As hard as this is to believe, these are actually different women.
I haven’t been paying much attention to the recent brouhaha over Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s new book. But I feel safe in saying that MRA lackwit Christian J.’s “Sheryl Sandberg, Your Usual “Modern” Crass, Arrogant, Sexist, Biased Female” may be the dumbest thing anyone has written, or ever will write, on the subject.
Mr J’s post on WMASAW – the blog that used to be called What Men Are Saying About Women – starts off with a puzzling description of Sandberg as an “arrogant Lindsay Lohan Look-a-like, [who] Promotes sexism, bias and hate.” (Um, what?) And it only gets worse from there:
It is amazing what these sexist and abusive, addled females get away with while they continually praise themselves and raise themselves as being the “Saviours” of the world with the “If Only Women ran the World” meme. Take Sandberg for example, the bastion of that left-wing mentality … .
Yes, that’s right. Mr. J is describing Sandberg as a “bastion” of left-wing thought. Mr. J and the English language are not good friends.
They make the claim that “Equality” is about the aim of making women level with men, erm! level suggests what? In every area possible, even if it means reducing standards and tests and lowering anything that women have problems with. …
Every time they make the same claim that (Lindsay Lohan Look-a-Like)Sandberg bloviates about here, like every other member of that same HATE movement, it was never about anything else but giving women a FREE ride to the top and don’t anyone every dare hold them back because there would be screaming and wailing and it would be introduce another excuse to cry that usual lie of “holding them back”, amazing.
In reality, it’s because job placement used to be based on merit and ability, even though that has been tossed out and replaced with quotas in favour of women. It has everything to do with sexism, v*gina and pro-female “Equal Opportunity” as Sandberg denies is the case. ….
What a sexist loathsome, despicable female.
Mr J. then quotes a couple of not-exactly earthshatteringly controversial comments of Sandberg’s:
“I think a world that was run where half our countries and half our companies were run by women, would be a better world.”
“I hope that . . . you have the ambition to run the world,” Sandberg told Barnard graduates, “because this world needs you to run it.”
As Mr. J figures it, Sandberg is promulgating female supremacy here, “saying that every females alive could out perform any male. Sickening, petty, self-congratulatory, back-slapping and wishful thinking or what !”
I choose “what.” (They speak English in What?)
Mr J, for his part, seems to believe that, in an inversion of the the man-hatred he attributes to feminists, every male alive could outperform any female:
As far as I can see so far, those countries that have women in charge, are not doing that crash hot at all. …
Yet this odious and tedious Sandberg has the temerity to state that the world would be a better place run by women. What a complete, compulsive liar that women really is, women these days have problems being genuine and real, let alone anything else. But it does demonstrate that standard egotistical side of these “New Women”, who have been granted the easy option and helped along the way, every way possible by compliant men. Do they get any thanks for it, forget that. They just get the knife in the back for their efforts and gloat, even after changing conditions, being sued, forced to comply to changes that women demand and then turn around and state “Look at me, I am so good” .
Was that last sentence even a sentence? If so, please diagram it for me. I dare ya!
What hypocrites they are. It is about time men stopped capitulating to these arrogant and narcissistic females, stopped giving them automatic promotions, a free ride and start giving them some competition and let’s see how well they go then.
It’s always funny when blithering idiots suggest that women’s brains are inferior to their own.
@kamilla1960
I am very sorry that your brother is abusive (and a horrible writer).
@kamilla1960 It’s bad enough that they exist, to have one related to you. Ugh.
My sympathy knows no bounds.
Is it wrong of me to want to ask if a “vogina” is a female Vogon? (My sci-fi geekdom, let me show you it).
In my defense, news about the Steubenville
Rolling Miscarriage of JusticeRape Trial is sapping my will to live and driving me to seek ever more extreme forms of compensatory silliness.This is my favorite bit!
Where is the GRATITUDE???
We let these women learn to read and write and everything. We even let them vote.
What do we get for it? They take our jobs and don’t even say thank you or give us a blow job.
I have been hearing one form or another of this lament all my long life. You got your effing civil rights, now show me some gratitude by pretending that I am your superior.
Criminy!
