Sexism at the WaPo

Yesterday's vitriolic Washington Post piece upset me. Like the silly woman I am, I insist on getting caught up in my emotions when another woman wants to express her First Amendment views that all women are basically stupid, senseless, empty headed crybabies good only for keeping a nice house and taking care of men.

Thanks, Charlotte Allen, for keeping sexism alive. After all, it hardly counts as misogyny if another woman writes it, right? This self-hating mockery ran the gamut from the "harmless": noting that women frequently faint before Obama's thrilling oratory, to the, um, slightly more insidious assertion that scientific evidence proves men are smarter (and better drivers). On its merits as an op-ed piece alone, Allen's is woefully lacking. She starts out with unqualified assertions about fainting spells (ooh! Emotions=stupidity), moves on to the "no man I know would do xyz stupid female behavior," and ends with the assertion that women should just do what they do best, take care of others. I venture to guess she wouldn't include writing op-ed pieces as part of what women were made to do. Shame on you, Charlotte for touting forth your abilities while the rest of us silly headed gals paint our toenalis and braid each other's hair.

Finally, her tired examples of why exactly men are so much smarter than women fail to hold up to rational analysis. Even if she's correct and men are more biologically exceptional at analytic skills while women are exceptional at memory and verbal skills, this only points out a difference; her own bias creates the normative value. She relies upon the unstated assertion that the skills women do excel at are inferior to men's. It's less worthy to be an exceptional verbal communicator, writer, or memorizer of fact than a spatial reasoner? Back that up, Charlotte, and don't just tell me you're a girl and so you can't.

Falling into the vitriol myself, I think this article is bullshit and could only be published because it's written by a woman about women. No one would publish this if it made the same assertions about a racial minority group or about a disabled population or about gays and lesbians. Nor should they because it is wrong to make unqualified, untrue, hateful assertions about an entire group of people, even if you belong to said group. Well, I guess women will have to should onward closing the achievement gap with men and proving old bags like Charlotte wrong one career promotion at a time.