Internet declares Gay Talese sexist, improving lives everywhere

Legendary journalist and convicted sexist Gay Talese

Legendary journalist and convicted sexist Gay Talese

Two weeks ago, octogenarian and pioneer of “new journalism” Gay Talese answered a question badly at a Boston University conference. Poet Verandah Porche asked him what women had inspired him most “as writers.” After repeating the question to confirm it, Talese answered:

As writers, uh, I’d say Mary McCarthy was one. I would, um, [pause] think [pause] of my generation [pause] um, none. I’ll tell you why. I’m not sure it’s true, it probably isn’t true anymore, but my — when I was young, maybe 30 or so, and always interested in exploratory journalism, long-form, we would call it, women tended not, even good writers, women tended not to do that. Because being, I think, educated women, writerly women, don’t want to, or do not feel comfortable dealing with strangers or people that I’m attracted to, sort of the offbeat characters, not reliable.

Talese went on to say that women excelled at fiction, possibly because educated women were not comfortable around the kind of “antisocial figures” he had made the focus of his career. It was a cringe-inducing answer. It’s also the kind you might expect from an 84 year-old man. But Twitter went ape.

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The dangerous allure of proving that stuff isn’t sexist

A meme Slate called "kind of sexist"

A meme Slate called “kind of sexist”

Here’s a worst-outcome life: write a daily blog about things that aren’t actually sexist. When someone calls sexism on what appears to be innocuous, leaping to defend it is a low-percentage play. Part of the problem is that so many things really do turn out to be sexist, when you think about them. That’s the essence of the feminist critique. But pointing out what isn’t, in fact, sexist is also a bad risk because even when you’re right, the reward is small. You get the sweet feeling of proving someone wrong, but the person you proved wrong is invariably a defender of women. Even if logic and integrity are on your side, that sympathetic character is not. I mention this problem because Slate just said the Bernie vs. Hillary meme is sexist. By “the Bernie vs. Hillary meme,” I don’t mean the 2016 campaign for president. I mean what’s after the jump.

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Could this woman say something sexist?

Feminist icon and Bill Maher-tolerator Gloria Steinem

Feminist icon and Bill Maher-tolerator Gloria Steinem

On Friday night, Gloria Steinem criticized young women who support Bernie Sanders in, uh, problematic terms. “When you’re young, you’re thinking, ‘where are the boys?'” she told Bill Maher. “The boys are with Bernie.” That’s a bad argument, mostly because it implies that young women care less about politics than catching a man, but also because there’s a much more satisfying generalization right next door. When you’re young, you’re thinking, “where are the young people?” Eighty-five percent of voters under age 30 broke for Sanders in the Iowa caucuses, and he led Hillary by 21 points among voters 30-44. There may be some force at work here other than the overwhelming desire for boys. But if Steinem is a feminist, how can she say something sexist?

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Is this image sexist?

The cover of Doug Henwood's "My Turn," a book critical of Hillary Clinton

The cover image for Doug Henwood’s “My Turn,” a book critical of Hillary Clinton

Tweeting the cover of Doug Henwood’s Hillary Clinton book My Turn, Salon’s Amanda Marcotte remarked, “I keep hearing it’s unfair to think that some of the male Clinton haters on the left might have issues with women.” She was being facetious. But what about this image is sexist, exactly? It’s not flattering, insofar as it depicts Hillary as ruthless, even cold. But it also places a woman in a position of power, holding a traditionally masculine totem of violent authority, which she points directly at the male gaze. As critical as the title “My Turn” is, in conjunction with this image, it suggests that Hillary is assertively demanding what she believes is rightfully hers. And the artist, Sarah Sole, told International Business Times, “I love Hillary Clinton. I support her. I very much want her to be president.”

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In possible overstatement, Time calls dad bod a “sexist atrocity”

A gender-neutral atrocity

A gender-neutral atrocity

My brother sent me this blog post from Time, in which Brian Moylan argues that the concept of the dad bod “continues to reinforce inequality about what is acceptable for men and women.” As you have no good reason to know, a dad bod is when you are kind of fat but not really. The term comes from this 500-word humorous essay by McKenzie Pearson, a sophomore at Clemson University. Pearson writes:

“The dad bod is a nice balance between a beer gut and working out. The dad bod says, ‘I go to the gym occasionally, but I also drink heavily on the weekends and enjoy eating eight slices of pizza at a time.’ It’s not an overweight guy, but it isn’t one with washboard abs, either.”

She goes on to enumerate reasons women like a dad bod, including looking pretty my comparison. Annie Dillard it ain’t; Pearson’s essay is lighthearted and relentlessly slight, which might explain why it went viral. It might also be because it feeds the internet outrage machine. Six weeks after Pearson published her essay, Quartz declares that “the viral dad bod phenomenon is male privilege masquerading as empowerment.”

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