A Good Woman is Hard to Find (and getting harder)

February 6, 2003 10:21 AM

"Feminism" isn't the problem, it's Woman's Super Ego that's the problem. "...there comes a time in every relationship when a woman has to be tender and empathetic. If she can't or won't do that, it doesn't matter if she has the face of Helen of Troy with George Eliot's mind."
posted by vito90 (55 comments total)

I'm not sure but I think I might hate this article.
posted by mcsweetie at 10:36 AM on February 6, 2003

I read it, and I don't understand a word of it.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 10:37 AM on February 6, 2003

Oh, now I know why I don't understand it.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 10:39 AM on February 6, 2003

Uh, doesn't there come a time in every relationship when a man has to be tender and empathetic, too? Aren't tenderness and empathy pretty much prereqs for anyone in a relationship, regardless of the gender of anyone in the diad?
posted by arielmeadow at 10:40 AM on February 6, 2003

For the full experience of how condescending and insulting to women this essay is, I mentally did gender reversals while I read it.

Sigh... where to start...

"...there comes a time in every relationship when a woman has to be tender and empathetic. If she cant or wont do that, it doesn't matter if she has the face of Helen of Troy with George Eliot’s mind."

I'd say that about men too. With a substitution of the ideal beauty and ideal mentality personaes.

Thus, feminism is not completely to blame for cold, unloving women.

Isn't that a generous allowance.

How about mine: Feminism is not at all to blame for cold unloving women. Nor for cold, unloving men. People who are angry and damaged tend to take ideas to extremes sometimes. Don't blame the ideas.

Venomous, bitchy personalities are certainly not confined to feminists.

Why say this? Nasty personalities aren't confined to any category of the human race.

Hopefully, with a principled, sympathetic debate, some career women will learn to understand the limits of workplace personae.

Only some, huh? Guess it's too bad for the rest of us, who will never learn. What about men? Do they learn to understand workplace limits without debate, sympathetic or otherwise?

But I close asking a compelling question: can a society that discourages femininity manage to get enough people to form stable marriages to maintain basic social order?

Find me a society that discourages femininity and maybe we can discuss that about IT.
posted by orange swan at 10:46 AM on February 6, 2003

Camille Paglia wrote in Sexual Personae “Men’s egotism, so disgusting in the untalented, is responsible for their greatness as a sex.”

Camille Paglia has also said, "Men know they are sexual exiles. They wander the earth seeking satisfaction, craving and despising, never content. There is nothing in that anguished motion for women to envy.

With a bag full of buzzwords, they'll dance to anything.
posted by four panels at 10:48 AM on February 6, 2003

I am little surprised people are bothering to take on his "points", he clearly just got rejected by some girl and is so much of a tool he's extrapolated it into some kind of societal problem.

More importantly, this guy is hilarious!

I love the irony of this guy blaming women's "ego", brimming as he is with defensive egotism and overly florid and high concept reasons for why he got cheated on/dumped/ignored. Good luck with those "oriental" women, buddy.
posted by malphigian at 10:53 AM on February 6, 2003

I have a beautiful sister who dresses carefully to impress and is always a knock out. She’s charming and personable, and guys always like her. However, when seeing a pregnant woman walking through a parking lot, she once exclaimed “That’s disgusting!” Neither of these women buy the patriarchy line, but both are contemptuous of marriage and motherhood. Are these women feminists?

Actually, no, I wouldn't call her a feminist. Feminism is about correcting the barriers that women specifically face in their attempts to lead fulfilling lives. I'd say your sister is more the asshole type and/or is projecting some kind of internal conflict onto other people.

malphigian - the author of this piece is a woman. However, your "just got rejected by a girl" theory is not necessarily wrong.
posted by orange swan at 10:56 AM on February 6, 2003

It seems a little vague exactly what she's trying to say, but in essence it comes down to this phenomenon of a lot of late 20's / early 30's single people, especially single women, who suddenly realize they might really like to have a family after all, and that time really is limited for them to do so. The teens and twenties in our culture have been turned primarily towards achievement, in school and in work, and our love lives are about entertainment rather than our futures.

