There are certain things about women that men will never understand, in part because they have no interest in understanding them. They will never know how deeply we care about our houses—what a large role they play in our dreams for ourselves, how unhappy their shortcomings make us. Men think they understand the way our physical beauty—or lack of it, or assaults on it from age or extra weight—preys on our minds, but they don’t fully grasp the significance these things have for us. Nor can they understand the way physical comforts or simple luxuries—the fresh towel or the fat new cake of soap—can lift our spirits. And they will never know how much our lives are shaped around the fear of bad men and the harm they can bring us if we’re not careful, if we’re not banded together, if we’re not telling each other what to watch out for, what we’ve learned. We need each other’s counsel, and oftentimes it comes when we’re talking about other things, when we seem not to have much important on our minds at all.

For me, reading Caitlin Flanagan’s honeyed words is not so different from the bronchitis I’m currently recovering from. I really want to keep coughing because I think that this time, surely, the cough will be productive and afterwards I will feel better. Instead I just get a knot of something stuck in my throat and then my chest hurts.

I suppose I could go stand in a hot shower or buy some Halls or something. But then what would I complain about?

The New York Times magazine picked Caitlin Flanagan’s “The Glory of Oprah” as one of their top #longreads of 2011.  This is the third-to-last paragraph and so it’s really not fair for me to quote it out of context since it elaborates on and completes thoughts she’s been weaving through the piece.

Or maybe it is fair to quote it out of context.  Maybe what’s really unfair is for Flanagan to spend the rest of the piece casting a diabolical spell with her wit and flawless style and perfect innate balance between pathos and humor, so that when you get to this paragraph and its galling, risible gender essentialism, you are inclined not to throw down the magazine or close the tab in disgust, but to nod, narcotized by her smooth sentences, and agree.  Of course all men are one way and all women are another way, nature has made them that way, not culture. Want … soap … 

Shake it off, readers!  Don’t let her win!  Caitlin Flanagan is a DANGEROUS LUNATIC and WE MUST NEVER ALLOW OURSELVES TO FORGET THAT, NO MATTER HOW FUNNY AND CONVINCING SHE IS! AUGHH!

Oof, I seem to have overexerted myself.  Can I have a fresh towel?

(Source: emilygould)

Notes

  1. rachelfershleiser reblogged this from doree
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    -“The Glory of Oprah” by Caitlin Flanagan was picked by...And from this paragraph,
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    so different from...bronchitis I’m currently recovering from. I
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