HuffPo’s “Sad, Shocking Truth”: Don’t Believe What You Read…
September 24, 2009
by Marla Miller
|Marla Miller RN, MSN, writes for MORE.com. She also teaches writing workshops & coaches writers on the road to publication, www.marketingthemuse.com Her email ocwriter@cox.net. The opinions expressed herein are those of the author, and not necessarily those of The New Agenda.
Last week, Arianna Huffington posted a piece inspired by a book newly published by one of her bloggers, Marcus Buckingham; a book whose findings will set us all straight about why women are so flustered even though we’ve accomplished so much.
I write for MORE.com and through that site connected with Amy Siskind who I mentioned this book to. She wasn’t buying his premise. I, on the other hand, thought it had merit. Every woman I know is exhausted, or has been, trying to keep it all juggled.
Today, Mr Buckingham posted another piece about this subject. Between last week’s reading and today, I did a bit of investigating, triggered by Ms. Siskind’s strong reaction. I found out his publisher, a very small one, publishes Christian based books. So I emailed them to ask about Mr. Buckingham’s book. Was it religion based? was my question.
Here is what his Rep said in an email:
Thank you for contacting The Marcus Buckingham Company with your inquiry regarding Marcus’ writing being religious based or not. Your email is truly appreciated. The focus and content of Find Your Strongest Life are the natural progression of Marcus’s work and writing. Because the book touches on the stories of women from many different walks of life, it does include references to religious contexts, but the book is certainly not promoting a particular religious point of view.
In a HuffPo article yesterday, Buckingham’s findings deduce this about men, women and our happiness quotients:
…However, we know what is causing men’s slight increase in happiness and it’s not Feminism. It’s increased prosperity….. This makes women’s decline even more startling. The tide of prosperity should have raised everyone’s spirits, but instead, women’s have gradually sunk lower…
Mr. Buckingham, with all due respect, DATA collection and DATA interpretation are two different kettles of fish. Men aren’t happier because of feminism? REALLY? How ‘bout their wives are busting butt outside the home to bring MORE bacon home so they can fry it up for hubby- who ain’t working so hard (and thereby prospering more) – now that wifey is doing double duty that includes cleaning the pan of bacon grease hubby (probably) wouldn’t know what to do with except pour down the drain & clog it which wifey will have to call RotoRooter to repair before she goes to work the next day…
How ‘bout THAT interpretation of the data?
I’m suspicious of this researcher’s motivation and the catch 22 for me is by writing about it, I might be helping him sell more books.
The truth is that people will believe what they want, and your article won’t affect that, so don’t worry about it. Women who are so insecure that they are giving in, lowering their expectations, and settling will do it with any justification. Any “data” or “study” at all will be used to rationalize it. Women who don’t want to settle or give in won’t do so. Don’t worry about it.
But most times — and more and more frequently lately — I really do think that most women wish feminism had never happened, because it interferes with their ability to catch a man. Sure, they’ll regret it later in life, but they aren’t thinking that far ahead. Right now, all they know is that they can’t get laid without dropping their standards into the basement, and feminism woke them up just barely enough that they feel subconsciously guilty about doing it.
Men? They couldn’t care less. As long as they’re getting laid at all, they’re happy. They don’t care one way or another about this nonsense.
“However we know what’s causing men’s slightly increased happiness…”
Really? We KNOW it? Prosperity – in this economy? I’m guessing Mr. Buckingham has the requisite credentials to perform this “study”, but as a former engineer, I’ve seen too many cases where data analysis proved the bias of the researcher instead of uncovering a truth.
If men’s and women’s happiness levels are significantly diverging, I’d suggest that there are an infinite number of factors and combinations of factors that would need to be considered before we “knew” any single reason. Prosperity may make us happy, but not if it comes at the cost of our intimate relationships. Feminism may have gained us some rights to the same pay for the same job, but many highly paid women still come home every night to fix dinner, help with the homework, either clean the house or hire the housecleaner, etc. More men are stepping forward to take their share of these tasks, but you still see an eyebrow raised when a man says he’s a stay-at-home dad.