But as one of the commenters says following the article, many people come to see that the "bourgeois" lifestyle is what they wanted all along - all their grand ideas and alternative lifestyling in college and afterward was a 'phase' (see "hasbians") after all... Problem tends to be that we have really high expectations in a mate - someone emotionally & sexually compatible who is also your best friend and inspiration in all things etc etc. Maybe we expect too much from one person. WOmen especially tend not to want to marry someone less intelligent or successful than they are. Men perhaps in general will be more likely not to want to marry someone less attractive than they are - ? is that fair / accurate? I know they're only generalizations.

Anyway, she seems to blame feminism for the lack of fulfillment in this area. It could be true that modern women don't need to marry for stability and so put it off in hopes of marrying for "true love" whatever that may be, and then in their thirties realize they won't have kids if they don't choose someone, and so settle down with some fat bald banker who's sweet and pays his taxes... and live happily ever after, or as much so as the story would have gone at any point in time. We're just more aware of our options these days, and that can be difficult and even painful because we have to choose not to do so much in order to do anything at all.
posted by mdn at 10:58 AM on February 6, 2003

all I have to say is, if you're still mad about feminism, political correctness, and communism in 2003, then you need a large cup of coffee and Toby Keith's boot in your ass.
posted by mcsweetie at 11:02 AM on February 6, 2003

Orange Swan: Not necessarily, but probably wrong. In any case, it certainly is brimming with bitterness in a way that makes it sound less like an intellectual point and more like axe grinding.
posted by malphigian at 11:02 AM on February 6, 2003

Hey! Is this biochem student the same one who's sueing the anti-creationist prof? Now, that'd be funny!
posted by DenOfSizer at 11:04 AM on February 6, 2003

In my experience, women are much more willing to tolerate egotism in men than men are in women.

Perhaps the only remotely insightful statement in the whole article, although even that is an overgeneralization. I would love to hear more about the "bizarre conspiracy theories" that he attributes to feminism, though. That sure bolstered his credibility right off the bat.
posted by boltman at 11:06 AM on February 6, 2003

Bang on mdn....

It's true about the very high expectations and the overwhelming options. It affects men as well as women, just maybe takes more of a toll on women because our reproduction window is waaaaaaaay smaller. But I do think feminism has little to do with it - maybe opened up options and raised expectations for women, a double-edged sword perhaps, but still one I'm glad got wielded.

Men know they are sexual exiles. They wander the earth seeking satisfaction, craving and despising, never content. There is nothing in that anguished motion for women to envy.

WHY would Paglia think women don't "wander the earth seeking satisfaction, craving and despising, never content"? Sounds like a pretty human condition to me.
posted by orange swan at 11:10 AM on February 6, 2003

Baseless and pointless article, obviously written without any outline in mind, let alone articulated. Lots of buzzwords and catch phrases; the author should write for the mags you see in line at the check-out counter.
posted by zekinskia at 11:12 AM on February 6, 2003

It's tough to find a smart, successful tender woman, particularly in the United States, where tenderness and weakness are often confused; and a highly capitalist culture doesn't encourage tenderness (see Erich Fromm's book the Art of Loving. My complaints in this area took me to France, as it has a large number of other Americans. Whatever their other flaws, French women seem to be more successful at pulling off being feminine and yet smart and assertive. Perhaps that's because their whole culture, including the men seem more feminine, so that the result is more balanced.
posted by ParisParamus at 11:18 AM on February 6, 2003

http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2003/01/flanagan.htm
posted by Postroad at 11:30 AM on February 6, 2003

postroad's article is far more provocative and insightful than the FPP. I highly recommend it.
posted by boltman at 11:38 AM on February 6, 2003

What is truly amazing about this link is the sympathetic reading he's gotten from the commenters below his piece, both male and female.

Yikes!. . what kind of site IS that?
posted by Danf at 11:41 AM on February 6, 2003

being feminine and yet smart and assertive

what is feminine? One of the comments after the piece said something about how we don't respect masculinity and femininity enough anymore, and I also wanted to ask him exactly what that meant...

