I have to say…
Posted on: March 3, 2008
- In: WTF
- 12 Comments
…that I’m really tired of print editors in allegedly reputable periodicals accepting anti-feminist screeds. If a black journalist submitted an article arguing that black people evolved into a stupider race compared to Caucasians with similar selective and faulty analysis of statistical data — not to mention phrenology and evolutionary psychology, ffs! — would The Washington Post eagerly scoop up the tripe and make it their top Sunday op-ed? And you wonder why so many think journalists are simple hacks? Yet I am told all the time that feminism’s heyday is over and we should all sit back and relax.
For more read Up with your blood pressure! and The Stupidest Thing You Ever Read on this Blog (And Maybe the Whole Wide Internet).
Edit: This is too much. A technorati search turned up this gem at Laura Rozen’s blog.
John Pomfret writes me:
… I ran Charlotte Allen’s piece to provoke, but not to offend. I thought the parallel she drew between fainting Obama followers and Beatlemania was an interesting frame with which to analyze the Obama phenomenon. She went further, of course, to draw broader conclusions about the state of her gender highlighting women’s interest in Gray’s Anatomy and Eat, Pray, Love. But my reading of it was more a tongue-in-cheek screed borne from exasperation with her sisters than a mysoginist rant from a self-hating woman. Yes, she engaged in massive hyperbole but she did it to try to make a point. That said the piece obviously offended you and others and I regret that. But it was an opinion piece and that is what they sometimes do. …
You know what I think this points to? The asinine idea that no matter how weak, fallacious, unfounded and erroneous one’s argument is, it’s an opinion and therefore worth listening to. There was absolutely nothing she attacked in her op-ed piece worthy of particular exasperation. Not “fainting” Obama groupies (I thought that described all of his supporters?), or an interest in a harmless sappy tv show or a memoir. (That book is a memoir, right?) Tongue-in-cheek, my arse. And again newspapers almost never try this crap on men, and wouldn’t dare do a similar satire on Mexicans, Jews or African-Americans. That alone should give him pause for thought but that would be presuming too much. (Ha ha! Don’t worry Pomfret. I’m just being tongue-in-cheek about all the space wasted in that bigger brain of yours.)
Next time Pomfret should solicit a piece from a writer who’s actually in on the joke.
12 Responses to "I have to say…"
March 4, 2008 at 12:39 am
I started reading it but didn’t get very far. I decided not to waste my time reading such rubbish – I’d far rather read Eat, Pray, Love or watch Gray’s Anatomy.
March 4, 2008 at 12:41 am
What a masterpiece of cowardice, betrayal, inferiority-complex, and projection. And illogic. If our spatial sense is so retarded, how do we know where to go berry-picking?
Oy.
March 4, 2008 at 5:52 am
Good thing my wastepaper can is next to my desk. I feel like barfing.
March 4, 2008 at 7:17 am
Well, working on a college campus as I do makes me wonder if she doesn’t have a valid point. Young women today have no idea how hard women before them had to work to be taken seriously and, more importantly, they don’t seem to care. The act, react, and behave in a manner that makes it virtually impossible for anyone to take them seriously.
And yes, it does make me wonder if the ‘heyday’ isn’t over. If it is, we’ll have no one to blame but ourselves.
cjh
March 4, 2008 at 9:31 am
CJHill, I’m sorry, but Charlotte Allen has no point and her argument is so full of fallacies it would be a perfect example of everything one could do wrong in a critical thinking class.
1. Debating brain size and evolutionary psychology?Only Bob Jones university takes those things seriously. She’s quoting men from the 17th century for ideas on women, ffs. I suppose I should then quote Voltaire in an argument for black intellectual inferiority and feel I’ve done a good job.
And it’s been long established that there is more significant differences of intelligence ratings (and, of course, the question of what is intelligence is debatable) among a single sex than in the median between the two sexes.
2. Stats have shown that Obama has more male than female voters, overall, far as I can tell. No one’s lambasting the male brain because some idiots went to Hilary’s campaign holding “Iron my shirt” signs. Heck, America voted for Bush twice. Is that enough to build an argument that Americans are imbeciles?
3. How was Clinton’s campaign run any worse than, say, Guiliani? (Hello?) And Obama can peddle his wife all over the media but Hilary uses Bill and all of a sudden she’s “tellingly dependent”?
4. Women buy more “literary fiction” than men do. And a significant portion of Celine Dion’s fan base is gay men.
Do I even have to go on CJHill? Seriously. And unless you’ve done any proper study to back up your assessment of “Young women today” you’re just repeating what generations have been saying about the up and comers for centuries. That’s all it amounts to.
I’ve seen so many older people to whom I supposedly owe deep respect and reverence “act, react and behave in a manner that makes it virtually impossible for anyone to to take them seriously”.
And I know it’s anecdotal but I read Nora Roberts, frothy and erotic romance authors like Emma Holly and Next top Model shows. And I graduated from undergrad with honours. What kind of idiot rates intelligence according to someone’s taste?
I can’t believe you made me read through that article again. 
Who knows how many brain cells died in the process.
As for the rest of you…yeah, just about. I think I may buy that Gilbert book as a pointless sock-it-to-her move!
March 4, 2008 at 1:44 pm
Actually I don’t doubt that there is a segment of the female population choosing to act like bubbleheads, because that’s what the advertising tells them is attractive and that’s what gets them attention from cool guys who are afraid of a woman with a brain. That doesn’t mean they aren’t capable of more, though, which is what Allen misses. Acting dumb is not the same as being dumb, though it does perpetuate stereotypes, which I think is what CJHill is getting at.
March 4, 2008 at 4:58 pm
Oh dear. I skipped the original article and went straight to Jezebel so at least I got some laughter with the pain. I’d go on about how stupid Allen and her arguments are but I have to go find my maternal instinct because I think I lost it somewhere. While I am at it I might count my shoes and decorate my house.
March 4, 2008 at 5:50 pm
Sylvia I’m not sympathetic to that point either. Some women act dumb — whoopteedoo. That’s inevitable and nothing is going to change that. There are lots of male idiots running about the place and I don’t see anyone making a fuss in the newspapers about how they should do more to maintain their gender’s honour.
It’s just like all of that over the top chic lit criticism. There are tons of males churning out low level “manly” crap but it’s always women feeling under attack from frothy pink covers and allowing men to use that point against them. Feminism didn’t occur so that we could all turn into dour sourpusses only allowed to read quantum physics and mediocre Ian McEwan film adaptations for the rest of our days lest we let down our sex. We can’t live all our lives being minority representatives.
Oh and just to clarify, CJHill the “idiot” I referred to in my previous comment was Allen, not you, in case that was unclear.
March 3, 2008 at 10:50 pm
Oh. My. God. I’m thinking I might have to boycott the Washington Post…maybe forever…that is just ridiculous. I love that the author thinks she’s a feminist-I hope that WP ends up having to do a retraction/apology. The first page was bad enough, but at the top of the second, my jaw literally dropped (I don’t think that’s ever happened before) and stayed that way. I am so boiling angry right now I can’t even see all that well.