Reader and blogger Treifalicious sends me a link to this PDF file of a 1999 study on college professors and divorce. Published in the journal of Evolution and Human Behavior, it’s melodramatically entitled Teaching may be hazardous to your marriage.
The abstract:
Kenrick et al.’s experiments demonstrate that men who view photographs of physically attractive women or Playboy centerfolds subsequently find their current mates less physically attractive and become less satisfied with their current relationships. What then would be the
cumulative effect of being exposed to young, attractive women on a daily basis? Would there be any real consequences to the men’s dissatisfaction with their relationships? Secondary school teachers and college professors come in contact with more young women at the peak of their reproductive value than others do. The analysis of a large, representative data set from the United States indicates that, while men in general are less likely to be divorced than women, and secondary school teachers and college professors in general are less likely to be divorced than others, simultaneously being male and being a secondary school teacher or college professor statistically increases the likelihood of being divorced We contend that the contrast effect that Kenrick et al. find in their experiments is cumulative and has real
consequences.
It’s an almost laughable study, save for the fact that it’s, well, so bloody infuriating. Here’s the initial premise:
Few occupations and professions afford greater opportunities to come in contact with
women in their teenage years than teachers in secondary and postsecondary schools. These
teachers experience the cumulative effect of exposure to young, attractive women who are at
their peak reproductive value more acutely than people in most other occupations.
I suppose that’s true enough, though I can’t say I think much of the term “peak reproductive value.” No offense intended to teenage moms out there, but in my experience, those who choose to make babies in their thirties often (not always) have more “valuable” resources (time, patience, finances) than those in their “peak” reproductive years.
But then the study’s authors lose me completely. They note that those who teach are slightly more likely to stay unmarried after they divorce, though the difference with the general population is barely significant. But then this whopper:
We believe that there are two possible interpretations for this finding. First,
subsequent to divorce, male teachers and professors may remain unmarried because they prefer
to pursue a series of affairs with female students without marrying them. Second, they may remain unmarried because, due to the cumulative contrast effect, any adult woman they might meet and date after their divorce would still pale in comparison to the young attractive women with whom they come in daily contact.
“Pale in comparison”?
I can’t attack the methodology of the study, but I can take issue with the totally unsubstantiated hypotheses that serve as the conclusions for the piece. First off, there are plenty of other reasons why divorced male professors are slightly less likely to remarry than men in other professions. College and university faculty tend, as a rule, to be slightly more liberal politically than the general population (I believe this has been demonstrated using publicly available voter registration cards). Folks in more liberal social circles are perhaps likely to be more critical of marriage as a social institution. And as long as we’re free-associating and speculatin’, I’d venture to say that many men in academia are more comfortable providing for themselves the kind of traditional care performed by wives.
But in the end, we don’t know why college profs remarry less frequently after a dvorce. (I am evidently skewing the statistics all by my lonesome with my four marriages.) But the unsubstantiated suggestion that we aren’t getting married because all of our peers “pale in comparison” to teenagers is absurd and offensive. While not all college-age students are at the same level of maturity, it’s not offensive to say that there are few if any 20 year-olds capable of being the emotional equal of a 40 year-old. Sexual desire is about more than “fresh young skin”, for heaven’s sake — it’s a combination of many factors, not the least of which is the sense of excitement that comes with “playing the game” with an equal who can give as good as she gets.
Look, when I was a young newly hired professor in my twenties, I had a series of affairs with my students. Most of these students were within five to seven years of my own age, and a couple were older than I was. And though my behavior was unethical and irresponsible and indefensible, it wasn’t predicated on a desire for “young hot women.” Frankly, it was more about opportunity than anything else. Dating my students was easy because they were right there. That made me not just an unprofessional jackass, but a lazy one to boot! I could also trade easily on the “professorial mystique”, which boosted my sadly fragile ego. Bottom line: my reprehensible affairs with students were much more about easy availability and the “teacher’s cachet” than they were about the special desirability of those under the age of 22.
