My oh my what a dustup we’ve had this week in The Washington Post!
Troglodyte Thatcher-worshipper Charlotte Allen shopped this column to the Washington Post and, whaddya know! They printed it! Wow! That easy, eh, for a writer to get her material into the ‘liberal media?!’
Here are her brilliant rejoinders during a moderated chat about the article in the Post.
A feminist reply the Post chose to publish.
Media Matters lengthy rebuttal to Ms. Allen’s assertions.
A Feministe posting revealing that Ms. Allen is at least consistent in her self-hatred.
Some choice bits:
“Women ‘Falling for Obama,’ ” the story’s headline read. 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?
Perhaps only in your case, Ms. Allen. And I distinctly remember when women wrote gushing ‘may I fuck him pretty please?’ pieces when President George W. Bush, codpiece and all, appeared in a flight suit under the sign that said “Mission Accomplished.”
But that kind of hero worship is OK if its directed at a manly Republican eh Ms. Allen? As you stated in the Post’s discussion:
Dallas: I thought your article touched on some very good points, the main one being that men constantly are ridiculed and satirized (Homer Simpson) but not women. However, I’ve come to the conclusion that we should have a woman president, because she wouldn’t feel the need to show her “macho” side every single time a two-bit dictator said something unseemly about the U.S. Do you think that a woman president would have invaded Iraq on such flimsy evidence?
Charlotte Allen: Uh, who voted for the invasion of Iraq? And believe it or not, we live in dangerous times. I’m glad to see macho men around, myself, such as our brave troops fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Viva Prince Harry!
Earth to Ms. Allen: we have always lived in dangerous times. Just as Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia. And I certainly hope that her husband is a ‘macho man’ whatever that might be (at least in straight parlance). It seems as though Ms. Allen may have been a disciple of Maribel Morgan (she of the 70s ‘wrap yourself in Saran Wrap for him’ school of wifely composure) and so her taste in men is, well, perhaps a little less sophisticate than more modern women. Perhaps she would feel more womanly getting on her knees for the hero who killed the puppy. Perhaps that’s her speed in a man.
But I digress.
I’m not the only woman who’s dumbfounded (as it were) by our sex, or rather, as we prefer to put it, by other members of our sex besides us. It’s a frequent topic of lunch, phone and water-cooler conversations; even some feminists can’t believe that there’s this thing called “The Oprah Winfrey Show” or that Celine Dion actually sells CDs. A female friend of mine plans to write a horror novel titled “Office of Women,” in which nothing ever gets done and everyone spends the day talking about Botox.
Ms. Allen: if you’re not properly servicing your macho hero, he might land up going to a strip club. Perhaps, as part of a research experiment, you should visit one some time. If you think slavish devotion to Oprah is something, you ain’t seen nothing until you’ve seen a bunch of drunken macho heroes hooting at a poll dancer!
But that’s OK, right?
From the online chat:
Washington: Were you trying to start a constructive debate with your opinion piece? Do you think that’s happened? I think by concluding that women are “dumb” because of real sex differences that exist just pisses people off, and thus precludes any real debate on this issue — and it’s something I think should be explored openly. Name-calling doesn’t get us anywhere.
Charlotte Allen: I called no names, but to be quite honest, I wasn’t trying to start a debate, constructive or otherwise. I was just expressing my views.
She called no names?
Take Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign. By all measures, she has run one of the worst — and, yes, stupidest – presidential races in recent history, marred by every stereotypical flaw of the female sex. As far as I’m concerned, she has proved that she can’t debate — viz. her televised one-on-one against Obama last Tuesday, which consisted largely of complaining that she had to answer questions first and putting the audience to sleep with minutiae about her health-coverage mandate. She has whined (via her aides) like the teacher’s pet in grade school that the boys are ganging up on her when she’s bested by male rivals. She has wept on the campaign trail, even though everyone knows that tears are the last refuge of losers. And she is tellingly dependent on her husband.
She either has a very selective memory or has a far different definition of what ‘names’ constitute.
What is it about us women? Why do we always fall for the hysterical, the superficial and the gooily sentimental? Take a look at the New York Times bestseller list. At the top of the paperback nonfiction chart and pitched to an exclusively female readership is Elizabeth Gilbert’s “Eat, Pray, Love.” Here’s the book’s autobiographical plot: Gilbert gets bored with her perfectly okay husband, so she has an affair behind his back. Then, when that doesn’t pan out, she goes to Italy and gains 23 pounds forking pasta so she has to buy a whole new wardrobe, goes to India to meditate (that’s the snooze part), and finally, at an Indonesian beach, finds fulfillment by — get this — picking up a Latin lover!
This is the kind of literature that countless women soak up like biscotti in a latte cup: food, clothes, sex, “relationships” and gummy, feel-good “spirituality.” This female taste for first-person romantic nuttiness, spiced with a soupçon of soft-core porn, has made for centuries of bestsellers — including Samuel Richardson’s 1740 novel “Pamela,” in which a handsome young lord tries to seduce a virtuous serving maid for hundreds of pages and then proposes, as well as Erica Jong’s 1973 “Fear of Flying.”
