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Thursday, March 28
The Indiana Daily Student

national

Fox's Venker is deluded

Fox News has done it again.

Suzanne Venker recently published a cheeky column on the Fox News website to promote her novel “How to Choose a Husband (And Make Peace with Marriage).” It’s reductive, rude and going viral. Venker wants the world to know she is a woman who is not a feminist. That’s like being a gay Republican: just confused.

Her point is based in research that says in the past 15 years, there has been a 9 percent increase in women ages 18-34 that say a successful marriage is one of the most important things in their lives. But men don’t share the love. There is a 6 percent drop for men with desire to marry.

Why is this a problem?

Because Venker said she thinks women suck. According to the column, the battle of the sexes rages on, but it’s all women’s fault. The column’s title, “The war on men,” basically sums this up for us. Women are apparently angry and defensive, turning men away from them and leading to a lack of marriages.

Venker goes on to explain how the idea of womanhood has changed, and she doesn’t like it. She said “women aren’t women anymore.” This isn’t true because women are still women. Women aren’t pie factories and baby farms anymore. That’s what makes her angry.

Gender has become more of a societal projection than ever. Women are being
women according to 21st century standards. If Venker really believes women aren’t women, then she should be mad at everyone. Most men aren’t being men because they’re not off killing wolves to keep their family safe on the prairie. I’ve never built a log cabin, and I never intend to.

She’s angry at the changes that have been made in the past 50 years, from women as secondary to women as competition. Venker said she believes men don’t want competition, but they want wives, and we should all go back to the days of Stepford.
I’m pretty sure it goes without saying, but don’t turn back time. You might get to marry sooner if you actually “surrender to your femininity,” but you’ll probably be marrying a bad person.

Husbands don’t own wives anymore. It’s simple, and this has been established for a good 30 years. But we still haven’t seen much real change. Venker said she thinks going back on feminism will make marriageable men “come out of the woodwork,” but it will really just make the gross, lazy ones pounce on you.

­— sjostrow@indiana.edu

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