Via Unfogged comes Charlotte Allen in the WP:
bq. What is it about us women? Why do we always fall for the hysterical, the superficial and the gooily sentimental? … I swear no man watches “Grey’s Anatomy” unless his girlfriend forces him to. No man bakes cookies for his dog. … At least no man I know. Of course, not all women do these things, either — although enough do to make one wonder whether there isn’t some genetic aspect of the female brain, something evolutionarily connected to the fact that we live longer than men or go through childbirth, that turns the pre-frontal cortex into Cream of Wheat. … Depressing as it is, several of the supposed misogynist myths about female inferiority have been proven true. Women really are worse drivers than men, for example. A study published in 1998 by the Johns Hopkins schools of medicine and public health revealed that women clocked 5.7 auto accidents per million miles driven, in contrast to men’s 5.1, even though men drive about 74 percent more miles a year than women. The theory that women are the dumber sex — or at least the sex that gets into more car accidents — is amply supported by neurological and standardized-testing evidence. Men’s and women’s brains not only look different, but men’s brains are bigger than women’s (even adjusting for men’s generally bigger body size). … I am perfectly willing to admit that I myself am a classic case of female mental deficiencies. I can’t add 2 and 2 (well, I can, but then what?). I don’t even know how many pairs of shoes I own.
There are different, and predictable, ways to react to Sunday-supplement piffle like this. Get angry; point-by-point rebuttal; roll your eyes; wonder whether it’s a put on; or, of course, pipe up and say how great it is that someone finally has had the courage to confirm the conventional wisdom of thirty years ago. Well done that gel. It’s certainly a well-executed example of the genre: the flipping back and forth between anecdote and gestures to the science; the carefully-placed qualifiers; the breezy non sequiturs.
I tend toward an ecological interpretation. If there is a niche in the market it tends to get filled, even — perhaps especially — if it seems like an unlikely niche. Because there’s lots of misogyny in the world, there is a demand for misogynist writing. There’s plenty such writing by men, but that’s by now boring and there’s probably too much supply. If a woman is doing it, though, there are bigger and better returns to it. Occupying a niche of this sort also gives you certain rhetorical advantages in generating controversy and responding to it. (See, a woman admits the truth! Or, how can I be anti-woman if I am one? And if you misjudge the reaction, you can claim the whole thing was a joke.) In short, being able to occupy a niche like this makes you a better troll. Hence, Charlotte Allen, etc.
The point generalizes to most other writing and broadcasting about classes of people by classes of people: if there are stereotypical beliefs about some social category, eventually you’ll see someone from within that category make a career by playing to type. Being able to embody different categories at once makes you distinctive, gives you some leverage. When your categorical identity runs against the grain of received opinion, you will probably be treated as a curiosity, an object of derision, or a freak. Here the benefits, if any, are associated with strong in-group solidarity and accompanied by active efforts to de-stigmatize the identity. When it confirms received opinion — but from an interesting or unexpected position — there are greater opportunities for being rewarded. Typically people who fit here are not at any particular risk of suffering from any downside following the public embrace of being stereotypically dumb, or lazy, or whatever. (Allen, for instance, can say she “breezed through academia” on a good memory, but she also went to Harvard and Stanford. Women who have full-time writing careers telling other women to stay at home with the kids are in a similar position.) When associations with some classification are strongly polarized, there’ll be more anger and fighting, but also more incentive to play against type. And of course these processes take place within nested contexts, which complicates the dynamic. But the bottom line is that cross-cutting social categories will be filled with people happy to bear the intersection as an identity, and probably also to spend most of their time talking about it: hence black conservatives, marxist economists, Log-Cabin Republicans, ex-gay fundamentalists, pacifist Marines, libertarian environmentalists, pro-life Democrats, or what have you.
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Sk 03.02.08 at 7:27 pm
“A study published in 1998 by the Johns Hopkins schools of medicine and public health revealed that women clocked 5.7 auto accidents per million miles driven, in contrast to men’s 5.1, even though men drive about 74 percent more miles a year than women.”
