Ranty Ranty Blog Blog

I confess that when I created this thing in February, I intended it to be little more than a place to post pictures, updates, and the occasional hilarious anecdote from my forthcoming adventures in Vienna. Having little hilarity to offer from my current stressed-out, snowed-in, generally uneventful life in Toronto, I've not added anything of substance until now.

Two days ago, I read this. Go ahead and take a look. It's a quick read, though the mind-bogglingly poor taste and considerable liberties taken with the truth may be a little rough to get through.

I'm late to the party on this one, having been pre-empted by hundreds of angry bloggers and a large portion of the readership of the Washington Post. Nevertheless, I wanted to vent my frustration and righteous anger somewhere, and we were fresh out of soapboxes. Enter: the internet.

Full disclosure: I have been known to watch and enjoy "Grey's Anatomy" from time to time, and I have read "Eat, Pray, Love", though I wouldn't do it again. You see, it was given to me by my mother, who is among other things an Ivy League graduate in economics, an advocate of midwifery, a crossword puzzle expert, a soccer player, and a voracious reader of awful romance novels. She was also the sole breadwinner in my family for many years, whilst my father stayed home with me and my younger sister. Lest you think my dad is a sissy, you should know that he has, at various times, worked as an electrician, counseled at-risk youth, constructed numerous elements of our house proficiently and completely, and completed a solo circumnavigation of Vancouver Island by kayak. He could also totally beat up your dad.

Traditional gender roles were never reinforced in my house, indeed, they were largely ignored. Perhaps that has something to do with my utter loathing for the content and tone of Ms. Allen's article, though I'd prefer to think that's due to common sense. Then again, I'm not sure if I can lay claim to any such sensibility, having been labelled by Ms. Allen as "stupid", "hysterical", "superficial", and, my favourite, "permanently occluded by random emotions". (Such big words! Her husband must have helped her with those.)

Women are dumb, she maintains, before quickly amending that to "we women". She herself is unable to "add 2 and 2", and remains in a Bradshaw-esque state of ignorance regarding the size of her shoe collection (at least 4 pairs then?). Women - sorry, "we women" - faint at Obama rallies while our sisters sabotage Hillary's campaign. We're so busy watching Oprah, reading softcore porn and watching attractive TV doctors grope each other (surely no man has ever partaken of such filth!) that our spatial awareness, logical abilities, and driving skills lag behind those of our male counterparts. Yes, she concedes, men do stupid things too. Why, her own husband sometimes eats over the sink when she's not there to stop him!

I remember a boy in my 10th grade science class who hooked up 12 batteries in series with a wire at each end, then completed the circuit with his tongue. Polish farmer Krystof Azninski decapitated himself with a frozen turnip in an effort to prove his manliness. Some men routinely paint themselves bright colours and attend football games, shirtless, in subzero weather. But surely none of these things are as "embarrassing" as listening to Celine Dion. Or maybe they were put up to it by women. Or something. What should I know?

Unless maybe I'm an "outlier". One of those "female fighter pilots, architects, tax accountants, chemical engineers, Supreme Court justices and brain surgeons" who flies in the face of convention. Firstly, I'll bet that any engineer or engineering student smirks a little at that quote, since it's relatively common knowledge that the number of female chemical engineering graduates now equals or outnumbers the number of males in the same field. She could have picked a different engineering discipline, to be sure, one that attracts fewer women. Consider, though, that the Dean of the faculty of Applied Science at UofT is a woman, just as the past two presidents of the undergraduate Engineering Society have been.

As for Supreme Court justices and brain surgeons, these are hardly common professions among men. Lacking current statistics, I am aware that the number of female MDs has increased rapidly over the past decades, and would be surprised to hear that the number of female surgeons has not. Supreme Court justices are political appointees, which makes them difficult to include this discussion; however, the current bench features justices appointed as far back as 1975, and 2/9 justices confirmed since 1981 have been women.

There are five other women in my fourth-year aerospace engineering class of roughly 30. None of us are militantly feminist, nor particularly masculine. None of us are Hildegard of Bingen, Marie Curie, or Elizabeth I. None of us, so far as I know, have encountered particular difficulty in the field on account of our ovaries. Ms. Allen, I am not a genius, a trailblazer, an outlier, or a stereotype. I am a woman who enjoys math and literature, science fiction and romance, playing sports and baking pies.

50 years ago, few women were freelance writers, and fewer were engineering students. Significant gains have been and will continue to be made. Ms. Allen, it is not biology or misogyny that is holding young women back now - it is people like you and the ridiculous, misinformed, distorted, and most certainly not fact-checked pap that you spew. By all means, stay home to nurture and decorate if it makes you happy, but do not tell women - we women - that we are not capable of doing anything else.