The book, ultimately, sounds like the study was too simple to be taken seriously. It has a bigger platform than it deserves.
Gayle Carline
http://gaylecarline.blogspot.com
AS LONG AS THE AUTHOR DOES NOT MENTION THAT HUFFPO WAS THE LEADING ASSAULTER AGAINST HILLARY CLINTON in the 2008 DEMOCRATIC CONTEST, Huff PO may promote them, that is the rule they follow.
Click below if you want to see what I uncovered about how HUFFPO covered Hillary Clinton during the 2008 democratic nomination process.
http://alessandromachi.blogspo.....llary.html
Please understand, I don’t have the luxury of being paid for my research time. So the time I put into this article netted me ZERO DOLLARS. Imagine what I could have come up with if I had been paid to find ALL the STUFF that HuffPO used to spit on Hillary Clinton’s campaign last year, it might have expanded the article by 10 to 20 times worth of stuff.
What we have emerging are media bubbleheads that are trying to pretend they did not assist Barack Obama in getting elected even though they did. The list includes Jon Stewart, Huffington Post, and probably a few others I do not know about, but the list will probably grow over time.
Gayle, I agree. Men are happier and women less so because it’s a direct transfer-of-happiness from one to the other. They do about the same as they always did, and we do more.
The solution to a lot of idiots is for us to just give up all that financial independence adn fulfilling career nonsense and wipe (our husbands’) butts for the rest of our lives. Heaven forfend the solution be demanding that men … well, man the hell up and pitch in for real.
But I have to say that I’ve seen what happens when women do that. They get nothing. For me, it’s not a problem since I don’t want kids and am happiest by myself, but I’ve seen a lot of my female friends slowly dropping their standards into the toilet during their 30s until I hear them saying things like, he made eye contact with me without vomiting, so CLEARLY he supports older women’s sexuality! He uses string bags in the supermarket, so he’s singlehandedly saving the earth! If he only al ittle bit of an asshole, then that’s a godo thing, right? Right?
*headdesk*
Women must demand that men be more, but that means they also have to be prepared to have their bluff called.
Good point Alessandro. And not only Hillary – equally bad with Palin.
I wrote a piece with a simple premise for HuffPo that sexism against conservative women is still sexism and received over 1000 comments. Almost all vitriol.
I think a reason for men’s increased happiness is increased acceptance of outward expressions of misogyny. Men have never been happy, because they are men, but they can increase their happiness by making women uncomfortable miserable or anywhere on the uncomfortable-miserable quotient.
Amy, everybody — liberal or conservative — seems to need to believe that Some Chicks Ask For It. How they ask and what “it” consists of may change, but the end result is the same: they have to find out whot he victim was before they can say whether the sexism was wrong.
The perpetrator doesn’t even exist in their world. Rape just falls from the sky and smites the unworthy, “the media” attacks women because it’s “the media.”
No one will shoot the rabid dog. They just cheer it on when it savages someone they dislike, and whine when it bites them. Mostly because they’ve resigned themselves to someday marrying or giving birth to one of those rabid dogs.
This no doubt is inappropriate, but perhaps appropriately cynical. It may be as simple as the introduction of these Erection drugs that the Health Insurance companies pay for. Maybe some guys are getting up to 4 hours of personal pleasure while they are ‘home alone’ waiting for their wife to bring home the bacon.
PS – should any change in Health Care policy make these Erection drugs the responsibility of the individual rather than the group?
Well the fact that men write in erection drugs into Insurance policies and not abortions is salient. There is something to be said also about these books that men, or women, right. I mean, I think I would first examine the statistical evidence behind the “happiness quotient” and then the reasons attributed to it. Because people have been trying to blame feminism, because it just takes us away from our natural happy places, when they should be blaming men, and misogyny. That’s the obvious reason for women’s unhappiness, is that they are getting paid less than men, working harder than men, and subjected to all kinds of expectations that require massive financial output that they just do not have. And then blames them for being poor.
