Dowd's Depression and Feminism
The Op/Ed section of The Times never ceases to fascinate me (as might be apparent from recent posts). In her column today, Men Just Want Mommy (an article that I would have assumed came directly from the pages of Cosmo), the histrionic Dowd complains about the inequities of modern male-female relationships, lamenting:
"Men only want to marry their personal assistants or P.R. women........I'd been noticing a trend along these lines, as famous and powerful men took up with the young women whose job it was to tend to them and care for them in some way: their secretaries, assistants, nannies, caterers, flight attendants, researchers and fact-checkers."
As we have seen before (here and here) the media in general (and the Times Op/Ed section in particular) loves to cherry-pick evidence in order to advance a thesis assumed a priori while constructing a seemingly cohesive meta-narrative. In this particular case Dowd has drawn direct parallels of her thesis from within pop-culture specifically the relationships established in James Brooks' abysmal Spanglish (yes it was abysmal) and Richard Curtis's Love Actually. Dowd then cites 2 studies which find that:
"Powerful women are at a disadvantage in the marriage market because men may prefer to marry less-accomplished women..................... a high I.Q. hampers a woman's chance to get married, while it is a plus for men."
This then leads us to Dowd’s ultimately painful and horrifying question:
"So was the feminist movement some sort of cruel hoax? The more women achieve the less desirable they are?"
Assuming that we believe her supporting evidence (grossly sparse though it is) it appears what Dowd is attempting to tell us is that the ultimate success of the feminist movement can be gauged by the very anti-feminist notion of landing oneself a powerful man. Further, in this one ill-thought line Dowd has excluded the accomplishments of any women in the lowly "service" industry as existing wholly outside of the realm of discernable feminist accomplishments by virtue of their occupations (which last I checked was a feminist accomplishment) and tendencies to:
"......look upon the men they work for as 'the moon, the sun and the stars.' It's all about orbiting, serving and salaaming their Sun Gods."
However, if we are to take Dowd's logic seriously then these individuals are actually the archetype of rational feminist accomplishment, after all, they are in a position to marry a powerful man.
posted by Doc at 1:53 PM
9 Comments:
I am a 40 year old married male, with two younger, teenage children. In our 15 years of marriage, my wife has never worked (spare me the "outside the home" line). My wife lives by what I believe to be the feminist mantra: you owe nothing to men, and any act of assistance or service that may be construed as serving a male is to be completely and angrily avoided. It's not that we want to be married to our mommies. It's that feminism has turned women into angry, complaining, competitors. All we want is a little friendliness, tenderness and caring. If I ask my wife to do something for me, I get a sarcastic, "yes, sir!" They have become the complete opposite of the "doormats" of generations ago, when they should have been trying to achieve a happy medium.
I concur with "C"
If woody would have gone straight to the police, this would never had happened.
this from a big discussion at FuturePundit:
I think nowadays, only men who are intelligent AND very supportive of women´s advancement, will consider a very intelligent woman as a partner. A not very intelligent guy will never want a more intelligent woman for a partner, because, although he may not have a high IQ, he will not put up with the subordination that less intelligent women gladly are conditioned into accepting in the reverse picture.
Also, there is a lot of paternalism built in how many men relate to women but not the reverse. For example, if a not very intelligent woman, who is a nice kind of person, shows she has some very stupid views on a subject, the more intelligent man may think, "Well, she is still cute and nice, so I am satisfied." An intelligent woman in the reverse picture, would probably think, "What a stupid guy, I get no satisfaction from this."
Also, I haven´t seen any studies, but from life experience I have observed that men are much, much more intollerant at being shown that they are wrong on any subject than women, in a mating context. A conversation between an intelligent woman with a not very intelligent man will undoubtedly run into several of these situations quickly and will usually ruin any chances for any developments.
And there is a difference between looking at some trends in society and saying everyone is like this or that.
"Assuming that we believe her supporting evidence (grossly sparse though it is) it appears what Dowd is attempting to tell us is that the ultimate success of the feminist movement can be gauged by the very anti-feminist notion of landing oneself a powerful man."
This was an interesting take. (I don´t think the supporting evidence for what she claims is that sparse btw, I know tons of examples, but I want to comment on the last sentence).
And what would you say should be the success of the feminist movement? Leaving professional women with no option to marry? Or if feminist women married really poor and ignorant men, that would be success?
