Ah, The Book Review Strikes Again

by tristero

Recently, the NY Times Book Review’s been bending over backwards to find good things to say about “intelligent design” creationism, and assigning an intellectual lightweight to misread and review Daniel Dennett. Here’s their latest attempt to solidify their reputation for blithering stupidity bordering on functional illiteracy. It’s Pamela Paul’s review of a collection of essays by Caitlin Flanagan on housewifery et, al (accompanied by a scrumptious picture of a 50’s American housewife holding a freshly-baked cake. )

Flanagan is one of them anti-feminist types, apparently. And the reviewer wants us to know that she, too, has contempt for all those foolish feminist excesses. Unfortunately, well… in the spirit of the 50’s, let’s make it a quiz, boys and girls!

Can YOU spot the fundamental error of logic in the reviewer’s – and Flanagan’s – reasoning in the excerpt below?

As it stands, sensitivities are so attuned to the slightest insult of any one of women’s myriad work-life choices that Flanagan’s simplest observations — for example, when a woman works something is lost — are taken as an indictment of working women. Yet any working mother can see the truth in such a statement: time spent working = less time with children = something lost. What’s appalling is that pointing this out raises such ire.

Sigh. I suppose it is too much to ask an editor to catch something like this. But really, there are people who can give Flanagan a fair review who are smart enough to avoid perpetuating her sloppy thinking. And yes, it’s true that, considering the United States has a rogue executive branch that is in the early stages of what very well may escalate into nuclear war – and very few in the msm are willing to say it out loud – this is thoroughly trivial.

But this failure to understand basic logic in an influential literary publication points, and starkly, to a public intellectual culture that is profoundly empty of serious thought and discussion. A public culture in which serious thought and discussion really has to fight to get heard through muddle-headed thinking like Paul’s and Flanagan’s (Not their subject, duh. Their reasoning about the subject. Duh.). No wonder no one’s discussing the imminence of a possible nuclear attack on Iran in the msm. They don’t have the tools to comprehend it.

ANSWER: I found the “work vs baby-rearing” construction a classic false dichotomy, especially as framed here by Flanagan and Paul. The way they put it, *any* time away from baby could be construed as a loss – talking on the phone, eating lunch, going to the bathroom – all of these are losses to the mother/baby relationship; work is simply more loss. This strikes me as ipso facto a ludicrously crude position, and indefensible. Is part-time work less loss but still unacceptable? How about an hour a day? The false dichotomy becomes even more apparent if one considers mothers beyond Flanagan’s and Paul’s personal cohort of white, middle-to-upper-middle-class women. Which is not to say that there is even much truth to such a dichotomy within their own cohort.

This leads us to the question, “Why construct such a dichotomy in the first place?” And there are very few answers that don’t revolve around making women feel guilty for abandoning their children for the hedonistic pleasure of being underpaid in the workforce. Thus, the structure of this false dichotomy is, by its very nature, sexist and oppressive.

I hasten to add that I don’t know much feminist theory – since I agree with feminism, I would prefer to spend my time trying to understand things I have trouble agreeing with, or can never agree with – and so have no idea if any feminist has actually made this argument. It simply seems like common-sense to me.

Some commentators noticed that Paul makes a telling unconscious error, conflating “mothers” with “women.” Indeed, that is the hidden assumption that lies behind the urge to advance this kind of false dichotomy.

Please note: I am not saying there are not very legitimate issues surrounding the issues of child-rearing and employment outside the house for mothers (and to a lesser extent, fathers). Of course there are, and they need to be discussed openly and with good faith all around. What I’m saying is that by framing these issues as a simplistic false dichotomy, Flanagan and Paul are indulging, whether they are aware of it or not, in a very nasty kind of guilt-tripping. It is not appalling to object to this worthless style of argumentation. Rather, it is moral as it is the first step towards finding a legitimate discourse that does not take as a given that women should feel guilty about the choices they make.