@Gillian
I think, after yesterday’s thread, all the trolls who have recently popped up like they want us to play Whack-a-Troll,* and depressing news like Steubenville, that we are entitled to some silliness.
*Of course, in Whack-a-Troll, one has to hit the popping-up trolls with a different spoon each time. This is why it is great we play in a group and can pool our spoons.
@thebewilderness
It is just different words to the same Nice Guy tune.
@bewilderness
That is a great way to phrase it. *holds in my own personal rant about patriarchy, because all I’d probably manage is a ‘but I hate it and it sucks :P*
Feminism is about giving women absolute power.
Wtf makes women think they are oppressed?
Life for a modern woman is living like a hollywood celeb.
Not only do you have beta white knights catering to your every whim, you have the advantage of chivalry plus NOW you can have a free ride up the corporate ladder because of inclusive policies promoting “equality”.
You can focus on your career while freezing your eggs until you decide to have autist kids @ fucking 40.
Your careers are set, your family life is set and your social lives are set? You can become VP’s whilst fucking male models half your age.
If all else fails you can still just marry a rich guy who’ll take care of your every status whoring desire.
You’re not oppressed.
Can’t be bothered to read the Christian J post, ’cause: what an idiot.
I have to say I disagree somewhat with the assertion that the advice to ‘just be more ambitious’ is ridiculous. People here say we need to change the culture, how people think, and yes, we do. But how should that be done? Often when people are ‘lectured’ too much on a topic, or hear about it too much, it tends to backfire. They will rebel against their perceived ‘teachers’. I think that’s part of the reason so many men feel oppressed today. They see all this attention being given to women, all these special societies for them, and they become resentful. Case in point: I get e-mails all the time from my university about new ‘societies for women’, prizes just for women, magazines just for women, etc. etc. Some of these things are also interesting and good. Thing is, more than 50% of the students in my department are women, many of the people who win the major prizes are women, over half of the lecturers are women (an exception at the university in general, yes). The head of the department? Always a man. Always. We need to see more women in actual leadership, not just agitating, not just forming societies for women. Of course it won’t change everyone’s mind (nothing ever will), but it mind change more minds than just ‘changing the culture’.
Culture or society are such vague, nebulous concepts. We can’t change a whole culture, we can only change individuals. Or am I just thinking in a wrong way? I’m interested to know…
How is it ridiculous? How do you encourage otherwise?
Steubenville is getting me down too. I think there’s a decent chance the two young men will be convicted, but reading about the texts and crap where they were just openly admitting she was unconscious and that they could do anything because their football coach had their backs…
Carleyblue, back when I was still a PhD student there was a training day on managing your career and your life. It was open to men and women and attended mainly by women. After several talks on how you balance relationships/children with a career one of the male attendees commented this was all irrelevant to him as he’d never have to be primary care giver for a child or follow a partner for a job. This wasn’t an aggressive comment just acknowledging women have other concerns.
I have to admit that I rolled my eyes when one speaker suggested that you need a relationship not where your partner helped but where he took responsibility for household chores. I guess it is possible, but it seems so unlikely. I hope people here have relationships like that but it just seems asking so much.
I think a lot of women’s groups are advice on how to deal with these issues, that many men find irrelevant and don’t want to talk about.
@Carleyblue
I would like to see more lectures aimed at men. That is one way of trying to change the culture that also doesn’t send a message that there is something wrong with or lacking in women and if we just stepped up, we’d be where we need to be.
The advice for women to do more, be more, change more implies there is something women aren’t doing that keeps them out of positions of power when, in fact, it is often because of the things men are doing. In addition, there have been numerous studies that show that women who are as assertive as men (that is, do what men are told to do to advance their careers) often do less well than women who don’t. Assertiveness alone just doesn’t work. Neither does ambition. Both are necessary, but not sufficient and often detrimental.
Not really if you can communicate with your partner. Mr. HK and I have worked out a division of chores based on what we don’t like doing. I hate vacuuming, so he does it, etc. It does help that he’s way neater than I am, not all men are slobs.
From Twitter, yet another thing that is getting me down today:
“so we are clear, North Dakota just banned abortion less than 2 weeks after a missed period. In a state with 1 clinic. w/24hr wait” (@robinmarty)
About ND banning any abortions after a fetal heartbeat can be detected, usually around 6 weeks but occasionally as early as 5 weeks after conception.
