does this woman make my gender look stupid?

March 1, 2008 10:29 PM

"... 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." In a column in this Sunday's Washington Post, Charlotte Allen writes about the female "Obamamaniac" contingent. And some other things.
posted by Vic Morrow's Personal Vietnam (28 comments total)

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.

I'm going to be really disappointed if I click on that link and it's not about sex.
posted by Kadin2048 at 10:34 PM on March 1, 2008

I like the part where she says inflammatory things to get a rise out of people.
posted by Partial Law at 10:40 PM on March 1, 2008 [4 favorites]

All that's missing is a paragraph about how women's basketball is totally boring.
posted by shadow vector at 10:41 PM on March 1, 2008

I don't understand why more women don't relax

She forgot "lie back and think of England"

Oh, wrong article.
posted by amyms at 10:51 PM on March 1, 2008

All that's missing is a paragraph about how women's basketball is totally boring.

They made fun of our women's basketball team!? ...Did you explain to them how our good fundamentals make up for our inability to dunk?
posted by Vic Morrow's Personal Vietnam at 10:52 PM on March 1, 2008 [1 favorite]

You get the feeling they were sitting around the break room saying things like "I don't get it, what does the internet have that we don't? Oh wait, trolls! Trolls must be what make the internet popular!"
posted by tkolar at 10:55 PM on March 1, 2008 [3 favorites]

P.S. The article is incredibly patronizing, but it's written by a woman, so i guess it's "matronizing?"... I'm a Hillary supporter, but I'm very impressed with Barack Obama, and I follow his news coverage avidly. I don't see the goo-goo-eyed fanatics being any more of a presence than the normal people.
posted by amyms at 10:55 PM on March 1, 2008

does this woman make my gender look stupid?

Uh, your profile says you're male, so no?
posted by nicwolff at 10:56 PM on March 1, 2008

Erma Bombeck has risen from the grave.
posted by fleetmouse at 11:09 PM on March 1, 2008

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).

I thought that was caused by anti-depressant use. We had a thread about this.

excellent memory and superior verbal skills, two areas where, researchers agree, women consistently outpace men (An evolutionary just-so story explains this facility of ours: Back in hunter-gatherer days, men were the hunters and needed to calculate spear trajectories, while women were the gatherers and needed to remember where the berries were.)

Oooh, she even throws in some evolutionary psychology. She's really going all out on the sexist crackpot scale. You've got your pointless anecdotes, now evolutionary psychology. Now all she needs is... Hmm, I think that's all there is too it.
posted by delmoi at 11:13 PM on March 1, 2008 [1 favorite]

"the stupid sex, our brains permanently occluded by random emotions, psychosomatic flailings and distraction by the superficial."

Pay witness to the spectacle of the last flailing death throes of the "feminists" for Hillary, as they insult their own gender's intelligence and eat themselves...
posted by markkraft at 11:14 PM on March 1, 2008

> All that's missing is a paragraph about how women's basketball is totally boring.

You're kidding! Bounce factor and all?
posted by jfuller at 11:15 PM on March 1, 2008

Reading this made me want to drown kittens.
But that's how "we women" "get" when we choose a wrong candidate, right? Nothing ever gets done and everyone spends the day talking about Botox, as some sage once said.
posted by maryh at 11:19 PM on March 1, 2008

You're kidding! Bounce factor and all?

I've noticed that really athletic girls don't have too much bounce.
posted by delmoi at 11:22 PM on March 1, 2008

Oh, I get it now. She's one of those writers conservatives like to think of as reasonable liberals. The kind of liberals who write stuff like this.
posted by maryh at 11:45 PM on March 1, 2008

"Women screamed? What was this, the Beatles tour of 1964? And when they weren't screaming, the fair-sex Obama fans who dominated the rally of 16,000 were saying things like: "Every time I hear him speak, I become more hopeful." Huh?"

Why pick on the women? Why not Chinese, Blacks, and Latinos too?! Maybe she should consider trying to show how they're also stupid, but "special" in their own unique way?

Perhaps we should vote for Hillary because she's blonde and has an Aryan forehead too?
posted by markkraft at 11:49 PM on March 1, 2008

Independent Women's Forum "Scholar"
posted by empath at 1:02 AM on March 2, 2008

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.

KILL IT WITH LAUDANUM
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 1:09 AM on March 2, 2008 [5 favorites]

Hey Vic, why did you post this trash? Is it just a 'how fucked is this writing amirite?' moment that you thought you MUST share?? I hope you feel validated.
posted by peacay at 1:24 AM on March 2, 2008 [1 favorite]

...

I tried forumlating a response but I couldn't type anything coherently, all that is left is me slamming my head against my desk repeatdly.
posted by liquorice at 2:00 AM on March 2, 2008

3-6 damage, liquorice. Unless you're not playing forumwarz.
posted by imperium at 2:09 AM on March 2, 2008 [1 favorite]

If it's an Ikea desk it's only 1-4, with the pyramid die.
posted by Flashman at 2:22 AM on March 2, 2008

Wow, what a bizarre piece of self-flagellation.

At least Obama's supporters aren't asking him to pose in the nude.
posted by Coaticass at 2:47 AM on March 2, 2008

Let me see if I can follow the rhetorical progression of this article here:

1) Some women, somewhere, are doing something the author does not approve of.

2) The author claims this means that all women are stupid.

3) The author supports her thesis with dubious studies she does not understand, to the extent that she actually cites results that undercut her own points (e.g., according to a study she cites, women have slightly more minor traffic accidents and a massively lower amount of fatal traffic accidents -- about 60% fewer per passenger mile and an amazing 81% fewer as a measure of total traffic fatalities -- which she claims proves that women are poorer drivers) ...

4) Thus proving she is stupid.

5) See?

I do not think she has proven what she thinks she has proven. She has amply demonstrated point 4, but not point 2.
posted by kyrademon at 3:07 AM on March 2, 2008 [2 favorites]

(It also seems like the author is someone who assumed that "How To Suppress Women's Writing" was a how-to book.)
posted by kyrademon at 3:30 AM on March 2, 2008

If they call it "Obamamania" then they can dismiss it as irrational, and a fad. God forbid that people recognize that a real leader knows how to use words...it's almost the definition of leadership.
posted by idb at 6:13 AM on March 2, 2008

I AM WEEPING IN MY MORNING COFFEE
posted by miss tea at 6:36 AM on March 2, 2008

Her use of that 1998 Johns Hopkins study as proof that "women really are worse drivers than men" is misleading. The actual results of the study found that males under 20 get in 20% more crashes than females, males and females 20-35 get in equal numbers of crashes, and females over 35 get in more crashes than men over 35.

Not quite the simple result she says it is.
posted by mediareport at 6:37 AM on March 2, 2008