Jeff has already had some fun with this article, but it’s been awhile since I’ve ripped into some dating advice column, I thought I’d give it a go. “11 “Don’t-Tell-the-Wife” Secrets All Men Keep”, and by “secret” they mean “stereotypical trope about male behavior so common that all lazy sitcom writers rely on it”. They should be excluded from the strike, those lazy ass sitcom writers, since they’re the ones that get paid so much to do so little and create all the sniggering jokes in the media. What’s interesting is not the male non-secrets, but the implied female “secrets”, which are those desires women have that are hidden because the male authors of this article don’t give a flying fuck about female feelings, figuring that women have two: 1) To live for men and 2) To get to be the Mrs., with no real stipulations attached other than “the sooner the better”.
Secret #1: Yes, we fall in lust 10 times a day — but it doesn’t mean we want to leave you
If the oldest question in history is “What’s for dinner?” the second oldest is “Were you looking at her?” The answer: Yes — yes, we were. If you’re sure your man doesn’t look, it only means he possesses acute peripheral vision.
“When a woman walks by, even if I’m with my girlfriend, my vision picks it up,” says Doug LaFlamme, 28, of Laguna Hills, California. “I fight the urge to look, but I just have to. I’m really in trouble if the woman walking by has a low-cut top on.”
Granted, we men are well aware that our sizing up the produce doesn’t sit well with you, given that we’ve already gone through the checkout line together. But our passing glances pose no threat.
Information author doesn’t care to know #1: Your wife is quite the fuck aware that you ogle at women, as are the women that you’re ogling at. I guarantee it. The only men who don’t get caught ogling are those that are aware that women aren’t stupid, and try to be politely subtle about it. I’d also point out that women look, too, but that information probably would give this guy a heart attack.
I will call bullshit on the “no threat” reassurance. Any man who considers women “produce” is going to cheat once he feels relatively secure he won’t get caught. There’s no ethical reason not to cheat in this grocery shopping view of women. If you told me it was unethical to partake of the oranges because I’ve already committed to eating bananas in the past, I would look at you as if you were nuts. You simply don’t make commitments to perishable goods that purchase like that.
Secret #2: We actually do play golf to get away from you
More than 21 million American men play at least one round of golf a year; of those, an astounding 75 percent regularly shoot worse than 90 strokes a round. In other words, they stink. The point is this: “Going golfing” is not really about golf. It’s about you, the house, the kids — and the absence thereof.
Willful ignorance item #2: Your wife is not actually pining for your imminent return when you go golfing, unless you come back with the words, “Here, let me take the kids and do the laundry so you can go out and do your own thing for once.” I suppose the idea that women would also like to get out of the house and away from it all for a few hours a day seems about as logical as the idea that your recently purchased apple would like to leap off the counter and go take a walk before you get around to eating it.
Secret #3: We’re unnerved by the notion of commitment, even after we’ve made one to you
This is a dicey one, so first things first: We love you to death. We think you’re fantastic. Most of the time we’re absolutely thrilled that we’ve made a lifelong vow of fidelity to you in front of our families, our friends and an expensive videographer.
But most of us didn’t spend our formative years thinking, “Gosh, I just can’t wait to settle down with a nice girl so we can grow old together.” Instead we were obsessed with how many women who resembled Britney Spears we could have sex with before we turned 30. Generally it takes us a few years (or decades) to fully perish that thought.
Willful ignorance item #3: Your wife’s eagerness to get to the wedding, while flattering, was less about her utter sexual fascination with you that precedes the ability to give a moment’s thought to other men, and more about getting to wear that really cool dress and make her friends both feel jealous and moon over her. The notion that women are all about marriage and commitment and men are all about looking around is a trope used to make sure that women and women only feel the need to work at the marriage, because they’re they only ones who supposedly really want it. It’s fun for men to believe this right up until the day you get served papers and then get to play the role of the bereft divorced man who doesn’t get why he has to pay child support with no regular access to pussy attached to it.
Secret #4: Earning money makes us feel important
In more than 7.4 million U.S. marriages, the wife earns more than the husband — almost double the number in 1981. This of course is a terrific development for women in the workplace and warmly embraced by all American men, right? Right?
Yeah, well, that’s what we tell you. But we’re shallow, competitive egomaniacs. You don’t think it gets under our skin if our woman’s bringing home more bacon than we are — and frying it up in a pan?
A lot of people come to me with questions like, “What do you feminists mean by ‘male privilege’?” This is a good example. Can you imagine a woman saying, “I know it’s shallow of me, but I need to make more money than you in order to feel all woman. Would you be a dear and hold back on your career to soothe my ego? Thanks!” while running out the door, sure the answer is yes. We’d rightfully consider that borderline sociopathic unwillingness to be generous to your chosen life partner, if a woman said it. But a man does, and it’s not considered right exactly, but at least just a cute “boys will be boys” matter that women are expected to tolerate.
Secret #5: Though we often protest, we actually enjoy fixing things around the house
I risk being shunned at the local bar if this magazine finds its way there, because few charades are as beloved by guys as this one. To hear us talk, the Bataan Death March beats grouting that bathroom shower. And, as 30-year-old Ed Powers of Chicago admits, it’s a shameless lie. “In truth, it’s rewarding to tinker with and fix something that, without us, would remain broken forever,” he says. Plus we get to use tools.
“The reason we don’t share this information,” Powers adds, “is that most women don’t differentiate between taking out the trash and fixing that broken hinge; to them, both are tasks we need to get done over the weekend, preferably during the Bears game. But we want the use-your-hands, think-about-the-steps-in-the-process, home-repair opportunity, not the repetitive, no-possibility-of-a-compliment, mind-dulling, purely physical task.” There. Secret’s out.
I’m not sure why he didn’t just come out and say it: “Women’s work is all the tedious crap, and men’s work is anything that has a possibility of a satisfactory completion. So be a dear and if it’s boring and repetitive, don’t bother your master with your blather about partnership and just get to it. I’ll be sure to put up a mild show of resistance if you ask me to fix something, though, so that we establish the illusion that I’m not a complete ogre about housework.”
Secret #6: We like it when you mother us, but we’re terrified that you’ll become your mother
With apologies to Sigmund Freud, Gloria Steinem — and my mother-in-law.
Jeff was confused about this, but my sense is that they’re saying, “Go ahead and make my pancakes, but don’t forget the blow job while you’re at it.” Willful ignorance item #6: Your wife would also not be opposed to having pancakes and cunnilingus served her in bed.
Secret #7: Every year we love you more
Sure, we look like adults. We own a few suits. We can probably order wine without giggling. But although we resemble our father when he was our age, we still feel like that 4-year-old clutching his pant leg.
With that much room left on our emotional-growth charts, we sense we’ve only begun to admire you in the ways we will when we’re 40, 50 and — God forbid — 60. We can’t explain this to you, because it would probably come out sounding like we don’t love you now.
“It took at least a year before I really started to appreciate my wife for something other than just great sex; and I didn’t discover her mind fully until the third year we were married,” says Newton. “But the older and wiser I get, the more I love my wife.” Adds J.P. Neal, 32, of Potomac, Maryland: “The for-richer-or-poorer, for-better-or-worse aspects of marriage don’t hit you right away. It’s only during those rare times when we take stock of our life that it starts to sink in.”
Jeff’s response was right—there’s almost no way to say that you love someone more every day that comes off wrong. Except one. If you actually said, “Damn, dear, I didn’t even know you could think and read and stuff for years! Who knew that women could both have a hot ass and a mind to match?,” that would not really come off that well.
Secret #8: We don’t really understand what you’re talking about
You know how, during the day, you sometimes think about certain deep, complex “issues” in your relationship? Then when you get home, you want to “discuss” these issues? And during these “discussions,” your man sits there nodding and saying things like “Sure, I understand,” “That makes perfect sense” and “I’ll do better next time”?
Well, we don’t understand. It doesn’t make any sense to us at all. And although we’d like to do better next time, we could only do so if, in fact, we had an idea of what you’re talking about.
We do care. Just be aware that the part of our brain that processes this stuff is where we store sports trivia.
One of the fascinating things about reading the “men’s rights activist” sites, which are where bittered, divorced men go to restore their egos by bashing the non-existent feminist conspiracy to get your wives to leave you is how many of them begin their bitter tale of woe by establishing how completely surprised they were when their wives filed for divorce. Never saw it coming. Had no idea she was unhappy. Why didn’t she say something in the first place?
Before the divorce, I bet those guys found items like #8 fucking hilarious.
Jeff’s right—this entire list is insulting to men. Yes, it insults them in a way that a lot of men embrace, because it lets them off the hook for both house work and emotional work. But it paints men like little babies that immediately start to whine the moment even a minor task is asked of them.
Secret #9: We are terrified when you drive
Want to know how to reduce your big, tough guy to a quivering mass of fear? Ask him for the car keys.
“I am scared to death when she drives,” says LaFlamme.
“Every time I ride with her, I fully accept that I may die at any moment,” says Buckingham.
