I should have added the category “Science For Choads” a long time ago to cover all those articles that make reactionary claims that are supposedly based in science, but when you look deeper, it turns out the science doesn’t say that, doesn’t really say that, or is completely made up. This article about the “happiness gap” pushed me over the edge. I saw this reported on a few feminist blogs, and they took it seriously, citing the well-known fact that women have much less free time than men on average as the probable cause. As Jill notes, the sexist commenters at the NY Times and at Digg took the intended bait and suggested two possible causes: Female inferiority and feminism. The former (it sucks to be inferior) needs no explanation. The second is a common anti-feminist theory that goes something like this: Women need men to be happy, but men will only tolerate women’s presence if women are properly subservient. Since feminism, bitches are too uppity to get men, and are unhappy, but men are perfectly happy to get by watching porn. Also, I’m a Nice Guy®, so why can’t I get—
Wait, different rant. Most of them are smart enough to space them.
Jill’s favorite comment to explain the happiness gap:
Oh boo hoo! Feminists made their bed, now they have to lie in it alone with their cats.
Translation: I don’t call it a “dry spell” . I call it a “sex strike”. And it’s completely voluntary. I swear! Look, cats!
Anyway, for better or worse, turns out the happiness gap isn’t real. It was a lot of hoary number-pinching that doesn’t seem really justified, but the NY Times ran with it because of their long-standing editorial policy of greeting any evidence, no matter how made up or weak, that feminism is a bad idea with open arms.
What kills me about this article and all attempts to say that women were happier being subservient, etc. is this: No one is stopping women. Seriously. If you personally find it satisfying and happiness-inducing to marry a man who will lord over you and treat you like a cross between and a child and a butler, you have every right. That women are passing by this option in large numbers now that they have the right is pretty good evidence that it’s not all that appealing.
Of course, the idea is that women are too stupid to know what they want. That’s the logic behind claiming that feminists are crying themselves to sleep every night with their cats, and it’s the logic behind Gonzales v Carhart, where Justice Kennedy opined that women as a class are too stupid to know whether or not they want life-saving medical intervention, so the government will just have to tell them no. Better dead than risk the possibility of regret, you know.
61 Responses to “Women: Not really that unhappy avoiding scowling cretins and petting cats”
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That women are passing by this option in large numbers now that they have the right is pretty good evidence that it’s not all that appealing.
Of course it’s terribly appealing. It’s just that feminists have brainwashed women into thinking otherwise!
I have a wonderful feminist boyfriend who lives around the corner, and I’m happy. But I don’t have a cat. I would be happier if I had a cat.
I have a boyfriend and cats. Boyfriend sleeps in bed, but the cats won’t, no matter how much I tell them to jump up there with me to pet them.
I’m not sure how this works with the lonely-feminist-with-cats theory.
My cats sleep with me and my boyfriend doesn’t (we have our own bedrooms and we like it that way). This is overall a good arrangement (until the cats try to jump up onto the headboard and miss, landing on your face in the middle of the night and scratching your cheek!)
I take any “study” of feminism by anyone who isn’t an avowed feminist with more than one grain of salt these days, especially since dumb commenters on blogs so often prove that they just…don’t…get…it when it comes to feminist issues and what it is to be a woman in today’s world. Especially those evo psych assholes who are clearly out to create a bullshit pesudoscience in support of white male (especially white male christian) patriarchy.
Your cats have what Bill Cosby calls “the brain damage.”
My cat only jumps up on the bed once my husband gets up for work. The little wild-child still won’t let me pet her, though.
In other science news, two new studies have confirmed that there is a direct correlation between immigration and social rot.
Oops, *pseudoscience.
My problem- though the boyfriend and one cat both sleep in the bed with me, the second cat does not.
If both cats aren’t sleeping with me, do I have to turn in my supposedly lonely-feminist card? If the second cat does start sleeping in the bed, does that mean that because the number of cats > boyfriend(s), I get the card back?
And if there are cats in the bed, how can I be alone? The two scenarios seem to be mutually exclusive.
The Columbus/Mayflower/colonial variety? ‘Cause I’d sure call that social rot—we’ve nowhere near attained with this society the general social success of the cultures that were here originally.
As for current-day immigration, with all the economic exploitation of immigrants, I’m not surprised that the result isn’t a healthy social model, but the blame for it lies somewhere other than the immigrants. If they were welcomed with open arms, given living wages and otherwise helped to acclimatize, most of this “social rot” would cease to be a factor.
*is purrfectly happy to be in bed with the cats, thank you very much*
Actually I don’t think this policy applies just to feminism. The NYTimes “Science” related articles were a standing joke when I was studying statistics in college. Their ability to not interpret, critique, or understand any research while simultaneously completely overstating the claims of said research is legendary.
The New York Times could not pass Statistics 101 if they cheated.
