Charlotte Allen sees "the lighter side" of female idiocy

When Charlotte Allen's op/ed about the alleged intellectual inferiority of women outraged Washington Post readers, section editor Joe Pomfret assured the public that the essay was intended to be tongue in cheek.

Now, the Post is giving Allen a chance to explain herself--and she's undercutting Pomfret's condescending excuses.

Allen stresses that she was not trying to be ironic, or satirical, i.e., she wasn't making an exaggerated case for women's inferiority in order to show the reader how bad those arguments really are. 

Washington: When I read this, I immediately thought it was written ironically. Were you surprised that so many people took it literally?

Charlotte Allen: I wouldn't quite use the word "ironic," but yes, I meant to be funny but with a serious point--that women want to be taken seriously but quite often don't act serious. Also, that women and men really are different.

In the Q&A Allen restates her prediction that the percentage of women in the highest echelons of medicine and law will remain "relatively small" (because, she argued in her original essay, women are just too dumb):

Alexandria, Va.: Loved your column -- you spoke honestly about things that most people are reluctant to discuss openly for fear of being labeled sexist or anti-feminist. I think most of the critics don't seem to realize that you were not saying that women were the only ones who could be stupid -- men can be just as clueless, but men and women are usually stupid in different ways, and you just happened to be discussing some of the congenital flaws of the fairer sex. Certainly there have been no shortage of columns in the past dissecting the shortcomings of men!

Charlotte Allen: Yes, men are fair game, and it's considered perfectly OK to make all the fun of them we want. But make a joke at a woman's expense, and--woo!

Evidently, making fun of real or imagined "congenital defects" is fair game as far as Allen is concerned.

There's more...

Woodbridge, Va.: Congratulations on a hilarious article. Do you think the hysterical response to it provides further proof that feminists have no sense of humor?

Charlotte Allen: Is the pope German?

So, Charlotte Allen seriously believes that women are intellectually stunted by their genes. She was just trying to approach the serious subject of female stupidity in a lighthearted way!

 

Comments

[cfrost]

Can't wait for Charlotte Allen's next hilarious piece about colored folk's fondness for dancing and watermelon.

[bill]

Is there a word (or literary allusion) to describe a member of an oppressed class who tries to get ahead by aping the mores and mindset of their oppressors, doing his or her fellows down and then looking around for the applause?

(I don't know whether I'd say women in Western society were "oppressed" (and I don't know that I wouldn't, either) -- but you get my point.)

[shrimplate]

Charlotte Allen must live under a pile of rocks. Not just one rock. Oh no. A hill of them.

[kimba]

I went to high school in Woodbridge, Virginia, so the final question you include sadly doesn't surprise me. Her reaction, however, indicates to me that she should move to Woodbridge.

[Lesley]

Of course she doesn't think of herself as dumb does she? She must be the exception.

I'd like to see the stats on women in law, medicine, and other specializations and the changes over time. The latest Canadian census results show more women than men have have university degrees. I expect there are a record number of women in many areas now then at any time in history, mainly because more women have the resources to pursue higher education and there are fewer barriers.

[Lesley]

Here's what the US census bureau reports on women and education:
www.census.gov/prod/2004pubs/p20-550.pdf

Women have made gains in both high school and postsecondary educational attainment.

In 2003, for the second year in a row, women had a higher rate of high school completion (85 percent) than men (84 percent)...The 2002 difference was the first statistically significant one between the sexes since 1989. Over the last decade, college attainment has increased for both men and women, but women appear to be making greater strides. Women experienced an increase of nearly 7 percentage points in the proportion with a bachelor’s degree in the past decade, reaching 26 percent, while men experienced an increase of about 4 percentage points, reaching 29 percent. The proportions having completed some college (or more education) were more similar—52 percent of women and 53 percent of men.

For the population 25 to 29 years in 2003, educational attainment levels of women exceeded those of men (Figure 2)—88 percent of young women and 85 percent of young men had completed high school, while at the college level, the proportions were 31 percent and 26 percent, respectively. The last year young women and men had equal rates of high school and college attainment was 1995.

From Wikipedia:
It should be noted, however, that in 2003 males still earned more college degrees than women and that among the overall population there were slightly more men with a Bachelor's degree or higher than women. Overall, 29% of men had a four-year college degree, versus 26% of women. This contrasts with the completion of secondary education; 85% percent of women were high school graduates compared to 84% among men. The contrasting figures indicated that fewer women than men went on to college and earned a four-year degree. Comparing the percentages of those having earned a four-year degree with those having attended college without graduating further supports this assumption. While the differences between men and women with some college education was a mere one percentage point, the difference between men and women with a Bachelor's degree or higher was three percentage points.[1] Thus the gender gap seems to widen as educational attainment increases. During the 2000 Census, 1.4% of men had a doctorate, compared to only 0.6% of women.[5]

Fewer going on to pursue a post-graduate education does not necessarily signify a lack of intellectual capability. There are many (one would think, obvious) reasons women cut short or interrupt their education. It's not as if women are socially and economically equal yet, though we're definitely getting there.

