Feminist Outrage? Try a Shrug of Resignation

Maureen Dowd: American women conditioned to 'assume the worst'
By John Johnson,  Newser Staff
Posted Jun 8, 2011 12:36 PM CDT
Feminist Outrage? Try a Shrug of Resignation
This undated photo taken from the website BigGovernment.com shows Rep. Anthony Weiner.   (AP Photo/BigGovernment.com)

Bonjour, American women. You have "traded places with France" when it comes to attitudes about the not-so-noble pursuits of men, writes Maureen Dowd in the New York Times. Consider that after the DSK scandal broke, "a spirited feminism" emerged in France, with women angrily demanding that the sexism there must stop. Contrast that with the lack of "feminist umbrage" in this country over the "creepy and compulsive" behavior of Anthony Weiner. It's not just because he's a liberal, it's that "women have been conditioned by now to assume the worst," writes Dowd.

"In five decades, we’ve moved from the pre-feminist mantra about the sexual peccadilloes of married men—Boys will be boys—to post-feminist resignation: Men are dogs." Given how many women seem willing to indulge them, it seems futile for feminists to argue that women are being objectified. "Now we’re the world-weary ones," writes Dowd, "with little energy to try to reform relations between the sexes: Is there any point, really, in trying to fix men?" (More Anthony Weiner stories.)

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