Charlotte Allen Redux

Both Stephen and I (and seemingly dozens, if not hundreds, of others in the blogosphere) were moved to write posts a few days ago concerning a piece in last Sunday's Washington Post by Charlotte Allen, which advanced the proposition that women were dumb.  The Post was inundated with furious comments from readers and responded by suggesting that the article was merely whimsical, a "tongue in cheek" effort meant to provoke discussion.  Today, the Post put Allen on line to chat with readers about the article.  It's a pretty fascinating exchange and to me makes clear that the piece was serious.  Oh not serious in the sense of logical, well written or carefully thought out -- indeed, far from it.  But this was not parody, satire or irony, although Ms. Allen operates under the sad delusion that she is somehow humorous. 

When asked if she was surprised that people took the piece literally, when she meant it ironically, Ms. Allen responded:

I wouldn't quite use the word 'ironic,' but yes I meant it 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 are really different.

Another reader follows up on Allen's claim that women will always be a minority in high level fields like medicine, law and politics, noting that women are now graduating from law and medical schools at greater rates than men.  Allen concedes this point but then goes on to state "but the proportion of women at the highest levels in these fields is going to remain relatively small I predict."

One senses from this last comment and in Ms. Allen's other works a sense of contempt for women, that at her core she believes them to be materially different from men and in a way that is inferior.  In a venomous defense of Lawrence Summers' suggestion that women just weren't as good as men at science and math, Allen compares what she calls "ideological feminism" to Nazism and Marxism.  She contends that "asserting that men and women are innately identical is, in scientific terms like asserting (as the Nazis did) that Jews are an inferior race or (as the Marxists did) that the history of the world can be explained as a process of class struggle."  The conflating of feminism with Nazism and Marxism -- and in particular with Nazi racial theory is rather stunning hyperbole.  Or maybe it is satire.  But probably not.   

      

In addition to being on a par with Nazism, feminism is also about the "triumph of the ugly and the stupid."  But lest I suggest that Ms. Allen hates only women, check out this bit of lovely from her chat regarding Hurricane Katrina and it salutary effect on those lazy bastards from New Orleans:

I said Katrina was the best thing to happen to New Orleans because it finally [gave the] opportunity to a huge number of New Orleans residents living in passive dependency on welfare to get out of New Orleans and change their lives for the better.

Yeah, that's it -- Katrina was a blessing.

Enough with this pathetic specimen already.  But what on earth could the Washington Post be thinking?  Who do they imagine that their audience is?  And is every self loathing right wing hack entitled to space on its once august pages?   

Comments

[litbrit]

I am speechless. Really, I don't know what to say (and those who know me will tell you that's some stunningly rare stuff if it can render me without words.)

Cripes, but the Post needs to reject, denounce, and fire this woman tout de suite.

[Joe Klein's conscience]

LitBrit:
Why would they when Fred Hiatt runs the op-ed page? Or is he the Executive Editor? Kay Graham sure raised a bozo for a son, i'll say that.

[Crissa]

...And could she say if Marxism was wrong?

Probably not. *sigh*

[Sir Charles]

JKC,

Fred Hiatt is the Op-Ed page editor. Donald Graham, Katherine's son, is the publisher, and I believe Len Downie is the Executive Editor. The Sunday Outlook section, in which this was published, actually has a separate editor whose name I cannot recall off of the top of my head, so I can't blame this travesty on Hiatt. Outlook is quite bad in terms of publishing the worst kinds of right wing crap.

Crissa,

You're right about the ridiculous conflation of Marxism and Nazism. I assume that Allen was using this as a shorthand for "Marxist" regimes and so didn't get into that argument, but yes, it's not actually an intellectually rigorous analogy from many perspectives.

[Lisa Simeone]

Well, here's one die-hard feminist who defended Summers and thinks his comments were taken way, way out of context.

Even so, Allen sounds like a bozo, though haven't read her defense of him yet so don't what she said. Will do at some point.