Oh, blah blah. The rest of this list shows why, in the face of all carefully cultivated evidence to the contrary,* the stereotype of women drivers persists. Our sexist culture, in an effort to get men off the hook for any domestic duties at all, has established that men are some kind of idiot savants, utterly incapable of picking up a dishtowel or having a discussion about why the wife’s feelings should be as important as her cock-sucking skills, but of course, like Rainman, fully able to memorize incomprehensible amounts of sports statistics. While all this feigned stupidity is useful for getting out of work, it also bruises the ego to live inside marriages where the myth is that she’s the only capable one in most ways.
So what we have here is not a genuine belief that women’s boobs get in the way of steering the car or something, but another mythology—let’s all pretend that Jane can’t drive so Joe feels capable of doing something right. The side benefit is symbolic—is it any wonder the one official skill men are allowed to have and women aren’t is the one that gets one away from the house? She’s such a mythologically bad driver, it’s probably best if she does all the staying at home while he does the dangerous driving to the golf course.
Secret #10: We’ll always wish we were 25 again
I’m not even going to bother quoting the rest of this. If a man honestly thinks it’s a big revelation that he reminisces about youthful freedom and youthful energy, then he’s truly lost all respect for the fact that women are human. I mean, how could you possibly think that women don’t have the same thoughts? And therefore are quite aware what it feels like to reminisce?
Secret #11: Give us an inch and we’ll give you a lifetime
I was on a trip to Mexico, standing on a beach, waxing my surfboard and admiring the glistening 10-foot waves, when I decided to marry the woman who is now my wife. Sure, this was three years before I got around to popping the question. But that was when I knew.
Why? Because she’d let me go on vacation alone. Hell, she made me go. This is the most important thing a man never told you: If you let us be dumb guys, if you embrace our stupid poker night, if you encourage us to go surfing — by ourselves — our silly little hearts, with their manly warts and all, will embrace you forever for it.
Willful ignorance item #11: She’s still waiting for you to return the favor and “let” her go on a vacation alone. But what really bothered me about this passage was his utter certainty that wanting is a woman-only thing. He decided to marry her, three years before he asked, and it didn’t even appear to cross his mind that she had to pick him, too. Which of course is why the extension of freedom to “keep” someone doesn’t go both ways; the idea that women need to be catered to and indulged a bit makes as much sense as letting that apple have a bite back when you’re eating it.
*Why do you think insurance companies charge men higher rates, especially when they’re younger?
131 Responses to “Life after the checkout line”
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Considering that “I fear letting my wife drive” is code for “I hate letting a woman control my fate, even if it’s only for five minutes.” the rest of the list doesn’t surprise me.
BTW, speaking of backward jerks, Henry Hyde has died. I don’t begrudge him a prayer; he’ll need it where he’s going.
Hmmm. Ladies, keep some male enhancement pills around, and you get a slave for life.
Oh, spot on the whole way through. And the whole “Gee, I had no idea she’d divorce me” thing is spot on - every guy I know whose ever said that would indeed have found #8 HI-larious before they got their copy of the papers. And what I find hilarious is that these same guys don’t realize that saying their divorce took them by surprise = saying they had no idea what the state of their relationship was = saying they put in no effort to maintaining said relationship. And then she wants a divorce, GOD! Who could have seen that coming?
Actually, the seperate vacation thing does work well. My wife & I take a few seperate trips a year (long weekends w/the girlfriends or guys to places like Vegas, San Francisco or ski trips). Since we live & work together it helps a lot to have some time apart.
They forgot one last huge secret fear:
Secret 12: We totally fear homosexual relationships in our midst, particularly gay marriages, because same-sex unions built on a different model than this sitcom drivel will totally blow the cover off our little fantasy-world-as-deterministic-scenario bullshit.
In other words, we fear a world where we get called on our disrespectful bullshit masquerading as “the way we are”.
On Sunday, one person took the kids shopping. The other did some serious demolition and construction work on the house. Can you guess who did what? Hint: the situation could be reversed at any time.
Yes x 11, Amanda.
If a man failed to notice his wife’s dissatisfaction in their marriage, it’s only because he was doing his damnedest to hew to another stereotype: That men don’t listen. (I think men are completely capable of listening, but society and culture often remind them that “men never listen to their wives.” Not hard to fulfill that expectation, is it?) If he’s trained himself to tune her out, he just might’ve missed those three times she mentioned that the marriage just isn’t working for her any more and maybe they should get divorced.
BTW, if women are such bad drivers, then why are men statistically more likely to both be in and cause an accident? Note Mr. Guy Machopants here never makes a note of who pays more for the car insurance …
You know the only bad thing about Hyde kicking? Now we in the Chicago area are due for a few days of that elder-statesman shit that always made me want to puke. From the very first sentence of the Chicago Tribune’s coverage: “…known for his courtly manners, oratorical skills and historical knowledge…”
…and for ruining the lives of countless poor women and dragging the country through a ludicrous impeachment spectacle.
Sorry to go OT. I just had to vent.
I’m going to go out on a limb and say that any list that mostly consists of plot points from “Everybody Loves Raymond” is crap. Although, I should also admit that it would be slightly improved if it was read out by Peter Boyle.
Every time you do this post, the fisking of a men’s journal ‘what men don’t tell women’ thousand-word excretion, I have the same thought, so forgive me if I repeat myself:
I just don’t know how you make these mixed marriages work.
What a list! It’s so funny that MRAs talk about women-hating men, when articles like this show how completely men hate themselves and other men.
Translated: “It’s only when we realize that our wives stood by us as we got bald and fat and treated them like shit that we grew to be as codependent on them as they’d become on us.” Indeed, wuv, twoo wuv, is vhat bwings us togevah today.
I wonder if the men who identify with this article would even recognize what a happy marriage is like. Sure as fuck doesn’t look like one with these “secrets” involved.
And on topic: Every one of the eleven items is sometimes descriptive of me. And my wife is in on that reality, so it’s not a secret.
A couple of the items are never true of her. Which is why sometimes her friends asked, Are you sure you want to commit to this one? Seems like an immature dumbass to me… and my friends asked me how I planned to prevent her from getting away once she figured me out.
Sexism must be such a time-saver, because you never have to wonder who’s going to be the jerk in any zero-sum situation in your marriage!
Man, if I tried to hold any of these attitudes/beliefs, my wife would kill me. Literally; she’s a dangerous woman. But then, I doubt she would have even considered a relationship with me, let alone marriage, if I’d behaved like this.
As an aside, given that my income is well into the negatives, it’s pretty important that hers is higher than mine. I’m kind of counting on it.
I put these through an online Bullshit to English translator and it said:
1. If something I do makes you feel bad, it’s your fault.
2. I do not like you,
3. but I settled for you
4. because I want to control you
5. and make you wipe my ass
6. while wearing high heels.
7. I do not notice many aspects of your personality
8. because I do not listen to you
9. or see you as capable of anything.
10. I think you are stupid.
11. However, it will make life easier for me if you convince yourself that I am stupid too.
Ms Kate, hell yeah on #12.
Things like this insult my humantity never mind my gender. For what’s worth I want a living realtionship not a f-king sitcom.
Sigh. My father cannot understand why I have obstinately refused to do the ‘right’ thing and go snag me a new husband. I spent seven years of my fourteen in marriage trying to work past many of the items on this list, and have had seven quite peaceful, productive years since, quite happily single (avec FWB that works out well for us both). My father is confused and ANGRY that I am simply not interested in marriage, and affronted that I would be happily maintaining the relationship that I have because *GASP* I’m supposed to be bartering sex for marriage. Or something. When I point out that I am getting as much from it as he is, he looks like his brain is going to explode.
“*Why do you think insurance companies charge men higher rates, especially when they’re younger?”
No kidding. When I was 19 and bought an 8-yr-old Subaru station wagon, I was able to get my own insurance policy (though living on Long Island at the time, it was still kinda pricey).
Two years later, when my brother was 19, and he bought an 8-yr-old Subaru station wagon, there was no way he could have afforded to buy his own policy, as my parents had forced me to do. His was about 3 times the price mine was.
There were only a couple differences between the situations — my car was a Legacy and his an Outback, my car had 30k miles less on it than his did when bought, his was manual and mine automatic, and he’s male and I’m female. Your guess as to which made the most difference.
I bet you can also guess who has had accidents since.
Word, BitterScribe. I can’t bring myself to read his obit, but I wonder how much of it will cite his having carried on a homewrecking extramarital affair in the shadow of the Clinton impeachment debacle, making his “morality” excuses pathetic, hollow and very much of the style of focusing on the speck in Clinton’s eye while ignoring the log in his own. His passing should be one where we reflect on the shame he brought the citizens of this nation, both in his punitive and classist Hyde Amendment and in his hypocritical insistence on a public marital fidelity he did not possess himself. Asshole.
Miss Prism FTW.
