from aftonbladet.se
"Ladies: A word of advice. Marry hot guys or ugly ones. Short ones or tall ones. Blondes or brunettes. Just, whatever you do, don't marry Forbes' Michael Noer. Because he's an idiot."
That's my rewritten lede from his blood-boilingly misogynistic article charmingly titled "Don't Marry Career Women" released yesterday on the web, and thankfully there are already smart, similarly disgusted people on the case like Broadsheet's Lynn Harris, Gawker 's Jess Coen/Alex Balk and Opinionistas' Melissa Lafsky. Good - there are so many things wrong with Noer's flawed, presumptuous, lazy, selectively-sourced article that I need all the help I can get.
Noer opens with this gem: "Recent studies have found professional women are more likely to get divorced, more likely to cheat, less likely to have children, and, if they do have kids, they are more likely to be unhappy about it." Wow! Career women are TROUBLE! (No, really, I'm just quoting: "Marrying these women is asking for trouble.")
Here are some of the gems:
Nowhere does Noer provide corresponding quotes on how likely men are to cheat on their wives, educated and working or docile and homebound, as he clearly seems to prefer; nor does he examine how marital satisfaction correlates with division of household labor (his husband doesn't seem to do any) or how income brackets play into it (i.e. is the idle stay-at-home wife more likely to dabble with Roderigo the poolboy? Or is the rich executive husband more likely to throw down with his secretary? What if they both work and get a nanny? Which one gets to have sex with her? Or him?). Noer backs up his argument by reference to "many social scientists" but he doesn't let us know if many more social scientists have drawn different conclusions from conflicting data, or this data, or more complete data. He's clearly been super-selective (not to mention ultra-glib: "If they quit their jobs and stay home with the kids, they will be unhappy," he sweepingly states, contrary to every NYT article known to man — but meanwhile further down in the article they're even MORE unhappy when theyr'e working and making your life a living hell).
Never mind the selective data, condescending economics lesson and statements like "wives' employment does correlate positively to divorce rates, when the marriage is of 'low marital quality'" which, of course, fails to enumerate the positive correlation or define "low marital quality." Never mind the framing of the information with danger-flagging phrases like "There's more" and the aforementioned "Even your house will be dirtier," as if that's the straw breaking the poor helpless married camel's back. Nevermind, too, the ominous slippery slope of extrapolation: "And if the cheating leads to divorce, you're really in trouble. Divorce has been positively correlated with higher rates of alcoholism, clinical depression and suicide"). The real flaw in this article: It COMPLETELY removes male accountability from the equation.Maybe that's the rub: No smart, educated career woman would be satisfied that kind of passive wimp.
By the way: Everything we said above goes double for the atrocious, vile, appalling accompanying slideshow "In Pictures: Nine Reasons To Steer Clear Of Career Women." Per Gawker: "That stock-photo man at right sure looks sad. If only he'd had the balls to send off for that Ukrainian mail-order bride."
Noer saves his disclaimer for the end: "As with any social scientific study, it's important not to confuse correlation with causation." If this article counts as "scientific study" then Noer counts as marriage material.
Don't Marry Career Women [Forbes]
Shocker: Forbes Recommends Trophy Wives [Gawker]
'Forbes' Writer May Have A Few Issues With Institution Of Marriage [Gawker]
Forbes' Nine Ways To Avoid Becoming a Pathetic Dried-Up Unmarriageable Waste of Humanity [Opinionistas]
Related Disgusting Misogynistic Articles In Forbes By Michael Noer:
The Economics Of Prostitution [Forbes]
