Credulous Tool Takes on Straw Feminist
An evolutionary-psychology lovin’ tool named Neil Chethik is interviewed in Salon this week about his new book on men and marriage. He says he’s in favor of feminism, and I’m willing to believe that he means well. What astonished me about the interview is the bullshit this guy spouts about the feminist movement — under the guise, of course, of defending it:
Now, I know there were some angry people, angry women in particular, who I thought were sometimes wielding a broad brush by saying that you can’t trust any man, that all men want is sex, or that they are uniformly dangerous and abusive, but I never really felt angered by that because I believed that, in the bigger picture, both men and women stood to gain from the larger feminist goals of equality and removing biology as destiny.
That’s right — feminism was just full of Valerie Solanis-types, but without the humor. Fortunately people like Neil understood what feminism could really be!
And I sense that women, even very strongly feminist-oriented women, are open to hearing what men have to say.
Amazing — even strongly-feminist-oriented women are open to hearing what men have to say! That is, even women who strongly believe in the equality of the sexes are open to listening to the other sex! How could that be, when we all know that a strong orientation towards feminism means you have to Hate Men? That is just absolutely fucking amazing. How’s that straw woman, Neil?
The other hilarious part of the interview is when Neil wonders aloud why husbands who do housework get more sex from their wives. Is it a quid pro quo thing? Or is it, as Neil suspects, because those wives feel more appreciated? Never occurs to this genius that maybe women who haven’t spent 40 hours in an office and then another 20 hours scrubbing toilets and picking up dirty socks actually have a little more time and energy for sex.
I checked out this guy online, and found a lovely article he wrote a couple of years ago about religious education for boys. In that brilliant piece, he:
1. Empathizes with the poor little boy who wonders why there isn’t a “boyism” to match “feminism”;
2. Argues that the emphasis on discipline and quiet study unfairly favors girls over boys (see Amanda’s recent post about this kind of bullshit);
3. Asserts that more men are needed in leadership and teaching positions in religious education. Right.
Oh, and he also trots out uncritically the same old ev-psych bullshit “proving” the differences between boys and girls.
You know, I like guys just fine, and I want ‘em to be happy. This credulous tool may mean well, but Jesus H. Christ. Enough with the Angry Feminist straw woman, the bullshit about how the New World Order is unfair to males, and the ev-psych crapola. Drop that stuff, and then we’ll talk.
5 Responses to “Credulous Tool Takes on Straw Feminist”
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manxome says:
No, I am not going back to read that dumb article again. You can’t make me! It was like meeting the guy who writes compatibility quizzes for teen magazines. Bleech.
January 30th, 2006 at 12:45 pm EST -
Alon Levy says:
I think Amanda’s post concentrates on the wrong issue. It’s a lot easier to just castigate that line of thinking by explaining that since the gender gap appears to be mostly in reading, it’s unlikely to be the result of differences in discipline. What is more likely is that modern society prevents boys from expressing their full range of emotions, which makes it harder for them to a) open up and write about their feelings, and b) understand emotional and psychological literature.
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Violet Socks says:
But these guys always take the line that the reason boys lag behind girls is because it’s just so hard for little guys to sit still in class and pay attention. The fact is that sitting still and paying attention are always things students have had to do, from the very beginning of school (I shit you not — read sometime the student exercises of ancient Egyptian and Sumerian kids.) That is, long before females were even allowed to be educated, even allowed in the fucking classroom, boys were being required to sit still and pay attention.
Well, now females are in school and have perhaps reached the point where they feel free to shine scholastically, and whaddya know? Girls are really good and sitting still and paying attention. So the pro-boy/anti-girl faction gets all up in arms — obviously the school setting unfairly favors girls! Then they convince themselves that sitting still and paying attention are wacky feminist requirements that only crept into the school system in the past 30 years, and that the only way for boys to be given an equal shot is to revamp classes so that running around like wild Indians and shooting spitballs are the preferred behaviors.
It always boils down to the same thing for these male apologists: if girls do better at something, then obviously the system is skewed in their favor. If boys do better at something, then obviously it’s because boys are innately superior in that area.
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Alon Levy says:
There are two very different arguments sexists make about why girls outperform boys in American high schools (I have absolutely no idea whether it’s true outside the US). The first is that the current system was skewed by feminists to focus on reading and writing, which girls are better at than boys, possibly innately (it’s known that females have innately better linguistic perception than males, slightly). Many experts claim this; the sexists’ mistake is to claim that this is deliberate misandry and that the solution is to deemphasize reading and emotional development, instead of to give boys a leg up.
The second explanation is that girls are better than boys at sitting still and being quiet. Here the sexists’ mistake is, as you say, asserting that this is the result of a deliberate misandry instead of traditional education emphasizing a skill girls happen to be better at than boys. This explanation is empirically false, as far as I know (it predicts that the gender gap will exist in all subjects but be strongest in math and weakest in English, whereas from what I hear, it’s strongest in English), but even if it’s true, it’s no evidence of malice or even of a dire need for change.
Interestingly, Lindsay said more or less what you say:
When a gender gap that favors boys, the proposed solutions generally involve changing girls to meet the prevailing ideal. This is usually the most sensible way to approach the problem. Girls are underperforming in math and science? Well, then we should keep up the emphasis on math and science for everyone and push girls harder.
By contrast, when a gender gap favors females, people are more likely to address the discrepancy by challenging the evaluation criteria. American public school curricula have come to place more emphasis on reading comprehension and other verbal abilities. Some educators argue that this shift has placed male students at a systematic disadvantage because girls tend to be better readers and writers than boys. Note that schools deliberately increased the amount of reading and writing in the curriculum because they thought that it these skills were intrinsically valuable for all students.
By the way, my main gripe with Amanda’s post isn’t that it refutes the schools-are-misandrist claim using a different argument from mine, but that its style promotes mediocrity: do everything you’re expected to do, sit still and pay attention even if you’re bored, and if you complain about anything then you believe you’re entitled to special favors.
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belledame222 says:
Yeah, I mean: if these guys’ beef is really with “gee, it’s wrong to make kidlets (male or otherwise) sit still for so long when it’s against their natures,” then, you know, come up with some other, better form of pedagogy. Lord knows education’s in need of some fresh ideas. It’d be appreciated. Really! Work those manly right brains of yours and come up with something fresh and creative! You can do it!
As per reading and writing: yeah, thing is, most of life’s tasks in this our modern woild are going to involve one or the other, if not both. Sorry about that. Maybe if you give them lots of books about tools.
Bottom line, though: if you want to increase your boys’ self-esteem, howzabout you start by *not* harshing on them every time they cry, want your attention, or otherwise “act like a girl;” or don’t perform as well on some monkey test as would suit your ego. Stop fretting so damn much about their performance (yours too, as far as that goes), and give them a damn hug or something. Praise them for what they *are* good at, not what you think they should be good at. And if you can’t manage that, then for the love of Christ and little plastic baubles, at *least* try to provide them with a role model that can accept defeat once in a while, WITHOUT WHINING. Narcissism: not manly. Just incredibly annoying.
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