Feminist writers/bloggers Amanda Marcotte and Catherine Price aren't fond of my recent column Women don't want men? Ha! (Chicago Tribune, 1/21/07). Marcotte called the article "hateful" and Price dubbed it "virulent" and "remarkably harsh."

Both of their reactions fit in well with one of my criticisms of feminism--when we criticize men, it's fine, when we criticize women, it's sexism. And--no surprise--neither Marcotte nor Price actually dealt with the substance of what I said in the column.

Marcotte always assumes that if a wife has ended a marriage (which is how most marriages end), it's because the marriage was an "unequal partnership" where the wife had to do all of the work for some lazy, sexist slob of a guy. My co-authored column put forth research showing that this isn't true--that as a whole the labor is divided equally in American households, when work both in the home and in the labor market is considered.

My column's other point--that women are sometimes excessively critical of men--was also not meaningfully challenged by either Marcotte or Price. We wrote:

"Nobody would dispute that, in selecting a mate, women are more discerning than men. This is an evolutionary necessity--a woman must carefully evaluate who is likely to remain loyal to her and protect and provide for her and her children. If a man and a woman go on a blind date and don't hit it off, the man will shrug and say 'it went OK.' The woman will give five reasons why he's not right for her.

"A woman's discerning, critical nature doesn't disappear on her wedding day. Most marital problems and marriage counseling sessions revolve around why the wife is unhappy with her husband, even though they could just as easily be about why the husband is unhappy with the wife. In this common pre-divorce scenario there are only two possibilities--either she's a great wife and he's a lousy husband, or she's far more critical of him than he is of her. Usually it's the latter...

"Yes, there are some men who make poor mates, but not nearly enough to account for the divorce epidemic and the decline of marriage. While it's easy to blame men, many of the wounds women bear from failed relationships and loneliness are self-inflicted."

Reasonable people can disagree whether I'm right or wrong. Instead, Marcotte and Price do what feminists usually do--rather than deal with an argument, they instead give it a nasty label like "Hateful" or "Remarkably harsh" and declare the case closed.

(Note--I actually like Marcotte personally, though I'm not sure the feeling is mutual. There are actually many feminists--including Martha Burk, Helen Grieco [head of California NOW], Gloria Allred, Lynn Gold-Bikin [feminist family law attorney], Michael Kimmel, Hugo Schwyzer, child support advocate Debbie Kline, Donnalee Sarda of the anti-father advocacy group Justice for Children, and others--who I like personally, despite their misguided views. Marcotte's writing is often entertaining and witty, though she is, of course, massively unfair to men. Amanda was my guest on His Side with Glenn Sacks a couple years ago for our show Families and Fathers Conference 2005: Civil Rights Leaders or Reactionary Patriarchs?).

(Note #2--Price criticizes my column for being "wittily titled 'Women Don't Want Men? Ha!'. I assume Ms. Price is aware that columnists don't write the headlines that appear on their stories. My original title for the piece was the admittedly more bulky "Men Blamed for Marriage Decline but Women's Relationship Wounds Often Self-Inflicted.")

Read Marcotte's views at Conservative reaction: Get married because we say so! and Price's at Overcritical women and their excessive expectations.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 25th, 2007 at 10:26 am and is filed under Feminism/NOW, Marriage, Men and the Media, Sexism, Divorce/Separation/Child Custody. You can trackback from your own site.