What does work, and what are these things men are doing?
cloudiah: that is awful.
@cloudiah
gaaaah. *grimaces* How early do they think people can find out they’re pregnant. grrr. I’m probably going to end up ranting soon, but…bwuh. How long is it going to take this anti choice shit in america to turn around. I’m rambling. I just hate it.
I’m literally walking distance from North Dakota if anyone wants me to go throw rocks at it or something. (Not at people, of course. Just the state.)
I’d say working it out isn’t *easy.* We do something like hellkell and mr hk.
Except we both really really hate dishes. It turns out that I hate cooking and I hate dishes, and he kinda likes cooking but hates dishes, so he cooks, and I do dishes.
So variously, different chores have to get worked out, and we have to talk about expectations and such. And getting at what I think the speaker that Pear_tree is referencing meant, we worked out that *remembering* something needed to be done counted as a chore.
So list of chores might be:
vaccuming
dishes
clean the bathroom
keeping an eye on the dog’s needs
checking whether we’re keeping on top of things
etc.
so the first three are “traditional housework” and the second two are “responsibility for housework” but they all count as doing a share of the housework.
@hellkell
Asking for a promotion, talking yourself up, speaking up, taking credit for your work, etc. are all things men are advised to do that often backfire on women. (My browser is still trying to load the search results for that, but I will follow up with links.)
I found this Forbes article discussing a study that found what worked was being stereotypically masculine at some times and stereotypically feminine at others and knowing exactly when to do this worked really well,* but that isn’t truly encapsulated in “just be more assertive” or “just be ambitious.”
*This article loaded before my internet got weird and is annoyingly gender essentialist and trying to sell the secret to this masculine/feminine tightrope act. I am going to reboot and try this internet thing again, but didn’t want to lose my comment. Sorry.
I just went looking and now I can’t find the article I was reading about the ND ban. It was one of the legislators behind the measure, arguing that even though they knew it was likely to be judged unconstitutional, they intended to go forward with it anyway. Since the state has a budget surplus, thanks to oil and natural gas deposits, they have the money to fight against the “highly lucrative” abortion “industry” (seriously, why did no one tell me that the path to riches led through the field of obstetrics and gynecology?) who will fight the ban in order to preserve their profit centers.
Ugh.
I think what the speaker meant is instead of “helping” with the vacuuming, it was his responsibility to ensure the vacuuming was done. She never had to mention it, nag, or do it herself because it wasn’t done. My ex and I did the cooking together, but he did not like doing any other chores. Nor did I really but someone has to do it.
Cloudiah & Marie– Exactly! Periods aren’t always regular.
After I got an ultrasound, it turned out I was more than 2 weeks farther along than I thought I was based on my average cycle.
checking the charts… Yep, I found out I was pregnant at about 6 weeks (2 weeks after missed period for a 4-week standard cycle), and was surprised because I didn’t think I was late yet. (The constant nausea was what drove me to check it out)
Also it turned out that I had had a CT scan 1 week after conception, because the pregnancy test came out negative that early. The fetus has the modal number of arms and legs though.
@starskita From the tenses involved, I’m inferring some congratulations are in order?
@ Gillian
20 weeks now 🙂 So far so good.
Some Gal: That article and study is awful. All of that could be filed under “well, no shit,” and how interesting that men who were adaptive had no success. Makes me wonder how this study was put together.
How does he jump from “If half the world’s countries and half the world’s corporations were run by females” to “if the world was run by females”?
Does he assume that if the world was run by females they would still assign half of all the leadership jobs to men?
@hellkell
Here is a NPR article discussing the different perceptions of men and women asking for a raise in exactly the same way and finding that women needed to ask in a differently, more traditionally feminine way to avoid being disliked.
Here is a Washington Post piece discussing how when women follow the advice for men, the strategies that work for men, they did worse than women who didn’t follow that advice.
Here is a CNN article discussing findings that men who did what they are supposed to did better than men who did not while women who did what men are supposed to didn’t do much better than women who didn’t.
