Comments on: Times Reveals: Men Stupid, Women Good

By: Nick Harkaway

Nick Harkaway — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 09:34:45 +0000

hn – don’t get your point, mate.

Colin – I ain’t sayin’ men don’t do stupid things. Just that the ‘men dumb, caveman natural, women shiny & clean & can relate socially’ trope is harmful tosh.

By: Colin

Colin — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 09:31:30 +0000

On the other hand, it’s not often we see women on YouTube or FailBlog, doing something dangerously insane simply for amusement.

By: hn

hn — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 03:43:40 +0000

I guess the text is about football, barbecuing or running around shirtless — so could you please get a woman to rewrite it? (repost as female-named alter ego suffices)

By: grant

grant — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:54:40 +0000

The Times has fallen into a common trap of rewriting the science for the sake of a snappy headline, I thinks.

The Swedish study, as the article carefully puts it, isn’t really about *clever* women, it’s about women who are *educated*.

I’d be nearly certain that women who marry better-educated men also live longer than those who don’t – because of the same factors the writer goes on about: more knowledge of diet and health. The only real difference might be who’s statistically more likely to be preparing meals….

Ah, and Google turns up this BBC item on the same study, which quotes the researchers:

Dr Robert Erikson, who led the research, said: “Women traditionally take more responsibility for the home than men do and, as a consequence, women’s education might be more important for the family lifestyle – for example, in terms of food habits – than men’ s education.

“It’s still the case that women tend to put the food on the table and in that way have a very direct influence.

“Women with higher education may also receive better medical treatment and their partners may benefit too.”

So it’s a study that reflects on a sexist society, but not in the way the columnist might like it to.

By: Helen Callaghan

Helen Callaghan — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 11:47:39 +0000

It’s a fascinating stereotype in the movies (must recently carried out in classic fashion in pixelbothering blahfest “2012″) that the sundered couple brought together by fate/force of nature/screenwriter’s whimsy have nearly always seperated due to the hero’s inability to function effectively as husband or father while he pursues his “dream”. Wifey drops him pre-credits and takes up with dull, jocky secondary character for love interest number two, who earns a good living, cares for her children, and whom the audience is encouraged to despise. Resolution is achieved when Wifey learns to look past years of neglect and see the True Love burning within her original flame.

But I always think that the hero presumably had had chances before that to pull his socks up to save his marriage and had failed to take them – it simply wasn’t worth it to him. His family wasn’t worth it. So how is this a happy ending?

By: Natty

Natty — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 11:44:44 +0000

Funnily enough, my bloke taught me to cook, and I do the DIY (he can put a computer together from scratch, but has trouble with shelves). And he would never put bleach near a carpet!

We’re definitely not the ’standard’ when it comes to families, I’m the breadwinner, he’s the homemaker. I’m the hardarse with the kids, he’s the soft touch, I could go on. We love our antistereotype life, not because it is antistereotype, but because it makes us happy.

He is a bit of a man-boy, but I’m quite immature myself. We love it. I think as long as you find someone whose intelligence and maturity roughly match your own you’ll be laughing.

By: uberVU - social comments

uberVU - social comments — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 11:36:21 +0000

Social comments and analytics for this post…

This post was mentioned on Twitter by Harkaway: Gender Wars, Harkaway style: an argument I really did not expect to get into today: http://bit.ly/3awvvV...

By: New Gadgets | Times Reveals: Men Stupid, Women Good

New Gadgets | Times Reveals: Men Stupid, Women Good — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 11:32:48 +0000

[...] Original post by Nick Harkaway [...]

By: Bonnie

Bonnie — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 11:24:33 +0000

I couldn’t agree with this more.
Yesterday my friend told me that her partner- a PhD student, so hardly thick- tried to clean their bedroom carpet with Bleach. He just assumed if it cleaned sinks, it would clean carpets.
Perhaps certain sterotypes of men being worse in domestic situations are a result of a lot never having to do anything in that are. My boyfriend couldn’t cook when we met but he’s brilliant at it now. I was never taught any kind of practical house maintenance stuff but I’m quite handy with the DIY now that I have my own home. Hopefully these kinds of stereotypes will die out over time.

By: Kim Andrews

Kim Andrews — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 11:22:15 +0000

Hurrah, hurrooh! Gender stereo-typing is offensive whichever sex does it, and it’s particularly insulting when it’s pretends to be amusing – I’m brighter than that, you’re brighter than that, please don’t try to tell us this is funny, we know its not.

So why do so many find it funny? I don’t get it. For me it’s in line with all that nonsense about not wanting to grow-up. You know, all the larky comments about “Hey, who wants to be a grown-up? Where’s the fun in that?”

Well, me for a start. And every child I ever met. I like being a grown-up, and I have lots of fun. In fact I have fun kids dream of, because I can play with my food and not get told off.

It’s all just a substitute for thinking, isn’t it? Or possibly just a simple way of showing you’re part of the tribe? Think like everybody else, laugh at the stupid in-jokes, prove you’re “one of us”. Bah!

Now excuse me, I have some marching out of step to do…