May 31, 2006
It's official: Romance on the Road is out!
Well today is June 1, the official publication date of (fanfare, trumpets) 
Romance on the Road: Traveling Women Who Love Foreign Men, which I've been working on for six years (I think ... it's been awhile, anyway)!
Anyway, to mark the occasion, I'll be giving an interview on Around the World radio in Santa Barbara today. You can listen live at this link at around 1:10 p.m. our time (East Coast). Click on the microphone on the upper right of the link. I'll try to record and post the show on my Web site.
Also, I've been asked by Beth to submit something for her forthcoming book, For Women Traveling Solo. This is what I'll be sending her.
Solo women travelers will be approached by foreign men -- there is no doubt about that. The pursuit can be overwhelming in the Mediterranean and Near East, and sometimes in Latin America, too.Many guidebooks deal with this matter with a section entitled "For Women Travelers" and assume a sort of scolding tone -- advising a woman to dress modestly and wear a wedding ring to deter harassment.
Or conversely, women may be blithely told that they should pack condoms to be prepared for temptation.
While such advice is valid, the reality of road romances is more complex, and it's best for solo women travelers to think ahead and be truly prepared. Ideally, you should give some thought to how to politely put off annoying men and politely engage with intriguing guys -- just as you would at home.
And maybe you should even be open to the idea of losing your head completely with a handsome stranger. Wild travel flings live in the memory forever as being one of life's most vivid experiences. They often provide a paradoxical path back to having a man in your life permanently.
Two facets of human nature as it exists outside the walls of Western workplaces will confront the solo female traveler. First, most of the men of the world outside the reach of corporate anti-harassment statutes assume that men and women belong together. You being female and not accompanied by a husband means (in the minds of foreign men in many exotic places) that, according to all the rules of the universe, you are looking for their company. So it's best not to get too irate with guys who are hard-wired to be macho.
Second, women also need to be honest with themselves about their reasons for solo travel. Six out of every seven women who travel and engage in flings lack a mate at home. And so many solo traveling females engage in either flings or serious relationships while on the road, that they virtually confirm what foreign men think -- that every solitary human, deep down, is seeking a partner.
When I see women on travel forums ask about "traveling safely on their own in the Caribbean," for example, I conclude that somewhere, unacknowledged in their decision to travel unescorted in perhaps the world's most overtly sexy climate, is a subconscious yearning for companionship and physical release.
So, what do you need to know about love, romance, sex and travel before you go? Seven points to think about:
1. You are most likely to have a fling with a fellow traveler. One woman I know spent a romantic time with a Parisian photographer she encountered in Bangkok.
2. You are more likely than you think to encounter out-of-nowhere propositions from appealing foreign men. One in six first-time, female visitors to the Dominican Republic, for example, enters an affair with a local guy.
3. A foreign lover can be your ticket to seeing everyday life in a foreign culture. In places with tourist ghettos -- think resort areas of the Caribbean -- a local boyfriend can be one avenue, and perhaps the easiest way, to getting to really know a place.
4. One of the best things about road romances: An exotic boyfriend in a tropical setting can offer a road to healing for the divorced female traveler, or one who feels discarded or unappreciated.
5. One of the worse things about road romances: There are resort areas (in Kenya, West Africa, Thailand, parts of the Dominican Republic and Brazil) where HIV rates are so high, and men are so skilled at rapid seduction, that a broken condom (or the rush to have sex without one) may be extremely risky. So it pays to study the U.N. statistics on HIV / AIDS, and to realize that rates may be higher than what the U.N. reports in resorts with gigolos, prostitutes and many tourists. One experienced traveler who wrote a book mentioning her casual affairs in Africa years ago, for example, told me she would never experiment there today. And female travelers have contacted AIDS from men in places such as Cyprus, not thought of as a disease epicenter.
6. Ethics and etiquette for the female romance traveler often boil down to the same rules you really should be following at home. Try to avoid temptation if you are happily married. Treat your lover as a flesh-and-blood man, without condescending to him if he is younger and poorer, or leading him on if this is just a fling for you. Surprising as it may seem, often the man is the one who can get hurt, especially if he lives in Oceania or the Middle East, where sincere men may lose their hearts to a female traveler they have no means to ever see again.
7. Let coffee or tea be your drink of seduction, not alcohol. You need to have your radar fully operating to detect whether danger -- or merely mutually satisfactory amusement -- are on a foreign guy's' mind.
