UPDATE: LOL Dear Mr. Taranto, It really, really, really, really didn’t. Thanks for the traffic though!
Stick around people…..we do have fun here.
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I know many of you follow me just to get the “female” perspective. Thank you! I’ve been asked to comment on James Taranto’s Best of the Web Valentine’s post……“Girls Gone Hyper”
So here you have it. In many ways Mr. Taranto is right. But he’s a funny, funny guy who likes to poke a stick at groups of people now and then and yesterday it was the feminists turn. His description of me (the bold below) caused others to point it out with disdain.
Bennett disparages immature men who waste their lives playing video games. To be sure, such dudes are pathetic. But there’s a reason they’re attracted to that particular pursuit. Video games are a simulacrum of masculine virtue: challenge, mastery, control.
There is a corresponding harsh female stereotype: the childless single woman with a cat or dog that serves as an outlet for her unfulfilled maternal instincts. Bennett and Coontz would dearly love to put these two together, but there’s a reason they’re alone. In a culture of sexual equality or female dominance, women and men who aren’t especially charming, brilliant or beautiful don’t have much to offer each other. Happy Valentine’s Day.
But wait you say, “I see the bold part, but what about the “not especially charming, brilliant or beautiful” part?”
Oh that….he was talking about other women there. Not me. 🙂
Why am I, charming, brilliant, beautiful, and still single and sharing my maternal instincts with my dog and other people’s kids? Because I never met the man I wanted to marry.
Is that because fewer men are more educated than me? No, because I don’t value education more than I do a good mind. (The 2 serious relationships I’ve had were with men who were less educated though incredibly smart. )
But yes, women, like most animals, in our guts want men who are more dominant. Dominant men may be in short supply, or they may just not be around my immediate circle…who knows, but I haven’t met the one who a) was available and b) actually asked me out and c) worked out for the long run. That doesn’t mean they don’t exist. OR that I’m not charming!
But do women dry up and become old lady spinsters if we don’t meet said dominant male with whom we have a mutual attraction? (which is what I think Taranto was trying to depict in his poke at feminists)
No, not at all.
Instead we get a dog, or a cat, or a horse. We live in complete freedom coming and going as we please, doing or not doing what we want how we want without an xtra person with whom we would otherwise be compromising. Is it better? Not necessarily. But is it bad? Not even a little.
So no Taranto didn’t bother me. Actually I wondered if perhaps he and his significant other might be on the outs and he poured his own bitterness into the column.
Or perhaps he was just stirring that stick a little for simple fun.
We’ve all done that a time or two eh?
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