The Daily Princetonian
Friday april 5, 2012
Take it or leave it By Lolita Buckner Inniss ’83 S’83 P’09
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s a woman who attended Princeton and who holds deeply feminist views (and who, full disclosure, has been married for 30 years to the man she dated since freshman week), I have to say that while I disagree with most of Patton’s assertions, I don’t find them especially offensive. After all, women can take Patton’s advice or leave it. While Patton’s tone does seem overwrought and off key in several respects, I don’t find her message much different from any other piece of alumni advice. In fact, I find myself uneasier with the assumption by some women that Patton’s point of view is one that should be suppressed. I don’t agree with much of what Patton says. But neither do I think that Patton’s view should be silenced. Haven’t men told women to shut up long enough without women telling each other (for it is mostly women doing the silencing) to shut up? I for one think Patton ought to speak louder and longer to her points. If she did, we might engender fuller and more constructive engagement on the issue of women’s family lives. I am especially uneasy with the class and race privilege evidenced in the outraged responses to Patton’s letter. There seems to be at work here an implicit understanding that elite college women who look for early marriage with classmates (or perhaps for any marriage at all) are turning their backs on stellar opportunities or are being untrue to bedrock feminist principles such as autonomy or equality. This is problematic because although women come in all stripes, too often norms of feminism are shaped by the elite few. Feminism has been and continues to be the province of the wealthy, the white and the well-connected. Many of these women want to have it all or want a larger piece of the pie. Other women might be content to get any of it at all or might be content with some
of the crumbs from the pie much less a piece of it. It is difficult to frame a broad-based emancipatory feminist program in the face of such starkly contrasting metaphors for female success. The contrast may be especially bleak when comparing wealthy, white women to black women from poor and working class backgrounds. In the con-
“Only with this sort of honest acknowledgement of the conditions facing some women can we achieve significant change for all women.” text of marriage, some wealthy white women, for instance, may be far more likely to have access to well-paying jobs or other resources that obviate the need for a spouse’s financial support. Moreover, given a higher rate of placement in elite firms and more frequent residence in upscale neighborhoods, wealthy white women who do choose to marry may have far more opportunity to find a like-minded mate at places outside of the elite colleges or universities that they may have attended. For poor or working class black women and for some other women of color, there is often less available in the way of career or spousal choice. Even equipped with an elite college degree, highly educated black women from poor or working class backgrounds often earn less than their white, wealthy counterparts, making it harder for them to support themselves
alone. Highly educated black women from poor or working class backgrounds are also less likely than their wealthy white peers to live and work in settings where there are large numbers of people who share their interests or values. Yes, it may be possible to find a suitable mate in other settings. I’ll call such mates diamonds in the rough. Then again, it may not be possible. There are far more rocks in the world than diamonds in the rough. While solid and dependable, a rock is, well, just a rock. This is not to say that elite colleges and universities are brimming over with cut and polished diamonds in the form of highly suitable mates. But I think some of us protest entirely too much when we eschew the seeming elitism of remarks such as Patton’s “you will never again have this concentration of men who are worthy of you.” Certainly I’d adjust that statement to read men or women; heteronormativity is its own form of tyranny. And maybe Patton’s statement it is a bit too emphatic; never is a long time, after all. But the fact is, even if adopting the most antielitist stance possible, a lot of us do think this way. We just don’t like to say it and if anyone else says it we cry foul. Does this mean that I would give my daughter the advice that Patton is proposing? Absolutely not. If my daughter is lucky enough to attend Princeton or a school like it, I want her to view her college years as a momentous first step in a life full of grand possibilities of all sorts. Marriage may or may not be one of them. But, I would also make sure that my daughter understands that for some women, well educated or not, choices and opportunities, if they exist at all, may be narrower and more constrained. Only with this sort of honest acknowledgement of the conditions facing some women can we achieve significant change for all women. Lolita Buckner Inniss ’83 S’83 P’09
Beyond Princeton By Kunle Demuren class of 2011
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y issues with the letter by Susan Patton ’77 published in this paper last Friday would fill up many pages, but for this response, I will focus on just a few. An integral part of the foundation that Ms. Patton’s piece rests on (well, besides sexism) is that once her theoretical Princetonian daughters leave the Orange Bubble, they won’t meet very many “intellectual equals”. This very sentiment is the kind of breathtaking arrogance that gives Princetonians a bad name. This attitude is a throwback to an era in which Princeton was a place only for the longestablished “elite,” so I found it extremely disappointing that an alumna who seems to be heavily involved in the University as it is today indulged in this view. This is not to say that Princeton is not a place for the elite anymore, but that elite status is ostensibly based on some merit beyond who one’s parents are. I would not claim that the University has come as far as it should in that regard, but I believe that it is well on its way.