“My cats sleep with me and my boyfriend doesn’t (we have our own bedrooms and we like it that way).”
Sheesh, this is my own vision of the future, should I ever take up residence with a partner. Except, there will be dog(s) too.
I shut the boyfriend AND the cats out of my room so I can sleep.
So the cats sleep with him.
I’m not sure what this says about our relationship(s).
My husband gets to sleep in the bedroom but the cats don’t, so I guess that makes me a bad feminist. Or something. I’m confused.
(Other cat people are always slightly shocked that we don’t let the cats in the bedroom, but since cats seem to be irresistably drawn to sleep directly on my husband’s face so they can clog up his sinuses, it was the only choice. I do sometimes miss them, though.)
I’m married and have dogs, no cats, because said husband is allergic to cats. Is my feminist card in danger of revocation?
The dog sleeps on the floor, where he is quite enough of a nuisance, thank you. The husband sleeps in the bed. The kid sleeps in her room with another dog, who also sleeps on the floor. No cats. No loneliness. Lots of feminism. Often some happiness, which wakes the dog (and sometimes the kid).
mathpants’ theorem:
given a data set X mapping onto some reality Y:
the more tenous the mapping between X and Y, the louder will the claims derived from said mapping be proclaimed. As the mapping gets more tenous, more and more people who dissent from the claims will be told that they don’t understand MATH or SCIENCE adequately.
I’m married and have no cats. And I’m still “pretty unhappy” …having more to do with the state of the world than my marriage or lack of cats. Yet, my husband is just as “pretty unhappy” as he was during Watergate and Vietnam. Connection?
That article didn’t pass the smell test.
A worthwhile counterpoint would be to look at suicide rates since 1970, when men and women did themselves in at roughly equivalent numbers.
What’s changed in the 30 odd years since? Women’s suicide rates have dropped by half, while men’s have remained constant.
I have a problem with the chart right off because I can’t even tell what the hell it is trying to say. And shouldn’t there be some marker showing the reliability rate of the data? Without that it would be fair to assume that every single blip on the chart is statistically insignificant and within the margin of error.
And in any case, this isn’t actually a chart showing whether people are very happy or not too happy. It is a chart saying what people said they are. Maybe guys just don’t like to say that they are very happy as much as women do.
And as far our sleeping arrangements go, the cats sleep on my wife’s side of the bed.
Oh, and the NY Times science section has always been a joke. I’m not sure how you get to be a science writer for the Times but I don’t think it involves having done well on your Chemistry regents.
A worthwhile counterpoint would be to look at suicide rates since 1970, when men and women did themselves in at roughly equivalent numbers.
That is really interesting. The first thing I thought on looking at that graph, other than the fact that there isn’t actually much of a trend, was about the social pressure on subordinate groups not to have interior lives. Actually saying you’re unhappy can be taboo if you’re not supposed to be thinking about your own feelings at all– for example there seems to be much less pressure on mothers recently to pretend they love every minute of childcare. Though I bet the suicide rates thing can be almost entirely explained by the fact that women have other ways out of domestic violence these days.
I’m sure you’ve seen the recent study tying “being conscienceous” to not getting Alzheimer’s.
What they actually did: asked a bunch of Italians nuns(!) to rate how consciencous they were on a scale of 1 to 5, waited a while to see if they got Alzheimer’s.
How the NYT will eventually report this: gramma got Alzheimer’s cuz she was lazy.
Upon further examination of the timeline on the chart, I see a direct correlation between the downturn of women’s overall happiness with the appointment of activist rightwing judges.
What strikes me about that graph is that since the early 90s or so the lines for men and women have tended to move in opposite directions for any given short period. You really couldn’t ask for any more compelling evidence that we live in a failed patriarchy. (well, yes you could, but not the the New York Times’s standard of evidence.)
The nun-study thing (I’m pretty sure it’s central US, unless it’s a new one) is actually kinda interesting. Years and years ago, during their early phases, they found that nuns who used more complex language as teenager and young adults were less likely to develop Alzheimers, which fits with the general “use it or lose it” model of brain activity that seems to be coming in — although that has troubles of its own. So I can’t wait for the Times article that suggests women keep their brains active by taking up quilting and crosswords, and cleaning house in new and interesting ways.
Mark Liberman over at the language Log does some analysis of the “story”:
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/004981.html
We sleep with both a cat and a dog. Guess Bill Murray was right…it must be the end of the world. Damn, I thought we all were pretty happy, too.
My cats do not so much sleep in the bed as pace around it all night, occasionally grabbing 5-minute catnaps in inconvenient locations. They walk and sleep on my boyfriend more than they walk on me, but they knead on my hair and scalp while purring loudly in my ear at 3 AM.
Also, I rarely make the bed. Does that mean I don’t have to lie in it?
