Before she was the first Asian American on the King County Council, she owned the first Chinese restaurant in Seattle outside of the Chinatown/International District. With her husband in the kitchen, she presided over the dining room as a pure diva. This name/face recognition fueled her rise to influence, both within the Asian American community and beyond. You may know of her daughter, longtime public-schools advocate Cheryl Chow. You might not know Chow was the sister of Mary Pang, whose frozen-foods mini-empire met a fiery end at the hands of Pang’s convicted-arsonist son.

• Clearcuts, landslides. Could there possibly be a cause-n’-effect thang goin’ on?
• The Church of Mary Magdalene, a vital ministry to downtown’s homeless women, needs a short-term home.
• Did a Boeing subsidiary operate charter flights to CIA secret prisons/torture chambers? That’s what an ex-employee alleges.

Every now and then one of these “gender” pundits proclaims that political conservatives have absolutely no tolerance for, or vision of, female sexuality.

Bosh.

There is a right-wing female sexuality. Several, in fact. You might not be particularly turned on by/approve of ’em, but they’re there.

This was proven back in the pre-Reagan ’70s, with Marabel Morgan’s once-popular paperback book The Total Woman. In it, Morgan extols the ultra-eager-to-please wife, who might not have a career but who works damned hard to keep energy in the marriage bed.

The current edition’s Amazon page is chock full of juicy, snarky customer comments. Most of the commentors howl at Morgan’s vision of female totality as little more than passive-aggressive bimbodom.

But is Morgan’s fantasy woman really that passe?

Perhaps she’s simply been succeeded by another set of ideals.

Morgan’s vision of the conservative feminine libido belonged to a conservatism that was already fading when her book came out.

It was a conservatism of hierarchy, of rules, of clearly defined social roles. A conservatism of modest luxury and quiet good taste, when business executives at least still talked about prosperity for all; when politicians at least still talked about civility.

Those days are long gone.

The organized thuggery and egomania that are today’s “conservative” culture are topics I’ve ranted about before, and probably will again.

But with a changed culture come changed personal roles. That includes female roles. (I’ve already written that the sole positive thing I can say about Bush is he respects strong women.)

I happen to have had acquaintances of differing degrees with a few of these modern right-wing women. I won’t get into the sordid particulars.

Let’s just say I’ve seen what a new Marabel Morgan might write about in gushing tribute.

I’m sure you can, too.

And as soon as I’ve figured out how to add them newfangled comment threads to this site, I’ll ask you to add your own suggested chapter titles for a new self-help tome, Nookie for Nubile Neocons.

‘Til then, take these as inspiration:

• “You don’t need a pool to have a pool boy!”
• “You never feel so empowered as when you’ve fired half your employees!”
• “Jamaica’s best gigolos!”
• “Keeping your lover away from hubby’s mistress!”
• “Fine handcrafted dildos for under $3,000!”
• “Your new corner office–it’s incomplete without your own ‘casting couch!'”
• “Marrying a closeted gay politician–no pesky sexual demands, AND you get to be a public victim when he’s found out!”
• “Turn that spare guest house into a dungeon! Have fun, AND frighten the household staff!”

…about women whom society initially judged as bad troublemakers, but who’ve since been revered as revolutionary heroines. This link isn’t about them. It’s about real bad women.

…these lists of “the 100 Sexiest Women in the World” that keep popping up. All of them are celebrities of one sort or another (actresses, models, singers, porn queens, one tennis player, and one racecar driver); as if baristas, schoolteachers, policewomen, seamstresses, lady lawyers, etc. can’t be steamin’. All are English speakers and almost all are from the U.S., Canada, or the U.K.; as if there couldn’t be alluring, captivating females in (or from) the rest of the planet. And don’t start me on the uniform mainstream perky thinness of most of the list.

…why females, including female politicians, should not be slandered with demeaning references to sex organs and sexual activity: “I don’t understand why I should regard vaginas with the negative attitude that the metaphorical use suggests…. every interaction that I have had with a vagina in my life has been a positive one.”

…the “50 Most Powerful Women in Business” includes two celebrities but only one Seattleite.

…one of the most explicit yet poetic sets of reasons for “Why I love women.”