I still think that one of the hallmarks of adulthood is a maturing libido, of the sort that drives primary attraction towards one’s approximate chronological peers. To be fair, this is based as much on my own experience as on anything else. As I said in ‘06:
…since I hit puberty, I have never experienced sexual attraction to someone old enough to be my mother or young enough to be my daughter. And I acknowledge that one reason why I am often so hard on men who do experience that attraction to much younger women is because I can’t empathize with it, not even for a moment. I try and “get it”, and I just can’t. It makes me instinctively angry, both on behalf of the girls who are all too often horrified by inappropriate sexual attention and on behalf of those “older” women who are forced to worry obsessively about losing their sex appeal as a consequence.
But I don’t think, in the end, I’m a particularly odd duck. My wife is old enough to remember disco, thanks — and it’s not as if I ever come home from work, stare at her body and compare her to some youngster born after the fall of the Berlin Wall! That some men may do this is possible, I concede — but that is an unfortunate habit that they have developed in response to the cultural fetishizing of the young. Even if there is some biological imperative that suggests to some men (certainly not to all) that women in their teens and early twenties are at the height of desirability, it is an imperative that can successfully be resisted. Indeed, for the sake of all the stakeholders (students and spouses in particular) it must be resisted.
The study’s authors admit that there is no evidence that professors divorce more frequently than non-academics. On the thin reed that suggests that male academics remarry after a divorce slightly less often than do their male counterparts in other professions, the authors come up with the absurd conclusion that “teaching may be hazardous to your marriage.” This is social science at its repellant worst, perpetuating the myth of male weakness without a shred of actual evidence.
Auden’s advice is one of I’ve always generally followed:
Thou shalt not sit with statisticians nor commit a social science. This particular study is evidence of the importance of the poet’s warning.
Quibble.
Reproductive value does not refer to the totality of desireability, including emotional maturity.
Instead, the reference is to the young, fertile, healthy female. It’s a result, so the theory is, of a million years of evolution.
For the Paleolithic period, awaiting emotional maturity meant finding someone who had been dead for several years, or had lived such a hard life that successful pregnancy was doubtful and/or living long enough to get the kid into the adult game–say thirteen years–was almost an impossibility.
On the other hand, hard living is supposed to delay the onset of menses, so fertility was probably a year or two later than today, meaning mid to late teens.
There was a neolithic society on Skara Brae whose massive tombs contain huge numbers of skeletons. They indicate that most of the society’s work was done by teenagers, those older being already dead or crippled.
The study is talking about back-of-the-brain, below-the-belt attraction in the service of spreading seed. Nothing else.
The question is whether this has any effect on male teachers.
My wife is a teacher at a middle class high school. They are constantly fighting the battle of the dress codes. “It’s not fair to the men teachers,” she has said on more than one occasion, there being so few places they can look. Due to an effort to conserve energy ($), the schools were kept at a lower temperature this winter than in other winters. The girls did not change their envelope-pushing ways of dressing to avoid hypothermia.
Anyway, this study was not talking about the attraction between mature adults.
My wife is a teacher at a middle class high school. They are constantly fighting the battle of the dress codes. “It’s not fair to the men teachers,” she has said on more than one occasion, there being so few places they can look.
Richard, I’ve taught legions of be-mini-skirted and tube-topped young women for lo these many years. And I’ve always found that one excellent place to look at is the eyes. I have these marvelous muscles that control my gaze and direct it towards the faces rather than the bodies of my students. How regrettable that your wife’s colleagues have deluded themselves into believing that a flash of thigh or breast is sufficient to render those muscles powerless.
Hugo.
How nice it must be to be so incredibly wonderful.
In fact, you’re so wonderful you have a blog so others can learn how wonderful you are.
How fortunate are those who read your blog.
