Dear Mrs. Bennett, you run against #44 and learn why he got elected and not Mrs. Clinton.

Yup, I was saying these very things to my girlfriend last night, but not as entertainingly. The only explanation I can come up with is that we women handle so many things at once that we lose our focus on one overarching goal? Just a thought (among many).

I've wondered the same thing myself.

In school, the girls were always the smart ones (research confirms this, going all the way back - girls always outperform boys). The person with the highest IQ in the world is a woman.

As the mother of two boys, I think I understand it. Both boys at the age of 3 came to me and said the same thing: "I love my penie." Point noted.

Furthermore, as a mother of boys, I know that women always say, "What a big strong boy you are!" "What a smart boy you are!" Boys never reason their way through those remarks to deduce their actual levels of strength and intelligence. They accept the praise as their due, and incorporate it into their self-assessments: "I am strong. I am smart. That means I am stronger and smarter than you." Projecting from these truths, I can guess that this understanding of themselves made them TAKE the leading role, and females placatingly let them because it's our job to tell little boys how smart and strong they are. We women can blame ourselves. (And men. We can blame men too.)

Later on, this skewed but well-intentioned praise morphs into another form of power. Women relieve men of their money, etc., by stroking men's egos (Have you ever met a man who questioned flattery? No. Men always accept flattery as a true assessment of their superiority). Women whisper the oft-repeated litany of "You're so strong." "You're so smart." "I like that necklace." Men never catch on.

Do you recall the expose a few years back of advertising, and the types of commercials are geared toward men versus women? The advertising world understands more about the human race than anyone, so you can trust their conclusions to be true.

Commercials that are geared toward men are usually in black and white (advertisers learned that men get over-stimulated and confused by color). Think Christmas perfume commercials where the beautiful woman and the beautiful man (representing our male purchaser) twirl around, while the voiceover says the name of the perfume over and over. Men's commercials limit the dialog to one or two words, which they repeat over and over again. It's usually the name of the product, so the man can remember it. And do you recall that diamond commercial? Black and white. He hands her a necklace in a courtyard in Italy, and she shouts, "I love this man!!!" They get that: "Necklace = love. MUST BUY!"

I love my men. I do. But I only go to female doctors and lawyers now. No offense, guys, but...

So mean-spirited.

Perhaps the difference today, at least in a popular forum like this, is that men don't attempt to point out the flaws and weaknesses of women.

Knowing already that they shouldn't, could they possibly get away with it?

Do we really need to get bogged down in this debate when there are so many things to actually get done. One thing you can say about the situation, whether they owe their advantages to superiority or some other factor, men are working on getting things done instead of slogging through who is smarter and better at doing things.

That must tell you something.

I love when women try to console themselves in their secondary status in the upper echelons of society by trying to pretend that, really, deep down inside, they are actually better than men yet inexplicably, they still let us run the world. For some crazy reason, your particular experiences with the few men in your household somehow fail to explain the phenomenon of the dominance of men on a societal basis. If our understanding of the sexes were limited to those who directly surround us, I would believe that all women are indecisive, emotionally imbalanced, incapable of making logical analysis, and completely satisfied with the pedestrian achievements of motherhood without any drive or concern for a successful career or lasting legacy beyond the happiness of their children. But I am not so simple minded as to believe that such experiences confine all women, which is perhaps, yet another defining aspect of men that you fail to grasp.

Oh Aaron. Do you also promote the superiority of the races? We happen to live in a patriarchal society - so far. But there are matriarchal societies where the roles are reversed. Is it because the men are inferior in those societies? Is it because women are inferior in ours?

The women's movement gave women more courage and self-confidence, and the result is that colleges and universities are quietly using Affirmative Action to admit men because, on the sliding scale competing with women, most of them wouldn't qualify. They're attempting to keep a gender balance on the campuses. Women dominate the scholastic achievement awards. Women get better grades.

This confidence and self-assurance in the past 20 years resulted in lifted barriers, and in more women enrolled in medical and law school than men. In another 10 or 15 years, you're going to see a massive shift because schools spend so much time grooming the girls, now, they left the boys behind. My boys got the short end of that stick, so I know.

