HTML tags for style... oooh!

"Almost as if your paycheck alone could papercut their balls right off."

Keep in mind, those castrating paychecks work better with more zeros.

Well, I am neither powerful nor career orientated, and the praise of monetarist values only alienates women such as myself from the feminist movement. It strikes me that feminism is largely a movement of priveliged middle class women who much of the time wish to keep it that way - and comment such as the ones above seem to verify this.

I am a socialist and a feminist of sorts who believes that capitalism is a patriarchal system. By encouraging women to be career orientated and get rich you seem to be asking them to appropriate what are, in my view, male values. I am not suggesting that women should stay in the home, but is money really everything? Those who posess capital may posess power, but is it the kind of power we really want?

I think feminism should be part of a wider struggle for social justice - and this will eventually lead to questioning the profit motive itself.

And don't you think those guys may have a grain of truth - namely that men who earn less may feel intimidated by having an arrogant and bossy investment banker as a partner?

Speaking from my own position I would not be impressed by a man who sat down to dinner with me and droned on and on about his accomplishments all night, how much he earned etc. Some women may be impressed by those shallow materialist things but I am not!

Feminists generally don't praise arrogance, materialism, single minded careerism and greed when men display it - if anything they criticise it in men. So why do you so often seem to condone or even praise it in women?
Seems like double standards to me......

Steve is right. I am too busy and I don't have time for him. I'm engaged to a much better guy anyway (who is actually supportive of my career).

HeyKatie, that is exactly the kind of power I want. That is the difference between socialist and capitalist feminists, and I am proud to support free and liberal markets. I grew up very poor and was in fact "trailer trash" at one time. I am proud to have overcome all of that.

I do have a social conscience in that I try to buy sweat-free clothes and I don't have a diamond. But I don't believe socialism as an economic system could ever work.

Also, when have the Feministing bloggers ever glorified money? I don't think that's what they're trying to say. I think they're just trying to point out how afraid some people are of independent women. That doesn't mean they agree that money *should* equal independence. But the reality is that, in some ways, it does.

Quoth “Real Man� Andy: I wouldn't say a woman should "dumb down" her achievements when meeting a guy for the first time, but she doesn't need to emphasize them, either.

Maureen Dowd, your future husband is calling...

Cheers,

TH

yea, i for one am turned off by women who are all into money grubbing, doing the greed thing. just nasty. no thanks.

Gee, Anonymous, I'm sure that's their loss.

Seriously, why does Joe Sixpack assume that every woman he meets will judge herself mercilessly based on whether or not he, personally, finds them desirable?

Never mind; it was a rhetorical question.

I think the world would be a better place if the men who write offensively shallow how-to-get-women books and the women who write offensively shallow how-to-get-men books fell madly in love with each other, moved together to a small deserted island with no Internet access, and lived happily ever after.

Cheers,

TH

How 1950s! BTW:there's a study about women and humor, in Psychology Today can't remember the month, but a month or two ago. though...Showed that both men and women say "humor" is the number one trait they look for in a mate. Turns out that this means, men want a woman to laugh at their jokes. PT found that it takes a strong man to marry a woman with a sense of humor of her own. I guess we women are looking for the strong, self-confident men who want a partner, and not a "traditional" wife.

Joan & TH Im with you. I thought this article was hilarious. I know that somewhere out there is a man who won't be afraid of testicle shrinkage if I make a lot of money & am really funny :-)

"I wouldn't say a woman should "dumb down" her achievements when meeting a guy for the first time, but she doesn't need to emphasize them, either."

I would say the same for men.

I make way more money than my husband and am also much better formally educated. Because he is as secure about himself as it is good for a normal human to be, he gets the benefit of my paycheck, and I get the benefit of a sweet masculine man who is a great father and just started a second career he likes much more than banking. If you can't get over your prejudices and gender expectations you miss out on a lot. However, most of my women lawyer friends are officially "stewardresses" when hanging out in bars, so I guess this dumb down message has been internalized, or as the song went at my alma mater (all women), "So act adolecent when gentlemen are present, cause you don't get a mark when you park in the dark, and you can't find a man with a brain."

I think HeyKatie has a lot of good things to say. I don't want my [male OR female] partner to talk about hir financial accomplishments over dinner all the time, I'd like hir to talk about hir social, personal, spiritual [and so forth] accomplishments, cute stories from the day, general thoughts and ponderings, thoughts, opinions. I doubt that many people would want conversations or relationships to be centered around how much money one makes or does not make, relationships should be much more than that. Also, HeyKatie's point about "what kind of power do we really want" is quite important here. Do we, as a feminist movement, want to change the world using money or ideas? Do we want to oppress other groups of people [namely, racial minorities and lower-class families] by creating a greater upperclasss/lowerclass division, or do we want to become united as a country and an anti-oppression movement to change policy?

I don't think this piece was that bad. It certainly wasn't a get-your-apron call. If you read the whole thing, you'll see that one of them men says he wants a woman who can take care of herself, and when the female author is asked if women should dumb it down, her answer it, "absolutely not." When the first guy talks about the traditional male role, I don't think he's endorsing it - he's acknowledging that that's how it is, still. And the next guy responds by saying that society needs to adjust, not that women need to stop succeeding.
And I'm with blue - I don't want to sit down with a guy and have him boast for an hour about his job and salary.
Above all, I think every woman on this site is too smart to even bother with these fluff dating things. I hope we all live our lives, earn money, and accomplish as we please.