The point is, Hugo, that the temptation exists, that people are all over the place, that they move, that books and doors and shoulders and the kid in the back of the room, and the light switch are all part of the scenery and one can be accused of looking where one should not look when one has not, in fact,looked there.
Maybe you could clone your eye muscles. Or bottle your wonderfulness.
Ah, but that’s just it. I’m not so wonderful, just a normal average fellow with an average amount of sovereignty over my eyes and actions. If we’re talking ’bout false accusations of impropriety, that’s a different cup of tea and well beyond the scope of this discussion thread. But are adult men tempted to value adult women less because of their exposure to adolescent midriffs or legs or boobs? No, no, no. And if a man believes himself to be so tempted that his own spouse is less precious to him as a consequence, he has some serious work to do. The good news is, any man can do this work — it doesn’t require any special talent. If it did, I couldn’tve done it.
“Peak reproductive value” means the maximum potential completed fertility rate (number of births per woman for women who have completed their child-bearing years) of nubile women. For example, women that start having children at 20 and want to maximize their number of children, might average having eight children. However, women that start having children at 30 and want to maximize their number of children, might average having three children. Therefore, 20 year old women, on average, have a higher reproductive value than 30 year old women.
Both my mother and mother-in-law had four children each. When we married, my wife said that she would like to have four kids and I agreed. She was 19 years old at the time we married. We started trying to have children when she was 25. She was not pregnant after a year of trying, so we went to a fertility doctor. She was shocked to find out how much lower her chances of getting pregnant were at 26 compared to her early 20s. She was on fertility treatments for two years before becoming pregnant with our first child. We waited a year before trying for a second child. We first tried a year without fertility treatments; and when that did not work, it took over a year of fertility treatments for her to become pregnant. Surprisingly, it only took a few months of trying without fertility treatments to become pregnant with our third. We are in our forties now and we were not able to have a fourth child like we wanted.
Fred, as someone who wants to see lower population growth, I think that encouraging women to wait to have children until they are in their thirties is an outstanding way to limit family size for these very reasons. I’m sad for folks who can’t have ONE kid, but less sympathetic to those who want large families (without adopting). We have sustainability issues as a planet, after all.
I agree that women peak in fertility very young. But biology is not destiny, nor should it be. As Amanda Marcotte once pointed out, “the vagina is not a clown car” from which untold hordes can be expected to emerge. I am sorry you and your wife weren’t able to fulfill your dream, but am quite confident your three children are a joy and a blessing to you.
I really can’t fathom this neo-puritanism. Richard’s going on about ‘temptation’ and Hugo’s taking this pseudo-radical view that male ‘weakness’ exists but is a myth since we all have the power to ‘resist’ our baser urges - what is this, the 1800s?
There’s nothing wrong with divorcing your wife because you’ve found a better option, and there’s nothing wrong with wanting to sleep with a 21 year old. If you’re both consenting adults and it makes you happier that you would be otherwise, then what’s wrong? The article doesn’t perpetuate any ‘myth of male weakness’ because it’s not backward enough to accept such outdated moral norms.
james. I’m hardly “going on” about temptation. It exists.
BTW, who are you to judge puritanism? What are your qualifications to condemn how other people live?
I don’t even know how to respond to some of the above (although I suggest any new vistor read Hugo’s previous work on the myth of male weakness and older men/younger women relationships), but I do have to ask one thing of the older men who think it’s “okay” to want to sleep with women in their early 20s:
Have you ever asked young women if they’re okay with being leered at? When I was in college, I would have been horrified if I found out that my professor was sitting up there being attracted to my “reproductive value”. And if simply viewing me while teaching class had a negative effect on his relationship with his wife, I would have suggested that he go engage in some serious personal therapy. Sorry, but I am not here to be used to assauge some grown man’s desire to hang on to youth, or to be a shiny, perky reproductive tool. Again, Hugo’s past articles on all these topics address this 100 times over so I won’t go further.