Note the fact that men drive 74 percent more than women has no impact on the statistics. The comparison has already been normalized to accidents per million miles driven-whether that is out of 100 million miles or 174 million miles is irrelevant.
Thus, Charlotte can’t only add 2 plus 2, she can’t even properly use the statistics in her own article on how unbright women are.
Sk
david 03.02.08 at 7:28 pm
Marxist economists? Either a joke or a strange category mistake.
Hitchens had his clever moment back when he was complaining that he couldn’t get on TV:
“When a liberal (from TNR, one presumes) says, as a liberal I say let’s bomb the shit out of them, voila — there’s a story. When a socialist says, as a socialist I say don’t let’s bomb the shit out of them, there’s nothing there.” Or something like that. Anyway, the moral’s plain as you look over Hitchens’ professional life — as you say, cross-cutting identity make up people, but also, water runs downhill.
Kieran Healy 03.02.08 at 7:31 pm
Thus, Charlotte can’t only add 2 plus 2, she can’t even properly use the statistics in her own article on how unbright women are.
If you ask me, she used statistics and pointers to research findings in precisely the manner best suited to the sort of article she wrote.
dsquared 03.02.08 at 7:36 pm
I would just like to say that blogging really is for arseholes, and that in particular the kind of person who obsessively comments on ther people’s blog posts is reaching the highest heights of knobheadery. Etc.
Seriously, this sort of thing has been going on ever since Epimenides spilled the beans about what a bunch of lying rogues the Cretans were, has it not?
Kieran Healy 03.02.08 at 7:41 pm
Seriously, this sort of thing has been going on ever since
Yes. But off we go again.
Stuart 03.02.08 at 7:48 pm
Note the fact that men drive 74 percent more than women has no impact on the statistics. The comparison has already been normalized to accidents per million miles driven-whether that is out of 100 million miles or 174 million miles is irrelevant.
Isn’t it relevant, but in the opposite direction: it suggests that on average men drive more, therefore are on average are more experienced drives, thus you would expect them to get into less crashes per mile driven.
Stuart 03.02.08 at 7:49 pm
Note the fact that men drive 74 percent more than women has no impact on the statistics. The comparison has already been normalized to accidents per million miles driven-whether that is out of 100 million miles or 174 million miles is irrelevant.
Isn’t it relevant, but in the opposite direction: it suggests that on average men drive more, therefore on average are more experienced drives, thus you would expect them to get into less crashes per mile driven.
sara 03.02.08 at 7:49 pm
And slime mold has its place in the rain forest ecology.
The WP stoops to publishing stuff you’d expect to find in WorldNetDaily, penned by a certain Vox Day.
qb 03.02.08 at 7:57 pm
cross-cutting social categories will be filled with people happy to bear the intersection as an identity, and probably also to spend most of their time talking about it
i agree with your points about Allen but it sort of seems like you’re generalizing it to the point where you can stereotype people for not fitting conventional stereotypes. everybody belongs to cross-cutting social categories and nobody can be blamed for being preoccupied with the tensions it produces. unless you think pacifist marines and pro-life democrats should just roll their eyes at themselves and think “i’m just doing this to get attention?” it’s fair to be suspicious, but i think people can come to occupy those oddball niches honestly.
Kieran Healy 03.02.08 at 8:11 pm
i think people can come to occupy those oddball niches honestly.
Sure. The point is just that oddball niches will tend to be occupied far more often than you might think, and that for certain hot-button combinations there are clear incentives for this to happen in a particular way — i.e., by embracing an external stereotype of one component of the identity to please the crowd, rather than, say, trying to reconcile them in a coherent way. But of course the latter preoccupies people, too.
qb 03.02.08 at 8:18 pm
right, i think we agree and are emphasizing different aspects of a complicated scenario. i guess the incentives are what should make us suspicious, but i’m all charity and benefit of the doubt over here.
derek 03.02.08 at 8:28 pm
If a man condemns the statistics of male violence against women, and admits to having violent emotions himself and being ashamed of them, is he a cynical niche-hunter? Or is his contribution to be heard with respect and not contempt? If the latter, why? Giving reasons *apart* from the fact that you agree with the position and disagree with the positions you dismiss as niche-grabbing.
