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Non-TH and Commenters shit on women lawyers


Doomed Harlottt

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One reason I love reading the non-Thinking Housewife is that she seems to direct so much of her ire at women who are exactly like me! It's oddly flattering to be considered the embodiment of all that is wrong with our society. Here, I thought I was a responsible, hard working average-jill, but in fact, mwahahahaha, in non-TH's world, I'm bringing down civilization.

Anyway, recently the Housewife's commenters have directed their faux-contempt at women lawyers, a category to which I happen to belong. Apparently:

-- Women are not actually talented at practicing law. We're just good at the busywork that junior associates do. At more advanced (and higher-paying levels), women suck because we are all just good little girls doing what the teacher tells us. We perform poorly in important the advanced taks, like making strategy decisions, or going to war with opposing counsel. These are MAN tasks unsuited for us little girls.

-- And even thought women may be competent JUNIOR lawyers, their presence in the profession detracts from the mentoring the much more deserving MANLY lawyers should be getting. See, apparently, older male lawyers reserve most of their attention for the cute young female associates, with whom they develop Daddy-daughter relationships, while ignoring all the far more worthy young male lawyers. While Daddy and his little girl are fawning all over each other, the male lawyers are ignored and their outstanding professional capacities left to wither, while their morale declines precipitously as well. And the mentoring is wasted on the little-girl-lawyers who are never able to function without Daddy and who drop out of the profession anyway!

No, really, this is what these folks claim to think. Now, part of me is amazed that anyone's perception of the reality of law firm life would be so at odds with reality. But then, upon reflection, I don't think these folks ACTUALLY believe the bullshit they're spewing. They just take a grim pleasure in venting their misogyny; in reality, they simply can't stand the fact that women are fluorishing in large numbers in what used to be viewed as one of the most masculine of professions. Boo-frickin-hoo.

http://www.thinkinghousewife.com/wp/201 ... more-36753

(By the way, it is quite true that the numbers of female litigators in the private sector is disproportionately low, that's obviously attributable to the fact that women still bear the majority of the household and childcare responsibilities, a fact that conflicts with the demands of billable hours in the private sector. It has nothing to do with a lack of competence, but rather a cultural assumption about women's proper role at home. If you look at public sector litigators, the numbers are much closer to proportional representation of the sexes. And, by the way, I am a private sector female litigator/law firm partner. And I have run my own cases and served as sole or lead counsel in my own jury trials for the last 15 years. But I am sure non-TH and commenters would say that I am simply not a "normal" woman.)

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As a young, female lawyer, I basically just have this to say: :angry-screaming: :obscene-birdiered: :angry-screaming:

Give me a bit to grab dinner and get home (I'm reading this while waiting for the train), and I might have something coherent to contribute.

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As another young female lawyer, I would like to add :twisted: :evil: :angry-banghead: :angry-cussing: :angry-screaming: :angry-screaming: :obscene-birdiered::puke-front:

These people have never stepped foot in a real law firm have they? Or have an idea what a lawyer does, junior or senior. I may be a junior lawyer but most of what I do is not busy work. Partners are not going to part with what would otherwise be busy work by paying junior associates, it would be much cheaper to hire more assistants or paralegals. And men get as much mentoring opportunities as women but it is up to the individuals involved in the relationship to make it work and to continue it.

(By the way, it is quite true that the numbers of female litigators in the private sector is disproportionately low, that's obviously attributable to the fact that women still bear the majority of the household and childcare responsibilities, a fact that conflicts with the demands of billable hours in the private sector]

There is more to law than private civil litigation. Women are usually in number equal to the men or more at most law schools. Just give us time to fix those numbers and change the legal profession on our terms. And its just not the female lawyers pushing for work/life balance, the men want better balance too.

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i am not a young female lawyer (yet)! but i will be upon graduating next month so i'll give this one a couple additional angry face!

:angry-screaming: :angry-screaming: :angry-screaming: :angry-screaming:

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Where do these people get their ideas about lawyers from? Television? Jim The Hammer Shapiro law firm advertisements? This is not how my office (A Crown Attorney's office - the equivalent of a District Attorney in the US) works in any way.