[Sir Charles]

Lisa,

Say what you will about Summers' comments -- and I thought that they were sloppy, half-assed and ill-considered for someone in his position -- but Allen's defense of him is batshit insane and completely over the top. Moreover, it if you examine her oeuvre, you will see just a series of screeds against feminism that make Maureen Dowd look like Betty Friedan. The fact that Outlook sees fit to print the likes of her and Dinesh D'Souza, among others, is really troubling -- I'm pretty sure that there are more cogent conservative voices out there they could print.

[bystander]

There are women in the world, fortunately their numbers diminish by the decade, who are made furious by the accomplishments of other women. Likely, they are also frightened of those accomplishments and resentful of the women who achieve them. All of which tells us more about Charlotte Allen, and women like her, than about the women they write about.

I'm not sure where the bitterness, or resentment, that masquerades as quasi-humor/irony/satire/parody comes from. It is as though they believed whomever told them they could never achieve what their male counterparts could achieve (for whatever reason(s) they were given), but have suddenly discovered that the tale wasn't true, and they shouldn't have accepted it as true. Lacking the insight to direct their anger at the tale-tellers, and unwilling to direct their ire at themselves, they feed a retrograde theme.

I see much of what these women, like Charlotte Allen, write as nothing more than sour grapes. The behind the hand tee-hee-ing that carries a nasty barb. Never having learned - nor having been encouraged to learn - how to compete successfully (and, admittedly, competition is a trait often suppressed in women, and by women), they lash out in coy, catty ways at women who did.

[Sir Charles]

bystander,

Well said. I am particularly intrigued by her recognition that women are the majority now in medical and law schools, yet somehow their numbers at the "highest levels" in their fields will remain relatively small. So evidently all of the poor to medicore lawyers and doctors will be women, but the really good ones will be men. A strange, sad world view for a woman who actually (believe it or not) has rather impressive educational credentials on paper.

[Daisy]

These nasty right-wingers specialize in the hateful writing, then when called it--oh gee, it was just a joke! Satire!

Sure it was.

Ann Coulter redux, it's like a plague.

[Joe]

Why does the Post feel it needs to be the voice of Movement Conservatism ? It seems as though the Editorial Page has moved from Liberal past Centrist and sensibly Conservative all the way to crazy Movement Conservative. Is this how the old media sells papers, or does the Post really believe Movement Conservatives represent mainstream America ?

[Sir Charles]

Joe,

As a Post subscriber and Washington resident, this question has been much on my mind for the last few years. How does this make sense from a business perspective? I did a post a month or two ago looking at the election results in this Metropolitan area, noting how generally liberal it is. And yet, the Post has become a haven for the worst kind of right wing claptrap. I thought the market was flawless and would deliver us from this sort of thing. It only seems to work from the right wing side for some reason.

[Corbie]

Litbrit, Charlotte Allen is a freelance writer, so they can't fire her. They need to fire the editor of the Opinion Section, John Pomfret.

Pomfret said he meant the piece to be provocative; the only thing it's provoked me to do is unsubscribe from the paper.

I can only imagine that this was meant to increase page views at washingtonpost.com.*

The Post claim they want to retain / attract female subscribers. I wrote an actual snail mail letter (! -- had to actually buy stamps) to five people on their masthead, letting them know that they'd lost me and my money, and mentioned my demographic profile in my letter. Sadly, I don't think this is enough, though I will be interested to see what their ombudsman says this coming Sunday.

If I don't see any real apology for this fiasco of an article, I'm contemplating writing to their advertisers, particularly those with which I do regular business.

*I recently found out that The Washington Post and washingtonpost.com are separate companies; the latter buys its content from the former. I'm not sure how this plays out, however, in terms of feedback and editorial content. Something that generates lots of pageviews would be good for the website, but, if other women like me in the DC area are also inclined to unsubscribe, definitely bad for The Post itself.

[Sir Charles]

Corbie,

Good for you. But for the fact that my wife needs the paper for professional reasons and reads it on the subway as part of her morning work routine, I would join you.