I’m with you, Hugo, on viewing that study as bunk. As it is, we live in a society where we’re bombarded with images of youth, especially attractive, young women. I don’t imagine that teaching them all day long is going to do much more than living in today’s world already does.
What I think the above commentors are missing is that, in terms of a scientific study, the assumptions the authors make when viewing their data is just a crazy leap in logic. It does not follow that those two options are the only conclusions to draw from the data or that there’s even a causation pattern going on. Maybe there’s some outside factor going on that causes a man to both become a professor and not remarry after divorcing.
Just to add, where I also think I was trying to go with that thought in my 2nd paragraph is that I do think that men are far more interested in a sum total of a woman, rather than just her T&A and assumed* ability to pop out babies. To suggest otherwise continues to equate men with cavemen.
(*assumed, because as I well know, there’s no guarantee that all nubile young women are even fertile)
Hugo,
“it is an imperative that can successfully be resisted.”
Firstly, a logical quibble. How do you resist something that is imperative?
Secondly, the world over, apparently, women in their early twens are most desirable for all men, younger and older. The fact that this -
“Indeed, for the sake of all the stakeholders (students and spouses in particular) it must be resisted.”
happens has probably to do with the fact that humans are not only concerned with passing on their own genes and improving the relative chances for that. Even disregarding cultural explanations (homogamy with respect to age certainly is an important factor) for the moment there’s a trade-off between mating effort and parenting or grandparenting effort. That is, if you’re a father you’re actually reducing the chances of your offspring to mate if you’re still investing in mating yourself. Couple reduced birthrates with psychological incentives (and cultural incentives) for agebased homogamy, and you’ll get a pretty good idea of what’s going on.
Hugo,
“I have these marvelous muscles that control my gaze and direct it towards the faces rather than the bodies of my students. How regrettable that your wife’s colleagues have deluded themselves into believing that a flash of thigh or breast is sufficient to render those muscles powerless.”
Sometimes I really wonder if you actually find the female body sexually attractive. I can control my actions I may even be able to control unwanted erections now that I’m not 18 anymore, but controlling attraction is an entirely different thing. For women, too, btw. Put David Beckam in a tight shirt in front of a female audience and tell them to not look at his butt or sixpack, then control their eye movement and state of arousal. Then write a post explaining why that’s ok for women and not ok for men…
It’s funny how the very men who lament that women aren’t submissive enough are the ones casting around for reasons that they’re “biologically” attracted to younger women. The answer is obvious: The insecurity that causes them to bemoan women’s empowerment causes them to also seek disempowered women to boost their egos. Men who have a decent level of self-confidence don’t need women to be inferior or submissive to feel better about themselves, and seek other qualities in partners.
Sometimes I really wonder if you actually find the female body sexually attractive. Whatcha insinuating, Sam?
An adult David Beckham being ogled by a crowd of women — or an adult Victoria Beckham being ogled by a crowd of men — is worlds away from a student being ogled by a teacher. We’re not talking about sexy celebrities, we’re talking about adolescents who come to learn, and for whom we have a very serious responsibility.
I’m not immune to beauty. But an aesthetic appreciation is one thing, and a sexual response is another. We’re not talking about 18 year-old boys with uncontrollable erections, we’re talking about college professors (and high school teachers) dealing with their teenage students. You’re appling and orange-ing.
And though my behavior was unethical and irresponsible and indefensible, it wasn’t predicated on a desire for “young hot women.” Frankly, it was more about opportunity than anything else. Dating my students was easy because they were right there.
OK. What percentage of the students you dated were hot and young?
Whatever the morality of being attracted to the real version of reproductive value, it exists. That’s why the race exists.
That it sabotages some portions of our society and our relationships is true, but that does not make it…not real.
We all, to make an example (METAPHOR ALERT!!!!!!!)get hungry from time to time. Nothing we can do about it. But we can affect what we do about it, from dietary peculiarities (snails) to table manners to eschewing our companions as the entree. That was a metaphor. Metaphor.