I suspect that they are jealous, because I can't imagine how they can hate so much when they are so unclear about the subject matter...

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From one of the responses about how men desperately want to have male mentors...

and eventually [be] handed the reigns
Must be because they're all KINGLY men. Certainly too kingly to worry about pesky little details like the correct use of language. :lol:

Stoopid whiny little boys rarely get ahead, no matter what conditions they work in. They want the truth?? They can't handle the TRUTH - which is that the women getting ahead of them are MORE COMPETENT. Hey, MAYBE the women ARE better at organization and details - that's what a lot/most/nearly all associates are responsible for while they're learning how to be trial lawyers. MAYBE you should SHUT UP and get yourself some manly file folders and little sticky notes and get better at organization. MAYBE if you didn't misplace the crucial transcript notes the day before the meeting with opposing counsel, your senior partner might see you have the determination to do well at EVERY job you're given, instead of only putting out effort on those jobs you think are worthy of your "manliness." MAYBE if you didn't act like you were entitled to be handed full trial responsibility on your first day of work just because you have testes, and INSTEAD set out to learn from the lawyers who've been around the block a few times, they might not think you were a complete asshat and ignore you as much as humanly possible.

But none of that matters, because the idiots responding with their "tales of woe" are so far removed from reality that even if God lit a burning bush in front of them, slapped them in the face, and said "Wise up!," they'd still be whining...People like that just make me all :angry-screaming:

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Where are the law firms where being cute and female will get you ahead in the game? To think I used my intellect instead of my cuteness to get ahead. I must be one of the dumb female she is speaking about. I should have just flirted with Daddy lawyer and wouldn't have had to work so hard.

She obviously knows nothing about the law or how a law firm works. I have met stupid lawyers of both sexes. Having a penis does not equal greatness in the law. If anything, I have found that female attorneys are more likely to close cases faster than their male counterparts and by using less of their client's money. We don't spend time trying to prove who has the biggest d*** by being an ass to opposing counsel.

This idiot obviously doesn't understand that if you can't do the job in law, they will fire you in a second, regardless of gender. Law firms are all about making money. Cute will not get a judge to disregard the law and rule in your favor. I have been a junior associate and a senior associate. Believe me, no one gives me sole responsibility on cases because I am cute and female. I had to work my ass off. I think this woman, and I use the term loosely, is just bothered by women who are smart and self-sufficient. They have opportunities that will never be available to her. They dont have to put up with the crap she does while staying meek and sweet. They can walk away while she is trapped in a cage of her own making.

Maybe she caught some old Ally Mcbeal episodes and thinks that law firms and lawyers are as dysfunctional as they were on the show.

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tth wrote in the comments:

Generally, most people would say women make better restaurant waiters than men, that they are more naturally skilled in that kind of work. Yet, in Italy, waiting tables is a heavily male occupation. Men were once given priority in paid employment and the field evolved with a masculine ethic.

She cannot possibly be for real.

'

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She has no clue on how the real world works. I'm in the business world, but I imagine it isn't all that different in that most people want the most qualified person to do the job. Mi wont lie the good ol' boys club is alive and well, but if you make your superiors look bad you aren't going to survive very long.

My boss is a middle aged male, but I have earned his respect by working my ass off and doing a good job. In turn, he is respectful and if I need mentoring will gladly take time out of his busy schedule to do so. He would treat me the same way if I were male.

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Well, the THH was bashing female doctors a few months ago. I guess it's time to offer the same treatment to female lawyers. Maybe she'll work her way through all the "manly" professions being invaded by underserving females. Poor little man-boys now can't get ahead because those wily females are showing them up with their competency and hard work.

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The Stinking Lousewife and her various ilk seem to hate any woman who works outside the home. One time they'll bash female doctors, and then it's onto female attorneys. Soon they'll be bashing female CEOs. Hey, even a woman who works part-time as a Starbucks barista would probably invite Laura and company's ire.

What is behind all the hatred? I know plenty of women who are homemakers/SAHMs/housewives, and not a single one of them has any white-hot hatred towards women who work outside the home. They realize everyone has different circumstances and makes different decisions.

