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by Anonymous User on 03:47 AM November 6th, 2005 EST (#1)
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"So if you can, have a look; it includes a pic of our gal sitting on a bar stool, in black stockings and heels no less -- waiting for someone to buy her a drink..."
...and waiting, and waiting, and waiting...
Ray
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by Gregory on 11:49 AM November 6th, 2005 EST (#2)
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What irritates me as much as Dowd is the New York Times giving a sympathetic forum to this male-hating shrew. In a way Dowd serves a useful purpose -- she is a constant reminder to me of some of the worst that the mainstream media and feminism have to offer. Practices that favor women including very privileged women, anti-male bigotry and sexism that hurts everyone in the long run, and the extent to which women are protected from responsibility for their behavior while men are held to higher standards of accountability. It always reminds me of the importance of the men's rights effort and why we should challenge jerks like Dowd and her enablers.
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by Anonymous User on 03:51 PM November 6th, 2005 EST (#4)
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Wired Magazine's sex columnist, Regina Lynn, has a good take on Dowd's attitude: Link http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,69476,00. html?tw=wn_tophead_3
"What's interesting is the underlying assumption that women have this choice. I've heard it called "the feminine right not to work." (If by "work" we mean "have a paying job," of course, as I'd never presume that managing a household and babies isn't work).
But I never hear anyone talking about the masculine right not to work. Nor have I read about a new generation of men deciding they're going to choose domestic life over professions, even though it's becoming more acceptable to trade traditional roles. (A handful of online communities have sprung up to support these at-home dads -- see Rebel Dad and Slowlane.)"
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by Anonymous User on 11:04 PM November 6th, 2005 EST (#6)
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"Nor have I read about a new generation of men deciding they're going to choose domestic life over professions, even though it's becoming more acceptable to trade traditional roles."
To do so you have to get someone to subsidize the option of not working-- this is what men do for women all the freaking time. Men can't do this because women (vast majority) won't subsidize a man's homebody life-- at least not for long.
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by Anonymous User on 01:26 PM November 6th, 2005 EST (#3)
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Dowd complains that successful women prefer to marry up and that successful men prefer to marry down. The male portion of this behavior, for Dowd is hardwired in the DNA. However, she fails to make the same observation for females. This proclivity to not mention or deemphasize the female role in perceived gender inequities and to suggest that they are independently and exclusively the fault of the male (even when there is a supposed genetic predisposition for such behavior with no moral component) I term Dowd's Syndrome.
What is Maureen Dowd doing in her own life to counter the pernicious tendency, in the absence of civilizing restraints, if any can be conceived, against women's innate preference for marrying up and against men's innate preference for marrying down? Nothing! She's attracted to famous men. Of course, she need not be a model citizen if she is relying on statistical data to support her thesis; it is when she resorts to illustration (and complaints) from her personal life that it becomes fair to ask if she has chosen, in her personal life, to transcend the presumed sexist tyranny of DNA by pursuing less successful men.
I've always been offended by the presumption that I was supposed to be "intimidated" by successful "strong" women. As Kathleen Parker writes,
"Men haven't turned away from smart, successful women because they're smart and successful. More likely they've turned away because the feminist movement that encouraged women to be smart and
successful also encouraged them to be hostile and demeaning to men."
I agree, although further analysis is needed: the analysis that leads to the identification of what I call the intimidation test (see below). The attitude of hostility begins with the presumption that men are "intimidated" by smart and successful women. But we're not stopping them from being smart and successful. We couldn't care less. We're too busy pursuing our own careers to become oppressors. If women want to be mathematicians, physicists, architects, engineers or whatever else, we're not interfering. They can go for it, and we could not care less.
The attitude that one's energies are better invested in persons who are not demeaning and hostile to men is not the attitude of someone
intimidated by superior intellectual and economic effectiveness. On the contrary, it is the simple recognition that you can't plan a family on the basis of a demeaning and hostile attitude toward men.
The intimidation test
Now for a Gedanken experiment. Let's imagine a world in which we didn't reflexively blame men for the widespread failure of smart successful women to fulfill their desire to start families. Instead, let us hypothesize some mechanism which explains the generally hostile and demeaning attitude of smart and successful women towards men on the basis of the correlation between economic effectiveness and reproductive fitness. Further, let us suppose that if smart and successful women are observing that men are intimidated by them, that we can ask, what, if anything, these women are actively doing, as opposed to merely being smart and successful, that might intimidate men.
Accordingly, the attitude of hostility towards men is an unconscious expression of the tendency of women to want to marry up. As the number of acceptable life partners diminishes, successful women will encounter many more unsuitable than suitable males. An attitude of hostility towards men generally signals that only the most economically effective males need apply. Such males are less likely to respond to the hostility: this is crucial, since the complaint that men are "intimidated" by successful women can be read as the statement that women are testing men by intimidating them, to see if they are successful enough. Those men who are successful enough will not be intimidated, and will pass the intimidation test. Since there are few such men, one hears the complaint that men are "intimidated." What we don't hear, especially not from Dowd, is that women are attempting to test if men are intimidated, and that this intimidation test is hardwired into the female DNA.
