Are women stupid?

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U2democrat

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I'm still trying to figure out what to make of this.

We Scream, We Swoon. How Dumb Can We Get?

By Charlotte Allen
Sunday, March 2, 2008; B01



Here's Agence France-Presse reporting on a rally for Sen. Barack Obama at the University of Maryland on Feb. 11: "He did not flinch when women screamed as he was in mid-sentence, and even broke off once to answer a female's cry of 'I love you, Obama!' with a reassuring 'I love you back.' " 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?

"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?

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.

We exaggerate, of course. And obviously men do dumb things, too, although my husband has perfectly good explanations for why he eats standing up at the stove (when I'm not around) or pulls down all the blinds so the house looks like a cave (also when I'm not around): It has to do with the aggressive male nature and an instinctive fear of danger from other aggressive men. When men do dumb things, though, they tend to be catastrophically dumb, such as blowing the paycheck on booze or much, much worse (think "postal"). Women's foolishness is usually harmless. But it can be so . . . embarrassing.

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.

Then there's Clinton's nearly all-female staff, chosen for loyalty rather than, say, brains or political savvy. Clinton finally fired her daytime-soap-watching, self-styled "Latina queena" campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle, known for burning through campaign money and for her open contempt for the "white boys" in the Clinton camp. But stupidly, she did it just in time to alienate the Hispanic voters she now desperately needs to win in Texas or Ohio to have any shot at the Democratic nomination.

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 soup¿on 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."

Then there's the chick doctor television show "Grey's Anatomy" (reportedly one of Hillary Clinton's favorites). Want to be a surgeon? Here's what your life will be like at the hospital, according to "Grey's": sex in the linen-supply room, catfights with your sister in front of the patients, sex in the on-call room, a "prom" in the recovery room so you can wear your strapless evening gown to work, and sex with the married attending physician in an office. Oh, and some surgery. When was the last time you were in a hospital and spotted two doctors going at it in an empty bed?

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.

Depressing as it is, several of the supposed misogynist myths about female inferiority have been proven true. Women really are worse drivers than men, for example. A study published in 1998 by the Johns Hopkins schools of medicine and public health revealed that women clocked 5.7 auto accidents per million miles driven, in contrast to men's 5.1, even though men drive about 74 percent more miles a year than women. The only good news was that women tended to take fewer driving risks than men, so their crashes were only a third as likely to be fatal. Those statistics were reinforced by a study released by the University of London in January showing that women and gay men perform more poorly than heterosexual men at tasks involving navigation and spatial awareness, both crucial to good driving.

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.

I am perfectly willing to admit that I myself am a classic case of female mental deficiencies. I can't add 2 and 2 (well, I can, but then what?). I don't even know how many pairs of shoes I own. I have coasted through life and academia on the basis of an 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.) I don't mind recognizing and accepting that the women in history I admire most -- Sappho, Hildegard of Bingen, Elizabeth I, George Eliot, Margaret Thatcher -- were brilliant outliers.

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.

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. (Even I, who inherited my interior-decorating skills from my Bronx Irish paternal grandmother, whose idea of upgrading the living-room sofa was to throw a blanket over it, can make a house a home.) 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.
 
By Charlotte Allen
Sunday, March 2, 2008;

Here's Agence France-Presse reporting on a rally for Sen. Barack Obama at the University of Maryland on Feb. 11: "He did not flinch when women screamed as he was in mid-sentence, and even broke off once to answer a female's cry of 'I love you, Obama!' with a reassuring 'I love you back.' " 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?


anyone that screams they love a candidate :huh:

and there are plenty on men "swooning" for Obama, too.


Stupid is a harsh word

I'll just say some people don't use the best judgment in making decisions.


As for Charlotte Allen, she seems to be an educated sexist person drawing wrong conclusions.




Here is a piece, where she defends sexist remarks
 
Is this the same Charlotte Allen who writes for the Weekly Standard? She sounds vaguely like a Camille Paglia protégée, only far more bitter, far less clever and, frankly, less intelligent as well.

What specifically was it that you didn't know what to make of, U2dem? The piece is enough of a disjointed (and hyperbolic) ramble that I wouldn't even know where to start in on it...
 
yolland said:
Is this the same Charlotte Allen who writes for the Weekly Standard? She sounds vaguely like a Camille Paglia protégée, only far more bitter, far less clever and, frankly, less intelligent as well.

What specifically was it that you didn't know what to make of, U2dem? The piece is enough of a disjointed (and hyperbolic) ramble that I wouldn't even know where to start in on it.

That's what I mean...I don't even know where to begin.
 
At first I thought it was one of those "I'm a woman but I'm smart and special, not like all the rest of those dumb, hormonal females" type of rants, but then she included herself in the "women are dim" equation. Whatever. The only thing I can make out of it is that it's a good piece of proof that some women can indeed be sexist against their own gender.
 
Bono's shades said:
At first I thought it was one of those "I'm a woman but I'm smart and special, not like all the rest of those dumb, hormonal females" type of rants, but then she included herself in the "women are dim" equation. Whatever. The only thing I can make out of it is that it's a good piece of proof that some women can indeed be sexist against their own gender.


We should not judge her too quickly, I am trying to find a picture of her.

