Showing posts with label rants. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rants. Show all posts

Thursday, May 2, 2013

Unpacking gender essentialism

I originally posted a bit of a rant to Facebook regarding this Psychology Today article claiming that women need love, while men need respect.  Excerpt:

"Choice quotes:
  • "we [women] are naturally physically affectionate and nurturing, and we just love signing emails and cards with lovey dovey phrases and long lines of xoxoxo’s."

    (We do? We are? Man. I am totally failing at being a woman.)
  • "It was determined out of this research that a woman’s primary need is for love, and a man’s primary need is for respect."

    (It's all right guys; don't worry about respecting me anymore. All I need is your looooove.)
Acerbicness aside, I would love to point out all the flaws with this, but it's kind of making me too angry to really pick apart right now. Someone else is welcome to do it for me. [...]
I'm going to go run in circles, wave my arms around, and headdesk until I no longer feel ranty. Perhaps when I'm done I will no longer possess enough braincells to care about this kind of thing. Thank you and goodnight."

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I was being tongue-in-cheek, sardonic, and probably a bit hyperbolic.  I wasn't really planning on going into a detailed analysis of why I found the article to be problematic.