But really Aaron. The point is this: You're so smart. You're so strong.

I like that necklace...

Holy shit, lady - I hope your sons don't read this.

All I can say is "wow." Ms. Bennett must really hate her children to write an article that humiliates them so thoroughly. Additionally, she implies that men are less capable of holding positions of power and yet she makes the outrageous implication that half of humanity are less capable based on encounters with a few individuals. Is this an example of her superior reasoning?

I'm curious as to which demographic this article was intended to appeal? I thought we'd gotten past this whole idea that women trashing men is saucy and socially acceptable after the 1990s. What next, Daily Beast? An article about how white people can't dance?

I usually don't write these kinds of things on the Internet, because it's so easy to disregard a critical message in this format. However, Ms. Bennett, your article here is reprehensible.

Not for your opinions on gender differences - while I don't entirely agree with your position, I find it respectable enough because I see the need to recognize intelligent girls.

What I think is absolutely unconscionable is how you're singling out YOUR OWN SON as an example of male helplessness. Whether or not your son ever reads the hurtful things you have written about him, your callous attitude toward his feelings simply because he is not a woman is most certainly going to have effects. Please carefully examine this attitude in yourself before the damage is irreversible.

No, namedujour, my point is not that I am better than women, or that men are on the whole, my point is simply that women certainly aren't better on the whole either, and I get tired of this absurd argument that comes up from time to time that men as a sex are stupid and simple minded. You act like men are the only ones who eat up being told something to stroke their egos; you know what men obligatorily tell women, lest their fragile self-esteem withers? Ever heard this from a guy, namedujour, and felt warm inside, "You're so pretty. You're so beautiful. You're so gorgeous." Yeah, we do it too, because it works both ways. The reality is, in almost all respects, the sexes are equal, and that is really my bone to pick with the statements of this article and the comments left here. The sooner women realize that, the sooner the results will manifest. Articles like this are akin to the multitudes of tone deaf singers who try out for American Idle; off key and lacking self awareness.

My brother taught me how to wash a car, mow a lawn, and make a terrific bananas foster, all of which he learned and did on his own, without prodding. I don't know what happened with Laura's sons.

I'm just reminded of a line from 'The West Wing':

'I can't understand how a demographic that constitutes more than half of the electorate fails to control the agenda.'

I guess my point is that there are more women than men in this country. If they all wanted the same thing, they should be able to get it.

And one more thing. I came up with this concept a long time ago, and most people I explain it to agree with it, at least on the broad strokes. It's simply this:

Men are stupid.
Women are crazy.

Sounds simple and trite, I know; and of course, as with any universal, not always applicable, but look at the people in your life and just start thinking about it. As a man, I acknowledge that I'm stupid and do stupid things. But women need to accept that they can be, well, crazy.

:)

*Sticks tongue at least partially into cheek*

I think almost all women can relate to this. I remember the time my husband wandered into the kitchen (after about 5 years of marriage) and said, "Where do you keep the forks?"

Here are a couple of quotes from a Times article called "Affirmative Action for Boys" at http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1727693,00.html

Jennifer Delahunty, dean of admissions at Kenyon College, "but developmentally, girls bring more to the table than boys, and the disparity has gotten greater in recent years."

Of course, admitting this is taboo, as Delahunty learned two years ago. She was in marathon committee meetings, stacking glorious girls on the waiting list while less accomplished boys wiggled through, when she got an e-mail informing her that her own daughter had been wait-listed. The experience inspired her to write a confessional Op-Ed, "To All the Girls I've Rejected," for the New York Times, responses to which lit up her inbox. "It pissed off the feminists and the misogynists--I got both sides of the spectrum," she told me. "The misogynists said women already have too many advantages. And the feminists said, How dare you not treat women like men." But what most amazed her was the reaction of young women: by and large, they assumed this is just how things work. "Why aren't they marching in the streets? That's the part that slays me," Delahunty says. "It isn't fair, and young women should be saying something about it not being fair."...