The idea that women aren't genetically capable of higher learning is ridiculous since if that were true, there wouldn't be a single post-secondary female graduate.

Blah blah, preaching to the choir here, but you know... :) I wish these reporters would introduce some hard stats to their questions instead of taking this so-called tongue in cheek approach. Force the dumbass to defend her position against cold hard facts. I mean, really!

[Margalis]

The worst thing about her piece was how dumb it was. Her own numbers show that women are better drivers.

[Mold]

Maybe in BoBJones or Robertson U. Something about women in their brochures and how teh wimmens should be properly submissive.

When I was in HS, women had the choices of nursemommy, teachermommy, or secretarymommy. Now, as a teacher, I delight in supporting girls in their choice of career. I have always wanted a meritocracy.

[Teri]

I reply to CFrost:

Blacks call it being an Uncle Tom, maybe from here on out it should be called being a Charlotte Allen.

[Roy]

you spoke honestly about things that most people are reluctant to discuss openly for fear of being labeled sexist or anti-feminist.

Really? Since when?
Every time I turn around, there's someone who's claiming to "go against the grain" or who is "bravely defying PC police" to let us know how inferior women are, all the while letting us know how unique they are and what a risk they're taking doing so.

[B-Money]

Clearly this lady is living a delusion. But she knows how to play the game. Now is is on the radar and is getting attention. Remember, any media attention is good media attention these days. People like Allen (i.e. Ann Coulter) revel in the negative spotlight and crave this type of attention so that they may spew their ridiculous views. It gives them a platform. Unfortunately, people play right into their hands and give them what they crave and seek.

[doyle Saylor]

The solidarity many women feel as women still is not a given about the culture. Conservative forces have always shaped women too, and women who had power in the past served conservative purposes. I mean conservative in the less democratic sense. Allen makes room for elite women to show their skills while dissing the mass of women. That is called class thinking. What is interesting is that this backward thinking piece appeared in the Washington Post. Which gives obvious factually wrong bigotry a 'sense' of orthodox thinking at the Post.

Why does this crop up now? Why inflate such thinking at this moment? Note her attack on feeling in the piece. Note the culture of feeling being downgraded. That coincides with the strong feelings people feel about Bush. If one can put that under question, make women feel they are stupid for strong feelings then that undermines the cohesion of the opposition to conservative read Bush forces in society. Women may feel vulnerable to attacks like this because of the insecurity they feel, an insecurity created by a system that uses insecurity and fear as a means to manipulate and control.

[parse]

Pomfret's excuse for the column appears to wrong, but what was condescending about it?

[Lindsay Beyerstein]

I always hoped the phrase "Aunt Tom" would catch on as a counterpart to "Uncle Tom."

[Brendan]

"that women want to be taken seriously but quite often don't act serious. Also, that women and men really are different."

Criticisms of the author aside, if this is, indeed, the "point" she was making then she seems to be correct. There are clear, statistical, differences between the sexes when it comes to performance on various kinds of cognitive tasks. Speaking to the former point she makes, I see no reason to dispute the claim that a substantial portion of women perpetuate stereotypes of women. And, of course, a substantial portion do not.

Finally, concerning comparisons to claims about race. Race is not a biological distinction. Sex is. HENCE, it is not surpising that there are cognitive differences, or other ones, between the sexes. It WOULD be suprising if there were between races, because, as biological categories RACES DO NOT EXIST. They are, at best, social, or normative, classes that people impose on themselves and others (very roughly speaking). SO, to imply, as some often do, that there is some analogy between the sorts of claims the author is making and similar claims an ignorant person might make about race is both offensive and uninformed.

[Cass]

"Speaking to the former point she makes, I see no reason to dispute the claim that a substantial portion of women perpetuate stereotypes of women. And, of course, a substantial portion do not."

Well, let me just say that after eight years of government by and for "children of a larger growth" this doesn't seem the moment for my gender to be feeling defensive about anything.

[Roy]

There are clear, statistical, differences between the sexes when it comes to performance on various kinds of cognitive tasks.

Exactly. Just like the studies that show how women talk more than men. Oh. Wait.

[cfrost]

SO, to imply, as some often do, that there is some analogy between the sorts of claims the author is making and similar claims an ignorant person might make about race is both offensive and uninformed.

I’m not familiar with current research on gender related cognitive differences, though incidental reading of popular and technical literature has convinced me that there are indeed some. I’m willing to believe that carefully constructed experiments may have sufficient resolution to peer through the nearly overwhelming noise that besets the whole field of human psychology to map such differences. (And here we should tip our hats to the psychologists whose lot is mastering and applying the rigorous experimental design and statistics/analysis required for their field.) It would be surprising if there weren’t at least some gender based mental/cognitive differences accompanying the physical ones. The question is: are whatever differences, that may, and probably do, exist of sufficient weight to be of any practical consequence? Do such differences that are measurable coincide with popular and stereotypic notions of gender-based cognitive/mental differences? Real differences are likely to be subtle (remember, we’re talking about a notoriously noisy experimental environment), counterintuitive, and almost certainly very incompletely understood.

