Last week, this article appeared in the Washington Post. The blogosphere has been going nuts about it, and rightly so, because it’s absolutely appalling. It was written by Charlotte Allen, and after the uproar about her awful article, WaPo said that it was meant to be satiric. It was most definitely NOT satiric. I read the article a day or two after it came out, and I sent an email to Ms. Allen. Granted, my little undergraduate mind can’t compare to a Harvard and Stanford grad, but I’m sure she was surprised to hear such vehement anger from an Evangelical Institution student, if she’s ever heard of the place. Well, turns out she actually emailed me back, and here’s the exchange:
Ms. Allen,This is a response to your article entitled “We Scream, We Swoon. How Dumb Can We Get?” in the online version of the Sunday, March 2nd edition of the Washington Post.My first question is: is this a serious article or some kind of satiric piece on the idea that women are naturally worth less than men because of their scientifically-proven smaller brains? If it is the latter, I am not picking up the cues from your writing. I’m going to assume that you, a woman, actually mean every word of what you say.I think you’re writing from the premise that women are essentially sentimental and are constantly consuming books and entertainment that is worth less than what men consume. Since this is one of your assumptions, how can you possibly admit that you admire a woman such as Elizabeth I, who, according to you is naturally dumber than the men she was commanding? These “outliers” you talk about were actually part of their culture, not monastics who could create their own reality by separating themselves from their peers and culture and pretending to be a man. I think you need to look into your literary history a little more, especially when you talk about Richardson, who happened to be a man writing a sentimental piece which was read by men in clubs who cried over it. Don’t forget Dickens, who was also a man writing sentimental novels. And who said that sentimentality has to be a bad thing? Harriet Beecher Stowe got the United States to understand what slavery was like and she humanized the bodies being bought and sold. She also created huge social and pragmatic change.Also, you belittle your own academic career when you say that”I have coasted through life and academia on the basis of an excellent memory and superior verbal skills, two areas where, researchers agree, women consistently outpace men.“ You don’t think at all that you, as an individual, and not some evolutionary example of femaleness made your own way in your career? If you think you should make a house a home, then why are you writing articles for the Washington Post? Why do you even bother with a career at all? Could you perhaps be using the idea that woman are naturally stupid as an excuse to publish a really awful article? Even by admitting that there are some feminists who don’t know what the Oprah Winfrey Show is, you admit that there are women out there, despite their mental incapacity, who don’t go for the sentimental and generally stupid. If you know who Mary Wollstonecraft is, you might understand that sometimes women’s tendency toward the “dim” is because they are trained to be that way by their culture (by articles like yours) even when they could be better. Your article is actually making more stupid women, not to mention justifying all the misogynistic tendencies of the men who think that women should stay barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen.People have fainted at Hillary rallies, too, and I’m pretty sure the fainting at Obama rallies was because of the heat, not because of Obama worship. Don’t forget the 10-year-old child who fainted in California when Schwarzenegger was up front.I support your effort as a woman to write and be heard in a nationally-recognized newspaper. But, I do not support a poorly researched article which is counterproductive of your efforts and to all women with goals and with brains.
Ms. :
I don’t think you’ve read my article very carefully. We’ve had almost 40 years of movement feminism, indoctrinated at every level of education, so it’s difficult to understand how you can blame the “culture” for women’s acting dim. The culture of dimness has, alas, been created by women themselves.
Charlotte Allen
I sent her an email back saying that, oh yes, of course she’s right; not only am I stupid, but my uterus is the reason why I can be passed off as hysteric when I have a real concern. My ovaries secrete stupid hormones all day long.
Oh trust me, I read your article very, very carefully, and I got exactly what you said. That’s why I was so angry. “I don’t think you read my article very carefully” is a classic excuse for “I suck as a writer and don’t realize that my words can be interpreted differently than what I intended.” She says that there’s nothing in the culture that allows women to act this way, but then she goes to say that women “created the culture of dimness. What the fuck? In other words, women are stupid. I read your article carefully. I can’t say the same for one of my profs, to whom I sent the article. That particular prof, Dr. P, didn’t get it. The other prof I sent it to was just as freaked out as I was.
Seriously, google Charlotte Allen and see how crazy this woman is/how pissed off the rest of the world is.