I'm still somewhere in the middle with all this. I'm not sure the bourgeois lifestyle would make me happy at all, but the alt. one can start to get alienating and lonely. Lots of people talk about wanting a community but it seems just really difficult on a practical level to encompass friends from various areas of interest into one group - i have my book group friends, my poker friends, my martial arts friends, my school friends, my theatre friends, even my online friends - and so hardly develop the level of intimacy with any group to really feel I'm part of a community. If I didn't show up to any of those things for a while, I expect people would notice, but it wouldn't impact their lives significantly. And we like to think we're impacting people's lives... Family would notice; that's why so many people want their own families. You become important that way.
posted by mdn at 11:43 AM on February 6, 2003

Here's what Fred has to say.
posted by Witty at 11:54 AM on February 6, 2003

I don't quite get the physical appeal of Asian women, but that's a pretty good ballpark estimate of reality.
posted by ParisParamus at 12:01 PM on February 6, 2003

"At this point I think that bourgeois normality is most people's best shot for reaching retirement age with the fewest regrets. "

Huh. Now that's actually something to talk about...
posted by ubi at 12:02 PM on February 6, 2003

What's somewhat interesting is that, at least for me the appeal of non-American women started to wane as soon as I became seriously interested in getting married. But the "local candidates" which began appealing to me were always American women who had traveled outside the country quite a bit. Perhaps the best place to meet an American who escapes the rule is away from America.
posted by ParisParamus at 12:04 PM on February 6, 2003

Yes, mdn, the whole masculinity/femininity concept is problematic to say the least. Who's to say that any specific behaviour belongs on either category?

I find that people who use those terms, the ones who argue that "we" aren't being masculine or feminine enough, always have some axe to grind. Like a former friend who was always in some terrible relationship or other, who at 40 had no savings and a job she hated, and who whined a LOT about how men weren't masculine anymore, how they didn't realize it was thier job to take care of her.

My response this is that I concentrate on being adult and on behaving decently and responsibly in general and not limit myself to this artificial and meaningless construct of masclinity and feminity.
posted by orange swan at 12:07 PM on February 6, 2003

Oooh, I'm getting that Dave Sim feeling...
posted by inpHilltr8r at 12:07 PM on February 6, 2003

Time passes; menopause approaches; and you begin to wonder whether choosing to emulate an immortal costumed superhero was really the best move.
posted by 314/ at 12:09 PM on February 6, 2003

Goodness, he was an undergrad at UW the same time as me. I wonder if I know him. My guess is I would have remembered a snot such as him.
posted by rocketman at 12:10 PM on February 6, 2003

Her. She.
Sorry. Gotta get that gender thing right.
posted by rocketman at 12:14 PM on February 6, 2003

>"...there comes a time in every relationship when a woman has to be tender and empathetic. If she cant or wont do that, it doesn't matter if she has the face of Helen of Troy with George Eliot’s mind."

I'd say that about men too. With a substitution of the ideal beauty and ideal mentality personaes.

orangeswan: I came into the forum wanting to make the same comment. It's clear that if you can't be tender and empathetic, be ye male or female, at some point, the relationship will cease to be fulfilling to a normal human being, and I knew that the fact that our friend directed the comment specifically at women was bound to raise an eyebrow.

Still... sometimes I wonder. As a cultural generalization, many women seem to have become wary of getting suckered by a nurturing role and empathy and intimacy and all that, simultaneous to having more men opening up to those possibilities. Meanwhile, the fact remains that marriage (or just about any committed relationship, including friendships or whatever), requires you to fulfill such roles.

Most of the time, even while I think about this, though, I just try to realize that I don't deal with "women" -- you never experience the whole abstraction at once, which is why the generalizations are only marginally useful (and a lot of baggage). I encounter an individual person, different in a dozen ways from the stereotype and maybe the same in a few, human ways.

And perhaps different tomorrow than today, too. Five years ago, the idea of becoming a father was highly foreign to me. It's still foreign, but in the last year, I've thought about buying land and adopting. A woman to whom motherhood is anathema, who lives out of a suitcase for six months while working for Arthur Anderson in Germany, who equates marriage with teaching piano lessons from her basement as far as career goes, might change her mind years later and want nothing more than to start a family with you.

And we like to think we're impacting people's lives... Family would notice; that's why so many people want their own families. You become important that way.

mdn, that's a great observation. I don't think that family is the only way to do it, but living with someone, sharing finances, sickness, health, sex, and decades of experience seems likely to produce a sense of significance -- or raising someone from birth. Or being siblings -- some of my best friends are my siblings.