HeyKatie, I wonder why you think that capitalist values are male values - from my reading, it seems more like you're using "male" and "bad" interchangeably. And while I dig what you're saying - that there's more to life than money - we do live in a supposedly capitalist country and within the system we have now, I see no problem with women eking out their hard-won space in that system. There are plenty of successful women with intense careers that aren't simply motivated by money, even if they make a lot of it.

No one likes either a male or a female blow hard, but let's face it, the male of the species has learned from experience that a high percentage of T&A will follow him out of a bar when he mentions his beach house, six figure salary, and rolls, as opposed to his 4 roomates, studio apartment and scooter. I mean, displays of emotional intelligence are not what normally leads to quick hook ups, because those who appreciate such qualities don't do quick hookups so much. By contrast, women have rarely used personal wealth or material success to lure the male of the species, again learned behavior. Think about it; a lot of guys love the idea that you will think his $800 per month one bedroom is a palace compared with your digs. Remember the entire Sex and the City episode where Miranda pretended to be a stewardress instead of a partner at a law firm and guys swarmed? Guys may say whatever in interviews, but I consider it a miracle that I have a successful marriage with someone who makes a quarter of my income. I think it's the real exception to the rule.

HeyKatie, since when does hard-working/high achieving mean "materialist" and "rich"? I work my ass off, 80 hour weeks, work weekends, crazy busy, but I'm a feminist media studies academic. I'm very high achieving and successful, but I'm broke as hell and I couldn't care less.

I think you're missing the point here. The point is not that all women should sell their souls to the company store and go get them the brass ring, fancy McMansion, big SUV, etc. (Grody.) The point is that women who do decide to dedicate themselves to their career, no matter what it is, should be respected for that just as much as men are. And that the idea that women should "dumb down" either themselves or what they've done (let's not kid ourselves here) is pretty disgusting.

I also think you have to recognize that for most people, making money is a goal. Whether that's because they come from a poor background and have worked their butt off to escape it, or because they have mad student loans to pay off, or because they'd like to eventually own a home. The upper-middle-class high-flying lawyer/professional is like 2% of the population. I think class privilege works to glorify genteel poverty as somehow more moral than working for a living, which I think is silly. Try paying rent with your credit card a few times and then get back to me on whether women should goal themselves on making money.

Besides, I find doing well at my career unbelievably intellectually and mentally satisfying. Plenty of other women also get satisfaction from their careers. There's not much self-actualization in drudging along at a job you hate.

heights,

dang, so i wrote this big ole' post and was gonna put it up, but then i see alice said it all... and better than i would've.

a little addendum is that neither nakamoto, craig, andy nor mapes spoke from a place of radicalism. none of them said, "women should not tout their career accomplishments too much in public because it bares their implicit involvement in an exploitative economic system and may end them up in a ditch when the revolution comes."

no, they said that women should not speak up about their accomplishments because it challenges the power of men and makes them less appealing.

fuck that.

I'm curious as to how many successful women divulge their income stats on the first date. I can see it being alluded in a casual yet vague manner, but not giving the cold hard figures of one's salary. I bet the number of successful women who do so is considerably lower than the number who put out on the first date.

Andy the entrepreneur is hilarious. I don't think he belongs in the "dating successful women" article. What kind of educated, professional woman would say to her friends “Oh, I wish we could come with you, but Bob here doesn't make enough money.� That sounds more like something Lucy would say to Ethel than what you'd hear from someone with a more active role in their economic standing.

I do, however, feel that men typically place more of their self-esteem on their career and earnings than women do, so if they're insecure in those aspects of their lives, a successful mate will only exacerbate it.

But before we jump down their throats for it, we should ask ourselves how we would feel about dating someone who was noticeably more attractive, physically. I don't mean someone who aged better throughout the course of a lengthy relationship, or someone whose good looks are more classical next to your unconventional beauty. I'm talking about the kind of discrepancy in appearance that causes people to notice and wonder how much money you must make to have landed such a good looking mate.

Ladies, keep in mind that you get what you advertise for. If you want a man who isn't threatened by a woman who is his equal or better, don't act dumb!

My wife is a better shot than I am, we're about equal cooks, and while I do engineering math fine, I always screw up my checkbook (she's an accountant). Until she also became disabled, I did most of the housework, shopping and cooking; seemed only fair as she worked a 9 to 5 and I couldn't.

I'm also a lifelong martial artist, 6'2", 180 lbs, 9 years younger than she, a musician/singer/songwriter, was a rock climber. We're both amateur mycologists (into mushrooms), but she's the expert. We're the ones the local ERs in Central Oregon call for mushroom poisoning cases.

She's a sharp lady.

When she's better than I am at something I can learn from her; vice versa, I can teach her something. It's a nice arrangement.

I always enjoyed brushing her hair for her, we shower together, I rub her feet a lot, and rub her back every night - it's anyone's guess which of us falls asleep first. We're equals, utterly honest with each other, and a great team. She loves me, trusts me, challenges me, and it all goes both ways.

As for making love, we've learned a lot from each other, and at fifty (me, that is), even after a decade it keeps getting better despite our failing health. If it were a competition she would always be my superior - women are, period. But it isn't, it's a mutual gift, as it should be.

I wouldn't have it any other way. Don't settle for some knuckle-dragger whose testicles are attached to his pickup, biceps and top seargent attitude. You deserve better!