Even if we accept that Princeton is the right kind of elite place, we should not labor under the assumption that it would be that way regardless, simply from the virtue of having been around a very long time. During my four years at Old Nassau, I met some of the most brilliant and erudite people that I have ever known, then or since. (I also saw some of those same people do some really stupid things.) However, I also know plenty of incredibly smart people who didn’t go to Princeton, or even to any school of that reputation. It should never be taken as automatic that a Princetonian is incredibly intelligent; such an assumption demeans the huge intellectual effort that we put in while at Princeton to become better thinkers. It requires agency on our part to take the chance of a Princeton education and make it mean something. There are plenty of men and women in this world who are just as bright and intelligent as any Princeton student, and even others who are brilliant in ways that many Princeton students aren’t. Some of those people went to institutions with the prestige of a Princeton, some went to institutions with far less. Regardless, they do not deserve our scorn
just because they didn’t get the chance that we got. Whether we are evaluating someone’s dating or marriage potential, or merely interacting with him or her socially or in the workplace, a choice they made (or didn’t or couldn’t make) as teenagers shouldn’t change how we perceive them. Ms. Patton may not have intended to condescend to those who graduated from (or didn’t graduate from) “lesser” institutions, but her tone and assumptions do not really allow us to give her the benefit of the doubt. I was only able to go to Princeton as a 17-year-old because the University offered me a substantial financial aid package. I am immensely grateful for that opportunity, and I am almost always immensely proud to be associated with such an institution. However, if the calculators had spit out different numbers, I could easily have attended a university of less prestige. If I had, I would hope that if I had met Ms. Patton’s theoretical Princetonian daughter, she would look beyond credentials on my resume to form an impression of me. Kunle Demuren ’11
What I would say to the young women of Princeton By Priscilla Smart Schwarzenbach class of 1977
(Or any institution of higher education, for that matter ... and precisely what I said to my daughter as she headed off to college — not Princeton) Go off to college determined to get the best darn education you can. Take advantage of the great professors, get a taste of academic disciplines that are new to you, seek out interesting/diverse classmates, play a sport or an instrument, join a club or two and study what you love. Make the most of your time there and allow yourself to evolve. I would bet many of us wish we had done more. Most parents I know are not sending their daughters to college to find a husband. However, if along the way, you happen to meet someone and fall in love (be they your intellectual equal or not), lucky
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you. But I would caution you not to get married too quickly. Your education is far from over upon graduation. Particularly for a young woman, it is very important to know you can handle the world on your own. Given the marital statistics, who knows what’s to come. I venture to guess that the divorce rate for Princeton marriages is no better than the national average. If you don’t happen to meet “the one” while an undergrad, please don’t despair. Most of us didn’t. If marriage and family are important to you (as they are to me), remember that the world is full of smart, eligible people. You are no doubt welleducated, ambitious and bound to end up in a milieu where you will meet like-minded people. I certainly wouldn’t spend my precious four years at any university/college worrying about that. Priscilla Smart Schwarzenbach ’77
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Advice for the young women of Princeton (and colleges everywhere): By Helen Coster class of 1998
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s a princeton woman who’s been out of school for 15 years, I offer my own experience—and the experience of almost all of my female friends — as an argument for why you should ignore Susan Patton’s advice. At Princeton I spent four years taking classes I loved, juggling 10,000 activities and spending time with friends. I would have liked to have a serious boyfriend, I guess, but I didn’t. A few of my friends married men they met in college. But most, like me, graduated and went out into the world without a wingman. It was hard — sometimes excruciatingly so. I spent my 20s paying my dues in my profession, working long hours while attempting to meet someone. I went on a lot of bad dates, and at times, I envied my friends who didn’t have to navigate adulthood alone. I also had adventures. I climbed Mount Kilimanjaro, learned Spanish and backpacked through Alaska. I rose through the ranks in my career. Every man I dated for any
length of time loved the fact that I worked hard, that I had ambition, that I was curious about the world. They possessed those qualities, too.
“Don’t focus on finding a husband in college. Focus on doing the things you love.” (To Ms. Patton’s point: Yes, some men are attracted to women who are less intelligent than they are. But that’s not a reason to spend college hunting for a husband.) When I was 32, a friend from work set me up with a kind, handsome guy. (He went to Brown, and is super smart, but I don’t automatically correlate intelligence with an Ivy League degree. Smart people are everywhere, and from everywhere. I know you know that.) We got married last summer — almost
15 years after I walked out of FitzRandolph Gate. By the time I met the man who would become my husband, I had grown up, and was well on the way to becoming the person I wanted to be. I had kissed enough frogs to know a prince when I saw one. So here’s my advice, for what it’s worth: Don’t focus on finding a husband in college. Focus on doing the things that you love, and being with people you love. Cultivate your intellectual passion, your extracurricular pursuits, your friendships. When you graduate, pursue a career that excites you. Take risks. Travel. Live the rich, full life of your choosing. What I find most insidious about Ms. Patton’s letter is her belief that her sons have more and better marriage options than you do; that their intelligence is a virtue, while yours is a liability. Don’t believe this for a second. Don’t be scared off by people who tell you that smart women can’t find husbands. The smart guys — the right guys — will be out there looking for you. Helen Coster ’98
Baseless assertions By H. Carol Bernstein P’16 class of 2016 parent
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s an advanced-degreed executive officer of a publicly-traded technology company who has 28 years of experience in both for profit and academic institutions focused on science and technology (and Princeton parent of a male student), Susan Patton’s March 30, 2013 Letter to the Editor appears wholly inconsistent with my personal experience as a wife, mother, friend and professional, as well as mentor and sponsor to various men and women throughout my career and 20-plus-year marriage. Moreover, her regressive beliefs, which appear to be based on little more than her own unhappy circumstances, detract from the important responsibilities those of us who are more senior in our careers and lives have to those younger men and women in our personal and professional communities of various academic and socioeconomic backgrounds who look to us for some guidance, assistance and example with regard to career development, “balance”, leadership and social responsibility.