- posted by jbelliveau at 4:27 PM in Love, Sex, Romance and Travel
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May 16, 2006
The Italian soccer scandal
The soccer scandal engulfing Juventus, Italy's finest team, will come as no great shock to anyone who has read 
The Miracle of Castel di Sangro by Joe Mcginniss.
If memory serves, the plucky Castel di Sangro team throws a game to help another team advance to a higher league in exchange for money. The fixing is open -- the owner comes to the fixed game to supervise matters and fixes his beady eyes on the players. The Castel goalkeeper flubs easy saves, and the Castel midfielders open with a pass to their opponent.
Now we just have word that this happens at higher levels in Serie A, Italy's top soccer league. The allegations include goal-fixing, illegal betting and even a kidnapping.
As Lamont e-mailed me --
Surprise, Surprise!! Italian Serie A hit by a huge scandal. 4 Clubs (Juventus, AC Milan, Fiorantina, all demoted at least once since 1980 for cheating and corruption, and Lazio Mussolini's favorite club) involved, Referees involved, players involved!!! If only the U.S. could play THEM first and not Czech Rep.
As Lamont points out, the United States plays Italy in its World Cup group, so the scandal has implications for our team, especially if the Italian national team, or individual players under investigation, is either demoralized, distracted, or conversely fired up, as a result of this scandal.
You can read details on EPSN.com or at the Washington Post.
***
Here are some of Lamont's predictions for the United States in the World Cup:
Model #1. The 1990 world cup model
Has anyone bothered to notice that our group is almost the same as 1990 (Czechoslovakia, Italy , Austria) First of all its a bit suspect that we got nearly the same grouping again 16 years later, what are the chances. Second, we are much improved and our opponents are comparatively weaker, ie the Italians are NOT the home team and the Czechs are without the Slovaks. In theory the Austrians faced tougher opposition to qualify than the Ghanaians did. Ghana has not done well since qualifying.
The results?
Based on 1990... back then we lost 5-0, the Czechs who like most smaller European teams that peak in the Euro will dissappoint at the world Cup may win 1-0.
Italy scraped by with a 1-0 win way back then will lose 1-0 or 2-1 as the U.S. is better suited to defeat shorter Latin/style teams.
Ghana will play brilliantly for 70 minutes, then collapse allowing 2-3 goals.
We top our group, and make it to the Semi-finals for the first time.
Mexico will make an early exit leading to large riots in Mexico. In Los Angeles another day without and Immigrant is declared in resentment at the results. NBA replaces soccer as the top sport south of the border.
Model #2. The 2002 World Cup model:
In spite of our lofty position in the world rankings, the U.S. still has no respect as a soccer power. Following the pattern of 2002, Czech, like the arrogant Portuguese, will get the surprise of their life when McBride, Johnson and Lewis score on them. An own goal by Frankie Hejuk or Ben Olsen will make it look closer.
We will have a close tie with the Italians who will complain that they were cheated out of every offside shot they put into our net, they threaten to boycott future FIFA events (but change their minds when the world lets out a celebratory cheer).
Then Ghana, yet to win a game, will rip us a new one, beating us 3-0. We will only get to face Brazil when doesn't agree to ta gentlemen's draw (right, now you know I'm dreaming) and elimiunates Czech. Brazil beats us 1-0 in the second round having gotten away with a hand-ball on the line.
(Another favorable model the U.S. Brazil July 4th, 1994-if only Ernie Stewart had a left foot we'd have won 2-1. So using that model, U.S. wins 2-1 but Landon Donovan is hospitalized with a head injury)
No need for a model, I expect this...
The U.S. will play to the jeers and whistles of home crowds except for the game against Ghana where legions of right-wing Europeans in anger at middle eastern Muslims will make ape noises at confused West Africans.
Model #3, The "I hope its not 1998" model.
Czech will beat us 1-0 like our preveious overrated Balkan opponents (Yugoslavia), Italy will win and Ghana will sneak by us 2-1. McBride will get our only goal and Arena will be fired when the disgraced team returns. MLS attendence will drop and ESPN reporters will openly dance in glee as they can ignore U.S. soccer for yet another 4 years.
- posted by jbelliveau at 11:41 AM in Sports
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May 11, 2006
Gay marriage vs. religious liberty
What an eye-opening column by marriage advocate Maggie Gallagher -- Banned in Boston: The coming conflict between same-sex marriage and religious liberty.
In a nutshell, Catholic Charities of Boston placed children for adoption. A small number of these children were placed with gay couples.