Johns Hopkins says the driving fear might have some validity:
“As reported in the June issue of Epidemiology, American women were involved in 5.7 crashes per million miles driven. Men, on the other hand, clocked up just 5.1 crashes per million miles. Given the fact that men drive an estimated 74 per cent more miles per year than women, the figure is surprising indeed.”
My marriage was a classic example of number 8. Then, when I told him I wanted a divorce, he was surprised. Then, when no amount of cajoling would change my mind, it became *my* fault. I hadn’t done enough to make him listen. I hadn’t tried hard enough to get him to go to counseling.
I’m with someone now who prefers it when I drive because I’m a safer driver. I think this relationship might last longer.
Amanda once wrote:
Uhhh, you did realize that all of this was a joke, didn’t you? Even if you thought it was a bad joke, that’s still all it ever was.
By and large, I agree that this list is filled with stupid stereotypes of men and women. Just a few comments:
I will call bullshit on the “no threat” reassurance. Any man who considers women “produce” is going to cheat once he feels relatively secure he won’t get caught.
I disagree. Any smart husband realizes how good he has it. Cheating has messy real-world consequences, to his relationship, his integrity, and his financial freedom. On the other hand, an idle — and fleeting — fantasy hurts no one.
Eagerness to get to the wedding, while flattering, was less about her utter sexual fascination with you… more about getting to wear that really cool dress and make her friends both feel jealous and moon over her.
This is sadly true. On four occasions I have witnessed that women’s urge to HAVE A WEDDING has blinded them to what the marriage would be like. The most poignant was my co-worker, who had met his bride four years previously when they had both been members of Campus Crusade for Christ. She started getting dressed one evening, about four months into the marriage: “Where are you going?” “Out. I have a date.” Talk about being unclear on the concept.
Repetitive tasks: Besides fixing things around the house, “traditional guy” activities include such repetitive tasks as cutting the grass and shoveling snow. Less neanderthal men share housework evenly of course.
Mother-in-law: Traditionally caricatured as “the old battle-axe,” in reality, as advocate for her daughter, the mother-in-law sees through her son-in-law’s bullshit, which he finds threatening.
Women drivers: On the whole, women drive more prudently than men. A woman’s ovaries are not threatened by the rash acts of other drivers, and they have no need to “teach the other driver a lesson”.
Dana’s a mean, poorly endowed little man who gets off on carefully and meticulously pondering his daughters’ sex lives…
…just kidding!! Hah hah, I crack me up ~_^.
Thanks, Dr T…
I’m sure later you’ll regale us with proof for a host of other facts, such as:
Police really ARE obsessed with doughnuts.
“Negroes” DO love fried chicken and watermelon.
Orientals ARE terrible drivers.
Every “Mexican” IS a gardener.
Every Sikh IS a taxi driver.
Italians ARE all mobsters and all speak with a Brooklyn accent.
Irishmen ARE all drunks.
Feminists really ARE hairy-legged and -pitted dykes who want to kill all men…
Etc.
Such enlightenment…
Dana, uhhh, you did realize that when Amanda said “I am a feminist and by definition, am humorless,” that was a joke, right?…
Mr Ess, it might well have been — but it was the most accurate statement she has ever made.
Uhhh, you did realize that all of this was a joke, didn’t you?
Yup. I know I turn to webmd.com for all my humor needs.
The car insurance rate difference has to do with number of miles driven and not the accident rate. In other words if men on average had an accident every 20,000 miles and drove 10,000 miles per year, their insurance would be a lot higher than a woman if on average women had an accident every 5,000 miles but only drove 1,000 miles per year. Besides, the stereotype says that women just cause accidents and leave wrecked cars in their wake as men crash into each other trying to avoid the bad woman driver.
As to the article, I really don’t think many men actually believe any of this drivel. But men can be sucked into stereotypes and end up acting as if they believe this crap when they are BS’ing with the guys because they think that is what is expected of them. Since everyone expects you to be a jerk like that guy on Home Improvement, you play-act as that jerk until it’s not pretend anymore. Simple example: If you don’t like football, then your friends think you’re a jerk. So you like football to be socially accepted among your peers. Same goes for treating your wife as an equal or having a wife that makes more money than you. In other words, it takes maturity to act like a mature person and too many people (not just men) never grow up enough to not care what their friends say about them.
MikeEss -
Once again you show the unwillingness to look at any statistics on an idea - despite the source like Johns Hopkins Univesity. Rather than discussing the facts presented you emotionally flame. You are a living lefty stereotype. You’re funny.
#9 is the perfect picture of my marriage. He *hates* the way I drive, and I admit, I don’t particularly care for the way he operates a vehicle, either. The last time I was driving, and took his “advice”, I got pulled over for speeding. After the cop gave me a ticket and drove off, I exploded and told my husband point blank that I was *never* going to listen to his “driving advice” ever again.
He still harps on my driving, and I’ve taken to simply reminding him who got ticketed *three times* in two months (hint: wasn’t me!). Predictably enough, this is the one point of contention for us.
Dana, do you not see that this, while a joke, is supposed to one of those ‘We laugh because it’s funny and we laugh because it’s true’ things.
“You are a living lefty stereotype. You’re funny.”
I’m glad to know that I’m just another stereotype to you. But I guess in your world we all are…
Dr T, even if we take your statistic at face value, it says women have about 11% higher chance of an accident per passenger mile than men. Probably less than the increase in risk when it rains a bit.
Would that justify being a “quivering mass of fear” who thinks he “might die at any moment” in your judgement?
I fucking hate the way golf is assumed to be a “sport” that “everyone” plays. There are about 105 million males over age 20, and only 21 million (20%) play golf at least once a year.
Oh right, since that 20% is predominantly white, male, and middle-class, they are the only ones who matter.
The bullshit stereotype piece above didn’t say that women cause more accidents than men. It said that men fear for their lives when women drive. To be an accurate stereotype, women would have to cause significantly more accidents than men do, and such accidents would need to be substantially more severe, often being fatal. The Hopkins study showed that women cause 11.8% more accidents than men when measured on a miles driven basis — hardly a differential to warrant such a drastic differential in perception of driving ability, particularly since, when miles driven are factored in, men still cause the bulk of accidents in the aggregate.
In other words, it’s one thing to dispute the idea that men are always much worse drivers than women. Obviously there are some bases for indicating that women are comparable and in some ways worse than men when it comes to driving. But it’s another thing entirely to say that the stereotype of All! Women! Drivers! Are! Deadly! has merit, and to do the latter is to wildly overstate the data.
As reported in the June issue of Epidemiology, American women were involved in 5.7 crashes per million miles driven.
Age stratification please?
Older drivers have many more accidents per mile driven than younger drivers. There are a lot more older women driving than older men. Older women are also, due to sexism, intentionally less trained and less experienced drivers than their age-matched male counterparts.
This information means nothing without further stratification.
“Johns Hopkins says the driving fear might have some validity”
Does it happen to include the amount of property damage/serious injuries/fatalities involved in the crashes? Most of what I’ve seen re: different insurance rates is that while women get into more accidents, they’re more likely to be things like backing into a non-car object at 3 mph. Repair costs are lower, serious injuries are far lower, and fatalities lower still. Hardly a reason for heterosexually coupled men to be clutching their car keys in terror.
True that. Comparing my brother and me again, I’ve been in more “accidents” than he has; I’ve been in 2, he’s been in 1 (that I know of). He hit another car. In BOTH of my accidents, my car wasn’t even moving. In one it was parked, and in the other I was stopped at a stop sign.
“Hardly a reason for heterosexually coupled men to be clutching their car keys in terror.”
If he hands her the car keys, he might as well be handing her his balls in a jar, so of course he’s clutching them in terror. If he’s Dr T, that is.
OTOH, maybe that’s a good indication that a better relationship might be had with another, less insecure, guy…
Johns Hopkins says the driving fear might have some validity
The fear arrow points in the opposite direction. When cut off on the freeway, which sex will tailgate the “offender”, flashing his headlights “impotently” behind him? Or, worse yet, which sex will zoom up in front of the “offender” and slam on his brakes? Or, even worse, which sex will pull the “offender” off the road and start a fist fight? In other words, if you were a passenger, which sex puts you in fear for your life?
I trust the insurance companies to know what’s best for their own bottom lines. If they say that men’s bad driving costs more money in claims paid and therefore justifies massively higher premiums, especially in adolescence, then I’ll believe them before I believe a single study from Hopkins. These people are in the business of crunching numbers to make sure they don’t pay too much; they wouldn’t make a huge systemic mistake that was not in their favor (that’s why they didn’t go with the sexist stereotype in the first place.)
As a married woman whose husband cannot legally drive and is therefore not on the policy, I actually have lower car insurance than a married woman whose husband *is* on her policy (or at least I did when we were younger.) It’s hard to get the “married woman” rate, because of course married couples share cars and they’ll give you the rate of the more expensive driver, but married men are more expensive than married women, and unmarried men are *vastly* more expensive than unmarried women, especially when young.
