I knew *somebody* must have written this...

...but I only bumped across it today. Maureen Dowd's decrying of the state of the modern women (reduced to batting her eyelashes after all the high hopes of feminism) really rubbed me the wrong way, for reasons of both content and presentation. The latter was pretty obvious (her opinion that current trends might be misguided didn't appear until 2/3 of the way through a longish article), but the former need pointing out, as the "state of affairs" that she discusses (e.g., difficulty for smart/ambitious women to find a man) has pretty much been debunked, although she cites it as gospel.

Men, by contrast [with college freshmen surveyed in a study last year], do not reject achieving women. Quite the opposite. Sociologist Valerie Oppenheimer of University of California, Berkeley reports that today men are choosing as mates women who have completed their education. The more education a woman has, the more likely she is to marry. Unlike the single University of California, Los Angeles study, this finding comes from an analysis of 80 peer-reviewed studies.

The linked article skewers a lot of other research mentioned by Dowd, such as effects of IQ on marriage prospects (the cited survey involved octagenarians) and another study done by a student who just emailed a handful of people. But of course, we always welcome misogynist alarmism!!

When Dowd bases her views of men and women on such poor research, it's no wonder that Dowd looks into the crystal ball of feminism and finds the picture so disconcerting.

Indeed. The reality-based community demands better (and is doing just fine, thanks).

Thanks to Twisty at I Blame the Patriarchy for the link to this article and thus the chance to vent my spleen (and perhaps correct the record).