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In addition to what has already been written in the feminist blogosphere regarding the latest foolishness from Charlotte Allen of the Independent Women’s Forum (which seems to have been named on Opposite Day), I would just like to add that I find it hilarious that someone who comments on women fainting at political rallies that “I thought such fainting was supposed to be a relic of the sexist past, when patriarchs forced their wives and daughters to lace themselves into corsets that cut off their oxygen” goes on to prove herself to lack even the sense of those female novelists of the Victorian Age who opposed women’s suffrage.

You see, as Elaine Showalter points out in A Literature of Their Own (which I recently resumed reading after the goblins returned it), these feminine novelists at least attempted to ensure the continued viability of their writing careers by referring to themselves as exceptions to the more common foolishness of women. Allen, on the other hand, by attempting to use herself as an example from which to generalize about women’s silliness and stupidity, quickly throws away any legitimacy she herself might have had as a writer or thinker.

That said, however, I don’t think she’s really stupid per se. I think she’s insecure about her abilities and worth– and trying to cover that can make even the smartest of us act like fools.

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1. Privilege, Experiment, and (Non)sense

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