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[ThatHawaiiGuy]

Fakin' It


The Washington Post

August 13, 1989, Sunday, Final Edition

SECTION: WASHINGTON POST MAGAZINE; PAGE W9; CRITIC AT LARGE

HEADLINE: Fakin' It
BYLINE: Richard Cohen

AS MUCH OF THE WORLD KNOWS by now, the movie "When Harry Met Sally . . ." contains a scene in which a woman shows a man how she fakes an orgasm. She does so at a place called Katz's Delicatessen, which, until now, was best known for its pastrami. In the scene, Meg Ryan oohs and aahs, whines and tootles, clanks and whizzes, yodels and screeches until -- am I remembering this right? -- her eyeballs disappear in a fog of sexual bliss that, unlike the pastrami at Katz's, is not the genuine article.

Women love this scene. This is the screenwriter, Nora Ephron, letting men in on one of the shared secrets of womandom: They sometimes fake it! Implied in the scene is one -- maybe the only -- shared impulse of all women, stronger even than the nurturing instinct: the urge to ridicule men. As for men, reports from audiences everywhere indicate some confusion. At first, there is consternation, and then grudging laughter, as men realize that the scene is supposed to be funny. It's hard to laugh, though, when the joke's on you.

Of course, many men have known for some time that women occasionally fake orgasms. They thought, however, that other men were being fooled, not them. In the movie, though, Meg Ryan makes it plain that "other men" is all men. And it is this realization that makes the scene so funny and so discomforting to men. Women are not laughing just at what's on the screen: They're laughing at all men.

So it is in the interest of equal time, otherwise known as revenge, that I would like to say that men fake it too. No, not orgasms, because that would be too difficult, and, anyway, we are too sincere to do something like that. I am talking of something more important: listening. We pretend to listen. Mostly, we pretend to listen to women, to open our eyes wide in totally insincere interest, nod our heads occasionally and say, at appropriate intervals, "Right, honey."

To fake an orgasm is one thing, a bit of talent wedded to artifice that the average woman is called upon to practice on the rare occasions she is called upon to practice it. Listening is a different matter. A man is called upon to fake this several times a day, dozens of times a week, hundreds of times a month. He pretends to listen in the morning, when he is barely awake and is thinking of the workday ahead. He pretends to listen when he is still, really, asleep -- and this is no easy thing to do. He acknowledges remarks, remembers a fragment from a previous conversation, censors things he's heard from other women and pretends to be engaged in a conversation. Actually, he's hardly in the room.

To do this sort of thing day in and day out is, truly, heroic. But most men not only do it, they do it so well women are oblivious to the act being put on for their benefit. Worst of all, as the women's movement has made inroads, as its one-time-radical tenets have become accepted, this task of pretending to be something you're not has gotten harder and harder. From the dawn of creation until 1973, men had to pretend to listen on only a few occasions. Now they have to pretend all the time. Otherwise, they can be accused of not being sensitive.

As a result of the women's movement, out of this awesome fear of not being thought sensitive, many men now spend most of their time faking it. And the faking is not limited to listening. They pretend to see women colleagues as persons. (There is not a man alive who knows what a person is. A person is either a man or a woman, and the difference is discernible to the naked eye.) They pretend not to notice other women. They pretend to be interested in parenting, in housework, in, of all things, relationships (even their own).

Older men, those who came of age before 1973, make no such demands upon themselves. You see them all the time. They will come into a restaurant with their wife, order a drink and then say nothing for the rest of the meal. Sometimes the woman will say something. The man will make a one- or two-word reply and then look down. That's it. He will say nothing more until the check comes and he has to leave a tip. "How much should I leave?" are about the only words he utters throughout the entire meal.

The new, sensitive, contemporary man does not do this. All during the meal, he pretends to listen. He fakes conversation. He can seem animated. He uses body language and, sometimes, grunts and groans. But it is a fake. A pretense. An artifice. His mind is elsewhere, on things he would prefer not to discuss and, indeed, could not discuss. So successful is this pretense that not for a moment could he tell you what is in his own mind, since most of it has nothing to do with business but with emotions. Emotions are not to be discussed.

To live a life of utter, heroic pretense is not something every man can do. Just most of them. To pretend to be part of a couple when, deep down and atavistically, you see yourself as a loner -- an Indian brave, a fisherman, a hunter -- is a pose that all men strike, and strike well. To fool literally billions of women billions of times a day -- and to do it while at the same time making money and war -- is a tour de force to which faking an orgasm is a mere nothing. It cannot be compared.

So that is what's so funny about the delicatessen scene. There is Sally showing Harry how women fake an orgasm. All the women in the audience are screaming their heads off, and Harry, to his credit, makes his eyes bulge and has a look of absolute shock on his face. It's very funny. But the laugh's on you ladies.