Blaming misogyny would be like acknowledging that sexism comes about due to people’s active choices to be sexist. That’s in direct contradiction to the “rape is like the weather” attitude that you find all over the place nowdays, including among most so-called feminists. Rape and sexism are like random lightning strikes that we can pray to smite Chicks Who Ask For It.
Saying that rape and sexism come about because men (and women) actively choose to do it requires a shift in their worldview that they are simply not able or willing to make. I’m probably revealing more than I should about my own circle of acquaintances, but from what I’ve seen, most women in my age cohort are like, “Hold men responsible for their actions and stop cutting them constant slack?! Then, I’ll NEVER find a husband!” *eyeroll*
There are all kinds of people with all kinds of ulterior motives on all sides of this issue. I can only speak for myself. I am very unhappy. I’m unhappy because although I’m freer to pursue a career, the personal thing between women and men is not much better. I don’t have more housework because I don’t have a man but I’ve been doing everything myself for almost thirty years. I think we need more diversity in Feminism so we can raise more diverse issues, such as communication between the sexes. Feminism has helped me in some ways and hurt me in others. I do surveys for a living and I know that most of these “studies” are bogus. I want a better, more balanced life for my daughter and my nieces and nephews. I want them to be able to rely on their spouses and share things. I want them to understand that women and men are people. Their children will grow up to be women and men. We need to make progress in this area for everyone’s sake.
I’m very happy. That is because I do what feels right for me rather than follow “the way” prescribed by anyone, which requires frequent life and self evaluation. There is no magic recipe for happiness which you can find or follow. As far as demanding that men or anyone live up to your expectations so that you can be happy, well that is very controlling. You can only control your own behavior. Maybe you would be happier if you gave up on trying to create your vision of utopia by controlling others. Your happiness should not depend on someone else acting a certain way. But then there are some people who like the rush they get from negative emotions. You know that old song “Is that all there is?”, well yeah this is all there is and then your dead, so find a way to enjoy it.
Regarding the treatment of Hillary and Palin by Huff Puff and the Democrat party. Yes you saw it and it was blatant and disgusting. Even the women from those two groups wear their misogyny like a badge of pride. So expect it next time, don’t act shocked. These liberal blow-hards have exposed themselves for the misogynist they truly are. There was no mistake and there is no excuse. Open your eyes, see it and expect it next time and every time, Plan for liberal misogyny because it is a constant.
“As far as demanding that men or anyone live up to your expectations so that you can be happy, well that is very controlling. You can only control your own behavior. Maybe you would be happier if you gave up on trying to create your vision of utopia by controlling others. Your happiness should not depend on someone else acting a certain way.” -BES
That is a very powerful statement. I believe there are some nuances that contradict the above rather solid philosophy, and those nuances relate to how well you know the person, and how much time has been invested in the relationship with them.
Can the above rule actually apply equally to family, friends, lovers, business partners and strangers?
The study mentioned in the Huffington Post article is primarily an analysis of the General Social Survey for the past 35 years:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/.....90021.html
It’s a sexist analysis because it does not mention that other factors than feminism have caused gigantic changes in women’s lives. It presumes that if women are less happy, that the only possible reason would be feminism when everyone knows that women’s lives have changed enormously in the past 35 years due to non-feminist causes such as dramatic technological advances. The analysis is called The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness:
http://bpp.wharton.upenn.edu/b.....piness.pdf
The main study in the analysis is the General Social Survey (GSS) from the U.S. from 1972 to 2006. The GSS found that in the early 70’s women are 4% more likely to report that they are very happy than men and by 2006 women are 1 percentage point less likely to report being very happy. So it’s a tiny change but the male-dominated press is making a big deal about it. I’ve read about this analysis three times so far in the New York Times.
Studies show that participants often don’t tell the truth when they’re answering survey questions. It could be that the tiny “decrease” in happiness is because feminism has made women more comfortable about saying they’re not happy, so women could actually be happier now than in the 70’s but the study shows less happiness because the 70’s statistics were skewed due to women inflating their real happiness when answering questions.
