Someone Had To Say It

I don't like to think of myself as sexist, but when Nancy Hopkins of Harvard stated that she had to flee from the room to keep from passing out or throwing up in response to Larry Summers' rather anondyne remarks, you begin to wonder if at least some anti-woman stereotypes might just have some foundation in fact.

Football Fans and Beyond quotes a Harvard professor on this, err, floridly emotional behavior:

It takes one's breath away to watch feminist women at work. At the same time that they denounce traditional stereotypes they conform to them. If at the back of your sexist mind you think that women are emotional, you listen agape as professor Nancy Hopkins of MIT comes out with the threat that she will be sick if she has to hear too much of what she doesn't agree with. If you think women are suggestible, you hear it said that the mere suggestion of an innate inequality in women will keep them from stirring themselves to excel. While denouncing the feminine mystique, feminists behave as if they were devoted to it. They are women who assert their independence but still depend on men to keep women secure and comfortable while admiring their independence. Even in the gender-neutral society, men are expected by feminists to open doors for women. If men do not, they are intimidating women.

Hit the link for the full article, as well as a transcript of an NPR article in which Nancy Hopkins admits there may in fact be some inherent gender differences between men and women in cognitive ability, and yet she manages not to swoon while saying so.

So maybe women don't go all to pieces just because they see or hear something they find objectionable. And perhaps this Nancy Hopkins woman is deliberately attempting to portray women in a bad light by suggesting they do.

I suspect Karl Rove had something to do with getting her academic "credentials."

posted by Ace at 02:21 PM

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