...I wonder if there's a price boys pay for the "soft bigotry of low expectations." ...That would be the crowning irony, if it turns out that girls emerge stronger somehow from having the game rigged against them.

Oh boy. Here we go.

Ladies, enough already. We all know how females truly hold the world up on their shoulders, while men basically run around trying to get laid and blow things up. You're so under-appreciated. Boo-hoo. Waaaaah. Blah blah blah.

This article obviously smacks of hyperbole. I don't want to get into a pissing contest (by the way, Ms. Bennett, I've never had a problem getting my stream to go where it needs to) but why do men still dominate all of the technical fields where there are jobs that require an unusual amount of intelligence, despite women comprising fully 60% of college enrollment these days? What's that? Because society (men) directs them away from those fields? Well if women are so strong and clever, shouldn't they be able to tell society to fu*k off?

Look--if women ran the world, I'm sure everything would be gumdrops and lollipops, right? Whatever. The fact is there have been and always will be great minds and great leaders of both sexes. If only women existed and were able to asexually reproduce, like an amoeba, I still think everything would come to a spectacular Lord of the Flies type end, just maybe not as soon as it would if only men were around. I generally agree with commenter MaelwysII - men are stupid and women are crazy. And it's a vicious circle: women go nuts because of the stupid things men do, and men do stupid things trying to survive the antics of crazy women!

Be honest - would we have it any other way? ;-)

P.S. - I wonder if Ms. Bennett recognizes the irony of her career choice. Trained as an architect, but chose to compete on a television show to become a fashion designer? Is she not perpetuating a stereotype? By all means, Ms. Bennett, be a fashion designer if that's your true calling - but perhaps you shouldn't wonder as much why 44 men have held the most powerful position in the world.

If you didn't have men, whose laundry would you do?

Do you really think it's appropriate to compare your children in such an unflattering way on a public forum that can never be erased?

The author of this article uses local observations and anecdotes to support her claim that the entire female race is superior. It appeals to our emotions and is well written, but mainly geared to the housewives who have time to read these sort of fluff pieces. If I were to say that African Americans are superior to Whites based on how I see so many stupid white people, I would be called a racist. Trying to make the argument that women are superior to men not only opens up the same can of worms (just different labeling) but this author decides to do it in a way that lacks any actual validity. After reading this piece, in the back of my head I thought of simply commenting with a list of what we think of as the most influential people in our societies: Jesus, Mohamed, Aristotle, Socrates, Bill Gates, George Washington, Thomas Hobbes, Voltaire, Constantine, Galileo, Leonardo Da Vinci, Benjamin Franklin, Rousseau, Condorcet, Christopher Columbus etc. etc. etc! But while the successes of men in the past 10,000 years overshadow those of women ten fold, I believe such points are moot. I admit there have been many more terrible men than women as well (hitler, stalin, the pillsbury dough boy). Also, societies have usually failed to provide women with equal rights. I just want to encourage all women to believe that they are just as capable as men, and that they should ignore what history shows them. "

The author of this article uses local observations and anecdotes to support her claim that the entire female race is superior. It appeals to our emotions and is well written, but mainly geared to the housewives who have time to read these sort of fluff pieces. If I were to say that African Americans are superior to Whites based on how I see so many stupid white people, I would be called a racist. Trying to make the argument that women are superior to men not only opens up the same can of worms (just different labeling) but this author decides to do it in a way that lacks any actual validity. After reading this piece, in the back of my head I thought of simply commenting with a list of what we think of as the most influential people in our societies: Jesus, Mohamed, Aristotle, Socrates, Bill Gates, George Washington, Thomas Hobbes, Voltaire, Constantine, Galileo, Leonardo Da Vinci, Benjamin Franklin, Rousseau, Condorcet, Christopher Columbus etc. etc. etc! But while the successes of men in the past 10,000 years overshadow those of women ten fold, I believe such points are moot. I admit there have been many more terrible men than women as well (hitler, stalin, the pillsbury dough boy). Also, societies have usually failed to provide women with equal rights. I just want to encourage all women to believe that they are just as capable as men, and that they should ignore what history shows them.

