For any of you who missed this gem by Charlotte Allen in the Outlook section of the Washington Post this past weekend, do go back and check it out.
A heads-up: don’t be surprised when—after a long re-hashing of old stereotypes (women can’t drive, add 2+2 or read a map) and gross generalizations (all women sit around reading trash novels while sipping lattes) — the piece concludes women should “relax” and enjoy our innate “tenderness toward children and men and the weak and the ability to make a house a home.” Why should we do this? Well, apparently so that we won’t have to think about “the fact that way down deep, we are . . . kind of dim.”
I know, it sounds like a joke and after hundreds responded with outrage, the Outlook editor, John Pomfret, lamely defended the piece as “tongue-in-cheek.” Ha ha very funny.
No, Mr. Pomfret, sadly a preliminary online look at Allen’s record reveals that it’s no joke. But Allen’s record aside, the piece isn’t funny because women already hear this *stuff* all the time. Admittedly, we don’t usually read it all at once, condensed down into a single poorly written, incoherent piece in a once respectable newspaper. Usually, it’s just a side comment, a look in the elevator, an implied suggestion here, a “harmless” remark there. There is nothing in Allen’s article that I haven’t heard before or that I don’t expect to hear again.
So I hope that Mr. Pomfret will forgive those of us who didn’t laugh when we read Allen’s charming reminder of the daily denigration that women around the world and throughout history have faced and – it appears—will continue to face for generations to come.
(To celebrate women’s month, consider writing a letter to the editor -letters@washpost.com- or sending a complaint to the Ombudsman- ombudsman@washpost.com)
2 Comments:
Thank you for posting on this Claire! It was such an outrageous piece, and if it were truly meant as tongue-in-cheek, it shouldn't have left hundreds of commenters mystified about its intent. As many of those comments said, I was ashamed of the Post for publishing such *stuff*
This is what I miss when I go out of town?
I am left sputtering from reading this op-ed just and I can't entirely form my response, but I would like to point out one particularly ridiculous bit of drivel.
When Ms. Allen mentions how a friend is thinking of writing "An Office of Women," in which nothing would get done and only botox would be discussed, she forgets that some of us spent out entire college careers in "offices of women."
I attended university with 1300 other women, and while we did relax after days crammed with Derrida, Marx, computer science and biology by watching "Gilmore Girls" instead of "Monday Night Football", we most certainly got things done. And I don't think that all 1300 of us were outliers. Neither do I think were those students at our sister institutions.
Not to mention the huge numbers of other women who are attending and doing better than men in co-ed environments.
Shame on the Washington Post. They have published some nonsense before, but this really is the limit. Now, the only question is -- when should I cancel my subscription?
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