, emergency housing and so on, authorities
will investigate to find out why her parent has abdicated responsibility. Taxpayers are loath to provide
necessaries when there's a solvent parent able to do so. Inevitably, you'll
be recalled into service. Why not call women's centre/rape crisis centre to ask for a list of really good counsellors/therapists
for parents in your circs? Kid's behavior is, at the end of the day, antisocial, begging the question why.
What precipitated the change, one wonders?
None of this is easy, of course. You're exhausted. But you're all she's got.
If you notice, love never calls us when it's convenient. Romance knocks when we're busy with other things. Kids need us
most when they are most repulsive. Best advice: Go by yourself for a session or two to talk about the problem. You may get a few
good strategies to help you cope in the interim. Later on, when you do confront kid, it will be with a professional, who will
ensure communication remains civil and open.
Somehow the two of you have lost your way. It happens. There's no shame in asking for help. Try to keep your eye on the
tiger: these are the behaviors of someone who is unhappy and rather desperate and, alas, who depends on you for sustenance. The
good news: she's still young enough to reap the rewards of a good intervention. You must try. Biblitz is rooting for you!
I love my wife and she deserves to have the best things in life. I am not lying, but before we got married, one of her
requirements was that I can never say anything about the prices on the shoes she buys. She buys heels, boots, etc. that can go
from up to almost $2,000... some I don't even know of. With that being said, we do have a very comfortable lifestyle, but I am
very responsible with money. She does have expensive taste, which she admits, but how do I get her to be wiser on what she
spends? She's not irresponsible, but sometimes she has me flabbergasted. On Friday she bought $750 heels. Like seriously...
did they have to cost that much?
Biblitz replies:
P.T. Barnum called it, in my view. If the market is (pick an adjective) enough to bear them, the merchant classes will
continue to extract these outrageous prices. Frankly, I find such rampant consumption obscene when there are so many going
hungry right here at home, never mind China and Africa, but no doubt you didn't marry this hard-boiled customer for her devotion
to philanthropy. Hope you make lots of money and never get sick or tired or o/w unable to keep it coming!
You can bet these alas departed Biblitz clan fence sitters held strong views about personal ethics and the kind of behavior a self-respecting young woman would expect from a father, a suitor and a husband! At ease, ladies. The dangers for you and your generation have passed.
DVD
Hardcover
The tiger (not unlike a teenage girl in Biblitz's view) is one of nature's masterpieces. A creature of beauty and grace... Whether encountered through the bars of a zoo's enclosure, or glimpsed in the wild as it stalks its prey with silent footfalls and eyes red as fire, the sight of this great cat is not easily forgotten. The tiger's body is thickly yet exquisitely designed, the steely muscles in back and shoulder rippling in movement, the huge legs propelling it so smoothly and quietly that it seems to be gliding above the jungle floor. (From the Introduction, p. 3)
By John Berger
To be born a woman has been to be born, within an allotted and confined space, into the keeping of men. The social presence of
women has developed as a result of their ingenuity in living under such tutelage within such a limited space. But this has been
at the cost of a woman's self being split into two. A woman must continually watch herself. She is almost continually accompanied
by her own image of herself. Whilst she is walking across a room or whilst she is weeping at the death of her father, she can
scarcely avoid envisaging herself walking or weeping. From earliest childhood she has been taught and persuaded to survey
herself continually.
And so she comes to consider the surveyor and the surveyed within her as the two constituent yet always distrinct elements
of her identity as a woman.
She has to survey everything she is and everything she does because how she appears to others, and ultimately how she
appears to men, is of crucial importance for what is normally thought of as the success of her life. Her own sense of being in
herself is supplanted by a sense of being appreciated as herself by another. ...
One might simplify this by saying: men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This
determines not only most relations between men and woman but also the relation of women to themselves. The surveyor of woman in
herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object - and most particularly an object of vision: a
sight. (-- pgs. 46-47)
