Daily Mail.co.uk talks about women's rise in society and makes sure we all know what the word "purse-whipped" means. In case, you know, that other pu***-whipped insult wasn't bad enough...
"Women with money can go where they like and do what they please (economists call it the ‘independence effect’).">Translation: OMG, is there anything scarier than a woman DOING WHAT SHE LIKES and GOING WHERE SHE PLEASES??! If that's not what they mean, then why do we even need to mention this "independence effect" like it's a thing to note?
"By the time these graduates reached the peak of their careers, ‘the entire management structure of Britain will have been transformed and feminised ...This thing is huge, and it is happening at every level, and no one seems to be thinking about the consequences’.">Oh no...how terrible that women will be able to influence their workplaces in a way that is beneficial to themselves! What the heck would a "feminized" work structure look like, anyway?...
>Daily Mail also warns us that in this new nightmare world of the future, women will not need men and so will never settle down:
>Yep. Thanks for that handy bullet point, Daily Mail! Women who have good jobs don't need or want husbands, in fact career women are 80% more likely to become lesbians, right? And not the fun kind like Katy Perry, either!"Social life: With more women being self-sufficient, increased numbers will choose to remain single"
"Men may find they need marriage more than women, and start to panic if they haven’t found a partner by a certain age.">I don't think so, especially since men still earn more $ then women on average, and women overwhelmingly outnumber men as single parents. Still, the image of a man panicking if he's still single before he becomes an "old maid" is kind of cute. Cause we all know that's what women do nowadays, right?
"Man caves will become a thing of the past because the whole house will become a man cave, with men dominating kitchens: furnishing them, equipping them with blow torches and Japanese sushi knives in the effort to find something new to bring to the table.">Ah, men must have blowtorches and sushi knives to cook dinner, I see.
"For the under-30s, there is nothing futuristic about this: the fairer sex is becoming the richer sex. More than ever, this is becoming a woman’s world.">Hmm, I guess I didn't get my "woman's world" raise yet. And it would be nice if we could also end violence against women and stuff, but as long as the Daily Mail says it's a woman's world...guess we're all right!
So seriously, there are some HUGE PROBLEMS with the way this article is framed:
1. 46-58% women in the workforce is not "A woman's world." Statistically significantly that's just about as equal as numbers get.
2. More than a bit alarmist: "All this is especially alarming to men when you think how things were just a few generations ago." Why should it be alarming at all? If this really was as huge a social change as the article says, then men should be celebrating that the women in their lives now have new ways to be successful & fair chances at achieving their dreams, and men have more freedom to take roles in family life & less pressure to always be the family breadwinner. It's only alarming to men if they can't compete in a world where women have a fair chance, and that's NOT how all men are. Men can be happy for women's success too, rather than worried and full of erectile dysfunction, which is how this article makes it sound.
3. On the erectile dysfunction note, this article subtly BLAMES WOMEN for marital problems arising from their own success: "the world is changing, but attitudes need to change with it. And the problem may well not be with old-fashioned male chauvinism. but with female atavism." This is even after they talk about the term "purse-whipped," women having to lie about their success to get dates, and men who have ED because their spouses earn more then them. None of these problems are women's fault. And what popular journalist uses the term "atavism," really? It doesn't even make sense here as a thing to blame.
4. It's hard to keep funding affirmative action for women when you read things like "‘College is built for the female brain,’ she says. ‘What do you do in college? You sit. You read. You write and you talk.’"
Yep, clearly women are DOMINATING college with 58% attendance rates, and this has nothing to do with the huge social pushes to support women's advancement, nope it's only because college is FEMINIZED because apparently we don't spend enough time shooting lasers and hitting things with sticks.
Sigh...I'm happy that women are getting more freedom and are no longer outnumbered by men in the workforce, but we should celebrate that responsibly and in a positive way, instead of calling red alert and acting like women are all uber-successful dominatrixes.
Similar to the "affluent gay guy" stereotype, This kind of propaganda does the same harm. People don't try as hard to look out for oppressed groups when you make people think they are rich and successful.