What the hell is the vertical axis? Fraction of respondents? I’m taking off a letter grade for failure to label axes.
I’m with Tom.
Mark Liberman gets right to the meat. What’s more I’d like to extend it a bit:
Reactionary people abuse statistics for their purposes by trying to confuse the distinction of variety within a group and variety without a group. There are usually all kinds of shadow borders to their results, from extracting data a certain way to sampling in an awkward fashion.
You will *always* find that people have the ability to do studies in something as vague as “happyness”, because it makes it easy to launder what results you already want. So one only has to look at the title, really, before dismissing most of this crap.
The dog sleeps in my bed. The cats are exiled to the other side of the bedroom door, where they can pace and wrestle to their hearts’ content, and are unable to wake me by chewing loudly on my books or knocking things off my dresser.
I’m a man who sleeps in bed with his wife and would dearly love to have cats, a dog, a gerbil, something, but my wife says No. Not on the property, even, let alone the bed!
If I got cats against her will, would it make her a more authentic feminist?
my favorite ny blog comment is the first:
that’s about the level of response these articles deserve.
What the hell is the vertical axis?
Dunno, Caroline, but you can bet it’s EVIL.
The cats sleep on me, and not my wife. I put out more body heat and they seem to like the subsonic rumble of my snoring.
This may be somewhat off topic but it’s so crazy I just have to share.
http://www.ladiesagainstfeminism.com/artman/publish/Feminism_and_Related_Issues_5/Could_environmental_factors_contribute1002925.shtml
“Science for Choads” has no right to be as funny as it is.
The dog sleeps in my bed. The cats are exiled to the other side of the bedroom door, where they can pace and wrestle to their hearts’ content, and are unable to wake me by chewing loudly on my books or knocking things off my dresser.
No pets in the bed at all ever, Zu …but we’re emptynested, and the rule never applied to the boys.
UM…I am happier these days…and I’m wondering if life stages were figured in, whether gals my age would skew stats upward significantly. So much more of my time is my own now, and having that time makes me very, very happy.
“Sleeping With Cats” sounds like a pretty good title, BTW.
Oh–yes, I’ve slept with cats. The problem is that cats seem to think of you as a great hot-water bottle. Or as territory for exploration when they’re bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at 2AM. One of our cats (a big 15-pounder) had the tendency to wander back and forth from one side of the bed to the other, stepping on my stomach on the way. Another loved sticking her whiskers into my ear. The tiny Siamese who loved to sit on my back would have been ok except she definitely did not like when I tried to move; out would come the claws and she would Hold On….
I don’t allow cats in the bedroom either. My husband always slept with the oldest before we lived together, but after I moved in I banished him (the cat) from the bedroom. Now, we keep a baby gate at the top of the stairs so the cats can’t get up at night (not in our room or with the kids) and the kids can’t get down. Mostly to keep the cats out, though.
Is Ladies Against Feminism the same thing as Ladies Against Women? I have to wonder given the acronym LAF!
That said, I’m straightish, married, and my cat sleeps on my head - once I get to bed. Before I go to bed, she sleeps on kid heads. If I’m on the road, she sleeps on kid heads until husband gets to bed, when she moves to husband head.
She also meows a lot for no particular reason, and chases her tail in the bathtub. I guess that makes her a wingnut?
ks…the baby gate has not been invented that could stop the once-ferals who grace our household. Impossible, determined and offended that there are rooms to which felines are denied access, the only barrier which they will not circumvent is a solid door.
Canines are easier, but infinitely more pathetic.
I suspect duke has a sleazy agenda, since he only mentions success rates and neglects to mention women attempt suicide more, a lot more.
ahunt–haven’t you heard of the feline game Offside?
“The object of the game is to consistently be on the wrong side of a door. This goes on as far as human patience can stand…and then just a bit longer.”
–Terry Pratchett (The Unadulterated Cat)
Rolling here, tzs…at first I thought you were just teasing me… but now I actually have something to ask for…(rapidly upcoming 49th.) Thank you so much.
Women need to be told whether they’re happy or not.
:)
similarly, tzs, Ogden Nash’s definition of a door: What a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of.
the only barrier which they will not circumvent is a solid door
You haven’t met Mario LeMiaux.
He figured out the window latches. He has very long toes, which he uses like fingers.
When we picked out a doorknob for my son’s door, he specified “one that Mario can’t open”.
His vet records are labeled “WARNING - ESCAPE ARTIST”. I padlock his carrier when we take him to the doctor.
His vet records are labeled “WARNING - ESCAPE ARTIST”. I padlock his carrier when we take him to the doctor.
Keaton is not quite an escape artist, but he rubbed his nose raw trying to chew his way out of his cage at the vet when he had to be hospitalized for a day or two. (Cat food tainted with melamine = two days of getting IV fluids pushed through your system) Our vet called us at 7:30 am the morning his tests came up clear and “suggested” that we come pick him up immediately.