The Catholic Church told Catholic Charities such placements were against church policy. When Catholic Charities complied, refusing to place any more children with gay couples, the state of Massachusetts blocked it from engaging in adoptions at all.
What has happened is that gay activitists have persuaded the courts (and to some extent public opinion) that their cause is a civil rights issue (an equivalence that maddens a significant number of African Americans who flatly reject this comparison), for which no religious or conscience exemptions could be made. From the article:
From there, it was only a short step to the headline "State Putting Church Out of Adoption Business," which ran over an opinion piece in the Boston Globe by John Garvey, dean of Boston College Law School. It's worth underscoring that Catholic Charities' problem with the state didn't hinge on its receipt of public money. Ron Madnick, president of the Massachusetts chapter of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, agreed with Garvey's assessment: "Even if Catholic Charities ceased receiving tax support and gave up its role as a state contractor, it still could not refuse to place children with same-sex couples."This March, then, unexpectedly, a mere two years after the introduction of gay marriage in America, a number of latent concerns about the impact of this innovation on religious freedom ceased to be theoretical. How could Adam and Steve's marriage possibly hurt anyone else? When religious-right leaders prophesy negative consequences from gay marriage, they are often seen as overwrought. The First Amendment, we are told, will protect religious groups from persecution for their views about marriage.
Gallagher asked numerous legal scholars, including Anthony Picarello, president and general counsel of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, what this all means. How serious are the coming conflicts over religious liberty stemming from gay marriage? "The impact will be severe and pervasive," Picarello says flatly.
These experts' comments make clear that it is not only gay marriage, but also the set of ideas that leads to gay marriage--the insistence on one specific vision of gay rights--that has placed church and state on a collision course. Once sexual orientation is conceptualized as a protected status on a par with race, traditional religions that condemn homosexual conduct will face increasing legal pressures regardless of what courts and Congress do about marriage itself.Nevertheless, marriage is a particularly potent legal "bright line." Support for marriage is firmly established in our legal tradition and in our public policy. After it became apparent that no religious exemption would be available for Catholic Charities in Massachusetts, the church looked hard for legal avenues to continue helping kids without violating Catholic principles. If the stumbling block had been Catholic Charities' unwillingness to place children with single people--or with gay singles--marriage might have provided a legal "safe harbor": Catholic Charities might have been able to specialize in placing children with married couples and thus avoid collision with state laws banning orientation discrimination. After Goodridge, however, "marriage" includes gay marriage, so no such haven would have been available in Massachusetts.
Precisely because support for marriage is public policy, once marriage includes gay couples, groups who oppose gay marriage are likely to be judged in violation of public policy, triggering a host of negative consequences, including the loss of tax-exempt status. Because marriage is not a private act, but a protected public status, the legalization of gay marriage sends a strong signal that orientation is now on a par with race in the nondiscrimination game. And when we get gay marriage because courts have declared it a constitutional right, the signal is stronger still.
The method and the mechanism for achieving protected status may be different for orientation and for race. Even the Massachusetts supreme court, for example, declined to rule explicitly that orientation is a protected class, subject to strict scrutiny. But in Massachusetts, the end result may be similar. If state courts declare gay marriage a constitutional right, they are likely to see support for gay marriage as state public policy.
The article quotes some leading legal minds on the extent to which placing gays on the same level as minorities will impact activities sponsored by religious groups, from adoptions to schools (can they expel lesbian students?), homeless shelters, marriage counseling and retreats.
It even remains cloudy whether free speech -- the freedom to argue against gay marriage -- would be freely permitted.
Even a lesbian legal scholar at Georgetown University has some pause about where we are heading. Chai Feldblum, raised an Orthodox Jew, notes:
She pauses over cases like the one at Tufts University, one of many current legal battles in which a Christian group is fighting for the right to limit its leaders to people who subscribe to its particular vision of Christianity.She's uncertain about Catholic Charities of Boston, too: "I do not know the details of that case," she told me. "I do believe a state should be permitted to withhold tax exempt status, as in the Bob Jones case, from a group that is clearly contrary to the state's policy. But to go further and say to a group that it is not permitted to engage in a particular type of work, such as adoptions, unless it also does adoptions for gay couples, that's a heavier hand from the state."
Indeed. Do read Gallagher's full article to see an amazingly wide range of legal views on the implications of gay marriage as a civil rights issue.
I'll also highly recommend reading Gallagher's excellent book 
The Case for Marriage, which takes on feminist notions that marriage is only good for men.
Other blogs commenting on "Banned in Boston:"
- Bettnet.com (note a lively set of comments after the blog entry).