He wasn't even listening.





The Washington Post

August 18, 1989, Friday, Final Edition

SECTION: METRO; PAGE C3;

HEADLINE: The Great Pretender

BYLINE: JUDY MANN

By late Wednesday afternoon, enough of my female colleagues had voiced objections to a recent column that appeared in this newspaper that I went back into the library, made a copy of it and read it. The bad news is that Morton Downey Jr. appears to have resurrected himself as a columnist for The Washington Post.

I speak, for others who missed it, of a column that appeared in the Sunday magazine by Richard Cohen titled "Fakin' It."

What set him off was a scene in the movie "When Harry Met Sally . . . " in which a woman demonstrates to a man -- with considerable histrionics -- how she fakes an orgasm.

"Women are not laughing just at what's on the screen," writes Cohen. "They're laughing at all men."

Hell hath no fury like a male ridiculed.

In the finest spirit of getting even, Cohen reveals to the world that men fake it too. "We pretend to listen. Mostly we pretend to listen to women, to open our eyes wide in totally insincere interest, nod our heads occasionally and say at appropriate intervals, 'Right, honey.' "

As a result of the women's movement, he writes, men now have to pretend to listen all the time, lest they be "accused of not being sensitive."

The faking by men, he writes, "is not limited to listening. They pretend to see women colleagues as persons . . . . They pretend not to notice other women. They pretend to be interested in parenting, in housework, in, of all things, relationships (even their own)."

As for the movie scene, Cohen concludes: "Harry, to his credit, makes his eyes bulge and has a look of absolute shock on his face. It's very funny. But the laugh's on you ladies.

"He wasn't even listening."

So there.

Insulting to women? You bet. When you tell half of your audience that they aren't worth listening to, that's about as nasty a put-down as there is.

What's the point? Well, August is a slow month for columnists. Step out on a limb and say something outrageous and you're sure to generate some hate mail, get a little personal publicity, make a little rep for yourself.

Folks in the media business might pretend to be above such crass self-aggrandizement and commercialism, but don't let them fool you.

Across the Potomac, USA Today founder Al Neuharth got himself back into the headlines by insulting flight attendants and wishing for a return to the days of post-adolescent "sky girls."

William Randolph Hearst started the Spanish-American War to sell newspapers. We come from a somewhat tainted tradition.

Columnists are supposed to be opinionated, thought- provoking and sometimes outrageous. Unfortunately, they are also supposed to be -- dare I say it? -- a little sensitive.

Thus, it would be poor form for a columnist to write an anti-Semitic diatribe, to indulge in an anti-Catholic screed, or to mount a full-scale attack against Hispanics or blacks.

Newspaper editors are loath to censor columns, and good editors encourage columnists to be as free-wheeling in their writing and thinking as they can be. But there are limits -- and no editor in his right mind is going to want his newspaper labeled anti-Semitic, anti-Catholic, anti-Hispanic or racist.

They don't have the same reservations, however, about printing stuff that is patently sexist and as offensive to women as a polemic against blacks.

Would we have published a white columnist making light of whites not listening to blacks? Would USA Today have printed a column wishing for a return to the days when servile black bellmen eased the travel of white train passengers?

Hardly.

The media have failed to develop the same level of sensitivity -- or plain good sense -- when it comes to writing about women. Or not, in another case, writing about women.

An obituary that recently ran in this newspaper described Nobel laureate William B. Shockley as the "son of a consulting mining engineer and grandson of a whaling captain." No mention of his mother or grandmother. Was his a reverse immaculate conception?

Newspapers aren't alone. "Rhymes with Rich" was the headline on a recent Newsweek cover story on Leona Helmsley -- who hasn't been convicted of anything.

From 1982 to 1987, the number of women who read a newspaper four days out of five declined by 26 percent, according to the Newspaper Advertising Bureau.

This decline is sometimes explained by the theory that women have less time. Men have more? Hardly. They are busier than ever (pretending to be busy with parenting, housework and relationships).

Women would read newspapers if they were vital to them and served their needs. Women have money now and they need information.

What has happened is that their need for newspapers has declined, and insulting them is not the way to bring them back.

Is anybody listening?

Date: Fri, 11 Jun 1999 10:03:13 -0700 (PDT) From: Ryan Mouncey <ricosuave-drexel rocketmail.com> Subject: When Harry Met Sally To: abrams drexel.edu

I came across this article, and I thought that it might be interesting for the class:



The Washington Post



September 10, 1989, Sunday, Final Edition



HEADLINE: WHO'S FAKING IT?