So reread this quote from the Time Magazine article:

"...I wonder if there's a price boys pay for the "soft bigotry of low expectations." ...That would be the crowning irony, if it turns out that girls emerge stronger somehow from having the game rigged against them."

And this one here: "But what most amazed her was the reaction of young women: by and large, they assumed this is just how things work. "Why aren't they marching in the streets? That's the part that slays me," Delahunty says. "It isn't fair, and young women should be saying something about it not being fair."

Clearly women are not seeing a problem - and neither are men. Men are pushed through the system with realized expectations of high marks for low performance, and the presumption (publicly admitted or not) of inherent superiority. Women struggle through with patronizing dismissive-ness from both sides. Like yours from the male side. And the girls' acceptance of discrimination from the female side.

We're all conditioned. It's everyone's fault. We comprise society.

But really men, stop acting so dumb. You're squandering your artificial advantage, if you don't start trying harder. That advantage won't last much longer.

As always, Ms. Bennet is funny, observant and a great read. I'm no house wife, but gosh I do love me some fluff. Isn't that what all DB readers like? Half the blogs on this site are about Hollywood, sex and scandal, and along with the political pieces, I read them all.

Laura, don't let the ill-humored keep you from doing what you do best; speak for countless of intelligent working mothers with a wicked sense of humor. Love it!

It's easy to see from this article that Ms. Bennett raised her boys to be selfish and helpless while she raised her daughter to be independent and self sufficient.

It's nurture, not nature. Your boy whines for you to make him a bowl of cereal because that's what you've always done. Your daughter orders pizza for herself because you coddle your boys and not her.

There is no big mystery.

I can't fathom why the Beast would publish such a mean spirited column in such troubled times.I remember Bennett from Project Runway.She was pitiless; so is her view of gender.

Oh Laura, come on, you can't expect me to take this laying down. You're normally so great in your observations, but I guess maybe you had a bad week. I'm having a bad week too.

Please don't interpret this as me saying I think men are better than women, I've had my fair share experiences with guys that I could only assume were delivered from the womb 5 minutes before I met them as nothing else could explain their complete ignorance about the most simple of concepts; things like buying groceries.

Disclaimer aside, back to my bad week. You see, my wife, whom I love dearly, has decided to quit the $24,000 culinary arts program I went into debt to pay for because she hated her paid internship and couldn't do it anymore. So now not only is that money down the drain, but now she's not working. Did I mention that I had to find a job close to the school just so she could commute in order to start her new career. Now she's at home, trying to develop a budget to pay off our debt on my salary alone. Which means I've gone from living comfortably to rice and beans. This is in between the emails to me asking to call her cell phone for her because she can't find it. And I'd say I have to drop everything to find whatever lost item she's misplaced probably 3 times a week, from phone, to wallet, to glasses, whatever. Going out is a blast, I'd say we're operating at about 50% efficiency when comes to having her wallet when she needs it, otherwise it's in the car or at home, so if she needs an ID to do something, we're not doing it. Which I guess doesn't matter anymore as we can't afford to go out anyways. Your 5 year old might be able to order pizza, but my 25 year old can't order chinese food without making me call. And today I log on to the dailybeast to read about how men are the inept ones. I think I'm starting to develop a twitch over my left eye from the frustration.

Don't get me wrong, I love my wife and am willing to put up with all of this for her positive attributes, to include the number of times she tells me she loves me and thanks me for putting up with her, and she is aware of her flaws and works to fix them just like I do mine. And I know she can produce a similar list of all the things I do to drive her mad. But I just cringe whenever an all encompassing generality comes out that groups me into some mass of inept people. I've worked very hard to be self reliant, and with self reliance comes self respect, so I felt a need to speak up in my defense.

By the way my wife loved your designs on Project Runway and I love your articles about your kids, it sounds like you're a great mother.
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