She could be cool, the kind of gal you would get two six-packs and invite over for an evening. :shrug:


kidding
 
deep said:
She could be cool, the kind of gal you would get two six-packs and invite over for an evening. :shrug:


I better send a cab
to pick her up
one for
irvine, too



Women really are worse drivers than men, for example. A study published in 1998 by the Johns Hopkins schools of medicine and public health revealed that women clocked 5.7 auto accidents per million miles driven, in contrast to men's 5.1, even though men drive about 74 percent more miles a year than women. The only good news was that women tended to take fewer driving risks than men, so their crashes were only a third as likely to be fatal. Those statistics were reinforced by a study released by the University of London in January showing that women and gay men perform more poorly than heterosexual men at tasks involving navigation and spatial awareness, both crucial to good driving.
 
The article made for a good laugh. Although an interesting discussion could be had regarding actual and perceived differences between the sexes as well as social biases and the significance of each, this article is too inane to even be a starting point.
 
deep said:



We should not judge her too quickly, I am trying to find a picture of her.

She could be cool, the kind of gal you would get two six-packs and invite over for an evening. :shrug:


kidding

Fight sexism with sexism.

Nice! :wink:
 
She's a Republican journalist. To think that the Republican Party introduced and supported the Equal Rights Amendment from 1940's to 1980. The party was also pro-choice up until Reagan. The the crazies took over the GOP. She is one of them.
 
I don't know, I know plenty of socially conservative Republican women and I can't think of any who talk remotely like that (although I do think she was deliberately going over the top for much of it, which is part of what struck me as Paglia-esque about it).
 
Now that I've had time to recover from initial "What the bleep was THAT?" reaction, I'm wondering how this got into the Washington Post. If it were loony ramblings on someone's blog, I'd just roll my eyes at it, but the Washington Post is supposed to have some standards. Would they print a column asking the question "Are black people stupid?"
 
Charlotte Allen is at the helm of the majorly misnomered anti-feminist organization Independent Women's Forum (IWF). The IWF uses the language of empowerment to basically tell women, "Get back in the kitchen, bitch, and make me a sandwich." Except for women like Charlotte Allen because she's such a "speshul weshul snowflake." She is in the same vein as Phyllis Schlafly, Dr. Laura and Ann Coulter.

And if this is supposed to be satire, Ms. Allen has done a piss poor job of it. She's no Jonathan Swift. The late Katharine Graham must be rolling in her grave.

Oh, and did someone want to see a picture of Ms. Allen? Here it is:http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/site_imagery/charlotte_allen_140x140.jpg
 
U2isthebest said:
So for the men,

Gloria Steinem circa 1970 or Charlotte Allen

Take your time, fellas.

Gloria Steinem is in her mid-seventies and still looks good:
http://www.observer.com/files/imagecache/article/files/Hirshman-Gloria Steinem1V.jpg

As for younger feminists, we have:
Susan Faludi
http://img.timeinc.net/time/daily/2007/0710/susan_faludi_1015.jpg

Naomi Wolf
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2006/03/11/books/wolf-naomi184.jpg

Jessica Valenti
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/site_imagery/jessica_valenti_140x140.jpg

Amy Richards
http://www.inthesetimes.com/images/29/10/richards.jpg

Jennifer Baumgardner
http://www.timeout.com/newyork/export_images/598/598.x231.ft.jennifer.jpg

Amanda Marcotte
http://media.newsbusters.org/media/2007-02-19Marcotte.jpg

Hmm, not exactly a parade of ugly.
 
Because I am a team player

I'll take em all

you can even arrange the order.

but, of course for that to happen
women would have to be stupid
 
politico.com


March 03, 2008
Read More: Washington Post

Wash Post editor says controversial piece was 'tongue-in-cheek'

On the front of Sunday’s Outlook section, in the Washington Post, two articles were placed under the banner, “Women vs. Women.”

It’s the second piece, titled "We Scream, We Swoon. How Dumb Can We Get?” by Charlotte Allen that immediately fired up the blogosphere, and prompted Media Matters to get involved.

“If it insulted people, that was not the intent,” Outlook editor John Pomfret told me this morning, calling the piece “tongue-in-cheek.”

Pomfret said that Allen pitched the idea to him as a riff on women fainting at Obama rallies, and similarities with the Beatles.

Allen wrote:

"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."



“She wanted to make fun of this issue,” Pomfret said. “A lot of people have taken it very seriously.”

But Allen didn't stop there. She continued on with countless stereotypes about how women are supposedly inferior to men. We're talking smaller brains, loving Grey's Anatomy, and being bad at math and driving. Ugh.

And those are just a few things that set off bloggers on the left and right.

Feministing:

“Professional anti-feminists make too much bank to ever stop writing sexist drivel. The Washington Post, however—who claims to be so concerned about how to appeal to women that it convened a task force on the subject—should know better."

Hot Air:

“Rarely have I read a newspaper column that shocks me for its sheer breadth of nonsense, but today’s effort by Charlotte Allen in the Washington Post provides one of those I-can’t-believe-she-wrote-that moments."

And Media Matters jumped on the piece, too.

Pomfret said that being an opinion article, he’s not surprised readers reacted to it strongly. But added: “Perhaps it wasn’t packaged well enough to make it clear that it was tongue-in-cheek.”

Even if intended as a joke, the Allen piece clearly isn't the best way for the Post to achieve its goal of bringing in more women readers, and it remains to be seen if the fallout continues today.

“It’s not the first time in opinion journalism that something has fallen flat,” Pomfret said.

UPDATE: There were so many responses to the WaPo piece, and I just noted a couple early critical ones. Also worth checking out: Jezebel, Glamocracy, and Eat the Press (which has links to several more).
 
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