Capitol Hill Blue Forums Misc. Topics The Media "We scream, We Swoon, How Dumb Can We Get?"

Ok, I will go back and reconsider the article whose link you posted. That said, when I am looking to discover an author's primary goal, I prefer to read and analyze for myself what the author has written, rather than depending upon another person's analysis of what was written.
I do not entirely dispute your point here, I would, however also point out that when we make fun of Mr. Bush, we commonly do so with our own political bias. I suppose that those who have a different bias would find the humor at Mr. Bush's expense less entertaining. And so when you discuss the root of the piece's failure to be funny, you are IMO likely illustrating your own political views.
The above quote is presented as shedding a light on the author's motives. The quote does help us discover Ms. Allen’s political bias, and that is interesting. We are further informed that this writer (who likely has her own bias) "suspects" the motivation of the author based upon the author's political affiliation. Please forgive me if I do not consider this suspicion to be an authoritative analysis of the author’s intent or the flaws of that intent.


Let us together admit an obvious truth. When a person with a political bias (which includes most of us) writes something critical of thoughts of others who have a differing bias... then it is often that case that the piece is written in a way that will be provocative for the people of the bias being criticized.

Keeping that in mind, it is no surprise that what was written is offensive to those having a different persuasion. But I propose that we set aside that reflexive emotional reaction to consider what was written from a more dispassionate perspective. Ms Allen makes the point that

Surely it is no surprise that many critics of the "women's movement" feel that the movement has concentrated on certain objectives in such a single-minded way that has insufficiently valued the life choices of women who choose to live a more traditional lifestyle. We may disagree with that evaluation of the women's movement, but it is a position that does not seem outrageous to me.

You go on to quote Ms. Allen as saying


These are words that many people find so very abhorrent... and frankly unforgivable. It seems likely that Ms. Allen intended ( and succeeded) in provoking such a reaction. Never the less, the question remains as to whether Ms. Allen intended these words with the simple meaning that has generated such widespread outrage.

Ms. Allen is clearly not describing the life that she herself leads. She is not describing the lives of her friends. She is not describing her own aspirations or the aspirations of her friends. And there seems no reason to believe that Ms. Allen is trying to evangelize a general trend among her gender to cohere around the words that she has written. And in that respect, it seems to me inappropriate to react with the presumption that Ms Allen is trying to promote this conception as a viable vision for modern women. What ever Ms, Allen means by these words, it seems that it is not her meaning that has provoked such prolonged outrage.
As I have previously written, I agree that the piece is poorly written and serves few objectives other than the self-gratification of the author in provoking blind rage among her political opponents.

It is generally recognized that the human mind produces exceedingly poor analysis when it is engulfed in strong emotions such as the anger. Given that so many renters have described their own anger at this piece, we should proceed with some caution in concluding that these angry posters have accurately evaluated the nature of the piece.

And so, when you say "There is no amount of editing that can correct the non sequiturs in logic" ... I wonder if you have accurately read the piece. No offense intended here, but IMO what is going on with you and with many others is that there is an emotional reaction that starts with the title itself. The emotional reaction is intense anger/disgust. And the reading of the piece is done in the context of validating that reaction. And when one reads things in the piece that do not validate those emotions, those things are evaluated as logical non-sequiturs. I propose that the apparent non-sequiturs may either reflect poor writing by the author, or alternatively a misunderstanding of the piece itself by readers who considering the piece in an emotionally charge state.

In a previous posting I have gone through a detailed analysis of my own understanding of the piece. I will not repeat that analysis since anyone who may be interested can refer back to that posting. I will say only that my analysis seems to conform to what Ms. Allen said of her piece in the chat transcript. And further that if one grants my analysis, the apparent non-sequiturs disappear.

Finally, I want to say a few words about why I have taken the trouble to respond so extensively concerning and article that I find largely without merit.

I did not participate in the initial postings on this thread. I did not comment because I was largely disinterested in the article in question. What got me interested was the near universal anger that the article generated. So I decided to have a look to see what it was all about. And having looked, it seemed to me that the general reaction of posters on this thread was not justified (IMO) by what I found in the piece itself. And what in turn struck my interest was to explore the foundation for these postings by people who I would most often agree with. And so my attempt has not been to validate the piece itself, but rather to explore the validity of the reactions to the piece that have been posted on this forum..

I have found that to be an interesting exercise. And if this little indulgence of mine has inadvertently annoyed anyone, please accept my apology because that was not my intent.

And on that happy note, I think I will be calling an end to further discussion on this topic.

You see that, after all thirteen pages of postings, you and I are in agreement, at least to this extent.

First of all, I appreciate you taking the time to elucidate your position on something that, in some sense we all agree, is a fairly worthless piece of writing that doesn't really deserve our comment - and yet there is value in what we ourselves are bringing to light, I think.


Indubitably. Everything up to and including this point, we agree. And I will carefully consider your remaining remarks.

Granted. Of course that doesn't mean I agree with _her_ position, but I do agree with your point.
Here, I disagree. Although I haven't read Ms. Allen before, I've suffered through enough articles by Betsy Hart and others to recognize a kind of cognitive dissonance that seems inevitable when a writer (or speaker, or TV host, etc) uses their notoriety to pay homage to the principles of those that believe you should be discouraged (or in some cases not even permitted) to do the things that they themselves have done to achieve their position. And they honestly, seriously do exactly that, and do indeed "try to evangelize a general trend among her gender to cohere around the words" that they have written.

