Letters to the Editor
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Maybe the reason nobody worried who boys were going to marry then
was because girls require of boys, and boys do not require of girls, an education and social/financial accomplishment if they are going to marry them. It MAY be possible that women in the future will decide to marry a poorer/less educated men if he agrees to total slavery and the absence of any dissenting opinion ever. Well, according to the feminist story that would be fair because that's what women have always had to deal with anyway. Since presumably people will continue to reproduce, (although based on what is happening in Japan and especially Italy this may not be as certain as many presume) and since men, unlike women, will make whatever compromise is necessary to get laid we will soon, if present educational trends continue, find out if this mainifestation of cosmic justice will in fact play out.
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Much ado about nothing
There isn't a war on boys. This is a phase society is going through right now and it probably won't last long. Boys will adjust and schools/curricula will adjust and things will even out. That's how it works. In the meantime, it provides a few people with a cottage industry for books and papers and articles and it gives boy-haters like Ms Pollitt and Ms Traister another excuse to get themselves worked up into a rage. That's the good news.
The fairly obvious delight people like Ms. Traister [though I don't intend to make it about her because she is certainly not alone] take in the prospect of boys failing academically en masse is likely to be short-lived. That's the bad news. Sorry.
There isn't a war on boys, though I think it's pretty clear a few people think there should be.
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Apparently in cuba all the educated people, well doctors anyway
and the majority of other professionals, are women and it has had some interesting effects.
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Anonymous, you're out of line.
To say that Traister & Pollitt are boy haters & to denigrate feminists as wanting the men they marry to be mute serfs is incredibly condescending & patently untrue. It is also untrue that intelligent women end up alone. If you will forgive a quick digression, I must point out that my mother holds a Ph.D from a top tier University, my father is a Lawyer, & they have been happily married for 30 years as well as producing two daughters who have both attended top tier schools. There is more than one way to have a healthy relationship, despite the fact that Tierney, Schafly, et al would be loathe to admit it. & if it is true, as you say, that women always "require" a husband who is educated & intelligent while men do not want a wife who possesses the same qualities, then wouldn't you have to give the upper hand to the women who know their own worth & will not settle for less? Why is it so acceptable for an intelligent man to marry a trophy wife who can barely spell her own name, while intelligent women are left to mop up their tears with their degrees - if that is even the real scenario, which I doubt. There is no "war on boys". Perhaps the men & women perpetuating this myth are unhappy that the alternate discourse provided by feminism veers away from their own Rockwellian vision of health & happiness, which, similar to this false war, is a myth. What is the ultimate goal of such thinking? That less women enroll is college to pursue degrees & credentials that were not available to them 50 years prior? That is bald faced discrimination, misogyny, & bigotry. Pollitt speaks the truth when she says that when the scales were tipped the other direction nobody cared about college educated men finding women to marry. I think the real question is this: Hey Ladies, can you smell their fear?
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There is a war for women to get everything their way
obviously whether that is a war on boys or a war to establish what is really best for everyone is a matter of opinion. Nobody says rich successfull women can't get men, the question is whether they want the men that they can get and MY question is whether they will have any need reason to compromise with the men they end up with. I doubt it since men need to prove themselves to women and not the other way around.
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This should be good news.
I don't believe that men want stupid women. The popularity of ass-kicking super smart women action heroes such as Alias' Sydney Bristow, Lara Craft, etc, belies that assumption. I do think that they want to be higher earning than their women, though. That way when it comes to deciding who stays home with the kids, they can take the work path based on hard empirical fact that they earn more, rather than the apparently sexist reason that they are "men." So the increased prevalence of more educated women SHOULD eventually result in more educated men.
I can't believe that no one is mentioning the fact that having a better educated workforce (male or female) is proven empirically to result in a better economy. Can't we all agree that more money is better?
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Books by women
I read Katha Pollitt's column today; it was excellent. Apropos of that, I'd like to ask the men reading this: why the horror of reading books by or about women? How are males harmed by knowing how females perceive the world?
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College, marriage and skilled trades
Contrary to popular belief, college-educated women are MORE - not less - likely to marry. They tend to marry at later ages than lesser-educated women who marry, but marry they do - in droves. And many marry men with less education, and/or younger men - because their economic clout gives them the freedom to marry for love instead of security.
Meanwhile, I think Ms. Pollitt is right and that many young men are opting out of college and into other career paths. And skilled trades - plumber, electrician - pay well and will never be outsourced.
And if boys are falling behind as Gurian, Sommers et al maintain, is it the fault of those damn feminists or our crappy public school system?
I'm glad to hear Pollitt's voice as a sensible breath of fresh air in these trumped-up "gender wars."
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I don't know that men don't read women
From what I've seen it's women who don't want men to know how women perceive the world. Which is not the same thing as wanting men to know what you think they ought to know