So my suggestion is that they stop attempting to intimidate men, to test for their economic effectiveness and reproductive fitness. Or else they admit that they are doing this. But it is wrongheaded to blame men for being intimidated, when women are imposing the intimidation test on men to determine their econonomic effectiveness and reproductive fitness. This failure to take responsibility for imposing the intimidation test is an example of Dowd's Syndrome.
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by jenk on 07:47 PM November 6th, 2005 EST (#5)
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Maybe she should start looking at non-professional men. I know quite a few men who would be willing to let her make all the money. They would have no problem cleaning and cooking, and taking care of the home while she worked.
But wait, that would be marrying down, I guess she is too good for that.
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by Raymond Cuttill on 05:01 AM November 7th, 2005 EST (#7)
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The notion that women set men tests, like offering to pay for dinner and that he fails if he lets her pay, has all sorts of implications. Firstly, it suggests that women can be duplicitous. Not only does that imply that a significant level of female deception is possible in everything from rape, DV through to paternity and divorce and in all the feminist statistics but also in day-to-day relationships. Some of us know women who have lied for years to men.
Secondly, the implication is that men have to provide for women. This is not just now but they have always had to do that. It is in living memory (mine) that when you went out with a woman, you paid for everything. If together you wanted coffee, you bought 2 coffees; you wanted a meal, you bought 2 meals; you wanted to go to the dance or the cinema (movies) you bought 2 tickets. There was no requirement for her to bring any money at all. (Also there were incidents like you take her to the dance and pay for her as usual and suddenly inside the dance she finds an excuse to dump you and chase after some other guy)
Thirdly, there’s the idea that men have to pass tests to get women’s affection. This suggest women have the power and always have had. The notion that the guy works hard and pays for her by choice is ridiculous. He has no choice. Men who do not pay for women don’t date and therefore don’t have children. In short women have been getting most of what they want throughout the 5 million year history of the human race.
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by Anonymous User on 05:02 PM November 7th, 2005 EST (#9)
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I'm honored to receive a reply from no less a personage tham the host of the Men's Hour.
I should point out that these tests aren't necessarily premeditated: they spring largely from the unconscious. It isn't necessary (or desirable) to accuse women of "intentional" duplicitousness, though a surface reading would lead to precisely that conclusion. The test to check if the man will refuse her offer to pay happens frequently enough that it is probably due to a predisposition to test males and so it cannot be said to be consciously motivated; on reflection the female may ascribe some ex post facto motivation to it, but this "explanation" is likely to be more of an interpretation of the experience at the time than an accurate account of what motivated the test.
There is one problem with exposing these tests: it escalates them. As the more obvious tests become exposed and "civilized away", the subterfuges become more involved. It's tedious.
I offer advice to younger men (I'm in my 40s
and have no children. But I have a smart cat).
Pursue work for its own sake. In the words of the great poet Anonymous (myself),
Work is to be pursued for its own sake
and never to impress potential mates.
But if you are going to impress potential mates with the fruit of your labor, be aware that you will be tested. Continually. You will be caught off-guard. And there is essentially one correct answer to the tests: no answer. No response. The behavior that drives you crazy is intended to test if you maintain your cool. If you don't you fail.
Given how miserably, unproductively, boringly
tedious this business of being tested is, perhaps it's better to fail them instantly. So here is some additional advice to young men:
Whenever you find yourself being tested by a female, react! You'll fail the test and she will look elsewhere. Make a conscious effort to notice the tests, and to fail them. Deliberately. Acting like a nice guy works. Failing them ungratefully works also. But whatever you do, fail the female's tests, and you'll be spared.
Now I may have seemed to have strayed from the subject of Dowd, but I haven't. because for every deplorable behavior that Dowd attributes to male DNA, there is an equally deplorable female behavior that Dowd fails to mention, that can be attributed to the female DNA.
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by Anonymous User on 03:02 PM November 8th, 2005 EST (#11)
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That's because mentioning female imperfections isn't politically correct. But notice you can go on until the cows come home about men's short comings.
Jinx
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by Anonymous User on 12:46 PM November 7th, 2005 EST (#8)
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maybe she should stop looking for "Mr. Right", and start looking for Mr. REAL.
Jinx
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by Anonymous User on 08:48 AM November 8th, 2005 EST (#10)
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How ironic that in an article about how men don't like smart, powerful, dangerous women, ms. dowdy
mentions Brad Pitt and the smart, powerful, dangerous Angelina Jolie that he likes.
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Well, it's unavailable to the general public (NYT print subscribers can see it on-line though if they sign up for the extra service), but our very own Maureen Dowd's