How about the “Stuff White People Like” blogger? Nasty sensation-seeking wanker? Actually the answer to that is “yes”, but what do you, reader, think, and why?
P O'Neill 03.02.08 at 8:46 pm
There’s a second issue which Michael Kinsley explained in his review of Hitch’s God thingy: that you get to be interesting (in media terms) not just by saying “out of category” things but by continually shifting to the right in doing so. Charlotte Allen and her shite editors are playing to both tendencies.
Watson Aname 03.02.08 at 9:04 pm
How about the “Stuff White People Like†blogger? Nasty sensation-seeking wanker? Actually the answer to that is “yesâ€, but what do you, reader, think, and why?
I think, just from the above, whatever the blogger was doing pinned you a little too well for your comfort. Why bring it up on this thread?
abb1 03.02.08 at 9:15 pm
Comedians. According to the current PC rules one can make racially charged jokes about their own racial/ethnic group, but not any other group. That’s certainly a niche.
abb1 03.02.08 at 9:21 pm
Come to think of it, not only racial jokes, sexist too. Same rule applies.
Harl Delos 03.02.08 at 9:35 pm
I wonder what the number of accidents PER TRIP are.
Both men and women take short trips. There is oncoming traffic, an intersection every 50 yards, and parked cars, dogs, and kids racing into the street after balls.
If you take a long trip, though, you spend most of your time on the interstate. The cars are going about the same speed, the roads are in good shape, and unless someone blows a tire or a vandal drops something off an overpass, it’s very difficult to be surprised.
It’s no wonder that most accidents happen close to home. It’s my impression that men drive the family to Disney World, and many truck drivers are men; women, though, tend to get stuck with a lot of the local errands.
I suspect women are better drivers than men. Men are more prone to road rage, and women are more likely to be facing backwards, yelling at kids in the back seat, but still, women still have better cognitive powers when it comes to spatial matters.
But maybe I’m reading too much into this. I, myself, am a terrible driver, except when it’s icey and snowy. I know how to deal with treacherous roads, having grown up driving tractors through muddy fields, but when it’s sunny and dry, my attention wanders, and uh, oh, there go the insurance rates climbing again.
Barry 03.02.08 at 9:53 pm
abb1: “Comedians. According to the current PC rules one can make racially charged jokes about their own racial/ethnic group, but not any other group. That’s certainly a niche.”
‘Current’? Think of it as the classical case – if I talk derogatorily about *my* [wife, mother, father, brother, etc], that’s one thing. To talk so about *your* [fill in the blank] is quite another.
David in NY 03.02.08 at 10:05 pm
Real meaning of “market niche:”
Every john will find a whore.
roger 03.02.08 at 10:06 pm
I think one can also wonder what small world the Washington post editors live in that they bedazzle us with the musings of Cheney’s daughters, Charlotte Allan, and other far right fringe dwellers as often as possible. Or that they would have jumped at the chance to hire Michael Gerson, the famous coiner of axis of evil, after he quit the Bush white house. One can wonder about that small world quite a bit.
M. Townes 03.02.08 at 10:15 pm
Kieran: Charlotte Allen’s previous contribution to the Post is something a good deal closer to your area of expertise:
a Sunday supplement diatribe against the horrors of living wills.
