Oh, oh, oh, did Charlotte Allen ever step in it with this Washington Post column arguing that women are "kind of dim." Excerpt:
Elsewhere around the country, women were falling for the presidential candidate literally. Connecticut radio talk show host Jim Vicevich has counted five separate instances in which women fainted at Obama rallies since last September. And I thought such fainting was supposed to be a relic of the sexist past, when patriarchs forced their wives and daughters to lace themselves into corsets that cut off their oxygen.I can't help it, but reading about such episodes of screaming, gushing and swooning makes me wonder whether women -- I should say, "we women," of course -- aren't the weaker sex after all. Or even the stupid sex, our brains permanently occluded by random emotions, psychosomatic flailings and distraction by the superficial. Women "are only children of a larger growth," wrote the 18th-century Earl of Chesterfield. Could he have been right?
There's been a massive response on the blogosphere, and now the op-ed editor who put Charlotte's piece on the front page of Sunday's Outlook section says he was just joking.
I'll say up front that Charlotte Allen's a friend, and I'm a Charlotte Allen fan, but I'm not big on this piece, and I can see why it's set so many people off. Still, if a man had written an op-ed piece in the same world-weary tone Charlotte use, arguing that men, as men, are "kind of dim," would anybody have objected? Seriously?
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I don't get it. What was funny about it? Was it funny because her examples of ways women are stupid were funny? Was it funny because it was obvious to you that she didn't really believe what she was saying - just using exaggerations and outrageous statements to make a point (which bizarrely she says wasn't what she was doing - she claims the column really reflects what she thinks)? Was it that she seemed to be arguing against the radical feminist idea that men and women are the same?
I'm asking honestly here. I think I have a pretty good sense of humor, but I didn't think this was funny except in a "what?!?!" kind of way. My husband who finds even really dumb stuff funny didn't laugh once while reading it and just came away confused as well. So I'm wondering what anyone would find amusing about it.
Rebeccat, earlier in this thread I cast aspersions on the inability of some people to appreciate droll humor. I mention it because that is not my intention with you here.
Given that you (and your husband) cannot appreciate the humor of the piece (and the author's later assertions that it was not meant to be humorous aside), how do you feel about the bare and basic points she attempts to make?
Just as a suggestion, is it possible that people (perhaps including you) found it offensive because it strikes too close to home? Or, not wanting to put words in your mouth, can you offer a rational rebuttal to her points that transcend whatever offense they caused?
I don't agree with the author per se, but I do find her points a valid commentary on the "rock concert/beauty pageant" that masquerades as presidential elections in the US.
franklin, actually while I am absolutely believe in the reality of differences in the tendencies of the sexes, I actually am decidedly NOT very "female" in many respects. In our home, my husband and I have our
I think the bottom line for me is that I am an unusually smart woman. I grew up during the height of the "sex is a gender construct" era and have run into more than my fair share of people over the years who have told me that interests and passions (things like children, education, religious devotion, literature) were inappropriate pursuits for someone with my intelligence. Why were they inappropriate? Because they reflected traditional "women's work" which, everyone knows, was what women were consigned to do because they were less intelligent. Now that we know that women are not dumb, it is time for us to leave "dumb people's" work behind.
My response has always been that it is extremely mysogenistic to measure what is worthwhile and what is not by the standard of what men do. The problem isn't that the work women have traditionally done requires minimal intelligence, as both the chauvanists and radical feminists like to argue. The problem is that this work has been undervalued because it is typically done by women. If we value women as intelligent, free and equal partners in the human endevor, then the work women do needs to be valued as much as the work men do.
What Ms. Allen does is reject both the radical feminist position and the position of someone like myself and say, "Not only were feminists wrong about men and women being the same. They were wrong about women being as smart as men. We should accept this and be happy doing the traditional, less mentally rigorous work that women have traditionally done. Isn't it silly that people would think otherwise - look at all the evidence of our stupidity!" So in one fell swoop she has used our gender differences as a weapon to condemn women for expecting to be respected AND denigrated the value of the talents and pursuits that women such as myself are working to elevate as respectable endevors.
PLUS she did it as a conservative which simply re-enforces the view that conservatives don't really believe in gender equality, that to accept the reality of gender equality is to accept the reality of female inferiority and that claiming to praise "women's work" on the part of traditional conservatives is simply code for "go sit down and don't bother your pretty little head."
Her logic is flawed beyond repair (men's visual spatial skills make them better at abstract thought, but women's superior grasp of the abstract construct of language makes them dumb?), she uses real, rather than exaggerated examples of sex differences as her evidence (exaggeration is the key to humor, satire and parody. Without this element, you are just making fun of people to laugh at their stupidity, which is what she admits she was doing) and she joins right in with radical feminists in insisting that "women's work" is for dumb people.
Anyhow, this woman has taken up too many brain cells. I still don't understand what was funny about the column. Fortunately, almost no one who reads it will think she has a point. Unfortunately, there are people who will walk away thinking that they got a glimpse into the conservative mind while having their prejudices against "women's work" affirmed. Which doesn't do anything for my perspective.
Ack - I erased the last part of the first paragraph. What I meant to say is that in certain areas my husband and I have our roles reversed. He is sentemental, prone to emotional outbursts, communicates obliquely and expects a certain amount of mind reading, prone to over reacting to an emergency, etc. I don't like romance or sentimentality, and stoic to the nth degree, say what I mean and mean what I say and expect my words to be taken for what they are - not more, no less. I am calm, cool and collected in an emergency, etc. He places great value on how he feels and expects people to accomodate his feelings. I place great emphasis on logic and expect myself to take responsibility for my own feelings and work to conform them to reality. In other ways we fall into typical gender roles, but my point is that Ms. Allen's anecdotes about women's behavior doesn't even get into my neighborhood, much less near home for me. I actually tend to have a fair amount of contempt for the sort of stereotypical women's behavior she outlines. I'm just not dumb or illogical enough to take my distaste and turn it into evidence of women's stupidity.
Rebeccat, you are (in large part) reacting to Allen's use of stereotypes. At the risk of seeming sarcastic or ironic -- neither of which do I intend -- you match my upbringing and personality rather closely but we diverge mainly on our gender difference. You're a woman looking at it from the inside, I'm a man looking from the outside. It should surprise no one that we agree on the principles but have very different levels of reaction to express.
Thanks for responding. I feel like I know you better, and you express many things that need wide exposure.
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