F ³: Women and Ruination? I Doubt That.

True confession: the name Ross Douthat didn’t mean anything in particular to me until quite recently. In only a few days I have learned that he is a laughably awful opinion writer for the New York Times. No one had to tell me this. His work speaks for itself.

Yesterday’s column:

Did Women Ruin the Workplace? - - Ross Douthat, New York Times, 11/6/2925

Oh my, yes. That’s definitely the column we need in this moment, in this country, teetering as we are on the edge of male-induced facism.

I present to you the antidote: beautifully curated by Bluesky user Paul Fairie. (It looks like he is interested in history and political science, by the way.)

A List of Things Said to Have Been Ruined by Women, Paul Fairie

You absolutely must click through and read every single one. It won’t take you long. I want this thread to get every single hit it deserves and it won’t if I copy and paste it all here.

The list contains eleven examples of newspaper articles that outright blame women for ruining something - - right in the the title of the piece! If you click on the photo of the article, the alt text will give you the text, the name of the newspaper, and the date of publication.

I don’t know Mr. Fairie but I must say he is thorough. And I suspect he has a wicked sense of humor.

A tip of the hat to Bluesky user @lauri8 who came back with the following:

But are we getting paid as much as men to ruin things? NO! A woman has to ruin something 3 5 times harder than your average mediocre dude does to get paid only 75% as much! Keep fighting, my sisters.

Yesterday afternoon a photograph taken by Andrew Harnik (Getty) at the White House made the rounds on social media. It caught an usual moment, showing what transpired as an (unknown) person suffered a medical event. Have you seen* it?

There looks to be only one woman in that room. At least, there’s only one woman in the shot. What is she doing there?

Ruining something, I suppose.

Village Green/Town² Comments

*You can see the photo here. Not necessarily recommending the article. Just wanted to find a quick link.

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