I said, “He’s been driving you guys crazy, hasn’t he?”
She said, “No, no, we just think he’ll be … happier at home.”
Sweet cat, hates cages with a passion. And if we had those doorknobs that are a lever instead of a round knob, he’s have doors open in 2 seconds.
The LAF article had an ad for a web based translation service at the bottom. It would have come in handy- I’m not sure where the Marxism came from. Perhaps Mrs. Whatserface thinks Marxism is some kind of carcinogenic compound you get by microwaving #2 plastic?
//From a science perspective, with the environmental endocrine disruption and all, she’s a bit off- the progesterone plumes you tend to find downstream from any city water treatment break down fairly quickly- but the plastics and pesticides and combustion byproducts that get transported up to the north pole- those are extremely persistant.
//on the plus side, endocrine disruptors tend to have really weird dose-based toxicological effects- miniscule amounts will give dramatic changes, but a constant higher-level exposure may do nothing at all, as your body takes a negative loop to their massive excess. On the minus side, a lot of them also uh, give you cancer.
Our baby gate is at the very top of the stairs, so they have to jump higher to get over it. And since they’re one is old and the other is lazy and obese (and thinks she’s a dog), they can’t get over it. It wouldn’t have worked even 2-3 years ago for them, especially the old one.
i’m such a terrible feminist that instead of cats i have a dog, a male dog, who won’t listen to me unless he decides he feels like it. which means my dog is a misogynist. yet i still love him.
heres my card, let me avert my eyes before you set it aflame.
Nooooo…feminists love dogs…honest!
It is just that some of us have too many of them, just like we have too many cats!
So grateful for the turn of this thread…desperately need the humor in my life this week.
My vet calls a “busy bee” code whenever we take our oldest cat in. I guess “busy bee” is code there for “psycho cat that will eat your face off”.
Share a bed with a man and a dog, here. Sometimes dog has to go in his crate at strategic moments. The look he gives me–my mother would pay to be able to induce such guilt.
But, uh, sorry, but what’s a choad?
(one Google later…) It seems to be a generic term of abuse meaning approximately the same as “loser”, but it’s got a specific meaning which seems to be “a penis wider than it is long”. I suspect, though, that the later meaning was invented for legitimacy and is rarely used, because I can’t imagine it being a terribly useful word in that context.
Wait a minute - how come men got much happier around 2002 and women got much more unhappier? Could it be the return to the authoritarian state had a honeymoon among men, but not women?
Unlike the sexist commenters’ interpretations, the main news outlet by me suggested that the difference was because so many women still have to do more unpleasant things daily than their male partners (housework, cooking, dealing with the kids, all while still having a full-time job–just like hubby). Of course they used more passive language than that: “women tend towards doing the unpleasant things rather than the fun things” or something, which has its own problems, but at least they suggested the root difference was the stress of sexist domestic expectations being put ahead of fun time.
No cats here–landlord won’t let me. Local stray who came whining around when I left the door open last week is tugging at my heart, though.
And I rarely make the bed.
Nenya, I adopted the local stray years ago- Ernie is a HUGE Maine Coon Cat mix and refuses to come inside, prefering the barn. I feed him dry kitten chow 2-3 times a day. Only problem is that I have to remember to bring in his dish every night, as another “kitty” and her family enjoy it too!
They’re really cute- big and fluffy black cats with white stripes…
Let me suggest that the entire chart is gibberish and NOTHING can be understood from looking at it. We have no idea what the margin of error for this chart is and it is highly likely that the margin of error is different for each year. This means that if the margin of error in a bad year was 10 points and the margin of error for a good year was 2 points then the entire chart could be an anomaly of error margins. Reality could be that the entire chart should be a flat line. Or that women are and always have been happier than men. Or that men have always been happier than women. The chart means nothing and any good science writer would have at the very least realized that.
Amanda: agenda? that was just a stat i recalled seeing a while back… i don’t have any deeper information. it seemed at least tangentially relevant to a story most here agree is nonsense.
I think Tom’s right. The chart seems to track rather miniscule variations, amounting to static.
My cat hates cages, too. I put a leash on her when I take her somewhere (generally the vet). She doesn’t walk well on it, but it means I can carry her and have an extra security if she squirms. It’s easier on her that way, as she apparently associates cages with her time in the shelter, and being on the leash reassures her that this is a temporary thing and she’s not being abandoned. She’s much less traumatized when she can hide under my legs or sit on my lap in the car ride instead of feeling separated.
As for her behavior at the vet, I always see the gals there carry her back out in their arms and cooing over what a sweetie she is. So the leash thing might not be a good idea with the psychos, but it might be worth a try with the merely neurotic.