WaPo: Women are stupid

[ChuckF]

For some reason the Washington Post decided to print this rambling and disjointed condemnation of women. Apparently it was some kind of joke.

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

Get it now, girls? I guess that puts you stupid humorless cows in your places.

They clarified by changing the headline on the website; women aren't dumb, they just act that way, the silly girls.

Anyway, long story short, Hillary Clinton's main problem has been female hysteria and Grey's Anatomy.

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.

I Scream, I Swoon. How Dumb Can I Get? Let Me Write A WaPo Op-Ed Se We Can Find Out!

[Leesifer]

I'm not insulted. I'm too busy knitting a scarf while driving.

[Stormlight]

Originally Posted by Leesifer

I'm not insulted. I'm too busy knitting a scarf while driving.

When, in fact, you're supposed to knit a scarf while being tender to me, woman.

[Artemis Entreri]

Man: The problem with women is they always take things personally.
Woman: Well I don't!

[Leesifer]

Originally Posted by Stormlight

When, in fact, you're supposed to knit a scarf while being tender to me, woman.

Sorry, Stormy.

Which bit would you like me to tenderise?

[Qingdai]

Tongue in whose cheek?
I particularly like the unsupported (by her at least) claims towards the end.

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.

So why can't my husband find his way out of the neighborhood we've lived in for 5 years now again? Oi! Big brain means good!1!

[Octavia]

Oh yes. Not minding that I'm dim! How could I forget that? Apparently my humour chip has failed along with my intelligence. Perhaps they are connected?

[Caligulette]

Woman on website: WaPo is idiotique.

[Stormlight]

Originally Posted by Leesifer

Sorry, Stormy.

Which bit would you like me to tenderise?

[Stormlight]

Also: Know your place!

[Doohickie]

I think there are physiological differences between men's and women's brains that make them think differently. That doesn't have anything to do, though, with an assessment that one is smarter than the other. Yeah, maybe I do have a better sense of direction than Mrs. Doohickie, but she is much better at juggling several activities at once and has better recall than I do. So which is better? Doesn't matter; what matters is together we make a pretty good team.

[Leesifer]

Originally Posted by Stormlight

Also: Know your place!

OMG! You are accusing me of "chatter".

I think, you meant that I should

Know my Limits

[Farren]

I think there are physiological differences between men's and women's brains that make them think differently. That doesn't have anything to do, though, with an assessment that one is smarter than the other. Yeah, maybe I do have a better sense of direction than Mrs. Doohickie, but she is much better at juggling several activities at once and has better recall than I do. So which is better? Doesn't matter; what matters is together we make a pretty good team.

I think there are physiological differences. The corpus collosom, for instance, is larger in women, and women's brains are slightly smaller than men's overall in ratio to body mass (although the existing evidence actually doesn't suggest this is matched by a difference in intelligence - unless you believe the crypto-racist "scientist" J Phillipe Rushton).

But not only do we have ample evidence that power relationships and culture still massively distort any appraisal of what those physiological differences mean, but its fairly obvious that even archiac homo sapiens with smaller brains than so-called modern homo sapiens clearly exhibited enormous plasticity in their intelligence, implying that differences in the software of our branch of the primate family overwhlem any differences in the hardware. IOW, hardware only starts to matter at the seriously optimal fringes.

From the point of view of social choices, this means that, when considering the mass of humanity, any group stereotype (as opposed to individual appraisal) does more harm than good.

[Dingfod]

Like I said in the Support Your Local Eugenics thread, someone needs to fix me a sammich like right now.

[California Tanker]

People are getting into a furore over that article?!

I mean, she's right, there aren't many men swooning at Obama events and just what is the point of Oprah?!

NTM

[ChuckF]

Originally Posted by California Tanker

People are getting into a furore over that article?!

I think it's not because they think it puts down women, but because it doesn't follow the "Women are as good as men at everything" mantra.

Whence this vision into the minds of others?

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?

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.

What is it about us women? Why do we always fall for the hysterical, the superficial and the gooily sentimental?

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.

With such blinding insights as these, might one come to think that this article does, in fact, "put down" women?

[Leesifer]

Pfft! What bunch of girls wrote that drivel?

[ChuckF]

Originally Posted by Leesifer

Pfft! What bunch of girls wrote that drivel?

gb2 knitting, stupid

[Clutch Munny]

Originally Posted by ChuckF

Did your post originally say this, CT? Because that's fucking desperate -- ie, in its search for some reason, however ridiculous, for the annoyance and despair at the WaPo article, besides that it was just obviously full of shit in a socially harmful way.

But then, this:

Originally Posted by California Tanker

People are getting into a furore over that article?!

I mean, she's right, there aren't many men swooning at Obama events and just what is the point of Oprah?!

NTM

...is not much better. How many times would one have to hit oneself in the head, before one could read that article, and read the responses here, and think that her basic thesis and the claims to which people are responding simply revolve around who "swoons" at Obama rallies? (Which is, naturally all the women and not just a handful amounting to statistical noise. Even pronouncing her "right" in her sweeping claims when this is restricted to the swooning is daft beyond belief.)

For fuck's sakes.

I think this is why "professional anti-feminists make too much bank to ever stop", as one blog put it. There's always an audience considering itself non-sexist that will smile and shrug, have half a larf, and say "Fair point!"

I read CT's response as tongue-in-cheek. I'm right about so many miserable things, it'd be nice to be a good guesser on this, as well.

[Clutch Munny]

I hope you're right. But I don't see much traction for that reading -- especially given the (was it an?) edit.

[Adam]

Originally Posted by California Tanker

...just what is the point of Oprah?!

She gives hetero couples something to disagree about?

[JamesBannon]

Originally Posted by Leesifer

I'm not insulted. I'm too busy knitting a scarf while driving.

[California Tanker]

Originally Posted by Clutch Munny

Did your post originally say this, CT? Because that's fucking desperate -- ie, in its search for some reason, however ridiculous, for the annoyance and despair at the WaPo article, besides that it was just obviously full of shit in a socially harmful way.

It did. Chuck was extremely quick off the blocks, I had it edited in short order as I figured it would not be well received around here and I'm short enough on time as it is in order to make supporting commentary. However, it was picked up, so onwards.

...is not much better. How many times would one have to hit oneself in the head, before one could read that article, and read the responses here, and think that her basic thesis and the claims to which people are responding simply revolve around who "swoons" at Obama rallies? (Which is, naturally all the women and not just a handful amounting to statistical noise. Even pronouncing her "right" in her sweeping claims when this is restricted to the swooning is daft beyond belief.)

This is your assumption that I think she's (a ) making sweeping claims, and if so (b ) that she is right about them. It is not.

It is no worse than saying that men have no sense of direction, are too proud to ask for help, mistakenly think they're God's gift to barbeques, are totally unable to pick up on subtlety less obvious than a brick and that as I'm Irish, I drink a lot.

This is called poking fun at yourself. I like to think I do have a sense of direction (though the others are accurate in my case), but they're all commonly held stereotypes which do absolutely no harm at all precisely because anyone of any sense knows that they cannot be held as an expected trait for any individual. (OK, there might be an argument about the men picking up on subtlety bit). Should I be pounced upon by all men and women for demeaning the status of men for saying these things in the paragraph above? Am I somehow saying that because of these commonly held stereotypical traits that men can be correctly viewed as daft overall? Of course not. Yet that is apparently how the article is being taken. Viewing the article as a sweeping condemnation of the inferiority of women is just as daft as the concept of claiming the inferiority of women from the traits listed, unless you have a reason to have a preconception for either position.

NTM