Compatibility and success — whether in the personal or professional realm — are borne of many things but generally arise from and are sustained by common values; superficial measures such as equating mutual attendance at certain academic institutions with a priori “intellectual equality”, or other of the snobbish inanities proffered by Patton, serve as false proxies for them. Furthermore, Patton’s baseless assertions regarding the issues with which current college and newly post-college age women and men are supposedly concerned, and ignorance of the broad dissemination and availability of, and discussion related to, information regarding such issues (including the active debates of the past year alone engendered by thoughtful views of various individuals such as Anne-Marie Slaughter and Sheryl Sandberg like the very one in which Patton “participated”), make me question her supposed qualifications as a “human resources consultant and executive coach”, or at least why any entity or individual who has read her letter would ever consider hiring her for anything even remotely related thereto. H. Carol Bernstein P ’16
Marry her! By April Allison professor of comparative literature
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arry her!
Susan Patton’s letter of March 31 reminds me of a piece that preceded AnneMarie Slaughter’s in The Atlantic by a few years: “Marry Him! The case for settling for Mr. Good Enough,” by Lori Gottlieb. After becoming a single mother after age 40, Gottlieb realized she still wasn’t quite living the dream: “The dream, like that of our mothers and their mothers from time immemorial, was to fall in love, get married, and live happily ever after. Of course, we’d be loath to admit it in this day and age, but ask any soul-baring 40-year-old single heterosexual woman what she most longs for in life, and she probably won’t tell you it’s a better career or a smaller waistline or a bigger apartment. Most likely, she’ll say that what she really wants is a husband (and, by extension, a child).” At least Ms. Gottlieb does hint at an awareness that not all women are heterosexual, even though she doesn’t seem to acknowledge the existence of heterosexual women who don’t dream of marriage and children (or that lesbians might cherish that dream!). Her advice resonates strongly with Ms. Patton’s: addressing women who are already in the sad predicament Ms. Patton dreads for our female students after graduation from college and are no longer surrounded by “men worthy of them,” Gottlieb doesn’t mince words either. “My ad-
vice is this: Settle! That’s right. Don’t worry about passion or intense connection ... Overlook his halitosis or abysmal sense of aesthetics. Because if you want to have the infrastructure in place to have a family, settling is the way to go.” As a heterosexual woman who put my ambition to earn tenure at Princeton before my desire to have a family — which as a result has not happened — and as a woman who has gone through two husbands and grueling IVF treatments only to find myself now single and childless, neither of which was part of my youthful dreams, I thank Ms. Patton for this chance to address an issue that’s so central to so many women’s lives and can be a source of so much anxiety. I don’t think it’s pure coincidence that Ms. Patton’s piece comes at the same moment when another issue has come to the forefront of public notice, even though neither Patton nor Gottlieb acknowledge the connection: The question of gay marriage and the variety of relationships and families that are possible. The day after Ms. Patton’s letter was published here, the Marietta Daily Journal published the objections to gay marriage of Georgia GOP Chairwoman Sue Everhart, who “warned that straight people might enter into fraudulent gay marriages to obtain benefits” (Huffington Post 4/1/13). Marriage fraud is of course possible regardless of sexual orientation, yet in practice it doesn’t seem to happen much. My modest proposal is to recommend that it happen much more: What a woman who does
want a family really needs is not a husband, but a wife. The last time I was married, my husband and I would both (simultaneously) wander around our house with arms upraised, lamenting, “Where’s the wife? Where’s the wife?” because that’s what we both really needed. My advice to any woman who dreams of a family is this: Do exactly what those men Ms. Patton describes do, the ones who “regularly marry women who are younger, less intelligent, less educated.” As soon as same-sex marriage is the law of the land — or even the law of your state — go out and get yourself a Russian mail-order bride! Any ethnicity will do, of course, and she doesn’t even have to be younger, less intelligent or less educated — just less privileged, and thus ready to cook, clean and mind your children for you, all for a chance at living your American dream. She’ll doubtless be grateful not to have to get “done” doggy-style on top of all that, and thus will be all the more devoted to serving your other needs. If Mr. Right should still happen along, I’m sure he won’t mind the threesome. Of course, if you’re worried she might just be using you for the green card and insist on alimony payments and half of all you’re worth when she runs off with some guy after a few years — you can always just hire a nanny instead. While she’s rocking the cradle, you’ll be free to find a marriage of true minds with whatever sort of person really rocks your boat. April Allison Professor of Comparative Literature
4/4/13 11:36 PM