Posted on 04/14/2002 10:27:45 PM PDT by Jean S
Are women whining, or what?
Some of the most privileged women in the Western world are complaining that their advantages have become disadvantages.
Women at Harvard Business School tell Lesley Stahl of "Sixty Minutes" that men don't want to date them as soon as they discover they've got brains.
Maureen Dowd, columnist fatale of the New York Times, tells how offended she was recently when a man told her she'd never get a mate because she was too, well, "critical."
Molly Haskell, successful writer and movie critic, writes in the New York Observer how she feels sympathy for Islamic women who like their burqas because then they don't have to worry about hair, makeup or the latest hemline. Women once had only to compete with other women for men, and now must compete with them for work and love.
Even Judi Dench, who wins acting awards for playing imperious queens, is insecure because she's not a tall, thin youthful blonde. The first page many of my single friends (of various ages) read in the Sunday papers are those with the wedding announcements. Not necessarily to check out who's getting married, but to check out the ages and careers of the brides. They want to see whether the brides are changing their last names. Many are.
Haskell calls the name change complete capitulation, "taking the veil of privacy or anonymity that a husband's name provides."
The underlying theme of these complaints is that life is unfair to women. After four decades of successful feminism, the Man in this scenario still has the edge. He doesn't have to be so concerned about his looks or his biology (though power, money and testosterone don't hurt). To paraphrase Rousseau, a feminist may be born free, but she is everywhere in chains to the aging process. If anatomy is not destiny, it's a major contender in determining life's choices.
It's ironic that feminists whose mantra is "choice" have trouble understanding the meaning of the word as it applies to personal decisions. Choices have consequences. There are forks in the road and roads not taken. The sexual revolution and feminism multiplied choices, but didn't eliminate the need to choose.
The most heartbreaking complaints come from those women who delayed having babies and find that the sand in the hourglass has run out. What they thought would always be possible has a time limit. A generation of women who came of age in the 1950s and 1960s knew that 35 was a major divide for getting pregnant, but the fact of that divide got lost in the expanding career stories of the next three decades.
So it's news when Time magazine does a cover story about the problems of fertility and reports that a woman, age 20, who has only a 9 percent risk of a miscarriage finds her risk doubling at 35, tripling in the early 40s. At 40, half a woman's eggs are chromosomally abnormal; at 42 that figure rises to 90 percent. Childlessness is on the increase for women between the ages of 40 and 44, as high as 1 in 5. It rises to almost 50 percent for women of that age who have professional or graduate degrees.
Of course, some professional women choose not to marry and others choose not to have children because they prefer to give more time to work. But they're a tiny minority. Unlike the pre-feminist generation, these women can pursue their careers as aggressively as a man and reach high achievement. But it's difficult for women with children to work that hard and be there for their children, too. One of the choices an ambitious woman has given up, at least psychologically, is the goal of marrying in her 20s.
Gone too, are the once ubiquitous stories about young mothers enjoying family life. For decades, references to "The Feminine Mystique," published in 1963, emphasized the boredom experienced by college graduates who became full-time mothers. But that was a distortion.
Most of the women Betty Friedan interviewed for "The Feminine Mystique" complained about their lives (begin ital) after their children had entered school. They lived in the suburbs without public transportation and they were stuck as chauffeurs-on-call.
Today, young mothers have infinitely more opportunities when their children go to school. They can go back to college, take a graduate degree, train on a job or seek a professional career, and do all that without the anxiety of wondering whether they'll be able to have babies. Once the culture - men and women - supported that choice. No more, and that's sad.
This makes me giggle like a pre-schooler. Not what the man told her, but the fact that she was offended by it.
She knows how hard she tries to be obnoxious. Are we to blame for thinking she IS what she has tried so hard to make herself?
This is very interesting. There was a survey taken some years ago asking men what they valued most in a woman. Instead of good housekeeper, good looks or good mother, they rated keen intelligence as first and capacity to love as second.
Only emotionally mature men appreciate an intelligent, loving woman. The rest are too stupid themselves to even see it, much less appreciate it.
Besides, somebody ought to tell these 'feminists' that being offensively strident in one's views and looking physically unattractive isn't going to put real love into one's life, either.
I would much rather date professional, intelligent women. Unfortunately between my heavy work schedule and my children I am left with little free time to date. If a woman has a successful career then she is also working long hours. I have had several relationships just sort of peter out because of scheduling conflicts. It often seems to me that the only women that have time to date me are unemployed or are in low paid professions that allow for a flexible schedule.
Now I am a good catch, but as I said I do have children. I could be wrong, but I feel lot of the professional women who have put off child baring for a career and have their biological clock ticking away don't consider me because they feel I would be unlikely to want more children.
That, as well as their scornful attitude.
That, and there is also the "evil stepmother" syndrome. No professional woman wants to put herself through that, unless the man in question is really worth it!
There is an element of self-serving interpretation here. Most of the women involved have academic memories and are not particularly intelligent. Nor to the show any propensity for WISDOM. Does anybody know what that is and the importance of it?
Additionally, I've noticed such women tend to be shallowly overstriven and neurotic. They are not the kind of women intelligent men would want raising their children. Neither are they capable of honest relaxed intimate relationships with men of any depth. Men know that.
Years ago when I was dating I found women Ph.Ds and Masters were confused basket cases unsuitable for anything of quality.
I forget who said it first, but it always strikes me as odd that some women consider it a blow against patriarchy when they decline their husband's surname in favor of...daddy's ;)
So you think I should become bitter like the women in the artical?
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