Probably some of this stat reflects that men drive more and therefore are in more accidents. But a considerable amount of it is that at any age, men take more risks and drive more aggressively than women, so even experienced male drivers will get into a *worse* accident than an equally experienced female driver, on average. Women living longer and getting into more tiny fender-benders probably accounts for the Hopkins study.
Personally, I feel I am taking my life into my hands any time I let a man who isn’t my dad drive. They wait until the last possible second to hit the brakes. To be fair, the only men I have ridden with are my own age, except for my dad (and my now dead grandfather, who was also a good driver), and I havn’t done it in years, so they were all young guys. But god, I felt like I was gonna die. I insisted on doing more than half the driving when I was with a guy who could drive, and now in some ways I actually benefit from being with a guy who can’t drive, because I maintain control and never have to fear being in a car with a reckless driver (I might myself be reckless on occasion, but by definition I’m not *afraid* of that.)
Oh, and Dr T, could you provide the exact citation, please? Not the POPULAR OMFG! SCIENCEY NEWS ITEMZ version, but the actual study? I have the June 2007 issue of Epidemiology on my desk and I’m having trouble finding the cite.
I know quite a few people at Hopkins, and I don’t they they are “saying” what you are “saying they are saying”.
This stupid shit is beneath the contempt of intelligent and thoughtful people. Typical once-a-fratboy-always-a-frat-boy, third-rate-sitcom nonsense. I suppose it might be useful to a certain type of woman — the type who is looking for just such a man. (These women do exist; the tip-off is if they begin shrieking together in a group after two margaritas. Castigate me if you will, but you know exactly who I mean.)
The depressing part isn’t that it’s untrue, but that it’s a highly accurate snapshot of a certain type of person.
Insurance stats do not corrrect for the fact that those who get more practice at something tend to do it better. So, in a society that has one group do more driving (for the US that is typically men, though not in my family as I have a hell of a commute and my spouse does not), that group would tend to have better skills, on average. The statistics would show that while not correcting for those of different groups who do drive more. A better measure would be the percentage of each who are rated as qualified for safe driver breaks, and that still would not correct for the average difference in driving opertunities.
Oh, Dr. T?
There *is* no June issue of Epidemiology. And the May and July issues don’t seem to have the article you reference.
Can you find a link to an abstract? Now I’m curious about that data.
“I’m glad to know that I’m just another stereotype to you. But I guess in your world we all are…”
No just you. You show zero ability to discuss a topic that has anything that might support a position other than yours. You revert to insults instead of provide alternative information to move a dialogue forward. I see the exact opposite from many posters here, which is why it is a good blog. Offer some studies that say women don’[t get in more accidents. You know, it’s actually possible in this world of ours for women to actually be worse at something than men are and for it to be statistically measureable. Step up your game big fella. Or you could just insult me again. Everyone here expects it.
Why do MRA-types write articles talking about how they’re just like the guys on third-rate CBS sitcoms, then pass the keyboard over to a friend who screeches that teh feminists control television and make men into incompetent losers on third-rate CBS sitcoms?
Full citation, Dr. T.
(yes, Alara, you are correct - I grabbed July by mistake. Looking online, there hasn’t been a June issue in 20 years!)
Offer some studies that say women don’[t get in more accidents.
Know much about actuarial data? Would it really behoove insurance companies to charge younger women less for insurance if they actually got into accidents more often?
http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/19980516133725data_trunc_sys.shtml
I have to imagine that this is what Dr. T found. Relevant information:
Side note: it’s ten years old.
You know, it’s actually possible in this world of ours for women to actually be worse at something than men are and for it to be statistically measureable.
Yes, it is possible for some women to be not as good at something than slightly more men, particularly when there are people like my MIL who had to learn from ME how to change a tire because my FIL wouldn’t teach her!
But you came in with a “truthy flavored infopiece” which cited an issue of a journal that Alara has pointed out DOESN’T EXIST. Show me the information, and I might actually agree with you. Repeat popscience distilled crapola and you will get it flung back at you.
Dr T, I don’t have to refute your “study”. On Pandagon there are plenty of regulars who know and understand these things better than me. I happily defer to their superior knowlege.
“You know, it’s actually possible in this world of ours for women to actually be worse at something than men are and for it to be statistically measureable.”
And finding that “statistically measurable” thing would excite you why exactly?…
Dr. T,
I will give your article fair consideration, but first you must provide the cite. To make assertions and then not provide the documentation fatally undermines your argument.
“Full citation, Dr. T.”
Give him time to invent it, geez! Now that’s he’s been caught lying, he needs time to invent a cite!
;)
Science A Go Go in 1998! Huh?
I wonder where they pulled that from?
Oh, and here’s the kicker - the REST of the article states:
If anything, I would call this out as prime evidence of sexism: a woman over 35 in 1998 would have been born before 1952 and have learned to drive in the late 1960s. Anecdotally, most women that age were discouraged from learning to drive too well, lest they be independent, and discouraged from driving when a man was around, even if their husband was drunk or too tired. It is a good bet that most of the risk discrepancy in this age group was due to lacking experience and poor skills - something that vanishes when you look at younger women.
“Would it really behoove insurance companies to charge younger women less for insurance if they actually got into accidents more often?”
It might if their accidents were minor and frequently did not result in a claim. If the average claim from a female driver is $200 and the average claim from a male driver is $5,000, and every collision results in a claim, insurance companies are still better off with female drivers even if they are 11% more likely to be in a collision.
Once you look at the likelihood of a low-speed/low-damage collision going unclaimed (the company doesn’t even have to pay attention, let alone money) or being claimed but not exceeding the client’s deductible versus the likelihood of a high-speed/high-damage collision going unclaimed (far fewer people can foot the bill themselves, far more are going to feel it worth increased rates) or being claimed and exceeding the deductible, the 11% increase in collisions is probably more than canceled out.
“I wonder where they pulled that from?”
All I know is SOMEBODY out there’s got a might sore ass…
Actually, Mike, if you read the rest of the article (exact quote in moderation), it is really pulled off by high accident rates in women over 35.
In other words, women born before 1952 drove less and drove badly.
The 20 to 35 age group has no gender differences.
The under 20 has lots of dead boys.
My soon to be ex-husband has this bad habit of wildly clutching the dashboard when he rides as a passenger in my car. Always annoyed the ever-living shit out of me because I have been in exactly two accidents (both slow speed bumps with only cosmetic damage to my car), while my husband has been in several accidents where the car was totaled (and he nearly died in the last one). The only way he stopped was by sitting in the backseat with the kidlet– he can’t see out the front anymore so he can’t freak and he ends up entertaining the wee one.
It is absolutely about control, not an accurate perception of which sex is safer behind the wheel. If your man feels threatened when you drive, watch out because chances are he also harbors other expectations that you will be a “traditional” wife and won’t cope well if you aren’t.
Helen H,
Actually the insurance stats *would* be considering who gets more practice and therefore who is a better driver, in the sense that the *only* number they care about is “who do we pay more claims for.” A more experienced driver, in theory, will produce fewer claims. You can see this in the age brackets — the cheapest people to insure are the 45-55 year olds, because they have the maximum experience before eyesight and reflexes fail.
However, in all age brackets (except maybe the elderly, I’ve never looked at that), men pay more than women. This means that in all age brackets, men produce more claims than women.
Is this because men drive more often, and therefore end up in more accidents just because of more time on the road? Is it because men are just plain worse drivers? Is it because men’s aggressive driving style produces worse outcomes financially when there *is* an accident, whereas women’s more timid driving style may produce more minor accidents that cost much less? We don’t know. We do know, however, that overall, men cost insurance companies much more money than women. So arguing that women are worse drivers is *empirically* nonsensical.
Now, if you had evidence that women are worse drivers, there might be reasons such as less experience on the road, more acculturation to be timid, greater likelihood of children in the car and therefore driver distraction, etc. But as it happens, the insurance figures say the *opposite* — they say that *men* are worse drivers. So again, maybe you can explain this by saying men clock more road time and have more opportunity for accidents. I know the insurance companies collect data on how much you drive, so this is checkable, although not by me right now because I’m trying to work.
But you can’t say insurance companies don’t pay any attention to experience. Insurance companies pay attention to *results*, and if results reflect experience, then they are paying atention to experience.
The overall point is that according to the people who will take a financial bath if they are wrong, and therefore have the most motivation to get it right, and who have the most detailed information about accident/claim rate (inluding rates of being an innocent victim of an accident vs. being the cause of it) by age, sex, marital status, home location, and miles driven per day/year, men are worse drivers than women. So men never, never have call to “fear taking their life into their hands” by letting their wife drive; the fear should go the other way around. I would need to see a *lot* of studies before I’d believe that the people who will pay through the nose if they’re wrong and have all the data, are wrong.
Preying Mantis:
True, but the amount of the claim is a good shorthand for the safety of the driver. No one ever died from a $200 fender bender.
So the argument that “men are better drivers than women” is refuted if women are in 11% more collisions but men cost insurance companies so much more per collision that it is still significantly cheaper to insure the women.