…a music festival and nobody showed up, would it make a sound? The Red Bull Music Academy brought dozens of European techno DJs to Seattle from Nov. 7 through Dec. 8. Each year, the “energy drink” people bring assorted mastes and tyros of electronica to a different city.

The academy’s workshops and conferences were hidden behind the obscured storefront of the former Beatty Book Store on Third and Virginia, compared to ROCKRGRL’s highly promoted events in the Madison Hotel.

Aside from fancy brochures and flyers in the participating bars and nightclubs, the Red Bull event was hardly even publicized locally. Too bad; the local electronica scene’s been on stagnant times, and could’ve used some high-profile events to bring back the local crowds—even if the most famous participant at Red Bull was Eumir Deodato, who’d made a hit disco version of the 2001 theme three decades back.

Even Red Bull’s PR packet contained nothing introducing the event to Seattle; only long essays introducing Seattle to the event’s Euro performers and reporters. Some excerpts:

“Seattle, while not as large as the American metropolises of New York or Los Angeles, is host to a bustling, shucking and jiving culture…. Seattle has long had a vibrant Asian and Asian-American population, and well-established communities of Scandinavians, African-Americans, Jews, Latinos and thoroughly Native Americans. The city represents the ‘melting-pot’ that logically fosters around the coastal areas of the United States.”…The grunge proliferation and later Internet boom created a dreamlike atmosphere in the city. RealNetworks, Amazon, and Adobe populated the Employment opportunities section of newspapers with wanted ads. Seattle-baed Starbucks replicated itself exponentially on a tidal wave of too-sweet corporate coffee to jolt the technologically-inclined into their 12-hour workdays…. While the Internet boom and bust were a manic time of too much wealth and then too much poverty, they did help revolutionize the culture of Seattle. The limitations of the finite world were kept at bay, if only briefly, and allowed dreamers to indulge. The staid American work tradition of business attire was cast aside, and three-piece suits were retired in favor of ratty T-sshirts and Levi’s. Tradition was scorned for new invention. It is perhaps for this reason that Seattleites insist on proudly wearing jeans and Teva sandals with white tube socks to restaurants with $200 price fixe menus.”

Streaming audio of the Seattle performances can be heard at redbullmusicacademy.com.

Weaving Women’s Words: Seattle Stories isn’t about weavers.

…to find even one positive thing to say about GWB. This is that one thing: He likes strong women. Indeed, if you’re to believe the right-wing magazine Insight on the News, Bush, in his current Nixon-Last Days paranoia mode, only regularly talks to four people, all females.

…at The Guardian now speculate whether the ’08 Presidential race could feature an all-female final heat.

“Computer chips that store music could soon be built into a woman’s breast implants.”

I just got my first check from my father’s life insurance policy, which means I can placate my creditors for a little while. I’m in line for a couple of potentially mid-paying jobs. And there’s women’s curling on CBC today! Life is good.

Kerrick Mainrender responds to a recent link item on this site:

“Out of curiosity I linked to that Morgan Hawke article, and while romances may indeed not be mindless, I found some misconceptions that are anything but helpful.The author seems to think that all women have the exact same development and needs–not true. Not all follow the same ‘character arc’ [or zigzag, or whatever]. Neither do men–this ‘mythic past’ stuff always seemed simplistic and overgeneralized–stereotyped, in fact.

Some children had secrets from Daddy right from the start [from Mommy too–where’s Mom in all those fairy tales anyway?] Sometimes a horse symbolizes something other than ‘masculine sexuality’–mobility, speed, endurance, for starters. Sometimes Beauty meets a female Beast. And so on.

Finally, first sex is NOT always painful. I don’t see why it should ever have to be, and if the young were educated right maybe it wouldn’t. That myth has got to go.

Ms Hawke can write about whatever fictive universe, with whatever rules, she wants to–we all have our favorites I am sure–but it isn’t a good idea to get ’em mixed up with the world you and I live in every day.

My sympathy for the loss of your father, and hopes that these difficult times can be surmounted, for you and all of us.”

Thanks. As I always say, women aren’t just different from men, they’re different from other women.

Mainrender also sends along a recommendation for the sexuality-info site Teenwire.