[Another draft-pile post from this summer when it felt like I couldn’t finish anything I started. —fl]

Ann Bartow of Feminist Law Professors highlights a study on the hazards of “marrying up” that she got from Historiann

...she considers the findings, which she asserts support a conclusion that “Women, much more often than men, are in marriages that don’t privilege their career tracks.” Men’s and women’s academic careers start off relatively equally, but 6 to 10 years out, men are more likely to have tenure or jobs outside of academe (generally with higher salaries than those for professors) and women are more likely to have jobs off the tenure track.

She said it here.

Towards the end of the theme song for the 1965 American TV comedy “Green Acres“ the husband who wishes to move to the country sings “You are my wife…” and his partner warbles with resignation “Goodbye city life…”

The lines went largely unremarked because at the time it was a foregone conclusion that, even if the woman worked, a husband’s career opportunities pretty much determined where the couple was going to go.

From conversations with academic couples there’s also evidently an institutional two-for-one tradition where it’s assumed that if you hire one candidate on a tenure track his or (less frequently, evidently, at least for now) her partner will be over a barrel anyway so why “waste” another tenure position on them? Unless it’s a town with a lot of colleges if the spouse want to work in their field at all they’ll settle for non-tenure contracts.

I’m not so confident the twofer tradition will disappear — if the rise in divorce in the last 40 years hasn’t changed that probably nothing will. But with colleges now graduating quite a few more women than men there’s some better than zero chance that the unfairness treatment will at least become more gender neutral.

Another reason, by the way, why the equality of opportunity (look, now there’ve been two women vice-presidental candidates on losing party tickets!) isn’t always the best metric of success. (Fortunately it’s also not the only such metric.)

Photo by Flickr user S.Languay. Used under a Creative Commons license.

So… some bozo writing for Redbook magazine rehashes a plate full of stereotypes about men and tries to call it “male secrets.” And some (relatively uncharacteristic) bozo at WebMD decides his site has to channel it.

Jeff Fecke, at Blog of the Moderate Left has a nice takedown…

Last night, I had a pain in my knee. (Probably bursitis; nothing major.) At any rate, I went to WebMD to check my symptoms and reassure myself that it was, indeed, nothing major, and I came across their list of most-read stories. Number one on that list? “11 ‘Don’t-Tell-the-Wife’ Secrets All Men Keep.”

Really? “All Men?”

The pain in my knee receding into the background, I opened up the story. And it did not disappoint in its craptacularness.

Like all “X things that are absolutely true about any given gender” stories, it was a mix of things that are true for all human beings, things that aren’t true for all human beings, things that aren’t true for all men but are supposed to be, and things that are just naked, raw sexism at its worst.

He said it here.

Fecke calls bullshit on each of the 11 “all things true” items in turn. Follow his link, above, if you want to find the original WebMD post as I’d rather not send them the traffic.

Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon takes her own stabs at the list. One that really hits home to me:

Secret #4: Earning money makes us feel important

In more than 7.4 million U.S. marriages, the wife earns more than the husband — almost double the number in 1981. This of course is a terrific development for women in the workplace and warmly embraced by all American men, right? Right?

Yeah, well, that’s what we tell you. But we’re shallow, competitive egomaniacs. You don’t think it gets under our skin if our woman’s bringing home more bacon than we are — and frying it up in a pan?

A lot of people come to me with questions like, “What do you feminists mean by ‘male privilege’?” This is a good example. Can you imagine a woman saying, “I know it’s shallow of me, but I need to make more money than you in order to feel all woman. Would you be a dear and hold back on your career to soothe my ego? Thanks!” while running out the door, sure the answer is yes. We’d rightfully consider that borderline sociopathic unwillingness to be generous to your chosen life partner, if a woman said it. But a man does, and it’s not considered right exactly, but at least just a cute “boys will be boys” matter that women are expected to tolerate.

She said it here.

See? It really is male privilege to say “By the way, hon, my ego is more important than you so do you mind, like, y’know, handicapping yourself economically? Besides, like, I can’t get it up if I’m not earning more money than you.”

It’s also… um… well, since it’s mostly conservatives[*] who are into this whole male-dominance thing, isn’t it worth pointing out that asking women to deliberately sideline themselves so they don’t outperform their partners sort of… like… affirmative action for men? I mean, and really, there really did used to be laws like that — in 37 states in the U.S. for instance, during the depression there were laws forbidding women from taking traditional male jobs, especially if they had a working husband. And… really… when you think about all the conservative handwringing over the ill effects of affirmative action on everybody else then doesn’t it stand to reason that… well… look at it this way…

Maintaining social conventions, let alone passing legislation, in order to artificially bolster the self-esteem of men by, say, handicapping otherwise perfectly capable, competitive women means you think men are really wimps, babies needing momma and daddy to pretend they’re really all grown up…

Now if we lived in such a society then we might predict a particularly mollycoddled set of men men would come up with, and make most popular on WebMD, a list of, oh, say, eleven fictional “truisms” they believe excuses them of any maturity, responsibility, authority, equality, choice, or authenticity. (Oh wait!)

Actually, as Marcotte puts it

...this entire list is insulting to men. Yes, it insults them in a way that a lot of men embrace, because it lets them off the hook for both house work and emotional work. But it paints men like little babies that immediately start to whine the moment even a minor task is asked of them.

Yeah, weird how anti-feminists who go on and on about “male bashing” feminists never notice how much utter bullshit they routinely bury men in! Sheesh! Thanks but no thanks, guys. I have a feeling real women like real men, not little boys all pretending to be big while wimping out on pretty much all responsibility that doesn’t involve bringing home money and shooting at something (each of which the average woman seem able to do about as well as the average man, or could if law, convention, stereotype, and fragile ego didn’t get in the way.)

[**] Yes, yes, some progressives too, but they’re generally chagrined rather than smug when called on it.