(I realize that you’re arguing the opposite of the “men are better drivers than women” meme yourself; I’m just pointing out how to take your argument one step further.)
One might also conjecture that a person who drives more miles may be racking up more highway miles and fewer close-to-home city-street miles. Don’t they say most accidents happen fairly close to home? If true, then the lower-mileage person might well have more accidents per mile driven than the high-mileage person who cruises uneventfully down a highway for many of those miles.
Oh, “fun with MRAs” time. Yay! Humorless feminist! No wai! I’m just party all the time with the laugh tracks.
It said that men fear for their lives when women drive.
Well, sure, makes sense to me. For example, I always keep my purse handy when I can’t control the urge to mow down a pious aging pantysniffer or a drunken fratboy puking in the parking lot who just annoyed me in the bar for the last two hours.
You see, if I apply some fresh red lipstick right before I explain to that “hunky” but semi-balding, pot-bellied, eager for approval and reassurance-of-his-masculinity Mr. Law Officer that the protestor or the drunken frat boy just staggered in front of my car and there was no way to avoid them, the officer’s eyes just kind of glaze over and he starts rubbing my shoulder and comforting me over my horrible tragedy. That’s when I off-handedly mention my husband just tragically passed away; hook, line, and sinker.
Also, when I had a few little accidents with those three guys that had anti-choice stickers, it might not have been entirely innocent. Hardy-har-har, it sure is hard to tell since us *girls* are just such bad drivers. But, you know, I think it’s fun to play the *confused signals* or the, “whoops, tapped the breaks a little too hard game.” They’re such easy marks, and since I’m rather gorgeous and have breasts I can use to my advantage in any situation, I always mention how at the last moment, I noticed the men appeared to be staring at me and not paying any attention to where they were driving. It doesn’t get any easier than this. I really enjoyed seeing that one shiney BMW smashed but good while I fired up the battered old stationwagon and mosied off with no-fault and la-cheapo PL/PD. It’s the small joys in life we often forget to seek out.
Sitcom mentality and stereotypes. Always ripe for a laugh or two, if you’re into that sort of thing. I bet Mr. Don’t Tell the Wife would find me High-larious, too. I wonder what he drives. I’m just kidding.
Ms Kate:
Arrgh! June *1998*? That’s not even on their web site anymore!
So here’s what interests me: is this an age-related factor or a time-since-second-wave-feminism factor? In other words, is there something that leads *women* qua women to become worse drivers after the age of 35, or is it that women who were older than 35 *in 1998* did not receive as many benefits from feminism and the idea that women *should* be equal to men (and so did not drive as much) as younger women did?
If the second is the case, then currently the women 35-45 should be safer than the men the same age, as the women under 35 were in the 1998 article, and the women above the age of 45 would be the dangerous ones.
Don’t you love how an MRA-type cites a *1998* study and totally fails to mention the year?
I still believe that the insurance companies know what they’re doing when it comes to making sure they don’t pay out more than they take in. But I *am* curious now as to what the accident rates might be for men and women as they age. Do we at some point hit a cohort of women who did not grow up under feminism’s greatest recent achievements and therefore never clocked the driving time that their younger sisters did?
BTW, when I was growing up, in 1986 when I got my license, it was well understood that boys were such bad drivers, and cost so much on the insurance, no one would insure their teen son if they had a choice. So teen girls were the default drivers, as teen boys who had licenses were rare due to what they’d do to their parents’ insurance. This was New York, Poughkeepsie, about an hour and a half from the City.
“(I realize that you’re arguing the opposite of the “men are better drivers than women” meme yourself; I’m just pointing out how to take your argument one step further.)”
Yeah, my first comment on the Female Drivers vs. Male Drivers: The Safening was pretty much that. You can say “Women have more accidents than men” and “Men drive more than women but have fewer crashes,” but you can’t automatically make a leap to “Men are safer drivers.” Not all collisions are created equal; I’d much rather be in a car with a driver who’s perpetually dinging into things than a driver who’s only been in three accidents, but all involved a totaled car and serious injuries.
What Jeff failed to mention and I wanted the opportunity to point out is that a lot of women can out of necessity or actually enjoy fixing things and stuff. My mom and I once bonded over putting a desk together. I rewired a lamp I loved too much to throw out. I’ve been forever resentful and jealous of my cousins (and now my boyfriend) who always get tools for birthdays and Christmas that they have no idea how to use.
Granted, my dad was the one who taught me how to change the oil in a car, but I’ve carried this love of tinkering into the rest of my life. Even when he was living with me, I only asked for my boyfriend’s tools when I needed to fix something.
Which, and this is why I love him, doesn’t threaten him in the least.
From the Science A-Go-Go Article
Consider that this was 1996 data, women born before 1951 were worse drivers than men, women born between 1952 and 1966 were similar drivers to men, and males under 20 sucked at driving.
Hardly “Hopkins saying” and “you just don’t want to hear it”. What this really says is that older women were likely less experienced, less skilled drivers.
Why? IBTP!
Any smart husband realizes how good he has it.
Any smart person realized women are not produce, nor is marriage a purchase.
Why do you even bother reading this site? You don’t seem to like anything written here, and seem to disagree with every one and every idea here. Common sense should tell you to participate in different blogs, rather than ones like these with your “friends on the left.”
Miss Prism @ 15 - nice one !
I don’t understand the vacation comment at all.
When my husband was alive, I always encouraged him to go pursue his hobbies alone and I was enthusiastic about him developing new ones.
Surfing, hiking, mountain climbing, skydiving, BASE jumping. I think it’s really manly when a guy takes risks.
I totally encourage it; as long as they are responsible and procure good life insurance. You know, I’d have been really in dire straits if my late husband didn’t have a sizeable policy when his buddy George tragically shot him in a bear hunting accident. It’s nice they were such good friends; George was a real strong and hard presence in my life as we worked through our grief together.
I miss him, sure. But I’m real glad it happened the way it did. I gave me some comfort to know he died doing something he loved with a friend he could really trust.
Someone should tell Mrs Don’t Tell the Wife to loosen up a bit.
Did you happen to note that this is a reprint from “Redbook”? Clearly humor. That said, most of these secrets about ‘men’ are actually secrets from men about women(Starred):
*1) The guy who thinks women don’t look is naive. The guy who thinks she shouldn’t is delusional. Women are just more picky about who they notice, so most guys probably never/rarely see women looking at them.
*2) Again, if the guy thinks the woman doesn’t want away from him and the kids occasionally, he is delusional.
*3) Plenty of folks here have commented on ‘wedding vs. marriage’.
4) The trade in the traditional male mind is “I go to work, she does the housework.” Having the woman contribute ‘her share’ in the financial domain threatens that equilibrium. Clueless guys don’t notice, good guys rebalance the home-work load.
5) This one isn’t so far off. The real dispute on ‘housework’ between less old-fashioned men and women is necessity, not worksharing. The thought isn’t “Vacuuming is women’s work”, it is “Vacuuming, dusting, and cleaning the floors every week is a waste of time, I don’t want to pick up extra actually needed tasks because she’s being retentive about the rugs. Let’s divide up and do the actual required stuff, and whoever cares about the other stuff can DO the other stuff.” The “Battle of the Sexes” here is that opinion vs. ‘given I want it that clean, he should help, as we are partners’. (And it can go the other way, though in our society it usually does break out the stereotypical way.) If they actually compromise on the point, they would share more than he wants, less than she does, and at the end of the day he still looks like a neanderthal to the people here, because she does more housework than he does. (Note this doesn’t cover the small minority of men who are of the “Dang woman, look at this mess. When are you going to get off your…” variety. They really are a*holes. Probably of a general purpose variety, not merely a misogynistic one.)
*6. Gah. Women don’t like his mother half the time, either. Another secret about women masking as a secret about men. (When men don’t like the MIL, it isn’t usually a secret.) If social roles were more equal, this would say “FIL” as often as “MIL”.
*7. Romantic drivel. To the extent that it is true of men, it is true of women, also. Increased knowing of the person will in good circumstances add depth to the love.
8. Many men really don’t get the emotional stuff. Really. They don’t. It isn’t thickheadedness, or that they are ignoring something. It is that their partner really does have a want that is unrecognizable to him. I know innate differences in mental composition are considered fictional around here, but this is one - though culture reinforces it, some people aren’t going to be good at it no matter the practice, any more than I could ever lift 200 lb. over my head if I just worked out enough. Empathy, emotional connectivity and signalling ability (not the ability to feel, which is more balanced, but rather the ability to express and recognize) is a spectrum, with autism at one end. Men average closer to the autism end - there are more autistic men. It isn’t ‘male ogre’ or ‘needy woman’ when the difference between two people is large enough to cause problems. It just means that a bad pairing has been made, and sex differences mean more problems will happen on the ‘male emotional idiot’ side.