Ditto with the attraction the study discussed. What we do about it is one thing. Insisting that, because it is icky, it must not exist is another.
Whether that is a or the reason for the differential divorce rate is another question.
It’s said that construction workers have more children than do professors. If true, there might be a reason. More Catholics among construction workers? More testosterone?
Differences are worth investigating, sometimes, I suppose. But figuring out causes is a whole ‘nother thing.
Hugo,
“Sometimes I really wonder if you actually find the female body sexually attractive. Whatcha insinuating, Sam?”
Nothing in particular, just that I’m unwilling to accept your belief in “mind over matter” to the extent that you apparently are.
“You’re appling and orange-ing.”
I was, to get the point across.
“I’m not immune to beauty. But an aesthetic appreciation is one thing, and a sexual response is another.”
yes, and yet I believe that that’s a matter of degree. Just two weeks or so ago you gave your ok (if I remember correctly) when one of your previous students (now 22) asked you what you thought about her asking out a professor of hers (30) - I think that was in the context of the erotic possibilities of discussing Shakespeare or so.
The mind is poweful, but so is matter. You may have turned this conflict into a religious (or quasi religious) battle with yourself (or your prior self) but not everyone works that way.
I’m glad you’re not immune to beauty. That said, let me agree with you on this -
“Sexual desire is about more than “fresh young skin”, for heaven’s sake — it’s a combination of many factors, not the least of which is the sense of excitement that comes with “playing the game” with an equal who can give as good as she gets.”
So very true, but strangely, it’s not how most people see it. A former brief girlfriend of mine (the worst logistics imaginable tore us apart) is a little over 30, unhappily single, despite being a most fascinating and truly beautiful woman. She’s constantly worried about her appearance and competition with younger girls, say 22 year olds. I keep telling her that 22year olds really aren’t competition for her, and I mean that. She’s accomplished and interesting, she already can tell all the stories the 22 year olds will have to spend the decade to experience. But when I talked about this to another friend, a 23 year old woman, she completely agreed with my exes analysis: she believed they are competitors, too. So maybe they are. Maybe my/our not believing they are is a rare exception to the rule.
>I can’t attack the methodology of the study
I can.
First they justify their study by citing this Kenrick study where men who views centerfolds were less happy with their female partners than men who viewed abstract art. That’s a lab study, using a different methodology, than theirs (which was basically an analysis of census data) so it’s a real stretch to claim they’ve reproduced their results. How long did Kenrick et al. wait before asking subjects to rate their contentment with their partners? Even IF there’s an effect from looking at hot! barely legal! teenage girls (outside a lab setting, where they are free to destroy the illusion that a photograph provides and are probably sitting next to hot! barely legal! teenage boys), for all we know it wears off in the amount of time it takes to commute back home.
Second, they claim to be proving some point by saying that high school and college teachers are exhibiting behavior different from grade-school teachers. But here’s an alternate hypothesis: being a college professor can be a really high-stress, high-commitment job. I have friends who are doing the tenure track junior faculty thing, and it’s not pretty. And it doesn’t get better once you have tenure. A job like that can strain your relationship quite a lot. Maybe the stressful job effect shows up in men more - maybe these guys are less acculturated than their female colleagues to try to balance home and work lives. Maybe they didn’t initiate their divorces. Maybe those damn female college professors are benefiting from affirmative action. That is speculation for another study.
The alternative hypothesis would hold true of college teachers but not high school teachers, which means that the college teachers would skew the numbers for the whole group. Their study doesn’t disprove it because they don’t separate those two populations and show that there is no statistical difference. And I suspect that if it had strengthened their results to do so, they would have put it in the paper. (Once you’ve got the data prepped it’s not that hard to run some extra statistical tests, and totally worth in on the chance that they will strengthen your results.) They completely fail to rule out other factors.
I can’t believe the reviewers let this slide. It’s really sloppy.
Ok so I have another question that I want to ask that is a little bit off topic for this post, but first I feel that I have to address the issue of objectification because no one else is.