The problem we have here is not just women’s selection of books but men’s as well. As a bookseller, I can tell you with a straight face that men’s popular reading is no less idiotic, in the main, than womens. I know of several men personally, one carpenter and the other a retired judge, who love romantic suspense. Yechhh! But its a personal preference, isn’t it? And for ever man that reads Camus, there are ten whose yearly literary output consists of books like Drew Carey’s “Dirty Jokes and Beer.”
Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But generally the book discussion clubs I know of are all exclusively made up of women and their choices of books are quite eclectic. Men, generally, don’t read for enjoyment in America and the sports page doesn’t count.
But the dumbing down of American culture is not merely a sin to be laid at the feet of women. It’s a problem that crosses the sex boundary. But of course, it doesn’t fit in with Ms. Allen’s bashing women mantra. For if she were honest, she’d have to criticize American taste, which, as a conservative, she won’t do. It would be unpatriotic.
I swear no man watches “Grey’s Anatomy” unless his girlfriend forces him to. No man bakes cookies for his dog. No man feels blue and takes off work to spend the day in bed with a copy of “The Friday Night Knitting Club.” No man contracts nebulous diseases whose existence is disputed by many if not all doctors, such as Morgellons (where you feel bugs crawling around under your skin). At least no man I know. Of course, not all women do these things, either — although enough do to make one wonder whether there isn’t some genetic aspect of the female brain, something evolutionarily connected to the fact that we live longer than men or go through childbirth, that turns the pre-frontal cortex into Cream of Wheat.
Well, let’s be honest: no man that she knows, i.e. no real man. Get it? Homophobia between the lines. And that “Cream of Wheat” reference? Not name calling, of course, but right up close.
I wonder what Ms. Allen would think of The Bell Curve?
Oh, she’d probably agree with it (from the article):
The theory that women are the dumber sex — or at least the sex that gets into more car accidents — is amply supported by neurological and standardized-testing evidence. Men’s and women’s brains not only look different, but men’s brains are bigger than women’s (even adjusting for men’s generally bigger body size). The important difference is in the parietal cortex, which is associated with space perception. Visuospatial skills, the capacity to rotate three-dimensional objects in the mind, at which men tend to excel over women, are in turn related to a capacity for abstract thinking and reasoning, the grounding for mathematics, science and philosophy. While the two sexes seem to have the same IQ on average (although even here, at least one recent study gives males a slight edge), there are proportionally more men than women at the extremes of very, very smart and very, very stupid.
It’s clear she has an interesting take on history (from the chat):
New York:”Women aren’t a historically oppressed minority.” Really? So we’ve always had the right to vote, not to be raped and have control over our bodies? Can I have some of whatever wacky antifeminist weed you’re smoking?
Charlotte Allen: Minority? Not when I last counted. And when did women get the vote–1921? 1923? Rape was a capital crime under Roman law. You know–the Romans, 2,000 years ago. As for “control over our bodies,” I guess you mean abortion. Wasn’t Roe vs. Wade decided in 1973?
Oh my, where do we begin here? She can’t even remember the date of the passage of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution. And she was wrong on both of her guesses. How is anyone supposed to take anything she says about feminism seriously?
But later in the chat when called upon it, she reverts to the usual excuse of conservatives: knowing basic facts doesn’t matter:
East Bridgewater, Mass.: You seriously don’t even know what year women got the vote? Who on earth hired you to write about women’s issues?
Charlotte Allen: Why is the exact year germane to anything?
Your credibility, Ms. Allen. But you get a pass from the so-called ‘liberal media’ because you’re a conservative.
And its too bad no one asked her point blank if she would have rather been a man or a woman in America right up until the 1970s.
I am perfectly willing to admit that I myself am a classic case of female mental deficiencies.
This is probably the most in-your-face insult to all women she could have constructed.
And what is the point?
The same goes for female fighter pilots, architects, tax accountants, chemical engineers, Supreme Court justices and brain surgeons. Yes, they can do their jobs and do them well, and I don’t think anyone should put obstacles in their paths. I predict that over the long run, however, even with all the special mentoring and role-modeling the 21st century can provide, the number of women in these fields will always lag behind the number of men, for good reason.
Because they’re innately inferior? Yeah! Cheers! But what should women be doing?
So I don’t understand why more women don’t relax, enjoy the innate abilities most of us possess (as well as the ones fewer of us possess) and revel in the things most important to life at which nearly all of us excel: tenderness toward children and men and the weak and the ability to make a house a home.
I bet Margaret Thatcher made a very fine home in between her busy days as Prime Minister. She would have been a failure in Ms. Allen’s eyes otherwise, no doubt.
Very simply put Charlotte: if you wish to think of yourself as the weaker and dumber sex, that’s your right. As a man, someone like you would not be attractive to me at all because, well, you are, as you so succinctly put it:
Then we could shriek and swoon and gossip and read chick lit to our hearts’ content and not mind the fact that way down deep, we are . . .
kind of dim.