It didn’t get as much play from Blogospherians, but it was equally fatuous. After that, her byline was clue enough that what followed would be a waste of time.
abb1 03.02.08 at 10:18 pm
Hmm, maybe it is classical, but I don’t think it’s very consistent and sensible. Why leave a loophole for perpetuating stereotypes?
abb1 03.02.08 at 10:28 pm
Tina Fey was doing it in the last SNL: – yes, Hillary Clinton is a bitch, we are all bitches, ‘bitch’ is good, bitch is the new black, blah, blah, blah. I don’t know, maybe it’s funny, but then it becomes so social-situation-dependent that you can’t really tell when it’s acceptable to call Hillary Clinton (or any woman for that matter) ‘bitch’ and when it’s not. Not a big deal, just a bit confusing.
will u. 03.02.08 at 10:49 pm
Re: Marxist economists, I find Marxian philosophical anthropology appealing, particularly the view of value as rooted in labor-as-“human metabolism with Nature,” but I remain uncommitted as to whether a scientific, quantitative theory of economic value can be erected on that basis. I see no a priori inconsistency between this anthropology and recognition of the empirical validity of neoclassical economics. _Capital_ seems worth reading on a philosophical, abstract level, regardless of whether it holds up under the economistic reading of Bohm-Bawerk et al.
So, I suppose my question is this: Is TSSI, Kozo Uno and company, and all that worth looking into at all? Kieran’s remark suggests otherwise.
R 03.02.08 at 11:50 pm
A study published in 1998 by the Johns Hopkins schools of medicine and public health revealed that women clocked 5.7 auto accidents per million miles driven, in contrast to men’s 5.1, even though men drive about 74 percent more miles a year than women.
Picking up where #18 left off… My understanding is that — on average — the more miles you drive, the fewer accidents per mile you have. I’m not sure if its the different type of driving, or just that repetition tends to lead to competence.
So if men drive 74% more miles than women, you’d expect them to have fewer accidents per mile. A more valid comparison would be to control for miles driven when comparing men and women.
Comparing type of accident (fender bender, serious injury, alcohol-related?) would also be interesting.
Bill Gardner 03.03.08 at 12:00 am
Having looked at the living will op-ed, I think she may have a personal interest in attributing superficiality to her gender.
Mrs Tilton 03.03.08 at 12:10 am
O’Neill,
thanks for the link to the Kinsley piece on Hitchens. What a brilliant melding of respectful engagement with ooh, meow!
Crystal 03.03.08 at 12:37 am
Unlike, say, Charlotte Allen, “Stuff White People Like” is actually funny. At least to me.
Allen, IIRC, reacted to an archeological finding on Amazonian civilizations (it appears that the Amazonian rainforests were, to a great extent, sculpted by the hand of man and woman, and there were some large and advanced civilizations along the Amazon before the Spanish and their guns, germs and steel got there) called said civilizations “crappy” and said, “What about Europe? Why doesn’t anyone write about whiiiite people and how awesomely great they always were and are?” Maybe she and Michelle Malkin could get together and cross-pollinate or something.
laura 03.03.08 at 1:02 am
I actually read that stupid Allen piece twice, because I thought that I had misread it. Maybe I had missed some irony, some subtlety. Nope. She really did write that women are dim. I’m glad that you found an blog post angle. I had no idea how to even begin a response to this.
roger 03.03.08 at 1:06 am
Due to the ‘reform” of media regulations, D.C., one of the most liberal areas in the U.S., is served by a Moony hard right newspaper and a Weekly Standard like lite right newspaper. One that earns the bulk of its money through a ‘testing service’ that just happened to become profitable through Bush’s No Child Left Behind act.
Funny how those media monopolies work. They simply reflect the will of the consumer, obviously.
harold 03.03.08 at 1:08 am
Also, we are talking about six tenths of a percent difference, no? A rather narrow margin from which to draw the conclusion of female incompetence — even apart from the variables of experience, highway versus short trips, seriousness of the accident, etc.
Jonathan 03.03.08 at 1:27 am
It’s six tenths of a percent per million miles. I haven’t driven half that in my lifetime and I’m 47 years old. For driving 100,000 miles (buying a car new and driving it till it dies), the difference would be one tenth of that, or six hundreths of a percent.
Mikhail 03.03.08 at 2:50 am
#18: Harl Delos,
It’s actually a very well documented fact that women are worse than men in spatial matters… (Mind you, I’m not saying they are worse drivers – that’s a separate question. See the end of the second link.)
