Oooh, burn! You know your allies have abandoned you when even the IWF won't support your crazy misogynist invectives.

It will be a great day when a woman can spend her day designing major industrial processes and then go home and read a Harlequin Romance to relax, and nobody will even blink at either.

I think it should be pointed out that the reading of "chick lit" and "gossiping" are signs of two of the great strengths of the female gender, namely not looking down on reading (which seems to have become more popular, and less men read today) and the ability to be social, which I think results in a situation where a lot less women than men are lonely.
The invectives against reading and having a social life are quite good examples of how *anything* that gets associated with the feminine get scorned.

The IWF response shows how this piece was not just sexist but outright misogynistic. Even if you do believe in innate sex difference, why would you turn around and associate everything that is stereotypically female with idiocy? Because you hate women. So much for different but equal.

"The invectives against reading and having a social life are quite good examples of how *anything* that gets associated with the feminine get scorned."

In the case of reading, it also seems like how anything scorned gets associated with the feminine.

In the case of having a social life, it also seems like how some guys think "how dare she not bend over on demand and expect a guy to bother learning how to treat her politely!"

Anders, a lot of guys I know love to read, insist on having female partners who also love to read, and gossip just as much as (if not more than!) me and my friends do. And I think the male version of "chick lit" is fantasy/sci-fi, which also has an undeserved bad reputation. It's too bad that there aren't more of them out there, but they do exist (and thrive).

"And I think the male version of 'chick lit' is fantasy/sci-fi, which also has an undeserved bad reputation."

I thought the male version of chick lit was lad lit.

waxghost, seeing as how I'm a guy, read way too much sf&f and have no problem with gossip, I have no doubt that such people exist. It still feels like I'm pretty bad at social things and such, though.
I also have some hopes that the internet has assisted a lot of men in being more social as a rule, but the stats of the matter seem to point to a phenomenon of men as they get older leading increasingly lonely and empty lives, something I think both reading and "gossiping" helps with.

I think gossip is due in part to the way women are socialized. And in part to the fact that people are curious about other people, which is why men gossip too. But if it's true that women gossip more - and I don't know if it is, but that's the stereotype anyway - I think it's because women are put into a system where they get power by association with the right people, rather than by being smart or rich or strong whatever. Obviously this is changing as society changes, but it's still there. So I think women get and exert power by showing that they know insider information about powerful people and by using information about people to manipulate situations, or as a way to make an association with the person they're talking to. Which isn't any worse than using money or physical strength to do the same things. So what bothers me is how people push women into a system in which gossiping is the rational thing to do, and then berate women for gossiping. I think the same basic idea applies to the use of sex to get money or power, although that gets really complicated.

Allen's misogyny "inadvertent"? Ho. Carrie Lukas' argument is completely specious. Both Lukas' and Allen's work has been published under the banner of the Independent [sic] Women's Forum, and here's IWF's shtick: Women are irrational, frivolous, cute widdle gals. Except when they go after something like, say, pay equity. Then they're castrating b*tches.

Allen has a long history here in Washington. First her byline was Charlotte Low, then Charlotte Low Allen, then Charlotte Allen. I bring this up only because the IWF went so ballistic when Hillary Clinton preferred to be addressed as Hillary Rodham Clinton. In those days, I subscribed to the IWF's Woman's Quarterly to keep an eye on them. It was quite amusing how many of the gals on the masthead either published under their maiden name or had a three-barreled byline incorporating both birth and marital surnames.

But of course, that's only okay if you're a Republican.