But I think how else you establish close relationships is a good question to ask, and I think while family is an extremely worthwhile endeavor, I have my doubts that I'd be content with only that set of relationships being the close ones.
posted by namespan at 12:15 PM on February 6, 2003

all I have to say is, if you're still mad about feminism, political correctness, and communism in 2003, then you need a large cup of coffee and Toby Keith's boot in your ass.

And if in 2003, you still think that those three things were nothing but fountains of wonderfulness with no regrettable by-products, then perhaps you need a large Mountain Dew Code Red and KD Lang's cruelty-free pleather shitkickers in your ass. Just sayin'.
posted by jonmc at 12:16 PM on February 6, 2003

He blew any hope of credibility by quoting Camille Paglia.
posted by archimago at 1:01 PM on February 6, 2003

she
posted by archimago at 1:01 PM on February 6, 2003

about as accurate as a gender studies major writing a paper about Y chromosome defects. Everything i know about women i learned from Friends. I'm just saying, he is on a soapbox that he didn't earn.

Me, i think feminism is the belief that 1-there is a hierarchy of power that is based upon Sex and 2-that is wrong. Real simple. Society and its expectations and its constructed gender roles [gender and sex are different, and culturally defined] are a different ballpark.

anyways...dig around in that site. his mentor: iSteve,
writes for: Vdare, which is an outgrowth of The Center for American Unity....lots of "American Unity" groups appear on tolerance.org's hate group list.

Another group that links to the CFAU is The Eagle Forum.

Interesting use of social Darwinism pseudo science, mixed with pro-life, pro-English Only anti-immigration diatribes.

Draw your own conclusions from there. mislabeling of Feminism is the tip of the iceberg.
posted by th3ph17 at 1:03 PM on February 6, 2003

SHE SHE SHE.... this article was written by a Woman.
posted by Bonzai at 1:06 PM on February 6, 2003

why asian women? if they want stepford wives, asia isn't the answer, those blushing, bowing, foot-bound geisha types will soon be relics as females across asia get more and more politicized and western every year.

alas, i don't think these anti-feminist males are serious or they would not be making the mistake of bypassing the major geographic area that's home to the most feminine, non-ball-busting women in the wide world: the middle east.
you want brides who are easy to manage and will worship the ground under you, brother, try Wahabbi Muslims. underneath those veils are sweet, loving, attentive creatures who only have eyes and ears for their men. not a peep out of these lovlies. best of all, they never heard of gloria steinem or the equal rights amendment and they never ever will
posted by jellybuzz at 1:46 PM on February 6, 2003

she she she. arg. right.
posted by th3ph17 at 2:13 PM on February 6, 2003

It is really amazing how many people have assumed this was written by a man. I'm sure that says something, I'm just not sure what.
posted by vito90 at 2:30 PM on February 6, 2003

96% of the people who have made negative comments here have confused the gender/motive/identity of the author and invested this piece with opinions that are not expressed by it.

Take a deep breath, read the article from the Atlantic, and try to be a little more open-minded. The answers are never as simple as you think they are.
posted by dgaicun at 2:35 PM on February 6, 2003

How many Europeans are importing American brides. Hell, what country in the world is takeing American women away? Maybe France and Canada. Yet, American men are importing wives from all over the world. Why is that?
posted by stbalbach at 3:31 PM on February 6, 2003

regardless of the gender of anyone in the diad?


Pardon my ignorance, but what is a diad?

Here's what m-w responded with (I assumed it to be English):

Suggestions for diad:
1. died
2. did
3. dyad
4. diode
5. dyed
6. Dias
7. dido
8. Diaz
9. Dido
10. dial
11. diag
12. dyads
13. dryad
14. diodes

No thread jacking intended, just a question from the periphery. Carry on.
posted by yoga at 3:47 PM on February 6, 2003

It is really amazing how many people have assumed this was written by a man. I'm sure that says something, I'm just not sure what.

that she lacks tenderness and empathy...?
posted by t r a c y at 3:58 PM on February 6, 2003

yoga, a 'diad' would be a twosome, like a 'triad' is a group of three, etc., etc.
posted by dgaicun at 4:31 PM on February 6, 2003

Take a deep breath, read the article from the Atlantic, and try to be a little more open-minded.

