I have an issue with Slate.com (not the first time) and this time it is with the Dear Prudence column. The column is like any other advice section, sanctimonious and insincere. This week there was one in particular though that caught my attention and had me nearly rolling my eyes into the back of my head.
What was the question asked? A wife was worried about her husband’s close friendship with his female friend and wanted to know if she should trust him or was smart to put her foot down.
What was the author’s genius response?
“I guess someone has to trust your husband, because I sure don’t. I’m all for mixed-gender friendships, but prior to the possibility of this road trip, your husband was too involved in the life of his erstwhile paramour. Now he’s making you feel like a jailer because you object to his going on a cross-country journey with a single woman who sounds to me like she doesn’t plan on being single for long.”
The author in question is a woman named Emily Yoffe, a writer who has previously caused my blood to boil after she wrote an article saying that girls should stop drinking so much if they do not want to be raped. Could you really expect anything less than idiocy from such a “journalist?”
There are a number of things that irritate me about this blurb of intellect, and not just the author who bothers me on principle alone. One, it perpetuates the notion that women and men have difficulty being friends with each other without any type of sexual friction or jealousy.
That notion is absurd, is not true and the sooner we all get over that the sooner we will evolve as a human race. Females, males – gender is not a means of dictating friendship, it is society that has constructed that idea and as a culture, people have formed to it.
The second thing that grates is that it puts the women, the one who is the friend of the husband, into the scheming hussy role. There is no doubt cast towards the male in this scenario – no, it is all entirely directed at the faceless woman who due to her feminine, dastardly aura, is instantaneously voted to be untrustworthy.
It is not a big, change your life type of issue – but it is one that we see pop up quite a lot in our culture whether it be in passing conversation or mass media. We are taught through movies that any man who wants to befriend a woman, obviously just wants to be with her. Male and female friendship is rarely seen onscreen where it does not turn into a relationship by the end, or females are always put into the conniving position.
It is tired, it is lazy and it is ridiculous.
I am sure this is not the last time Yoffe will write something entirely asinine, and I plan to be at the ready, pen (okay, laptop) in hand to blast her for it. However, this one is simply irksome because of how unnecessary it is.