U.S. women are taught to act a lot more happy and friendly than men. Happiness has been feminized so much that a homosexual man is considered “gay.” The word gay actually started when socialite Isabella Stewart Gardner was observed frequently socializing with homosexual men who acted very happy all the time. So the men began being referred to as Gardner’s gay (happy) friends, then the word gay started to be used to refer to all homosexual men. Evidence that women are socialized to act happy and men are socialized to act serious is that women smile a lot more often than men in public but when they’re alone they smile much less indicating they really aren’t that happy but were pretending:
http://www.post-gazette.com/he.....smile3.asp
Because gender boundaries are breaking down there is less pressure for women to act traditionally feminine, so logically there’s less pressure for women to act smily happy. Based on overwhelming evidence, women have deeper emotions than men and strong emotions tend to make people more serious. In the past when women answered the happiness question they probably felt a lot of pressure to say they were happier then they really were because happiness is a traditionally feminine quality and the opposite was true of men. Now that there’s less pressure to conform to traditional gender stereotypes I guess women feel more comfortable admitting their true feelings and are less likely to say they’re happy when they don’t really feel that way. Feminism, in some ways, has made women more honest and it could be that that is why there is a slight decrease in women’s reported happiness. Likewise, men feel less embarrassed or “gay” to admit when they’re happy which would increase men’s happiness rating.
Even if the tiny difference in happiness were true, it’s sexist to assume feminism caused it when there are a lot of other factors that have changed in society that affect women differently than men. For example, during the past 35 years there has been a dramatic increase in pornography which studies prove increases sexual abuse and most victims of sexual abuse are women and girls. Obviously, being a victim of sexual abuse decreases a woman’s happiness. Also, more men are turning away from relationship with women in favor of pornography so pornography has greatly damaged women’s lives.
Furthermore, religious people tend to be much happier than non-religious people. Arthur Brooks of Syracuse University wrote a book called Gross National Happiness where he documents evidence that having religious beliefs greatly increase happiness regardless of whether the person is liberal or conservative.
http://www.usnews.com/articles.....erals.html
Brain studies show religious people are less anxious:
http://www.newscientist.com/ar.....shows.html
For the past seven decades Gallup polls have consistently found that women are more religious than men, thus a decline in religious faith would affect women worse than men.
http://www.livescience.com/cul.....women.html
Religious faith has been declining dramatically in the U.S. The percentage of people who do not claim a religious identity almost doubled since 1990 and is now15%.
http://articles.latimes.com/20.....religion10
Thus, since religion has been much more important to women than men over the past 35 years, the huge national decline in religious belief means fewer girls are growing up to be religious women. That means fewer women are benefiting from the joy and peace religion offers.
The GSS analysis that points to feminism as the cause of women’s alleged loss of happiness is looking at the wrong place. There are a lot of other factors that have caused huge changes in women’s lives such as the loss of religion, technology changing our relationships, globalization changing our view of the world, etc. Feminism is a good force that transforms hate into love. If women are slightly less happy now that happened despite feminism, not because of it. Sexist researchers want to scapegoat feminism when they should look at the factual evidence of what causes unhappiness in women’s lives, which is what feminists have been doing all along: looking at what harms women and girls and ending the badness in order to make us happier.
Nancy,
Would you consider submitting a blog piece on what you wrote above? I think it would be great!
I think Gayle hit upon a couple of key problems with Buckingham’s baseless assertions, the first being that they are baseless. I strongly suspect as Gayle does that he has no data supporting his assertion that men’s increased happiness is due solely to ‘increased prosperity’. Everyday examples contradicting this assertion are rife among us, namely divorced men with an instantaneous increased prosperity quotient brought about by a sudden decreased prosperity quotient of their former spouse and dependent children. I don’t know about you, but when I’ve seen these guys they don’t seem all that happy. Also Buckingham’s assertion that feminism doesn’t make men happier is disputed by a couple of other men who do have data, namely Terrence Real who’s written sort of a feminist-minded marriage counseling handbook, and Robert Jensen, who’s made the claim that feminism is a gift to men who are smart of enough to accept it. But enough about what the guys think, we hear about that all the time which is a big part of the problem.