Yet, Laura and other assorted fundies hatred for working women is off the rails. It's scary. Yet, many of the fundies we discuss here did spend some of their time in the workplace-Laura claims she was a reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer, Kelly C used to be a teacher. They worked, so what's wrong with other women working? What gives? I have a few thoughts, but I was wondering what my fellow Jingerites think.

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The Stinking Lousewife and her various ilk seem to hate any woman who works outside the home. One time they'll bash female doctors, and then it's onto female attorneys. Soon they'll be bashing female CEOs. Hey, even a woman who works part-time as a Starbucks barista would probably invite Laura and company's ire.

What is behind all the hatred? I know plenty of women who are homemakers/SAHMs/housewives, and not a single one of them has any white-hot hatred towards women who work outside the home. They realize everyone has different circumstances and makes different decisions.

Yet, Laura and other assorted fundies hatred for working women is off the rails. It's scary. Yet, many of the fundies we discuss here did spend some of their time in the workplace-Laura claims she was a reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer, Kelly C used to be a teacher. They worked, so what's wrong with other women working? What gives? I have a few thoughts, but I was wondering what my fellow Jingerites think.

I agree the fundie hate for working women is scary but also stupid at the same time. ZsuZsu has bashed working women on her blog, but yet her mother-in-law works as a flight attendant. From what I've read on fundie blogs, is that they view women working as ungodly and " going against a man's authority." Looney Jessica/Latisha said that on her blog. They will bring up Bible verses to try and support their views. I'm not an expert on the Bible, but I have heard that there are no passages that condemn a women for working outside the home. I also recall there being a few women in the Bible who worked outside the home. Some fundie women do acknowledge that sometimes women do need to work in order to support their families. Kim at LIAS said something about that. I had a fundie lite neighbor who worked part time for several years and said that she didn't see anything wrong with a women having full time jobs.

I do laugh a bit at the fundie bloggers who truly believe that women shouldn't be working. There are morons to believe that. If women didn't work in today's world, society would suffer in many ways. There would be doctor, nurse, and lawyer shortages and that wouldn't be good at all. My cousin is lawyer and she has mentioned incidents in which both older men and women have told her that a "being lawyer should be for men."

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I personally suspect that these formerly-working fundie women are jealous. I suspect that they were not particularly good at their work. I suspect that they weren't well liked or were not high achievers. And it's hard to admit that you are the problem. It's easy to say that the system is the problem, and everyone else is doing it wrong.

(I also know it's easy to yell "you're just jealous!" whenever someone disagrees with you... but I can't imagine any other explanation for why someone would get so upset about something that they aren't affected by)

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Young(ish) female lawyer here, who thinks the Stinking Fishwife aka Nonthinking Housewife is full of crap as usual. She seems to think she's smarter than everyone else, including women doctors, pilots, scientists, lawyers, etc. when in fact, she knows nothing but the bitterness of her own shriveled up heart. That gal is so full of projection of her crazy ideas onto every profession that it is fairly ridiculous. She hears (or sees a tv show) about one tiny aspect of a profession, which is not even necessarily accurate. then suddenly she extrapolates her sexist theories

onto that profession and why women are not suited for it.

She was so vile against female pilots a few months ago that even some of her loyal followers were against her. I wondered if she's commented on the white, male pilot who had the huge melt-down over the skies of Amarillo? Was it really a woman's fault after all?

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I personally suspect that these formerly-working fundie women are jealous. I suspect that they were not particularly good at their work. I suspect that they weren't well liked or were not high achievers. And it's hard to admit that you are the problem. It's easy to say that the system is the problem, and everyone else is doing it wrong.

(I also know it's easy to yell "you're just jealous!" whenever someone disagrees with you... but I can't imagine any other explanation for why someone would get so upset about something that they aren't affected by)

ITA. A lot of the fundie SAHMs who converted as adults like to generalize their experiences to ALL women. "I'm so fragile and get tired so easily and am so illogical, that must mean that ALL women are like this and none of us should work." Or, "My boss flirted with me and it made me feel so violated that it must mean all women are constantly being sexually harassed at work, and distracting all the men to boot." Reminds me of Anna, the Jewish fundie in Israel who cried several times while cleaning her fridge for Pesach and found working two days a week to be totally exhausting, and thus concluded that all women needed several naps a day just to function and therefore should not be out of the home.

