Originally Posted by Mellowicious
Actually, no, I wasn't going to say that at all, but since you mention it -

Hekate and Issodhos have hit the nail on the head. The central issue here is that the article is both ignorant and wrong. Everything else is extraneous.

The point of the article, and of the thread, is prejudice. This article is absolutely full of it. The response I was really hoping for was "wow, this writer is whacked."

Challenging writers like this is far more important, has far greater effect on the lives of women, than any number of gentlemanly actions. When we sidetrack ourselves into discussions of who opens which door, we allow that prejudice to stand unchallenged, because we never address it directly.

Interestingly, I think all the women responding to this thread addressed the faults of the article itself (as in, "Wow, this writer is whacked!), directly. Most - not all, but most - of the men did not. I truly have no idea what that indicates, if it indicates anything - but I find it interesting.

I confess, I did not take the time initially to read it through all the way, and every detail... when I did, this is what I thought:

The first part of what she's saying has an element of truth to it - but her conclusions seem to be that not only is it true of significant numbers of women (debatable), but IT IS OK, JUST RELAX AND ACCEPT IT. What?!?

That phraseology reminded me of other egregiously (practically criminally) bad 'advice' from decades past...

So, I figured this is probably just some individual fringe-element opinion, and had to wonder why it was published (actually, though, after thinking about it a bit, it reminded me of some whacko columns by Betsy Hart - whom I've never read before except she appeared a few times, inexplicably in my opinion, right here on CHB). But even so, I still don't understand how anyone, even those on the right, would want to say "Just relax and accept that you are dim".

And incidentally, if she's associated with beliefnet, is that how *they* want to be represented?? Hmm, actually that explains things - a little.




But, actually there is another question - what exactly *is* the motivation of the Washington Post here?

First, WaPo publishes something entitled "...How Dumb Can We Get?"
and then encourages people to write in comments, which they will publish, preferably with the title "Smarter than you think..."


Is that an attempt at honest debate, or a cheap ploy to sell ink?

Is that really what our newspapers are for? Are they that jealous of strident polarizing talkinghead/blogger infotainment agents provocateur?

Castigat Ridendo Mores
(laughter succeeds where lecturing fails)

"Those who will risk nothing, risk everything"