- Rod Dreher: Why I Can't Help Voting GOP.
- And National Review's the Corner, where Stanley Kurtz foresees that "same-sex marriage will be used as a tool, not only to silence opposition, but to unstring religion itself as a force in American life." He summarizes:
Scholars on the left and right agree that the gay marriage movement has raised the specter of a massive and protracted battle over religious liberty. In states that adopt same-sex marriage, religious liberty is clearly going to lose. The source of the problem is the flawed analogy between the battle for same-sex marriage and the sixties movement for civil rights. Gay marriage proponents argue that sexual orientation is like race, and that opponents of same-sex marriage are therefore like bigots who oppose interracial marriage. Once same-sex marriage becomes law, that understanding will be controlling.
- posted by jbelliveau at 11:51 AM in Culture
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May 8, 2006
Innocents Abroad
OpinionJournal has an interesting article, Innocents Abroad: A new guidebook offers Americans advice on how to behave overseas, by Martha Bayles. Excerpt:
Poor Yankee Doodle. Our lovable bumptious boy, given to bragging about his bank account at top volume through a mouthful of fries while sticking his sneaker-clad feet into other people's faces, has been diagnosed as antisocial by a significant number of foreigners. As red-blooded Americans, our first reaction was, "Say it ain't so! The world loves us, right?" But then Doodle's behavior began to hit us where it hurts, in the pocketbook. So we decided to take steps.In a nutshell, this is the story behind the "World Citizens Guide," conceived in 2003 by Keith Reinhard, chairman of DDB Worldwide, an international advertising firm.
The articles goes on to note "... the first 'World Citizens Guide' lists four reasons why the world dislikes America: 'foreign policy,' the 'negative effects of globalization,' 'our popular culture' and 'our collective personality.' "
In my experience, you might be correct if you insert the word "European elites" for "the world" in the sentence above.
In Asia, Africa and Latin America, and even much of Europe, regular folks lap up our popular culture, befriend Americans and don't appear to give a moment's thought to globalization.
Further, annual inmigration rates of 1 million or more to the United States belie any notion that foreigners overwhelming dislike this country.
That isn't to say that American expatriates and tourists are perfect. We all learn to modulate our voice volume, wait for explicit invitations to come into a home or a room, avoid personal questions and try to read when "yes" means "maybe" or "no" in another culture. In that sense, a "World Citizen Guide" should be valuable for the more doltish.
Just be sure to give this booklet to European tourists, too, who (providing one of potentially hundreds of real incidents I've observed) chatter nonstop during Brazilian religious ceremonies while the Americans watch in silent respect (as I mentioned in the Brazil chapter of 
An Amateur's Guide to the Planet).
- posted by jbelliveau at 5:47 PM in Love, Sex, Romance and Travel
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May 2, 2006
The Girlspeak to English Dictionary
If you are in the mood for a laugh today (my birthday!) take a look at the Girlspeak to English Dictionary.
My favorites:
She says English
--------- -------
We need I want
It's your decision The correct decision should
be obvious by now
We need to talk I need to complain
I'm not upset Of course I'm upset, you
moron.
You're...so manly You need a shave and you
sweat a lot.
You're certainly attentive tonight. Is sex all you ever think
about?
I'm not emotional! And I'm not I have PMS.
overreacting!
Be romantic, turn out the lights. I have flabby thighs.
Is my butt fat? Tell me I'm beautiful.
You have to learn to communicate. Just agree with me.
Do you like this recipe? It's easy to fix, so you'd
better get get used to it.
I'm not yelling! Yes I am yelling because I
think this is important.
In answer to the question "What's wrong?"
The same old thing. Nothing.
Nothing. Everything.
Everything. My PMS is acting up.
I don't want to talk about it. Go away, I'm still building
up evidence against you.
Some cute relies from this discussion on Fark.com:
05-02 06:23:30 AM TappingTheVein
Men's dictionary:
1. I am hungry = I am hungry
2. I am sleepy = I am sleepy.
3. I am tired = I am tired.
4. Nice dress = Nice cleavage!
5. I love you = Let's have sex now.
6. I am bored = Do you want to have sex?
7. May I have this dance? = I'd like to have sex with you.
8. Can I call you sometime? = I'd like to have sex with you.
9. Do you want to go to a movie? = I'd like to have sex with you.
10. Can I take you out to dinner? = I'd like to have sex with you.
11. I don't think those shoes go with that outfit = I'm gay.
- posted by jbelliveau at 1:21 PM in Parodies
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