jchrisobrien ([personal profile] jchrisobrien) wrote2006-12-11 10:57 pm

Quote of the night

"The only thing stupider than a man with an erection, is a woman in love."

Author's name witheld to protect the innocent.

[identity profile] heresiarch.livejournal.com 2006-12-12 08:40 am (UTC)(link)
and just to be clear, i didn't make those anonymous comments below! i'm man enough to own up to my feminist humorlessness :D.
nepenthedreams: (Default)

[personal profile] nepenthedreams 2006-12-12 12:26 pm (UTC)(link)
Heh, did you see that article where the guy was writing that women are incapable of being funny?

I guess he missed Saturday night's Oddville Vaudeville!

[identity profile] silas7.livejournal.com 2006-12-12 02:17 pm (UTC)(link)
I can safely say, that the author of that article should have been in my shoes last night, and he would have to eat his words. :)

[identity profile] heresiarch.livejournal.com 2006-12-13 05:33 am (UTC)(link)
i saw the broadsheet blog post about it on salon... so ridiculous! ::rolls eyes::

[identity profile] ivy-crown.livejournal.com 2006-12-12 05:46 pm (UTC)(link)
and here I thought I was the only humorless feminist who suffered the "hooray gender stereotypes" eyeroll on this one.

[identity profile] silas7.livejournal.com 2006-12-12 07:58 pm (UTC)(link)
Ivy, you should know me better than that!

Where's the stereotype, really? Men and women can do stupid things when their emotions are involved. If I had written "Love makes fools of us all" would you have been up in arms? It's pretty much the same thing.

It was the punch line of a sad story: woman falls in love with a guy who treats her like dirt, and she takes all the abuse because she's in love. The story was preceeded by a guy who married a girl within 2 weeks of meeting her, and later regretted it.

[identity profile] ivy-crown.livejournal.com 2006-12-12 08:07 pm (UTC)(link)
The statement "men and women can do stupid things when their emotions are involved" is true, and in no way detracts from the humor of the stories involved. By defining the stupidity of men as having to do with their penises, and the stupidity of women as having to do with their emotions you're reinforcing stereotypical gender views of how men and women function, and what is important to them.

"Love makes fools of us all" would, in my opinion, be a much better way of describing these two things without bringing up any kind of gender roles. So yes, I would have been happier if you said that, because it doesn't define women as emotional or men as hormonal. If that's the case in these two circumstances, I have no problem with the specific individuals being described with these characteristics, but generically referring to "men" and "women" as being stupid for different reasons because they are men and women is re-stating traditional gender stereotypes.

/humorless feminist rant