I've read the article in the Atlantic. Caitlin Flanagan is a fine writer who can be very funny. Which is why it's all the more unfortunate that she's bought into the whole frigid-ball-busting-career-women thing. In fact, I stopped subscribing to the Atlantic because of its underrepresentation of women. A typical issue would be a 10,000-word report by William Langewiesche; serious think pieces by James Fallows, Michael Kelly and P.J. O'Rourke; and Caitlin Flanagan tsk-tsking about how women just don't keep house like they should anymore.
posted by transona5 at 6:48 PM on February 6, 2003

I don't quite get the physical appeal of Asian women. . .

That is a true shame.
posted by The Jesse Helms at 8:51 PM on February 6, 2003

dgaicun - true except its spelled "dyad"
posted by euphrosyne at 9:48 PM on February 6, 2003

It is really amazing how many people have assumed this was written by a man

I saw "Gene Expression" at the top of the page, and assumed without really thinking about it was a blog by a guy named Gene. It really didn't go any deeper than that. honest.
posted by boltman at 11:50 PM on February 6, 2003

American men are importing wives from all over the world. Why is that?

American women are picky?
posted by Summer at 3:08 AM on February 7, 2003

Society and its expectations and its constructed gender roles [gender and sex are different, and culturally defined] are a different ballpark.

Well, this is where the problem stems for me. I accept the fact that gender and sex are different. Either sex can make a good astronaut, lawyer, doctor, etc. But there are certain aspects of our character that come from our sex that cannot be ignored, and that have historically influenced the concept of gender "roles". Men are generally physically stronger. Women bear children. Then there are the studies (and pseudo-studies) that show inherit differences in the brains of men and women, suggesting perhaps that men are better are spatial problem solving and women are better at response (non-spatial) problem solving.

Most (good) studies also say that the influence of culture can and will far outweigh the genetic differences; a man raised with a poor education will still have a harder time with spatial problem solving than a woman who has a good education. I would suggest that what we have here is a crisis of culture -- that is, society has come up with ways of compensating for whatever sex-bias that is inherit in either, and thus our traditional concept of gender is outdated. It has probably been outdated for centuries, but historically male dominated societies have kept women in check through force or law, until the last century.

There is one glaring exception to this, however, and a hurdle that nobody seems to have figured out how to deal with: child bearing. This is not a trivial detail -- our species relies on certain gender roles for this reason alone. If a woman wishes to have the best chance for carrying a child to birth, she would do best to avoid the dangers of the hunt, (so to speak). If a man wants his offspring (and genetic information) to survive, he must provide for the mother and fight off contenders. Society has helped to eliminate these "roles" -- women can work while pregnant in non life-threatening situations, companies can provide maternity leave, and (ideally) enough money can be earned in today's workplace to reduce or eliminate the need for a spouse entirely.

And yet, even in advanced countries where the utility of a man boils down to his sperm, some women and men still fall back into these traditional roles. Why is that? Is it because the influence of the "male patriarchal" society is so strong? Or perhaps (my own opinion) it's because it feels right -- that is, we accept our sex-influenced limitations and benefits and are happy with the idea of having someone else there to "complete" and reinforce us.

And this, I would suggest, is why American women are seen the way they are. The problem isn't with the women in our culture, it exists with our men, too. The problem is our inability to accept that we are not complete when we are alone. We need help. We are not islands to ourselves, completely self-sufficient and disregarding of anyone else. Yet this is what American culture teaches us. Got a problem? Do it yourself! Need help? You're weak. America does it it's own way, no compromising.

This is the problem.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 7:36 AM on February 7, 2003

Civil_Disobedient: The U.S. doesn't know what to do with loners and genuine introverts. It's a society with a bias for (often loud) extroversion, no matter how lone-wolfish its foreign policy may be. Honestly. There are more than a few people in the U.S. who don't have the first clue as to how to live alone for more than a day. And you don't need anyone to "complete" you, regardless, even if you do need the assistance of others. No one has to get married or even have a live-in, blah blah.

You're not totally off, though. It's just more paradoxical than you guess - (often loud and intrusive) extroversion mixed, at its worst, with a "my way or the highway" thing. God forbid that any real introspection or self-awareness should happen along the way.
posted by raysmj at 8:27 AM on February 7, 2003

Men are generally physically stronger. Women bear children.

