"Don't Marry Career Women"

[sff_corgi_lj]

American misogyny rears its ugly head in the cultural petri dish created for it: Forbes magazine recently published the above-titled article by some... person... named 'Michael Noer, an executive editor and writer for Forbes.com', along with an earlier thoughtful piece by him:

..."The Economics of Prostitution," in which he compared "wives" to "whores" and wrote that "the implication remains that wives and whores are -- if not exactly like Coke and Pepsi -- something akin to champagne and beer. The same sort of thing."

Forbes pulled "Don't Marry Career Women" for a couple of days, according to the Salon article from which I quote ("Unhappily ever after"), and replaced it with "Careers and Marriage", which had a counterpoint written to the first piece.

Here's some more tidbits from the Salon article, quoting Noer's:

An accompanying slide show listed the "Nine Reasons to Steer Clear of Career Women," starting with the news that a professionally successful woman won't want to marry you -- "you" being Noer's male reader; he didn't bother to pretend that he might have any female eyes skimming his work -- because high-achieving women "search less intensively for a match," and "have higher standards for an acceptable match than women who work less and earn less."

...According to Noer, working women stray when a wife ventures outside the home, because a job increases the chances that "[she'll] meet someone [she] likes more than you." That surely doesn't sound like a stretch in this case.

..."Your house will be dirtier," since studies show that a woman who makes more than $15 an hour "will do 1.9 hours less house work a week."

And wait until you read why the husband of a 'career girl' is more likely to fall ill. You'll think you're in a time warp.

There's a reference on the first page to a Caitlin Flanagan -- I had to look her up, as thankfully I'd never heard of her. Formerly of The Atlantic, MS. Flanagan is apparently the kind of person who says writing isn't a real job so she can pretend she's not a working mother and remain piously self-righteous and self-justifying. Ms. discusses her apparently non-professional writings, for which she's getting paid lots of money to be not-working, at more length in the linked article.

What the bleep is going ON?

Comments

[minoukatze.livejournal.com]

I think Forbes must have a serious dip in readers, considering that they'd resort to publishing this sort of polemic crap to get attention.

It's funny, I probably fall into the demographic that Noer and the extremely hypocritical Flanagan (check out her background- not only does her supposed non-job take her away from her kids on book tours, she has a good deal of hired help to aid her in her maternal duties) think a good housey-wife should be. I never would have allowed myself to depend on any guy who subscribed to this line of thought, though- it's much better to be alone.

I imagine Mr. Noer is a very sad man.