Monday, March 10, 2008

nothing says monday morning like a little sexism with your coffee

hey guys, it was nice to meet you all last night! it's so great to get conversation going, how i've missed intellectual interactions!

so i had mentioned that horribly sexist article in the washington post where the author, charlotte allen, falls into some god-awful sexist language in her article we scream, we swoon. how dumb can we get? here's just a little taste:

"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."
for more of her awesome insights, check out the whole article. like i said, the feminist "blogosphere" erupted with quite the furor--thank god people were appalled like me. the always fantastic katha pollitt wrote a reaction piece, also in the washington post, blasting gender stereotypes and saying pretty much everything i wanted to say. furthermore, so many people were outraged that charlotte allen, who claimed that the article was "tongue in cheek" (coughbullshitcough), had a live chat where people could send in their questions to her regarding the article. it lends itself to some good reading, if only to make you more angry that the washington post actually gave this woman a platform for her sexist dribble.

anyways, i spend far too much time at work reading things online, so i'm sure i'll be hella annoying in posting links to articles and such all the time. what can i say, i work in a library and i read a lot.

2 comments:

Derek said...

Wow I was too angry to think until I read Pollitt's response. Now I'm a little calmer and astounded that they are attempting to pawn that off as some sort of satirical piece? No way in hell! She was serious and utilized many classic arguments made from within the patriarchy to maintain the status-quo. The focal point for me being her use of flawed biological or "evolutionary evidence" to "prove" that the way that women have been forced to live and function in society is actually the only way that they can be successful: that somehow a woman in the kitchen, taking taking care of her men, is actually how "nature intended it". AGH! I think its perfect that we are discussing the difference between biological sex and cultural gender next week. There is no limit to how crippling limitations imposed by cultural gender can be... so much so that they can appear to be immutable and/or genetic.

Anonymous said...

Yet, one can't ignore the exceeding happiness Ms. Allen possesses in contrast to the venemous critics identified in the comment section to her article.