Psychological gender differences with a biological/evolutionary basis are artifacts and consequences of processes and phenomena about which we have only a very fragmentary understanding. Gender roles in foraging behavior or child rearing in the various human-like species during the last three million years, to cite two examples, are hardly sufficiently understood to start drawing conclusions about women’s inherent capacity for academic excellence or driving prowess. Trying to do so is useless pop-psych silliness.

As for races; races do indeed exist. I saw a black-tailed deer (Odocoileus hemionus columbianus) in my back yard just this morning. That deer belongs to a race or subspecies, depending on how those terms are defined, that has a different range, and a readily distinguishable appearance from its conspecific, the mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus hemionus). Intergradations between the two are commonly found where their ranges overlap, where particular individuals can’t properly be called one or the other. There’s a continuum amongst species between complete random reproductive assortment yielding a uniform type (An extreme example being the Devil’s Hole pupfish whose entire population numbers a couple hundred, all living in one pond for millennia, all virtual clones, and utterly without racial division.) to “sister” species (e.g. Channel Island and mainland gray foxes.) that have accumulated enough genetic differences to be considered separate species.

Humans reside somewhere along that continuum just like any other organism. Our “races” happen to be rather poorly differentiated genetically, as we as a species are young and have only relatively recently spread over our current range, and most importantly, are highly mobile, indiscriminate and very enthusiastic copulators. Consequently our racial differences are trivial, and in the case of cognitive/mental differences, so miniscule as to be barely differentiable, if such differences even actually exist.

With respect to the sorts of claims Charlotte Allen is making, they hardly amount to coherent claims of any sort. There’s nothing there. Whatever she thinks she’s trying to say is just stinky vapor drifting out of her addled cranium. No analogies can be drawn about her “claims” except that they resemble nothing so much as the baseless idiotic nonsense racists spout.

[cfrost]

Every time I turn around, there's someone who's claiming to "go against the grain" or who is "bravely defying PC police"

Yeah, these heroic conservative "iconoclasts" are every bit as interesting and enlightening as mildew.

[Ken C.]

There's an immediate political content to Allen's column: the lead dumb example is "women who support Obama", and another dumb example is "Hilary Clinton and her female-heavy campaign staff". So her examples there also read: "women who are Democrats are dumb". The awfulness of the column as a whole seems to overshadow those particular points, which are relatively unchallenged (though I certainly haven't read every response).

Another subtext is also present: the lead example is basically "Our White Women are going into frenzied sexual heat over the Black Stud". She manages to play to racism as well as sexism.

[cfrost]

Another subtext is also present: the lead example is basically "Our White Women are going into frenzied sexual heat over the Black Stud"

I don't know, I'm not a woman, sexually frenzied or otherwise, but if I were, I don't think I could get much over room temperature for McCain compared to Obama.

[Margalis]

What was condescending about the editor response was that it was obviously bullshit and amounted to "what, you can't take a joke?"

The piece was *clearly* not sarcastic or "tongue-in-cheek" and it was pathetic to pretend that the problem was stupid readers didn't get it. It turns out Pomfret was the one who didn't get it.

[bill]

I thought of "Uncle Tom", but that seems to me to lack the sense of wholehearted sycophancy that I'm trying to convey... iirc Stowe thought of Uncle Tom as some sort of Christian ideal -- noble, long-suffering, loyal etc. I'm after something rather more vicious here, something that conveys my sense that Allen knows exactly what she's doing and simply counts her gain more important than equality's loss (and is too stupid to know that Churchill's crocodile does eventually eat the appeaser).

[parse]

Margalis, if Pomfret didn't get it, that means he wasn't pretending when he said it was tongue in cheek.

Also, I don't think it's accurate to characterize his response as "what, can't you take a joke." Calderone's article says that Pomfret's "not surprised readers reacted to it strongly." The editor also acknowledged that the failure of readers to see the irony in the article might be because "it wasn’t packaged well enough to make it clear that it was tongue-in-cheek."

[Margalis]

It wasn't tongue-in-cheek and I assume everyone there knew it. How could they not? It fit perfectly with the previously established serious views of the author. I covered this sort of thing in my blog:

http://margalis.blogspot.com/2007/12/on-language-satire.html

It's pretty common procedure to say something crazy then when people react claim it was satire or tongue-in-cheek or ironic when it was really slight hyperbole at most. Hyperbole is not the same as irony.

It was wrong of me to say Pomret didn't get it. I'm sure he did. Readers didn't see the irony in the article because there wasn't any. However I do think it's possible that many people genuinely don't know the difference between different styles of jokey writing and consider sarcasm, irony and hyperbole all the same thing. So in that way his comment may have not been out outright lie, just stupid.

But I'm sure he knew the author really believed the core of what she wrote.