John Tierney’s most recent sexist column isn’t exactly shocking. I mean, come on now--this is a guy who argued that Scrabble shows that women aren’t competitive and that abortion isn’t about women. But Tierney’s latest, Male Pride and Female Prejudice, combined with David Brooks’ recent article asserting that “power is in the kitchen,” is just too much for me to handle. But I’m tired of giving assholes like this any play on the blog.
Maybe Brooks and Tierney should have read Terry Martin Hekker’s piece before spouting off on how super fantastic marriage and scrubbing toilets is for women.
In Paradise Lost (Domestic Division) Hekker recounts her fall from advocate of stay-at-home-momism to divorced mom with no cash. It’s a must read.
In the continuing case of Full-Time Homemaker vs. Working Mother, I offer myself as Exhibit A. Because more than a quarter-century ago I wrote an Op-Ed article for The New York Times on the satisfaction of being a full-time housewife in the new age of the liberated woman. I wrote it from my heart, thoroughly convinced that homemaking and raising my children was the most challenging and rewarding job I could ever want....The column morphed into a book titled "Ever Since Adam and Eve," followed by a national tour on which I, however briefly, became the authority on homemaking as a viable choice for women. I ultimately told my story on "Today" and to Dinah Shore, Charlie Rose and even to Oprah, when she was the host of a local TV show in Baltimore.
Unfortunately, Hekker’s husband presented her with divorce papers on their 40th wedding anniversary.
...And "divorced" doesn't begin to describe the pain of this process. "Canceled" is more like it. It began with my credit cards, then my health insurance and checkbook, until, finally, like a used postage stamp, I felt canceled too.I faced frightening losses and was overwhelmed by the injustice of it all. He got to take his girlfriend to Cancun, while I got to sell my engagement ring to pay the roofer. When I filed my first nonjoint tax return, it triggered the shocking notification that I had become eligible for food stamps.
...For a divorced mother, the harsh reality is that the work for which you do get paid is the only work that will keep you afloat.
So Brooks, what was that about the all-powerful kitchen?
By the way, I’m seconding Echidne’s motion for folks to write to The New York Times. Because if one more middle aged guy tells me what I should be doing with my life I’m seriously going to lose it.
(Thanks to Jill Soloway’s brand-spanking-new blog Soloway Now for pointing me to Hekker’s piece.)
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Come now. Tierney's citing scrabble stats! If he's against your view of women than it's because the statistics are too.
You guys are so silly sometimes.
Weird. I thought it was silly to use Scrabble as a model for all of human behavior.
All that the scrabble study shows is that women don't get competitive over stupid crap like boardgames.
yeah, i gotta say... scrabble isn't the most powerful or precise social science tool out there... so when it comes to silly, i think those who measure human nature by scrabble take the cake.
I think the point of the scrabble thing was just to knock the feminist assumption that men coming out on top is always a result of sexist opression. It isn't.
Also. I don't see why middle-aged men shouldn't be entitled to their opinions. If a woman had the same exact opinion then suddenly it's ok? That's just plain silly.
Also. I don't see why middle-aged men shouldn't be entitled to their opinions. If a woman had the same exact opinion then suddenly it's ok? That's just plain silly.
You are thinking about it wrong. Take it this way: Suppose that suddenly the New York Times starts publishing many opinion pieces on how middle-aged men should live their lives, and all of them are written by young women. How would you feel about that?
And the point about using something like Scrabble is that it would most likely be possible to find some other hobby field in which women excel over men. To bring up one example like that means nothing.
How would I *feel* about that? I don't know, but what I would *think* is that I would evaluate their opinions with the same critical eye as anyone else's.
The fact is it doesn't matter who has an opinion, only whether or not something is true or false.
Of course I don't think people should prattle on about things they know nothing about. But anyone can get informed on just about any issue if they do their homework.
ok, traqula... you got a good point there... speech is free, right?
but if you're concerned with what's true and what's false, i would ask that you look into such statements in the tierny article such as:
"So more women... will be in a position to get better-paying, more prestigious jobs than their husbands"
which numbers say is patently not the case.
check this survey out.
while there is no straight line to the graph (for reasons that i'll suppose in a second), check out these numbers - percentage of men's salaries with comparable education:
there is a general trend there that women earn less money relative to men the more education they have. considering that, even when people do marry outside of their class (or education), it's often not very far, the chance of women being in a position to earn more than men may happen someday... but, given chartable trends, not very soon.
this, arguably, is a good reason why women are not as likely to "marry down." it's a poor decision on a purely financial level - a woman is more likely to hit a glass ceiling as she advances... having a partner who has significant earning potential hedges that risk.
of course, there are also plenty of women who are happily married to men with less education and/or income (such as my mom).
anyways, a reason, i think, for the fact that women with doctorates (who, mind you, earn, on average, less than people with professional (JDs, MDs, etc.) degrees) are paid more similarly to men with the same degrees is that doctorate-educated people are often employed in the academy and the academy has been the crucible of progressive social policy since the early 1960s.
yeah... that's a guess though... as is this: most men are not socialized to really take care of domestic matters. this means that, in a (assumed heterosexual, which is another issue with this whole thing) relationship where a woman earns more than the man, it is highly likely that she also carries most of the domestic burdens of the household, making the partnership a losing proposition for her. that's partly a reflection on my own shortcomings as the male half of a household... haha...
peace and blessings,
puck
Why even entertain the misogynists? No matter how much sense you make, the point is that his hatred for women is not based on logic. It's based on delusional thinking to support his fragile ego.