"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

[blueeyedtigress.livejournal.com]

Y'know .... I don't think I'd want a man dumb enough to believe that tripe.

[parke-matru.livejournal.com]

Agreed with blueeyedtigress. This only serves to scare off the jerkfaces that nice career women would hate to be married to, anyway.

[acusa-dora.livejournal.com]

I don't even think I know too many men who would fall for that. (not even my 80 year-old father-in-law!) There are so many things wrong with his logic that I don't know where to begin.

[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.

[kit-the-brave.livejournal.com]

Oh, my. I love the way he blythely declares what all these statistics mean with absolutely no shame - he quotes a number and then tells you it proves your house is going to be dirty!

And, um? "Girl" quit being used as a term for a female over the age of 16 in the last century...

[xianghua.livejournal.com]

I made talked Dad into canceling his Forbes subscription. :D Since it's obviously devolved into Time, which is not terribly worthwhile as a newsmagazine and it costs more and we get that anyway. So Hah!

[spin1978.livejournal.com]

I realized I could conceivably be in the target audience for the original article. To which I say, "Pfft."

I don't need a waste of electrons telling me how to choose a wife, I need suggestions on how to organize and maintain a royal harem!

:)

[zahdi.livejournal.com]

I had a couple of other firends post links to the Forbes article, and, wow, I'd been trying really hard not to read them.

*laughs*

Srsly though (the pluto stuff has me saying "srsly" all day for some reason. Bear with me till i recover..) that is really disgusting.

And? I think I spot some Freudian-type issues there. Srsly.


-- Zahdi

[wormtorturer.livejournal.com]

I just want to be like Harriet Vane and marry a smart, witty gentleman who loves me for being smart and creative, wants me to enjoy using my talents--and has hired someone amazingly competent at the day-to-day stuff neither of us wants to worry about.

Ha, maybe I should make silly comments to the Foglios about Agatha + (Gil & Wooster) :: Harriet + (Peter & Bunter).

And completely OT... I wonder what Wooster's been up to since we saw him fly in? And where's the Baron? Could Gil and the Clays be catching up?

[selenesue.livejournal.com]

SHFU. My house is spotless. I can afford maid service.