I am not speaking for feminists or the feminist movement, because I´m neither. I think marriage is fundamental and working out long-term, commited relatioships is part of that. And I think being a good mother is one of the most important things one can be in life. But it seems to me, men like you are very blind to patterns of paternalism in couples, also related to age. I think it´s much easier for society to change to allow women to go work, and reach higher positions of authority, than to change much more ingrained patterns and attitudes in personal relationships. But it is changing, too slowly, as always. But it is good that it is changing. You can also see that in countries that are very sexist, there is a stark difference in this issue.
Enjoyed your comments. I agree with you to a point about the slower changes occurring within society but disagree with you entirely about my assessment of paternalism within individual relationships (and your assessment of Dowd’s evidence).
The avowed purpose of the feminist movement was not to create opportunities for women to marry successful men (as the Dowd article would have us believe) nor was it the (now common) denigration of women who choose a conventional life of motherhood and homemaking, rather it was a demand for equal footing with men in terms of opportunity and treatment. Gender roles will dominate interpersonal relationships (as will power struggles) regardless of the advances of society, but the role of that interplay is individualistic and reflective of culture not vice versa.
That Dowd has set up her article to deem feminism a failure because women who work in the service industry are (by her “Spanglish” standards) more likely to marry a prototypical powerful man is far from a rational indictment of feminism (and is demeaning to the accomplishments of those “lowly” women). The successes of feminism exist solely outside of the realm of marriage and can be gauged by women advancing into roles of leadership within corporations, government, the service industry, or whatever they chose to work in. The opportunity created is the true legacy of feminism, what women choose to do with said opportunity, is individualistic.
"The successes of feminism exist solely outside of the realm of marriage and can be gauged by women advancing into roles of leadership within corporations, government, the service industry, or whatever they chose to work in. The opportunity created is the true legacy of feminism, what women choose to do with said opportunity, is individualistic."
I think you are forgetting that a reasonable effort of the women´s/feminist movement also addressed domestic violence, rape, and sexual abuse. Also the abortion/contraceptive debate, remember? Very important gains have been made regarding violence against women (and less towards children), and exactly the type of violence that occurs in the interpersonal realm, which includes marriage. Issues of child custody, etc etc also come to mind. These successes could not have been achieved with deep challenges to very ingrained sexist attitudes in the personal sphere. So feminism is not just about the public/work sphere.
Actually I haven´t put thought in trying to answer this question: what are the successes of the feminist movement today? Which is an interesting question, btw.
What I see is a culture war like situation. There is a tremendously sexist culture in MSM/entertainment/porn industry (which has a very powerful effect in socializing people) and there are the counter moves from different women/feminist/conservative/other strands. Certain things have become more mainstream, others not. Also, since anyone can call themselves a feminist for any reason, the label can often not mean much or only help to create a bit of confusion when discussing more specific aspects of society.
In the dating scene, I would say liberalism is much more dominant than feminism. But that depends on the definition of feminism here.
"So was the feminist movement some sort of cruel hoax? The more women achieve, the less desirable they are? Women want to be in a relationship with guys they can seriously talk to - unfortunately, a lot of those guys want to be in relationships with women they don't have to talk to."
"So was the feminist movement some sort of cruel hoax?" is just ridiculous given how many good changes it brought for very serious issues.
"The more women achieve, the less desirable they are? " - In many ways, yes, because at the same time that these women moved out of the subservient role in public and private, men remained with the old mindset regarding women in the private sphere. There is no doubt that this group of women changed more than men (in general). Men just need to catch up, and there is a lot of pressure for them not to do so. This is not a fictional problem, it´s a real problem.
"However, if we are to take Dowd's logic seriously then these individuals are actually the archetype of rational feminist accomplishment, after all, they are in a position to marry a powerful man."
I think you didn´t get her argument. Women have always been in a position to marry powerful men, most of them do marry or have girlfriends. That´s not feminism. The problem was these women were in many instances in subordinate positions. What Dowd is talking about is marrying eye-to-eye, and for that you have to change a lot of attitudes about relationships.
You know what is really still common nowadays, specially with guys 50 and up? They can be very progressive about women´s right in the workplace, but they are very sexist about women when it´s in a personal relationship. I see this "contradiction" so often!
With younger guys, I see a very sexist brand of liberalism, that has some modern feminist things in it, but not much. (this aside from conservative and other groups, which have other mixes)
Humanity! I tell ya... :-)
Women have always been in a position to marry powerful men, most of them do marry or have girlfriends.
[I realized this wasn´t written clearly. I was talking about the men here: most of them do marry or have girlfriends, which means that women have always been marrying or been girlfriends to powerful men, this is not new.]
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