To make things easier, here are a couple of sample links “about research” rather than actual articles:
http://chronicle.uchicago.edu/991118/spatial.shtml
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4406176.stm
roger 03.03.08 at 3:34 am
PS – Concerning the Post. Interesting fact: Slate, which is owned by the Washington Post, came out with a couple of articles by William Saletan a couple of months ago claiming blacks are dumber than whites. Now the post puts up a tee hee funny article claiming women are dumber than men. Those two stories bookend exactly what is wrong with American media.
KCinDC 03.03.08 at 4:07 am
Not sixth tenths of a percent: six tenths of an accident per million miles driven.
nick s 03.03.08 at 5:09 am
In short, being able to occupy a niche like this makes you a better troll. Hence, Charlotte Allen, etc.
The internet troll has made it possible, I think, to sum up a certain kind of performance in other forms and media. ‘Print troll’ needs greater currency.
This, though, is beyond The Sunday Format.
Dan Simon 03.03.08 at 7:00 am
When it confirms received opinion—but from an interesting or unexpected position—there are greater opportunities for being rewarded.
Conservatives noted this phenomenon decades ago, and refer to it as “strange new respect”.
Matthew Kuzma 03.03.08 at 7:35 am
I love how her failure to cite the relevant portions of statistics only advances her own point. That’s good rhetoric. In fact, why do we never see that kind of fantastic rhetoric coming from men? Could it be that we… talk-not good like women does?
abb1 03.03.08 at 7:59 am
Btw, my male boss watches Grey’s Anatomy (on his own volition) and once is a while attempts to start a discussion about it.
Martin Wisse 03.03.08 at 9:20 am
Shorter Kieran: only house negros get published.
Barry 03.03.08 at 2:48 pm
From the Paul Krugman archives:
The travails and temptations of a black intellectual
Barry 03.03.08 at 2:57 pm
sh*t.
GLENN LOURY’s ROUND TRIP – The travails and temptations of a black intellectual.
Adrock 03.03.08 at 4:00 pm
There is an insidiousness in these pieces in which anecdotes, stereotypes, and empirical evidence are strewn together into some un-PC, folksy opinion that the reader is concurrently asked to take seriously / not take seriously. Its lazy writing, and its very stupid.
My first reaction to the excerpt in this posting above was, “wait, I just read some other “study” that said that women were better drivers than men.” And then half the comments here accept the “study” results, and try to dissect it with another argument. It might be best to assume any empirical data offered within such lazy opinion is not worth merit.
abb1 03.03.08 at 4:25 pm
Well, if that’s indeed a jhu school of medicine study, that would be pretty solid, no?
Jeet Heer 03.03.08 at 5:07 pm
This is a very smart post except for this: “if there are stereotypical beliefs about some social category, eventually you’ll see someone from within that category make a career by playing to type” which is linked with a set of examples that includes “black conservatives, marxist economists, Log-Cabin Republicans, ex-gay fundamentalists, pacifist Marines, libertarian environmentalists, pro-life Democrats”. Now if you read the American press you can find many, many articles by black conservatives, Log-Cabin Republicans, etc. But is there really any Marxist economist who has made a successful public career in the United States? Is the American news media at all open to Marxist economists?
Righteous Bubba 03.03.08 at 5:15 pm
Thanks barry.
keshmeshi 03.03.08 at 8:24 pm
Men are more likely to be involved in devastating accidents. So who’s the more stupid, someone who gets into a fender bender now and then or someone who drives so aggressively that he or she causes serious property damage and/or loss of human life?
not even an MBA 03.03.08 at 8:27 pm
For #7 and #26.
The stat cited can’t be used to determine average driver experience without knowing the ratio of male to female drivers.
not even an MBA 03.03.08 at 9:24 pm
@ myself in #49,
Well, I read it wrong. The points made at #7 and #26 hold and I’m a doo-doo head.
lemuel pitkin 03.03.08 at 9:49 pm
So what does the ecological interpretation tell us?
Some writers play against type, that’s true. But many others don’t. Some niches are filled. Many others aren’t.
