mnvnjnsn's Diary To contact send email to mnvnjnsnATSIGNgmailDOTcom. 2006-08-23
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Don't marry Forbes editors So I just happened across this at feministing.com and, given that work is thankfully very slow this morning, I thought I'd break my nearly two week silence to comment. First of all, if you read the actual article, you may notice that the author peppers the thing with implied statistics ("professional women are more likely to get divorced, more likely to cheat...and she is more likely to grow dissatisfied with you") without citing anything specific (there are occasional journal cites, but only gives you the year, not the issue or page numbers). Every one of the "nine reasons" you shouldn't marry a "career girl" comes with a specious claim, no context and the implication that it's the career-- and the girl's-- fault. Oh, and then in the final paragraph, there's a quick "your mileage may vary" when he realizes he just wrote that if you marry a woman with a job, you'll get sick and die. Statistically speaking. Nice. Anyway, I think Feministing rips the article apart just fine, so I'm instead going to focus on my experience, having been raised by working parents who taught me that an education and a career were a given in my future, and it had nothing to do with me being a girl. I have never, ever assumed that I would be staying home while my husband went to work (though, it did end up that way for my year and a half unemployment-- and it sucked). It never occurred to me that I wouldn't have a career. And, quite frankly, I didn't think that there would still be men who thought they had to be the sole bread winner (this was before the internet demonstrated just how many idiots were, in fact, still out there). So here, Michael Noer, here's a real life "career girl" with some real information: My husband and I both work. I happen to make more money than him, at the moment, and neither of us care (although, we could both use a raise, if anyone out there is offering). I have a "feminist" outlook (in that I believe that women are, in fact, human beings), and yet I am not dissatisfied with my husband, nor am I out boning every guy I work with because my husband has deigned to let me out of the house. I think, Michael, that you left out a very important piece of the complicated issue of men v women: THE FUCKING MARRIAGE. A career doesn't define a relationship. Who does the dishes is not the only thing that any couple uses to assess whether or not they are happy. Your single-dimensioned look at coupling tells us nothing about the reality of the relationships in this world. All it tells us is that you are a piss-poor writer. And probably compensating for a very small... house. Oops, I meant penis. 11:35 a.m. - 2006-08-23 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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