Men, Women and Separate Checks

The Advice Goddess, Amy Alkon, author of I See Rude People has an interesting post on men, women and separate checks. She received this email from a reader:

It seems the requests for separate checks tend to separate along gender lines. A reader e-mails:

I waited tables all through my twenties, when I started getting "real jobs." Much to my chagrin and disappontment, I am now, at 43, back to waiting tables. To be good at it requires a certain set of skills, mostly having to do with organization and social grace. All of these things came back to me practically overnight.

So did the memories/stereotypes of different kinds of customers. I am writing to see if you have insight or an educated guess on one of these oh-so-true stereotypes. If a group of men comes in to have lunch and maybe a beer, odds are pretty good that one of those men will pick up the tab. But, (ask any ten servers and this will be confirmed) if a group of women comes in, they will almost always ask for separate checks. It's always cause for comment among the waitstaff if a group of women doesn't ask for separate checks.

Amy asks readers why they think this is. She gets some interesting answers in the comment section.

CNBC: Obama's Cowardly New World.

"Assistant State's Attorney Julie Drake said the sentence was compassionate but fair."

A woman who starved her 1-year-old son to death at the behest of a religious cult leader was given a sentence Wednesday that won't require her to serve any more jail time.

Ria Ramkissoon, 23, pleaded guilty last year to child abuse resulting in the death of Javon Thompson. She admitted denying food and water to the 16-month-old child when he did not say "Amen" before a meal. Javon wasted away over the course of a week before his heart stopped beating.

Baltimore Circuit Judge Timothy J. Doory suspended the balance of Ramkissoon's 20-year sentence and ordered her to report to a residential treatment facility for young women. The treatment program includes Bible study, and Ramkissoon will be required to complete the program, which doesn't have a specified length, before she can live on her own....

Assistant State's Attorney Julie Drake said the sentence was compassionate but fair.

"The state has always seen her as something of a victim in this case," Drake said.

Doory reminded Ramkissoon that she would have to live with knowing she was partly responsible for Javon's death, but added, "You were misled and did not do this with any ill will to your son."

Can you imagine the sentence if the defendant was a man and had starved his child to death? Would the judge feel all compassionate and think that a man could be brainwashed by a cult into killing his kid? Of course not.

The judge recognized that this woman was responsible in part for killing her child but he (probably due to his chivalry) is letting her go? Sorry, but having to "live with knowing she was partly responsible" for this boy's death is not the same as paying for it. A residential program for something this cruel? In terms of justice for this boy, it seems a bit cruel itself. (Thanks to Trey for emailing this story.)

"...they are allowing themselves to become agents for enhancing soft totalitarianism. "

Shrinkwrapped: The Sovietizing of American Therapy:

When Psychotherapists adopt a political stance as part of their therapeutic weltanschauung, they have left the field of enhancing autonomy and entered the field, albeit with the very best of intentions, of social engineering; they are allowing themselves to become agents for enhancing soft totalitarianism. It would behoove any such therapist to undergo some self-analysis and determine from whence his need to control arises.