Thursday, October 25, 2012

McArdle's Complaint


Megan McArdle:
It seems to be some sort of universal that women who make forceful political arguments garner a particular sort of vitriolic reaction.
She thinks it's worse than the vitriolic reaction which men receive.

I don't know. We could run a controlled experiment, I suppose, with undergraduates. You know, take two random sets of people, show them the same forceful political argument, but tell one set of people it's by Megan McArdle and tell the other set it's by Michael McArdle. Have them write critiques addressed to either Meg or Mike. Work out a scoring system to scientifically scale their respective vitriol volumes!

She says it's not just men.
I'm (painfully) reminded of the progressive woman who wrote a long and spiteful note, the upshot of which was that since my husband is younger than me, he'd probably eventually leave me for a younger woman.
She says it's not just conservatives:
...self described progressive men go out of their way to write me notes in which they sound like sexist jerks. They deploy words that I won't repeat, because this is a family blog, but which center around my reproductive parts, and what I might or might not be doing with them.
From all this, should I conclude...
that I need to get rude, crude, and lewd
so my meaning is not misconstrued?

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