This isn’t exactly a rare problem in gay relationships of both genders, where sex differences don’t even factor in. There are plenty of men and women close enough together that good pairings can be made. And just because you, or your guy, is great on this stuff doesn’t mean men and women are equally able. My SO can lift more than I can. That doesn’t mean that men, on average, aren’t innately significantly stronger than women, on average. We are both statistical outliers. So are you. The problem isn’t the existence or belief in the gender difference, it is the expectation that gender differences in the mean imply that all of one gender should be a specific way and all of the other the other way.
“I bet those guys found items like #8 fucking hilarious”.
yes. Humor comes from recognition. It is funny when someone imitating George Bush uses ‘decider’ and ’strategery’ and someone imitating Cheney snarls and pantomimes shooting a shotgun at someone, because it is recognizable. The opposite wouldn’t be so funny, because it wouldn’t jive with our understanding of the two people being imitated. (Bush and Cheney playing each other might be funny, at least in a Press Association roast sort of way.) The MRA’s error is assuming his ‘way’ is right and hers is wrong, rather than accepting it just wasn’t going to work out. (Well, that and being basically hateful rather than rueful about setbacks. A problem which afflicts both genders more-or-less equally.)
*9. I suspect as many women are scared by their husband’s driving, or would be if they weren’t used to it, as vice-versa. Being out of control is inherently scary. Men have fewer crashes per mile driven, but have worse crashes when they do. (Men also drunk-drive far more. No man has ever been as scared of his wife’s driving as a woman who only realizes after they get going that her guy is too drunk to drive.)
10) No star required. That both sexes wish they were younger when older (or older when younger) is no secret. Men stereotypically get sports cars, women stereotypically get facelifts.
11) See 7.
A per mile ratio to determine bad drivers is silly. I don’t doubt people who put in more miles have less accidents per mile, since they’re probably doing a lot more long distance driving. But do men start and stop an engine more than women in any significant numbers? I doubt that seriously. Are men’s per-drive accident numbers lower than women’s? Doubt it.
Many men really don’t get the emotional stuff. Really. They don’t. It isn’t thickheadedness, or that they are ignoring something. It is that their partner really does have a want that is unrecognizable to him.
What a remarkably stupid statement. Can you give an example of these “unrecognizable” wants ?
Wanting to be treated with respect, listened to, wanting to do something useful and constructive in life, to be autonomous, to have fun, have friends, be recognised as human ?
Many men don’t recognize these things ? Really ? Then go lock yourselves up in cages and don’t come out until you decide to grow up
Secret #6: We like it when you mother us, but we’re terrified that you’ll become your mother.
Considering that my mother adores my husband and scolds me because I don’t wait on him hand and foot like she does my father, why exactly is he supposed to be “terrified” that I’ll become her, again?
(I mean other than the fact that he wouldn’t want to be waited on hand and foot, because it would creep him out. I have a sneaky feeling that’s not the kind of “terror” that the writer is hinting at.)
Don’t forget that premiums are often adjusted by geographic area by rate of return. For example, I live in London, Ontario, a town with reasonably low rates of car theft and auto accidents. Yet our average premiums are higher than the pure numbers would justify. Why? It may have something to do with the fact that London ON is a comparatively wealthy community and its premiums are used by the insurance companies to balance off their lower profits in other, higher-risk / lower return parts of the province.
Of course, there is always the hilarity that found in the companies themselves. They endlessly moan that they are taking a bath on car insurance, that they need higher rates permitted to make it worth their while, and so on. But let someone suggest that we take the burden off their hands and have a public insurance scheme like BC (with lower rates and better coverage, economic libertarians kindly note) and you can’t hear for the industry’s Gollum-like screams as it clings to Its Precious.
Many men really don’t get the emotional stuff. Really. They don’t. It isn’t thickheadedness, or that they are ignoring something.
Yeah, it’s that they don’t care and figure that women, being the inferior sex, have inferior concerns not worth paying attention to. Also, they believe that emotional work is women’s work. Plus there’s the men are buying/women are selling model of marriage which means that women are the product that needs to justify the investment. You no more explain yourself to your wife than you are obliged to explain yourself to your car. That’s why so many of these guys are thrown for a loop when they get divorce papers handed to them; they never imagined that women have needs and wants just like men! Craziness.
Now, grown-up, thoughtful men are perfectly capable of having an emotional conversation. I can’t imagine that if I asked Marc to discuss our relationship with me that he’d have any other reaction but to listen and respond and take it seriously. He certainly wouldn’t be like, “Feelings are woman crap.”
Aw, don’t be dissin’ Dana. For a wingnut, he’s not half bad. His manners are impeccable, at least.I drop by his site every now and again to give him a hard time. He and his cohorts usually take it in good spirits.
Has anyone else seen the Home Depot ads where the woman is talking about various improvements she would like to make to the house and the man is all absorbed in his sports and not listening?
She then goes, gets the stuff, and does it herself.
I’m having trouble parsing it - he’s a stereotype, she’s a stereotype but an anti-stereotype too. He’s getting a free ride, but she seems to be enjoying the work, etc.
“It took at least a year before I really started to appreciate my wife for something other than just great sex; and I didn’t discover her mind fully until the third year we were married,”
Christ, that’s creepy as hell. I didn’t notice it, but I assume the article used psuedonyms. Wouldn’t you like to be this cat’s wife and hear, basically, “Yeah, I only married you ‘cause you gave up the pussy; luckily you’re not too stupid for me to deal with.”
And I must say how much I loathe the whole meme that says since I have a dick, I’m an emotionally stunted moron that’s only good for doing heavy lifting. just like the guy writing this nonsense. No, dude, you’re an emotionaly stunted moron because you’re too goddamn lazy and too goddamn chickenshit to try to be anything else. And not every guy loads up on sports trivia and, for what it’s worth, I agree with Mark Twain concerning golf: “A good walk spoiled”.
And I’m supposed to believe it’s the feminists that hate me male guts and are keeping me from getting laid/married. Feh.
I’m having trouble parsing it - he’s a stereotype, she’s a stereotype but an anti-stereotype too. He’s getting a free ride, but she seems to be enjoying the work, etc.
I still can’t figure out if it’s that she knows he’s absorbed in watching sports and is getting his “permission” for making the changes when she knows he’s not paying attention to what she’s saying, or whether she thinks he is paying attention and is too stupid to realize he’s responding to the TV and not her. It’s very ambiguous the way they play it — it could go either way.
I also can’t remember if he’s seen in the store with her at the end — if he is, that would kind of imply that he agreed in principle to the changes and he’s going to help.
“I’m having trouble parsing it - he’s a stereotype, she’s a stereotype but an anti-stereotype too. He’s getting a free ride, but she seems to be enjoying the work, etc.”
The versions I’ve seen end with her leaving for Home Depot. I’m pretty sure the punchline is supposed to be that he’ll be deeply sorry he tuned her out in favor of the game when she comes back with a load of work for him to do and a huge-ass bill for chick-things like fancy paint and wall fixtures. I didn’t get the sense that she was really an anti-stereotype, since the changes she wanted were cosmetic and things that women stereotypically focus on over more dudely pursuits like knocking down walls and pouring concrete and so forth.
the men are buying/women are selling model of marriage
Ah, Amanda, I get where you’re coming from now. I thought he was just reaching for a crappy analogy to explain “look, but don’t touch,” Considering his other statements, I believe you’re right.
Just while we’re piling on a stupid troll, “involved in” accidents is a lousy measure for determining driver quality, because it doesn’t say who is causing the accident (much less what kind of accident, i.e. fenderbender or less vs multi-fatality pileup). For a strawdriver version of how such stats might work, the young buck who plows into three women politely minding their own business at a read light adds 1 to the number of men involved in an accident that day, and 3 to the number of women.
Is this the same guy who decided 3 years earlier to marry his wife, but made her wait (assuming all along she would say yes)?
Because that would put it at 4 years that the “love of his life” was just pussy or a possible walking incubator. Not an individual. Completely interchangeable.
OT: Henry Hyde died? Good riddance. But, unfortunately I doubt my Chicago papers will go into any details about his
adulterous affair“youthful indiscretion”.Clinton can be impeached, but HH was just a sallow youth in his 40s when he made his mistake. And he had to bear that cross for the rest of his life…
Yeah, I’m just about old enough to have my own youthful indiscretion now.
What’s Atrobean? An MRA spoofing a feminist, a feminist spoofing an MRA spoofing a feminist, or random performance art?
I don’t like drawing attention to it if it’s option 1, or ruining the joke if it is one of the others; but the MRAs pretending to be feminists tend to take their drag off, come back and start arguing with their own strawpuppets; so it seems like a good idea to pre-empt that.
Also, this is beautifully ludicrous:
Besides, the stereotype says that women just cause accidents and leave wrecked cars in their wake as men crash into each other trying to avoid the bad woman driver.
In a way, it’s a shame to spoil the asininity by commenting on it, but I have to say it is a great way of updating the Titanic whine for the twenty-first century. I can’t tell if Tom’s endorsing this idea or just reporting it– either way, thank you for the laugh!
