Rachel Vamenta’s opinion column in the Oct. 11 edition left me reeling. At the end of a well-considered essay, she flippantly added, “We can simply file Susan’s comments under ‘stupid things said by women undergoing
menopause.'”
Ms. Vamenta is right on this point: The comment in question (a slight against the efficacy and validity of a Filipino education) was in poor taste and the product of desperate scriptwriters, hoping for a laugh. Her own comment, however, cannot be categorized as simply the lines of a silly character on a primetime soap. Hers was the commentary of an editor, expressing her real opinion and exposing her very real prejudice.
Reading Ms. Vamenta’s comment, I cannot help but ask if, like the writers of “Desperate Housewives,” she was making a bad-taste effort to be funny or if she really believes that menopausal women are more prone to saying stupid things. In either case, she is reinforcing the cultural misunderstanding that women are slaves to their hormones and therefore lose intelligence, emotional stability or self-control when faced with a hormone storm.
Ms. Vamenta’s remark is reminiscent of the sexism of previous generations. It is one step removed from the old joke, “Q: Why can’t we ever have a female president? A: Because once a month the whole world would tremble, knowing that a woman with PMS also possessed the nuclear codes.” It wasn’t funny then, and it is even less funny now.
What is funny, however, is that Ms. Vamenta got her fact wrong. Susan, the character in question, turned out to be pregnant, not menopausal. This would make the character’s idiotic comment the result of prenatal hormones as opposed to menopausal hormones. That would not, however, change what seems to be Ms. Vamenta’s baseline assumption that women are prone to bouts of idiocy based on hormones. If we accepted that cultural characterization – one sharp spike of estrogen, and there goes that scalpel, gavel or neutron bomb – we must ask ourselves if any woman should, at any time in her life, hold any position of real power.
Thankfully, smart, competent women continue to dispel the myth that women are slaves to their hormones. I would expect that Ms. Vamenta is especially grateful
for this, since her right, as a woman, to attend a public university and to serve as the editor of a student publication is the product of feminist struggles against such notions.
As a nontraditional student, I am also offended by the whiff of ageism I detected in Ms. Vamenta’s commentary.
I am not yet menopausal, but at 38, I am staring down the barrel of my reproductive mortality. I find myself wondering when Ms. Vamenta expects me to begin making stupid comments. Perhaps this next sentence will prove that I have already begun my hormone-induced cognitive decline. Ms. Vamenta, I would like an apology.
-Christine M. Woodman
Opinion editor’s response: Ah, yes. Thank you for your correction regarding Susan’s pregnancy. Perhaps this discovery hadn’t occurred at the time I wrote my original piece, but then again, I don’t keep up with what must be the most female-empowering show on primetime.
However, your first guess about my comment is correct. It was, as you say, “a bad-taste effort to be funny.” You are also correct in thinking that I simply might have replaced my “menopause” sentiment with “prenatal.”
Hormones or no, women will say stupid things. I know I do. And like it or not, there will always be jokes about hormone-induced irrationality. We can’t run away from those jokes, no matter how much we think society has progressed. We might as well beat men to the punchline. (Besides, don’t men have their own problems, too?)
I have no reason to believe that the residents of Wisteria Lane embody smart, competent women. So I am sorry, Christine, if you misinterpreted my comment. I am also deeply sorry that America has such poor taste in TV programs. I honestly don’t know how I sleep at night.