"i can't even add 2 and 2"
today the washington post provided me with yet another gem. “We Scream, We Swoon. How Dumb Can We Get?” used a skinny political premise to achieve a degradation of women the magnitude of which i’m sure hasn’t been seen in print since 1921. There is the slight chance that this article is satire. i hope it is, though i doubt it, based on the detailed political anecdotes and disdainful tone. would you believe that women are attending political rallies enthusiastically?
high school is a microcosm of male-female comparisons and relations, mostly because everyone goes through so it is relatable, and also because high school is rife with stereotypes. but i know i was not the only girl in advanced english. there were only three boys in it, though. nor was i the only girl on the honor roll. there was actually, if you can even believe it, a TEAMful of girls on my soccer team. there were a bunch of teams! enough girls played soccer for literally a whole league to be formed! they also played lacrosse! and basketball! these sports all had female leagues too! just for girls!
I tried looking through this piece of idiotic rambling for the best quotes, but copy-pasting the entire article seems to be the best option. i have already e-mailed it to a few of my friends. in the interest of space…
the author, Charlotte Allen, claims:
“I am perfectly willing to admit that I myself am a classic case of female mental deficiencies. I can’t add 2 and 2 (well, I can, but then what?). I don’t even know how many pairs of shoes I own.”
Allen, by way of explaining why women like Barack Obama, proceeds to embarass herself completely. first of all, who in the world would publicly claim to be unable to add 2 and 2 together? i think an idiot without self awareness would do it. maybe a three year old? she continues on to cite insiginificant studies to prop up her claim that women like Obama because, well, they’re women. and being a woman, of course, has its drawbacks, which include being dumber than men, worse drivers than men, having smaller brains, and not being able to spin an object in our brains to see it in 3-D. she tries to balance her article and make it objective by injecting little bits of female-deprecating humor, like the botox shots she claims is all women are interested in. women get in more accidents but they kill less people! women have better memories! women have superior verbal skills! Not only does she present her claims that men are superior to women without citing her sources or providing objective evidence, she does the same for the qualities she inadvertently credits to women.
did i mention she calls hillary clinton stupid? she does. did i mention she says:
“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 am pissed she called me dim. hell, i am pissed she called my SISTER dim. my mom’s not dim. i am mad she relegates me to the role she assumes i will fill best- a wife and mother who is completely devoted to my husband’s and child’s well-being. i guess my final point, the thing that bothers me the most about this so-called article, is that everyone, sex aside, is different from everyone else. allen does not seem to think this is important. allen doesn’t seem to think it is important that women are recovering from CENTURIES worth of oppression. they have a lot of lost time! it doesn’t matter to this “woman” (i put the word in quotes because she seems to reject the idea of empowerment and gender-equality and thus i can’t call her a woman with a straight face) that females are making progress. everyone has faults and no one is perfect. you know what- maybe i am just not smart enough to understand charlotte allen. this article could be well thought out and too intricate for my delicate girl-mind. but then again she is a woman so i am probably giving her too much credit.