And does anyone have a good snappy comeback for the “just joking” defense, as exemplified by Dana in this thread? Best I can ever manage is “Yes, I can tell it was trying to be funny,” and a duh! eyeroll. It does amaze me that Dana has completely failed to spot that Amanda’s fisking is much funnier, in a mordant sort of way, than the idiotic article could ever hope to be. I’m gathering that humour is a blunt instrument, if you’re a wingnut.
didn’t get the sense that she was really an anti-stereotype, since the changes she wanted were cosmetic and things that women stereotypically focus on over more dudely pursuits like knocking down walls and pouring concrete and so forth.
Something in the ad gave me the impression that she was doing the work as well as buying the stuff.
Maybe I was just looking at it from behind my sport-addled (yet laundry folding) husband through plaster fogged safety glasses while taking a break from ripping out walls.
Yes! Breakfast and a blowjob is way up there on the pampering scale. Awesome! Mine doesn’t seem to want oral in the morning, just the dick. And leans more to waffles than pancakes (it’s why I love her). But, the concept is sound.Also,
Amanda Marcotte
“Feelings are woman crap.”
Rvman, my husband is FAR more sensitive and emotionally connected to people than me. He is able to work in a caretaking profession that would cause me to strangle people. He is also a driving control freak. And you know what I say? Sucka - now I can drink! HEE HEE.
He is also a driving control freak. And you know what I say? Sucka - now I can drink! HEE HEE.
Damn you, BMC90! I still live and hang out with my ex, and every time we go out it’s, ‘you’re driving,’ ‘no, you’re driving!’ He actually is a better driver than me (he was a pizza delivery guy for like six years, so lot’s of experience) but I’m not so bad that he feels he should burden himself with all of the designated driving responsibilities.
Now, explain how items 1-11 explain, for us obtuse female types, the recent spate of ads and op-eds where men who wouldn’t be caught dead asking directions or admit it when they are lost to their female companions fall utterly and totally in love with female-voiced GPS units?
That fits what a Mountie with years of highway enforcement experience told me. He said that the big difference between overly aggressive drivers and overly cautious drivers is that the former are involved in the accidents that they cause and that the latter cause accidents to happen around them. It was his opinion that “Jim and Edna, out for the Sunday drive” caused as many accidents as the frothers, but usually had spotless driving records.Cute, Petey, but you misspelled some words. It should be “Feelingz r woman crap.”
Now, explain how items 1-11 explain, for us obtuse female types, the recent spate of ads and op-eds where men who wouldn’t be caught dead asking directions or admit it when they are lost to their female companions fall utterly and totally in love with female-voiced GPS units?
It’s a soothing female voice that takes care of their needs (Secret #6: We like it when you mother us, but we’re terrified that you’ll become your mother) while still letting them drive the car (Secret #9: We are terrified when you drive) encased in an expensive (Secret #4: Earning money makes us feel important), nifty gadget that makes the mundane seem spiffy (related to Secret #5: Though we often protest, we actually enjoy fixing things around the house) and that they can turn off whenever they want (Secret #8: We don’t really understand what you’re talking about). Did I miss anything? I’ve never used these GPS things–is the voice at all sensual? Because then you get to mix Secret #6 in with Secret #1: Yes, we fall in lust 10 times a day — but it doesn’t mean we want to leave you.
Oh, David Brooks. Your columns reveal so many more things about you than I want to know.
This post was AMAZING! You trully need to do this more often! It’s awesome to see “date” myths debunked like this.
CONGRATULATIONS!!!
Hear hear, Mary Tracy9. Blows me away. I’m trying to work and keep clicking back.
“He is able to work in a caretaking profession that would cause me to strangle people. ”
Ha! I was thinking the same thing. Mr. Boondoggle is a RN - in a nursing home.
I’m an ex-cop.
I’m fairly sure we’re an MRA’s nightmare couple.
My mother was a great driver but after years of hearing my father complain about her driving, she has “decided” to let him drive almost all the time. He drives like an ass by the way - has been in (and caused) more accidents. Some of the older women driver stuff may be reduced confidence from being bullied in the car. He would literally yell at her if she made a wrong move (in his opinion). Such treatment makes for an unconfident, shaky driver. I’ve heard my spouse’s father make similar comments to my mother-in-law when she drives. Of course, he always asks my spouse if he “let’s me drive.” Subtle eh?
Now, explain how items 1-11 explain, for us obtuse female types, the recent spate of ads and op-eds where men who wouldn’t be caught dead asking directions or admit it when they are lost to their female companions fall utterly and totally in love with female-voiced GPS units?
The GPS never says “I told you so”.
I guarantee that whoever wrote that list has done open-mic standup about having to buy his girlfriend tampons. And thinks it’s brilliant.
that lolcat just caused me to have an embarrassing outburst of the giggles in my school library. thanks a lot wheatstraw!
You know, folks, just because Dr. T thinks he’s proven something by mentioning accident rates as definitive proof that men are better drivers doesn’t mean that accidents are the whole story — even though you guys are doing a bang-up job (NPI) of fisking his assertion that the total number of accidents one person or another is “involved in” means what he thinks it means.
One thing nobody has mentioned yet — moving violations. Those’ll put points on your license and drive up your insurance rates even if you don’t get into an accident. So blowing through stop signs? Goes on your license, goes on your insurance? Speeding? Ditto (and robot cameras can’t be swayed by appeals). DUIs? Yep.
My brother always used to tell me what a great driver he was and what a shitty driver I was. Yet he was the one who drove drunk, lost his license as a result, racked up speeding tickets, and drove Mom’s car into a ravine. I didn’t have a single moving violation in all the time I was driving (I haven’t owned a car since 1993), and the only accident I was ever involved in while driving was not my fault, since I got rear-ended.
So don’t get too bogged down trying to disprove Dr. T’s old non-facts.
“It took at least a year before I really started to appreciate my wife for something other than just great sex; and I didn’t discover her mind fully until the third year we were married,” says Newton. “But the older and wiser I get, the more I love my wife.”
I’m kind of hoping that this guy was actually chiding himself for for his younger attitudes: the “wiser I get” line could imply he’s fully aware what an idiot he was in his younger days.
(A girl can dream, can’t she?)
Lurker here…
I didn’t see Dr T post the cite for the driving study, but I found it, so here goes
Are Female Drivers Safer? An Application of the Decomposition Method
Guohua Li; Susan P. Baker; Jean A. Langlois; Gabor D. Kelen
Epidemiology, Vol. 9, No. 4. (Jul., 1998), pp. 379-384.
I only read the abstract, but other commenters have offered numerous explanations for the results, especially since the data they used was from 1990!
ive always loathed tim allen & that fucking stupid show.
I’d just like to point out that some time ago I posted here from time to time as “Dr. T.” I am not the doofus looking for proof women can’t drive. Carry on.
This kind of drivel totally amuses me.
My s.o. pointed out to me the other day when I was bitching about women’s magazines how men’s magazines are just as insidious because while women’s magazines dictate to women what they should look like, men’s magazines dictate to men what they should think like and act like. Oh and also, who they should attracted to.
So my s.o.’s like, “I talk about my feelings, am not attracted to emaciated, falsely boobified women, hate golf and team sports, personally prefer when you drive and want you to have at least as much earning power as me so we can compile it to buy something awesome. According to this guy, I’m probably a woman. Or gay. Or I don’t even exist.”
I never really thought about it that way, but he has a point. Rigid gender stereotyping definitely cuts both ways and this is a case in point.
This kind of drivel totally amuses me.
My s.o. pointed out to me the other day when I was bitching about women’s magazines how men’s magazines are just as insidious because while women’s magazines dictate to women what they should look like, men’s magazines dictate to men what they should think like and act like. Oh and also, who they should attracted to.
So my s.o.’s like, “I talk about my feelings, am not attracted to emaciated, falsely boobified women, hate golf and team sports, personally prefer when you drive and want you to have at least as much earning power as me so we can compile it to buy something awesome. According to this guy, I’m probably a woman. Or gay. Or I don’t even exist.”
I never really thought about it that way, but he has a point. Rigid gender stereotyping definitely cuts both ways and this is a case in point.
Wow, I love how he thinks all men are just like him! I hope his wife reads that and divorces him. What a twat.
“It took at least a year before I really started to appreciate my wife for something other than just great sex; and I didn’t discover her mind fully until the third year we were married,”
DOUBLE YOU TEE EFF??!
Uhm…driving? Most collisions do happen close to home, are minor incidents, occur in urban areas, and particularly in crowded parking lots…in start and stop traffic corridors…and so on.
Parsing the data, it is not miles driven that matters, but the circumstances of the driving. I’ve never hit anyone in thirty odd years of driving, but have been hit three times…by men…one running a red light, one in a Meijers parking lot, and one rearending me in stop and start traffic.
The drunk who swerved on a viaduct and frontended my nother, nearly killing, was a man.
Go figger.
Pygmy, if you scroll up, I found the internet source of Dr T’s quote, and clipped a bit from the rest of the article where they age stratify and find that it is only the older women (and teenage males) who drive poorly.