Also, everyone can compartmentalize to some degree; she studied, went to college and became 'famous', but only in a narrow approved area (conservative religious writing, apparently). In all other things she was doubtlessly appropriately happy with her 'dimness'. (Yes, I know some of these people _very_ well.) These thoughts probably make sense within the confines of the community that all drank the same kool-aid; but it's only when trying to extend to the community at large and they attempt to apply it to people who are *not* willing to confine themselves to such a narrow definition, that the hypocrisy is exposed.

(Having said that, I think it is a very narrow field that this could apply to - I can see that a famous female conservative writer or speaker on "women's studies" could suggest that it isn't important for women to pursue academics; but I can't quite see a famous female mathematician or astronaut to suggest same.)


No offense taken. But also, I don't feel anger at all, although I can sympathize with those who do. While I did express shock and dismay (and yes, a bit of disgust), I took the time to also consider the words she and I (and you, and others) have written as dispassionately as possible (well, not in every post, sometimes it's good to 'express yourself' a bit more, heh), so that I can glean actual understanding from the experience. And I think I have, and I appreciate that you have too.

When I said "no amount of editing", I was speaking from experience as an editor - trust me, an editor is very limited in what they can re-write without permission from the author.

As for logical non-sequiturs, I stopped counting. I had given excruciating analysis of 3 of them, but somehow over the course of editing it all disappeared ... so, let me summarize:

1)She actually proved that women are safer drivers - I think, in the example of driving, she conflated RATE of accidents with INCIDENCES of accidents; while the NUMBER of incidences would be expected to be higher with 74% more miles driven, the RATE can be EXPECTED to go down (more experience), so the 5.1 vs 5.7 numbers are no surprise and are not indicative at all of 'safer male drivers'; in fact I fully expect that any group of women drivers that drive as much as men will have RATES even lower than 5.1 per million miles (hmmm, I wonder if there are comparative stats on truck driver accidents, by gender?).
I considered that a logical non-sequitur, but you could also simply call it a lack of comprehension.

2) She takes the higher number of female driver's 5.7 vs male driver's 5.1 accidents per million miles as her measure of 'safety'; and yet admits that women's tendency to take fewer risks results in 66% fewer fatalities per accident. Excuse me? After taking into account the fact that, while women may have have an accident rate that is 12% higher, overall they cause 62% fewer fatalities - seems to me she again proved women are safer drivers, by far!

Again, not a non-sequitur, just a glaringly obvious, huge, premise-of-the-article-destroying mistake. More personal dimness I'd have to say, but she herself said "she's OK with that"... she can barely add 2+2, if you recall, who needs to know any more than that?

3) She asserts that studies showing that men's superior visuo-spatial skills serves as confirmation that her earlier statement that men are better drivers is true. Well, leaving aside that her own earlier example actually proved that women are better drivers, there is no support given for the premise that 'spatial skills' = 'better drivers' (in fact her earlier example suggests that superior judgment (less risk-taking) far outweighed any advantage from superior visuo-spatial abilities) - she's using it as a premise, but it's actually a conclusion that has not been given any premises of it's own... and the two examples just don't seem to relate anyway. There's really no support given for *any* of these conclusions...


And there's more... she goes on to extend it to "female fighter pilots, architects, tax accountants, chemical engineers, Supreme Court justices and brain surgeons", again with only the barest of tenuous links from that "visuo-spatial" premise - which is itself undisputed - but without saying how important it may or may not be, or if that factor is swamped out by a host of other factors where women may excel, or that the standard deviation (not just the outliers) from the norm of each gender significantly exceeds the difference of the norm between genders; another non-sequitur in my opinion.

Alas, I don't grant that part of your analysis - I *do* believe that she really does believe her own words, that she really does advocate women to 'relax and enjoy your dimness in academics, it's more important to make a house a home'. I think it's obvious really, the 2+2 comment, all the mistakes in logic, etc, etc.

I even believe she thought it was humor - but I've already given my comments on that.

Well, you are human too, you admitted to making an assumption that she wasn't really seriously talking about it as an advocacy piece.
If you, for the sake of argument, accept that your assumption was incorrect, would you say the anger, or at least the discussion, was justified?

Yes, I'd say the discussion has been infinitely more illuminating than the original piece! And I can see how I might agree with you. if only I accepted your assumption that this truly was 'tongue-in-cheek'. I think she is more likely to be deceiving herself if she really thought she was writing a humor piece, or else she was outright lying and simply backpedaling.

There's a book you might find interesting, on the capacity of people to engage in denial, self-deception or cognitive dissonance, called People of the Lie , by M. Scott Peck. You may have heard of him, he also wrote the book 'The Road Less Traveled'. I far prefer the latter, but 'People of the Lie' has some very good points and insight also.

By the way, as I cited a couple times before, NASA did a study that found, on average, men *do* have better visuo-spatial skills and also better reaction time -and so they have a tendency to make better pilots. Women, on the other hand, they found to have, on average, better skills at considering multiple factors, weighing alternatives, and better judgment of risk (much the same as what Ms. Allen cited!), and so concluded that they tend to make better commanders...

Here's an article about a couple of them now, and how NASA addresses the issue

Scott Peck is a flim-flam man.