IT SOUNDS LIKE RICHARD COHEN [CRITic at Large, August 13] is experiencing a little more than "consternation" in regard to the scene in "When Harry Met Sally . . . " when Meg Ryan demonstrates a woman faking orgasm. It sounds like he is afraid, no, panicked about his own virility and sexual prowess. The smug, insulting tone of his lame rebuttal suggests a man who has had his worst fear, his worst-case scenario, blasted up on a movie screen for all to see and cackle at.

He embarrasses himself by exposing how disturbing the scene is to him -- as though he'd reviewed every sexual encounter he'd ever had and replayed all the breathy moments trying to uncover any possible histrionics substituting for true passion.

Based on the offensive attitude he displays toward women and his even more repulsive tactic of exacting revenge by writing about "not listening," it's no wonder he's worried. You only get what you contribute, and if his whole relationship with women is based on perfunctory nods and well-placed "yes, honeys," then it's easy to imagine a woman with him having to simulate some form of pleasure.

LISA BOYLAN

Washington



TO ASSUME WOMEN WAKE IN THE morning only to prattle on about the weather, the kid's new tooth or the stock market is an insult to most women's time, effort and intelligence. I doubt if I would bother "faking" an orgasm for Richard Cohen. How could he tell? He wouldn't even be listening.

DONNA M. KENT

Indian Head



RICHARD COHEN HAS APPARENTLY been eyewitness to numerous fake orgasms, or he wouldn't be so bitter about Sally's re-creation of a fake one in Katz's Deli. He claims he doesn't listen to women, but evidently his ears are still ringing from the truth in Meg's moaning.

KELLEY KRAFT

Washington



LET ME EXPLAIN THE FACTS OF LIFE TO you, Mr. Cohen. Women fake orgasms because men do not have the patience or the unselfishness to learn how to please them. We know because we've asked already. We're trying valiantly to overcome generations of conditioning that it is "unladylike" to express our sexual needs.

We've also learned of the fragility of the male ego. The only alternative left to many women is to give up and fake it. When men grow up (and there are a few who have), women can be honest with them. No, Mr. Cohen, the laugh's still on you.

NANCY GENTRY

Crofton



RICHARD COHEN SHOULD KNOW THAT "fakin' it" is most definitely not a "shared impulse of all women." Truly liberated women have no need to stoop to pretense to bolster the allegedly oh-so-fragile male ego. That's because we choose equally liberated partners who understand that orgasm is more a result of open communication and shared desires than of complex technique and physiology. When men listen, women don't have to fake it.

BONNIE NELLE DUNCAN

Rockville



IT WOULD SEEM THAT MR. COHEN IS A bit defensive about women who fake orgasms. Since human nature is such that we often fake something to impress or please another, my guess is that women who fake orgasms are trying to reach out to men who aren't listening to them in the first place.

Foolers fooled, Mr. Cohen.

PATRICIA DANVER

Reston



IN SEEKING "REVENGE" ON WOMEN FOR faking orgasms, good ol' male chauvinist and resident misogynist Richard Cohen has unwittingly succeeded only in insulting men.

RICHARD P. O'DONNELL

Bethesda



RICHARD COHEN'S COLUMN WAS DEgrading not only to women but men also. I can only guess that his bitterness stems from the fact that he can't even become romantically involved enough with a woman to consider orgasmic possibilities.

JAN ALBRECHT

Damascus



POOR RICHARD. ANOTHER FAILURE. IN the 20 years of our acquaintance, he has never, not even for a moment, fooled me into thinking he had the remotest interest in anything I had to say. But he's more of an egalitarian than he lets on. He's probably bored by a lot of his male colleagues as well.

GERRY REBACH

Washington



THAT MEN DON'T LISTEN IS NO GREAT mystery. Women have been aware of that sorry fact for centuries.

Perhaps if men would spend less time fantasizing about being Indian braves, hunters, fishermen and other assorted he-man types and come back into the real world where, luckily for them, we women are here to stay, they would have the opportunity to develop listening skills.

LINDA RUCKER

Dumfries



WELL, WELL. WILL THE TRUE RICHARD Cohen please stand up? Is this the man who so understood the plight of women and so sympathized with their frustrations? The one who seemed so intelligent and remarkable in his insights? So unprejudiced? So liberal? No, I'm afraid not. He must have been fakin' it.

JENNIFER WILSON

Fairfax



DID MR. COHEN SAY SOMETHING ABOUT "fakin' it"? I wasn't even listening.

KRISTI KORELL

Arlington





THANK YOU FOR INCLUDING RICHARD Cohen's column in your magazine each week. It fits perfectly at the bottom of my bird cage.

CAROL DODD

Alexandria



OOOH, AAAH, OOOH, RICHARD!

Sorry to report that your column wasn't as good for me as it was for you!

LEILA JOCELYN COMPE



Bailey, N.C.




http://httpsrv.irt.drexel.edu/faculty/ina22/cliplib/clip-faking_it.htm