Among this year's Book Review Contest entries at ACX is Dating Men In The Bay Area. (Read what follows before you come back to it.) I circulated it in a group email with some approval. Bsking immediately pointed out
my point of disagreement was: this is a single person hanging out with single people trying to figure out why they’re still single. I am a married person hanging out mostly with married people noticing that a bunch of men I know possess all the qualities that she claims “locks men out of relationships”.
How can you possibly determine this without comparing them to married men?
Well, she had me there. This and other comments set me on my heels a bit wondering why I had liked it pretty well. I am a sucker for a woman, especially a young woman, recognising that life can be hard for men. It is just assumed by many of them that women have it sooo much harder. Everyone knows that. GK Chesterton taught me to immediately suspect "what everyone knows." It is usually a culturally agreed on cover for something is not demonstrated by facts. No facts, because everyone has agreed not to study it.
This song has been covered a lot. I'm just saying. So when I see an exception, I get this halo effect and think the woman has great wisdom.
Now that I've undermined her, go back and read her and see that she does actually have some good things to say. And as another female friend pointed out, the girl can write.
2 comments:
I apparently missed the memo that proved that patriarchy was bad, rather than being an extremely successful paradigm used by cultures around the world.
I appreciate that she is trying to help people who are suffering.
Back before 9/11, I remember John Derbyshire writing a similar piece about how men were having to grow up in a world that didn't need them anymore, certainly not to be warriors or combatants. Then, of course, 9/11 happened and we went to war for twenty years.
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