Charlotte Perkins writes a piece about women are dumber than men, and she’s a woman. But William Saletan write a piece on why blacks are dumber than whites, and he’s white. So if there’s any larger trend involving the rehabilitation of noxious stereotypes, niche-filling ain’t it.
Sorry, there are no Marxist economists in US media, nor have I noticed any pacific Marines. There are also no Jews writing “OK, we really are greedy,” or insurance salesmen writing about why Social Security offers a better deal. The strong claim that niches tend to get filled is false, so that leaves us with the weak claim that the filled niches got filled. Is there any content to this post beyond that?
roac 03.03.08 at 10:04 pm
May I interpose a question?
Though a relative newcomer to the bloogosphere, I have noticed that almost everywhere I go, any mooting of the idea that Group A is inherently superior to Group B very quickly draws the endorsement of an entity called “Steve Sailer.” But not here.
What is the explanation for this? Is garlic involved?
notsneaky 03.03.08 at 10:24 pm
I want to know the answer to 52 as well. How you do it?
kw 03.03.08 at 10:31 pm
Regarding the “women & driving” stats, the study actually said:
“The investigators, who published their results in the July issue of Epidemiology, found that although teenage boys started off badly, with about 20 percent more crashes per mile driven than teenage girls, males and females between ages 20 and 35 were equally at risk of being involved in a crash, and after age 35 female drivers were at greater risk of a crash than their male counterparts.”
Note that the later category was (to the best of my knowledge — can’t find the original study) not broken down further. I would expect that the further up this age category you go, you get to the point in the demographics where women of that age/era were not routinely taught to drive when young, “since their fathers/boyfriends/husbands would do that”, at which point I would expect a significant difference to be found.
Finally, note that the folks who have actual $$s riding on the issue — that is, the insurance folks — seem to come down fairly firmly on the women’s side of the issue.
Crystal 03.03.08 at 11:19 pm
@52: For all I know it is garlic – all the more reason for me to use it liberally (har har) in my cooking. Or perhaps it’s bannination – for which I couldn’t blame Kieran or any other CT’er, as I’d probably wield the banhammer against the Sailer-entity myself.
At any rate, the WaPo has now published a “tee-hee, it was only a JOKE, lighten up!” follow-up. The WaPo is either covering its butt, or doesn’t realize that if no-one laughs at your joke it’s not because they are poor sports, it’s because your joke ain’t funny.
Daphne Chyprious 03.04.08 at 12:59 am
Ann Coulter looks like a hippie. Ta da.
roger 03.04.08 at 2:03 am
Crystal, you aren’t accepting the Washington Post management’s explanation that jokes about the stupidity of women are so funny they make John Pomfret roll on the floor? Wow, I’ve never heard of such self righteousness. I mean, I’m sure Pomfret and his buddies on the WAPO editorial page swap scores of scintillating jokes about dumb women, dumb negroes, and maybe even smart jewish bankers every day. Funny funny funny. Probably throw in a few practical jokes too. Those guys! And you can tell by their funny coverage of Hilary’s bosom, hairstyle and laugh that they know funny when they see it – especially in a dumb woman! They are just a hearty crewe of contrarians, sailing against the Conventional Wisdom!
lgrf4evr 03.04.08 at 4:16 am
will, what can you said. Charolette allen is making a fortune by telling woman to quit their jobs and stay at home. She is the one who is making money, so why would she care. she is not going to be the one suffering from loss if she quit her job. it is about the money, it had always been about the money.
ajay 03.04.08 at 11:39 am
I tend toward an ecological interpretation. If there is a niche in the market it tends to get filled, even—perhaps especially—if it seems like an unlikely niche.
That sounds like ev psych to me. Quick, shun him!
roger 03.05.08 at 6:04 pm
While Pomfret hides behind the Post editorial office, the WAPO is sponsoring a very special q and a with Charlotte Allen today about her very special article. Go here to lodge questions. Please ask about the decision behind printing the article – although in all probability, the censoring of the questions will make this another cream puff day for misogynists at the Post. Who are just being so very, very satiric!
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