“So very true, but strangely, it’s not how most people see it. A former brief girlfriend of mine (the worst logistics imaginable tore us apart) is a little over 30, unhappily single, despite being a most fascinating and truly beautiful woman. She’s constantly worried about her appearance and competition with younger girls, say 22 year olds. I keep telling her that 22year olds really aren’t competition for her, and I mean that. She’s accomplished and interesting, she already can tell all the stories the 22 year olds will have to spend the decade to experience. But when I talked about this to another friend, a 23 year old woman, she completely agreed with my exes analysis: she believed they are competitors, too. So maybe they are. Maybe my/our not believing they are is a rare exception to the rule.”
Most likely the reason that these women feel this way is becaue we live in a society that allows men to objectify women. Men do this so that they can stay in power. Being with a beautiful women is considred to be a sign of stautus in our society; and because the woment is a status symbol she is treated more like an object than a subject. Also by obejectifying women men don’t have to recognizen them as sujects and take them serioulsly. While it seems like this would be a horrible situation for women and the smart ones would choose not to participate this is not the case; many women feel that by appering beautiful they gain power over men because them man will then want to be in possesion of her. Perhaps teachers who objectify their students are more interested in power than having a relationship with their students. Also I can’t help but notice that many of the comments here are highly hetero-compolsary.
As for my other question I was actully curious about profesors who are in the same department that are married to eachother. In the english department where I go to school it seems like everyone is married to eaachother. Well there are at least four marriges that I’m aware of. What is interesting about these marriges is that the man in each of them has higher tenure track standing than the woman. For example in one such case the woman had been at the university befor her husband published before her husband and was terured before her husband, howere after her husband published his first book he was given the associate chair. I wont describe all the other cases, but all of these people are well versed in femininist theory and all of them are pretty liberal. Do you think such inequity at work could effect these peoples marriges at home?
“Well there are at least four marriages that I’m aware of. What is interesting about these marriages is that the man in each of them has higher tenure track standing than the woman.”
If I was to bet some money on it, I would bet on the following:
At least three of the husbands are older than their wives.
At least three of the husbands are taller than their wives.
Before they married, at least three of the husbands had higher status (from either more prestigious published papers, higher income, higher net worth, or higher tenure ranking) than their wives did at that time.
Most likely the reason that these women feel this way is becaue we live in a society that allows men to objectify women. Men do this so that they can stay in power. Being with a beautiful women is considred to be a sign of stautus in our society; and because the woment is a status symbol she is treated more like an object than a subject. Also by obejectifying women men don’t have to recognizen them as sujects and take them serioulsly. While it seems like this would be a horrible situation for women and the smart ones would choose not to participate this is not the case; many women feel that by appering beautiful they gain power over men because them man will then want to be in possesion of her.
I can’t believe anyone with a brain still subscribes to these preposterous cliches in 2008.
Martin. Yeah. When I was chasing around campus, so to speak, my primary concern was impressing my friends with the girls I could attract.
Not.
Jeez.
Oh look men who fail to understand feminist theory shocking! Perhaps before you truly make up your minds about such things you ought to bother to read up on the subject. Especially because my own explanation was very brief and to really explain the theory correctly I would have to write a great deal more—both something that I don’t have time for and should not have to do. As for the suggestion that what I described is a cliché isn’t completely incorrect. What I described is more like a model—it is not how EVERYONE functions. These are observations about how men and women are taught to function under “ideal” circumstances. Furthermore, what I described is hardly out dated—in fact such theory is widely taught at college camps across the nation and is the basis for a great deal of research out side of Gender Studies.