@hellkell
Yeah. I think it was so bad it broke my browser. 🙂 I think the study was desperate to find out what worked and found that, surprise surprise, the successful women are human beings! Which tells us nothing really.
I think I’m working for an unusual place because our CEO is relatively evolved for a man in the C suite. I think a large part of that is because he has a daughter–who yes, is a VP, but she can actually do the job and do it well–so he’s OK with promoting women who do a good job, not just those who kiss his ass.
Our owner is a different story. He’s installed his asshole little brother, and holy shit is this guy walking insecurity, which to me makes him incredibly dangerous. Just what we need, some man child with an ego problem who needs constant coddling and validation.
For customer service jobs, I found a study (that I can re-find if anyone is interested) that showed it was the presence of a woman or POC that led to complaints. I don’t know what is in the actual study, but that makes me despair for humanity.
OK, um, I hate to break this to you, but that is an entirely correct use of the word “bastion”.
Some Gal: I bet that’s because assholes think they can complain and steamroll over a woman or POC to get their way.
@Some Gal I’d be interested, actually. Whenever I hear something like that, I tend to want to go to the study itself and see what it says. Then, when I need to rant about it, I have the details at hand!
@hellkell My sympathies!
@ some gal
whopsie. That last part was me *blushes*
Regarding the ND ban, they have also made it illegal to have an abortion due to genetic anomalies with the fetus. They’re yammering about preventing eugenics, but the reality is that any reasonable person imagines that having an abortion due to a genetic anomaly with the fetus is nothing but heart wrenching, regardless of the outcome, and is not a decision made out of a desire to cleanse the human race but, rather, to minimize suffering. There are no exceptions or loopholes in the law, so even in cases of inevitably terminal diseases which result in short, pain filled lives, women are prevented from being able to choose what to do. That’s horrible, in my opinion. Some people will think it is right to continue the pregnancy and comfort the resulting infant during its life, others will think that an abortion is the more merciful option (or, let it not be overlooked, the only option they can afford), but it is something that the woman should be able to decide with the support and guidance of her doctors, family, and friends.
The whole bill is a real ugly piece of work.
@hellkell
The problem with trying to change workplace culture only or primarily through women pushing their way up is the women who get promoted are probably going to be those who most adhere to the culture, which doesn’t change a lot. Women are fully capable of discriminating against other women just like men are.
Even without the studies, though, it just doesn’t seem like only telling women to change to fit workplace culture is a good long-term solution. It seems like rather than breaking down the gender binary and our assumptions about what good men and good women each are, we are sending the message that only stereotypically masculine qualities are valuable and stereotypically feminine ones are, if anything, just a little bonus that women bring to “male” jobs.
@Marie
The blockquote monster got ya. (I “gah”ed too though, so it works.)
I guess I should’ve known the blockquote monster would get me someday.
Okay, the comments on that CNN article are gag inducingly familiar.
That’s just about anyone in a corporate culture who gets promoted. And that last sentence was totally unecessary, IMHO.
Congratulations starskita!
Some Gal, helkell: I believe there is a difference between (1) encouraging women to be ambitious and telling them that those who discourage them from being ambitious are sexist and holding them back, and (2) telling women “it is all your fault for not being more ambitious”. Of course, there is a fine line here, and it might be easy to fall from “encouraging women to be more ambitious” to sounding like one is blaming them for not being more ambitious. But I don’t believe that it is impossible to do the former without doing the latter, just as I believe it is possible to do the former while also calling out and trying to work against the many external factors that discourage women from, and punish women for, being ambitious and assertive.
@starskita Congratulations and best wishes!!
@hellkell
I just mentioned it because a couple of the studies determined that women actually have a greater bias against assertive women than men do.* And, yes, it is true of most people who get promoted share the company culture, but that is why we should direct as much attention to forcing that to change as we do advising women to just be more assertive, and/or be more ambitious.
*If true, this could mean that more women in charge might actually hurt women in the lower levels of a company more.
@starskita
Congratulations! Yay for more mini Manboobzers. 🙂
@hellkell
Here is the race and gender study.
As with most things, it depends on the individual. But, hey, thanks for giving the sexists more ammo with that line.
Study needs a subscription to read, it looks like.