So now we know that, with 1990 data, women born before 1954 had shitty skills and crashed alot. Sounds like the wages of sexism to me. Women born between 1955 and 1970 drove comparably to men. Teen females born in 1971 or later were far less likely to crunch up their cars.
In other words, the older women pulled the average up, even though the age patterns are stark. Reeks of intentional discouragement from building skills and experience to me!
To go back to the insurance rates, insurance companies don’t really care about anything except how likely you are to have an accident that costs them money. If the average woman had 25 accidents a year but each caused $200 worth of damage, the cost to the insurance company would be nothing since $200 is probably less than the deductible. So insurance companies would prefer to insure that woman over the man who had one $10,000 accident every 10 years.
In any case, the real difference is with teenage drivers. Teenage boys are immature idiots and they drive that way. That is why they pay high rates. My guess is that after age 25 or so the difference between male and female drives is insignificant.
This quote amazes me. I can’t believe that this guy would want to share with anyone what a stupid a-hole he is.
Kali, I guess it’s an attempt at combining malicious compliance with gendered stereotypes and dark or gallows humor. At any rate, the feminists I read don’t advocate utilizing gendered stereotypes as a subversive tactic to harm others and engage in passive conflict.
Basically, I was bored and wanted to play with these little stereotypes and put them in scenarios where they utilize the stereotypes to their advantage. It’s farcical in its absurdity, as opposed to the kind of aggressive bitter humor that is used as a cover to jab at people’s sore spots.
I did continue the story of my stereotypes offline. Poor George, but he had it coming. Other than this quirk, I’m mostly sane. Hope that explains it.
I’m going to echo all the other posters who say that if women are more accident-prone, it’s older (by now elderly or getting there) women - I’d put the cutoff at the baby boom era. These were women who often relied on their husbands to ferry them everywhere. Then when widowed, they were stuck and if they tried to learn to drive in their 60s really couldn’t master it. Or they *could* drive but didn’t.
Although - my mom, now 75, taught both my city-boy dad and I how to drive. She’s one of the best drivers I’ve ever seen. My grandma, too. Though mom is a card-carrying feminist and so was grandma. (My dad’s mom OTOH was one of those stereotypical older women who didn’t drive, though in all fairness to her, she lived in Chicago all her life; many city folk don’t drive because they don’t need a car where they live.)
Another thing is - I see small, hunched old women who can barely peer over the dashboard and that has to impair one’s driving. I’m 5′2″, drive a compact car and I sit on a cushion - it really helps me see things.
Atrobean, it was beautiful. I loved it and but then I wondered if I should have. So that’s why asked.
For all those angry about Henry Hyde, here you go.
It’s the way his obit should read.
For all those angry about Henry Hyde, here’s how his obit SHOULD read.
I know I’m very late to the party (work filters, sigh), but I wanted to say: Excellent fisking, Amanda. This kind of post is what drew me to Pandagon in the first place. Thanks.
Hey lisasmall
Thanks for the “obit”. Even the Sun-Times, the supposedly *progressive* Chicagoland newspaper was calling Hyde a statesman and a gentleman today.
Fuck. Just like when Nixon and Reagan died. Some fear of “speaking ill of the dead” goes into overdrive and reality is thrown out the window.
Hyde was a worthless piece of shit who should have had his affair investigated as thoroughly as he went after Clinton’s.
“Protector of women and children”* my ass. Didn’t care for his own children or those of his mistress so much.
I hope, in the future, people will understand that ANYONE that W gave a Presidential Medal of Freedom to was a traitor to true American values of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.
*Fucking read that quote in the Sun-Times. If I wanted to see that shit, I’d read the damn Tribune.
Back to your regularly scheduled fisking…
I think Pygmy Loris may have actually posted this already, but this is the link to the study on JSTOR:
http://www.jstor.org/view/10443983/ap060040/06a00070/0
It is far too statistic-y for me to comprehend on a Friday afternoon, but everyone else should feel free.
About #5: I do think that the work that is (stereotypically) ‘men’s work’ IS more fun than (sterotypical) ‘women’s work’. It’s not because men are more suited to it, as the author seems to feel, but rather that men take all the good jobs. I’m not sure whether you were also saying this; if so, I don’t think it came across clearly.
As far as driving goes, in family the sterotype is just the opposite: whenever my mom sees someone driving poorly, she assumes it’s a guy (I’ve never seen my dad even take notice of a poor driver). Which is somewhat more accurate than the reverse, but still kind of unfair. Oh well.
After reading the comments (so forgive the double-post, please), I don’t think it’s conclusive that the worse statistics are the result of sexism. It’s one plausible theory but it also could just be that seniors drive worse, and women outlive men, so women make a higher fraction of senior-accidents than youngadult-accidents or middleaged-accidents. From reading this thread, I don’t think there’s enough data to conclude one way or the other - both seem plausible (and it might be a ‘both/and’ situation rather than an ‘either/or’).
If post-second-wave women who live to be seniors drive better than the pre-2nd-wavers did at the same age, then we can probably conclude that that sexism was/is a primary cause. If they do worse or about the same, then not. It’s too early to tell, I think.
There might also be further complications - certain safety standards in the making of automobiles, or something in the design of streets might change affect the accident rates. So those will have to be controlled for.
That article cracked me up. Totally does not describe the relationship I have with my husband (though, sadly, it does describe the relationship my mother has with my father). I’m always the one who notices the woman who isn’t wearing a bra (he always looks confused when I bring up the nippleage). Neither one of us seems inclined to disappear on private vacations. And, while I’m sure he has no clue what I’m talking about from time to time, I have the same reaction when he discusses dynasty baseball leagues. Hell, if he always knew what I was talking about (and vice versa), the relationship would get very old quickly. Oh, and neither of us golf. What is with the guy golfing stereotype anyways?
Good breakdown on the article. The “11 secrets” article is just another “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus” piece of crap that assumes women are the civilizing force on Neanderthal men and men should put up with womanly vapors because we’re so much more needy.
Above some one started from my comment and got to:
“Is this because men drive more often, and therefore end up in more accidents just because of more time on the road? Is it because men are just plain worse drivers? Is it because men’s aggressive driving style produces worse outcomes financially when there *is* an accident, whereas women’s more timid driving style may produce more minor accidents that cost much less? We don’t know. We do know, however, that overall, men cost insurance companies much more money than women. So arguing that women are worse drivers is *empirically* nonsensical.”
I said it badly, but this was my point. The stats don’t tell you the why the rates are higher/lower and also are not a good way to claim a specific gender (per Dr. T, women) are worse drivers. Even if it did, it would not give any indication of why.
From a NOW Actions alert today:
“In each age group, men average more miles and proportionately more accidents than women. Insurers charge youth rates by sex as an estimate of the difference, but adult women charged the same as men are actually paying more per mile. This discrimination–and using driver sex–is ended by using each car’s odometer to pay by the mile.[1]”
Source: 1. Patrick Butler, NOW Foundation Insurance Project Director. “Automobile Insurance Pricing: Operating Cost versus Ownership Cost: The Implications for Women,” Proceedings, Women’s Travel Issues Second National Conference, Federal Highway Administration 1996.
NOW wants people to vote for MileMeter car insurance at some Amazon Web Services Developer competition. MileMeter’s point is to save consumers money by selling them car insurance based on mileage–so if you walk to work or take the train, you pay less for insurance than someone who’s driving more.
Regardless of the men-vs.-women accidents-per-mile-driven differential, men driving more miles on average and thus having more accidents is unfair from an insurance standpoint if adult women and men pay the same rate.
Allow me to explain the insurance issue a little bit, if I may.
In regards to insurance, when all other factors are held equal (age, gender, location, vehicle, etc) then vehicle miles traveled (VMT) is the best predictor of claims/accidents. For every mile you drive you are at risk of having an accident. Even if you’re a “good” driver, every time you drive you are exposed to hazardous road conditions and “bad” drivers.
NOW has supported cents-per-mile insurance (see the CentsPerMileNow Project) because women, on average, drive less than men. Women are therefore overpaying for car insurance. When you realize that car insurance is a $165 billion market, and that 2% of household income is spent on car insurance, that adds up quickly. Many women are high-mileage drivers, but as a national group women drive less than men.
This is why NOW has issued an action alert encouraging a vote for MileMeter at the Amazon Web Services Developer competition. Customers will buy miles of insurance coverage in advance and renew as needed — without tracking devices.
I hope you like the idea and vote for it! Especially since I’ve worked so hard to make it happen. At the very least, you might find the video informative, and some of the other companies listed in the competition are intriguing and inventive.
-Chris (of MileMeter)
As to Secret #1, I don’t agree that it’s a gateway to cheating. I think women fear that when their husbands check other women out, the husbands are not so subtly informing their wives that they don’t measure up. As far as I’m concerned, that fear is completely valid. A decent guy who cares about his wife or girlfriend doesn’t check out other women when in her presence.
I also object to the idea that it’s a victimless crime. There is a victim: the woman, that the man allegedly cares about, who is made to feel undesirable.