It’s at this point that I remind commenters in the thread that this is a feminist-friendly blog for feminists and their allies. It’s akin, as my friend Stentor has pointed out, to having a blog focused on solutions to Climate Change. Climate Change deniers are an unwelcome distraction, as are those who are fundamentally suspicious or hostile of feminist principles, both in theory and in practice.
catie,
The problem with “feminist theory” is that theory tends to make peoples’ eyes glaze over. It’s all well for the classroom, but in the real world, people don’t really sit around discussing “theory”. That’s one reason I like Hugo’s blog - it lifts feminism out of the classroom and into actual situations that we can identify with, through things like ancedotes and letters sent into him by readers.
Sure, objectification is at issue, but the non-theory way to explain what SamSeaborne observed? We’re constantly told by the media and Hollywood that young is beautiful. Look at all the early 20-somethings who fill the tabloids, and the way that studio exec people were shocked that the Sex and the City movie - a movie about women in their 40s (40s! They’re like, zombies!) - did well. When women start to age past 30, it’s understandable if they start to feel worried about how they measure up to the 20-somethings.
Richard Aubrey - men certainly do equate dating a beautiful woman with status. Women do it too, when it comes to “hot” boyfriends. I’ve heard plenty of people of both genders say things akin to, “Can you believe how hot he/she is? I never thought I’d be able to get someone who looked like that.” It’s certainly not their primary concern, but there’s this awe-like feeling about getting one of the “hot ones” that lifts people’s self worth.
B-I think that theory is perfectly acceptable for this blog. If you don’t want to think about it then just don’t read my comments. I know that your trying to help and you do have a point, but I also feel that what you are suggesting is a bit like censorship. I don’t think this would be a very interesting blog if there wasn’t a bit of disagreement now and then.
Hugo-I know that this your blog and that you can ask for what ever type of comments you like, but I’m also ok with what Richard, Martin and Fred said (although I wish they all had been more articulate.) What is obvioulsly not acceptable is hate speech; and while some of what was posted was a bit sarcastic and insulting I take none of it personally.
“… but I also feel that what you are suggesting is a bit like censorship.”
Actually it is Hugo who is doing the censoring, which is his perfect right as the blog owner. The principle is that once someone employs “feminist theory” as the the correct and objective view of a matter, any further discussion is limited to those who agree, since feminist theory is not to be questioned here.
catie,
The only censorship going on is Hugo limiting anti-feminist comments, and that’s perfectly fine since a private blog owner has every right to decide what sort of topics are discussed.
I was just suggesting that your approach might not help spread your ideas. The first thing I saw was a lecture-style blame game going on (”Most likely the reason that these women feel this way is becaue we live in a society that allows men to objectify women. Men do this so that they can stay in power.“) Right off the bat you’ve used academic language and charged every single man with a conscious behavior that puts women down. Of course you’re going to get some negative comments from men now - you’re not inviting disagreement but flat out denial. It doesn’t invite anyone to want to discuss this with you.
In your next post, you insult them (”Oh look men who fail to understand feminist theory shocking!“) and then tell them you can’t possibly explan it to them and that you really shouldn’t have to, as if you’re far too good for that (”Especially because my own explanation was very brief and to really explain the theory correctly I would have to write a great deal more—both something that I don’t have time for and should not have to do.“).
You seem like you’re very enthusiastic about feminism, and your tone suggests to me that you’re a new student to the subject and you’ve found something in it that’s really important to you. That’s great, and it’s a message everyone should hear. Lecturing, insulting, and acting like everyone who doesn’t know about these academic theories are just uneducated and not worth your time isn’t the way to do it. People can’t identify with theories, and it should be every feminist’s goal to help men and women personally identify with the cause.
Richard,
“Yeah. When I was chasing around campus, so to speak, my primary concern was impressing my friends with the girls I could attract.
Not.”
This may not have been your experience and you may not have consciously acted this way towards girls with the intent to hurt them. Because you may not have behaved this way doesn’t mean that other men don’t and DO. Why discount someone else’s experience through sarcasm? I agree with B’s observation about people and their sense of self-worth being lifted by association–it’s pretty common knowledge in psychology.
I can. Studies that tend to prove the prejudices of reviewers have little difficulty getting published.