Somehow I think you disproved your first point...
posted by dagnyscott at 11:24 AM on February 7, 2003

raysmj: The U.S. is an introvert's wet dream. We've devised systems that allow you to potentially never interact with other people. You can work from home, have food delivered, do your taxes and pay your bills online, etc. But you're right about how our culture tends to hype extroverts (particularly through the media). As for needing someone to "complete" you: my thought was that there are certain characteristics that are stronger in one sex than the other, and coupling has the benefit of combining these strengths.

dadnyscott: I don't think so. Men are generally stronger. By stronger I mean, can lift more weight, run faster, and exert themselves longer (insert obvious joke here) than women.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 12:24 PM on February 7, 2003

Forget "masculinity" and "feminity", whatever those words are supposed to mean; we are simply living through the first time in history when it is no longer mandatory for women to get married and have children, and it's going to take a while for the fallout to fall out. I take this article about a seriously as I take this one, previously published on the site, which is full of incoherent nonsense about the "Germanic International" and something called the "Anglosphere". Sample paragraph:

The Kaiserreich should have logically been the precursor to the constitutional monarchies that seem so natural to the north and in west. But it collapsed under the weight of its own grandiose militarism and hubris. The Third Reich that followed in the wake of the Weimar failure went even further along the lines of autocracy. The National Socialist experiment was the elaboration of a particular strain of Germanic thinking- militaristic, expansionist and tribal. But it ignored other aspects of the Germanic soul, the inward looking individualist who tends his own hearth and home and has a preoccupation with Heimat and is dominated by loyalties to family, village and locality before any abstract conception of race, folk or monarchy.
posted by jokeefe at 1:36 PM on February 7, 2003

...and something called the "Anglosphere".

I take it your not familiar with the writing of James Bennett?

Honestly jokeefe, I'm not certain what it is about that paragraph you quoted that's supposed to be so glaringly ridiculous. The essay is pretty solid (It also is completely unrelated to the post under discussion, and written by a different author, one who, I might add, is seen expressing very different ideas about the conclusions of this FP post, somewhat like you did, under the very same link). Seems to me you're trying to prove something, but I'm just not sure what.
posted by dgaicun at 5:44 PM on February 7, 2003

dgaicun: Yes, the essay is not specifically related to the one under discussion (Feminism and Femininity) but was posted on the same site a few days ago; as the site itself appears to have a coherent political philosophy, it seemed relevant enough as an example of the kind of thinking supported there. And, as I noted, it's a random paragraph, but seems to me to show some of the flaws of the text from which it is drawn: the use within the argument of such ill defined and meaningless concepts as the "Germanic soul", the attempt to reductively classify cultural characteristics (if, indeed, such things even exist) as individual ones ("the inward looking individualist who tends his own hearth"; note the uninclusive use of the masculine pronoun), and, finally, the characterization of the "Third Reich" as an "experiment". I'd say it was rather more than that... the article is long, but continues in just such a way. (And who refers with any seriousness to the Nazi regime as the Third Reich, I have to wonder.)

No, I have never heard of James Bennett, but I have just read through the paper you linked to, and I wouldn't even know where to start. He defines the "Anglosphere" in this way:

To be part of the Anglosphere requires adherence to the fundamental customs and values that form the core of English-speaking cultures. These include individualism, rule of law, honoring contracts and covenants, and the elevation of freedom to the first rank of political and cultural values. Nations comprising the Anglosphere share a common historical narrative in which the Magna Carta, the English and American Bills of Rights, and such Common Law principles as trial by jury, presumption of innocence, "a man's home is his castle", and "a man's word is his bond" are taken for granted. Thus persons or communities who happen to communicate or do business in English are not necessarily part of the Anglosphere, unless their cultural values have also been shaped by those values of the historical English-speaking civilization.

This kind of rhetoric would not be out of place in the political thinking generated at the height of British Empire... The Feminism and Femininity article was the kind of thing that I find familiar enough, but the ideological slant of the other articles on this site were a bit of an eye opener for me--libertarian, profoundly racially conscious, refusing to acknowledge the history of colonialism, obsessed with genetic difference. That said, I don't mean to derail; mostly I'm still working out just what these people stand for.
posted by jokeefe at 7:17 PM on February 7, 2003