Another of Gayle’s statements jumped out at me:
“Prosperity may make us happy, but not if it comes at the cost of our intimate relationships.”
I read Buckingham’s first article at HuffnPuff and immediately saw a problem with his happiness metric. He’s basically gauging happiness in financial terms and whether someone is married. While this may work for many guys, as Gayle alludes, many married women doing fine financially are basically doing it all and have no life of their own. Women and men don’t necessarily value the same things. I remember reading a gender differences study long ago where 6-year-old children were playing a game with pennies as the reward, and it was amazing to me how early you can see boy-girl value systems emerge and diverge. The girls were happy once they’d gotten a certain pre-determined number of pennies regardless of what anyone else had, while the boys weren’t happy unless they had more pennies than anyone else. This has some rather unpleasant implications, and we see the evidence of it everyday where everyone else has to pay for ‘happiness’ brought about by total and complete domination. This occurs on the personal level in relationships where one or more parties confuse domination with love; other studies have found that happy relationships involve some degree of acceptance of feminism, while failed and unhappy relationships involved unhealthy hierarchies. Silly domination games also play out in the public sphere in the form of unbridled greed in the financial sector and an imperialist foreign policy where everyone else has to be under our thumbs. Some people just aren’t happy to have domineering thumbs in their pie. Go figure.
Another rather easily explained phenomena is Buckingham’s mysterious decreasing happiness quotient with age for women. Also as Gayle alludes, there are probably many factors at play there including one that Buckingham touches on, the value (patriarchal) society places on youth and looks disadvantages women, but rather unsurprisingly, doesn’t present much of a problem for men. Much bigger, I think, is the garden variety Thwarted Potential of women. We start out ready to take on the world when we’re young, even if we do realize the world’s not our oyster, but as we come up against those glass ceilings and are stopped short by being ignored, silenced, passed over, and maybe even finally being dealt out of the game altogether, there’s bound to be unhappiness. Any person who has the potential to do much more than they are, and is stopped by games rigged against them is going to be unhappy, and they aren’t the only ones to suffer – everyone loses due to that Thwarted Potential. Many women come to realize at some age, maybe by 40 or so, that ‘This is all there is, but there could’ve been so much more … if only’. It’s time to take on that ‘if only’ part, because happiness lies in that general direction.
Amy, I will send a revised copy of my post via e-mail. I had wanted to write about the GSS study analysis for a long time but had never gotten around to it. Thanks for publishing the reference to the analysis from the Huffington Post article! I was able to quickly gather a lot of data yesterday to provide enough evidence to prove the Stevenson and Wolfer analysis of the GSS data is sexist and based on faulty reasoning.
Great comments here – very thoughtful.
Nancy – that would be great!
And other commenters -feel free to submit as well to our blog – email address is under “About Us”, “Contact Us”
Thanks all!
[...] “Sad, Shocking Truth” series featuring a man telling us what ails women. Infuriating! Marla Miller wrote a piece about this for our blog last week, and I understand that Nancy is writing another one [...]
Leave your Response Want an avatar? Get a gravatar!
Community Room
May 8, 2012 at 11:30 am
May 8, 2012 at 9:56 am
May 7, 2012 at 2:04 pm
May 7, 2012 at 1:37 pm
May 7, 2012 at 1:19 pm
April 20, 2012 at 12:57 pm
April 11, 2012 at 4:39 pm
April 6, 2012 at 1:18 pm
BUILD your NETWORK
Our Network of College Women
Protecting our Teenage Girls
We’re in the Media »
Click to see our latest stories in the media
More Stories »Recent Comments
The Latest from our Blog
Archives
Pioneer Mentors
Blogroll
Find us Online
Subscribe Entries (RSS) | Comments (RSS)
The New Agenda is a 501(c)(4) organization dedicated to improving the lives of women and girls by bringing about systemic change in the media, at the workplace, at school and at home. More...