The pseudo-biological arguments are especially laughable when you consider that they, essentially, regard women as brainless things: college students have no preferences, certainly aren’t attracted to hot men they’re own age; they’re merely receptacles for professors on the prowl.
The only censorship going on is Hugo limiting anti-feminist comments, and that’s perfectly fine since a private blog owner has every right to decide what sort of topics are discussed.
Well, I just tried to leave a comment that was not anti-feminist, it merely pointed out my opinion that real feminism has nothing to do with the simplistic, man-bashing stereotypes Catie was promoting. And Hugo censored it. Read into that what you will. Maybe that Hugo gives a big thumbs-up to simplistic man-bashing?
There is a scenario that I am familiar with that I would like to mention for discussion:
A married university professor is suffering from Depression. He takes on a young woman as his graduate research assistant. This young woman has the type of socially engaging personality that helps to alleviate the symptoms of the professor’s Depression via a socially close relationship between the professor and the student. The root causes of the professor’s Depression are not, of course, addressed. The student ultimately finishes up her graduate work and is awarded her Doctorate degree. She moves on to post-Doc work at another University, and another graduate assistant is assigned to work with this Professor. But this new graduate assistant is an older male, and hence cannot “bond” to the professor the way that the young woman could. As a result, symptoms of the professor’s depression return, with significant deleterious consequences to the student’s professional prospects. In fact, the male student is forced to terminate his graduate studies not because of a contentious relationship with this particular professor or with the University, but because of an inability to compensate for this professor’s loss of social companionship (and consequent re-emergence of his epression) due to the departure of the young woman to whom he had grown so attached.
I would urge students considering signing on as graduate research assistants to professors whom they are aware to have developed strong ties to a young woman who will shortly leave (graduate) to perform their own “risk assessment” to determine whether tethering their own career aspirations to such a faculty member is really a wise move to make.
I was on the receiving end of UNWANTED and UNSOLICITED sexual behaviors from male professors. My major was dominated by male professors. Unlike some of my classmates, I was NOT flattered and it was UNAPPRECIATED and I did NOT return their interest. Actually, I felt insulted and demeaned. These aggressive and destructive personalities REFUSED to hear that their behaviors were UNWANTED, UNPROFESSIONAL AND UNAPPRECIATED and that I did NOT feel similar towards them. Actually, their behaviors caused a lot of grief, stress and compromised my education. It angered me then and yet, I felt that I had little recourse. I did in fact try to get help in dealing with their inappropriate sexual conduct. In fact it still infuriates me now just thinking about these men and their negative impact that they had on my life. They had NO RIGHT.
Did they look at how often women academics/teachers re-marry? or marry in the first place? It would have given a bit of balance to the piece. I’m a woman academic and am currently thinking that I get such a buzz from my work and it so time consuming and emotionally demanding that not being in a relationship could be a good option for me. Realistically it could be choice between staying with this line of work or a good marraige and family. If you make the choice to be a well published academic it so often means you dont have the time or energy for a relationship, hence you don’t marry or your marraige fails. I was chatting to a PhD this week about the levels of work expected and she says her first year was incredibly difficult, partly because she was in a relationship. She no longer is.
I’d like to be able to say that I’m shocked such shoddy, seemingly self gratifying research gets funding money, but sadly I’m not.
oh and SamSeaborn: if I were teaching David Beckham I would defo have my professional hat on and learing would not be on the agenda. He would be my student. I have had some very, very attractive young men in my classes, but they are my students and I have far too much on my mind to think about their body parts, their welfare and academic development being paramount. I value my job and my self respect as a professional way too much to let a glimpse of young flesh stand in the way of that.
If I saw Clive Owen or Daniel Craig at a film premiere or such like however…
Martin - drop Hugo an e-mail. It might be the spam filter or something on your end. I had a lot of comments vanish or not get posted as well, and it wasn’t because Hugo was shutting me out.