Of course, there are plenty of men who suck at their jobs, but men get to be individuals while women have to be cookie-cutters. There are plenty of dudes who are not physically strong and can't do heavy manual labor, and there are also plenty of dudes who are more artistic than mathematical and therefore make better drummers than engineers. But just because Bob can't lift 25 pounds and Jim can't do calculus doesn't mean that we conclude that men suck at manual labor and engineering.

All working women deal with crap, whether it be from bosses, coworkers, clients, students, or our own perfectionism. Most of us find a way to deal with it, either because we have to or because we want to. I myself am not a naturally high-energy person AT ALL, and I'm generally a wreck 1 week a month, not to mention dealing with anxiety, depression, and chronic pain. Yet my workload of courses, teaching, committees, etc. (I'm a Ph.D. student) require that I work at least 10 hours a day, 7 days a week, and I do it because I love it (usually) and it's my passion and I refuse to give up. The fact that these women want to take that away from me because THEY couldn't cut it in the workplace or the university is maddening.

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I dunno, guys. Jim says his post is NOT sour grapes, and how else are we going to explain his lack of success at the law firm? It's not like he's an ignorant, whiny sack of crap or anything.

I enjoy the comment about how the poster googled "young women being mentored at law firms" and millions of entries came up (therefore this is a terrible problem that is recognized by poor, neglected young male lawyers throughout our society). Did he even read any of the results? I don't see one that has anything to do with this wide-spread scourge of a problem.

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The anti-working women bias is so virulent for the same reason these people are so anti-abortion----it's symbolic of a bigger issue for them. Some people are willing to harass abortion providers and stalk them yet they would be the first to advocate bombing other countries and killing civilians. To them, abortion isn't about saving lives or saving fetuses, it's about making sure women are kept in their place as breeders. In that same vein, these anti-working women aren't so much railing against supposed incompetence, it's that working women means independence and being away from their husband's authority. It's the symbolic idea that women can replace what a man traditional has done to control women aka provide financial solvency to women.

THH just uses the "women are incompetent" excuse to badger perceived threat to male domination. It's the same way she and others use abortion issues to keep women barefoot and pregnant. It's not the actual act but what that act means for the welfare of women. Anything that means women can slip under the grasp of men, anything that means men will be less able to control women....THH sees as threats to her existance. I don't suppose to know why she feels independent women are a threat but she bashes anything that hints at a woman's independence.

I don't think all people opposed to abortion, or all people opposed to working women do so for this reason. There are plenty of pro-life people who don't see it as a positive situation for women. There are plenty of people who believe mothers who work outside the home is less than ideal situation. However, most people can see the complex decision making these situations are produced from and acknowledge there is no one-size fits all solution. THH and her ilk only sees in black and white dichotomy and pushes the virulence level to ridiculous proportion for their ulterior agenda.

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I'm starting to think that the hatred of working women is because it is threatening to the fundamentalist wives' lives, not their husbands' lives. If women are capable of working outside the home, women can't demand that men take care of them financially. Men will come to expect their spouses to work (but probably won't expect to pick up their share of work inside the house). For women who don't enjoy work outside the home, this is very threatening, especially if they think they would still have to do everything they do at home on top of it. It's not like they can ask the government for any help such as day care or paid parental leave given their anti-govt. principles. It may seem counter-intuitive but they may actually be acting in their own best interest (at least in the short run). For women who can only find employment in crappy jobs with little respect, getting a man to work for you might seem like a good plan. But those pesky women who work with him are screwing the whole thing up.

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I'm starting to think that the hatred of working women is because it is threatening to the fundamentalist wives' lives, not their husbands' lives. If women are capable of working outside the home, women can't demand that men take care of them financially. Men will come to expect their spouses to work (but probably won't expect to pick up their share of work inside the house). For women who don't enjoy work outside the home, this is very threatening, especially if they think they would still have to do everything they do at home on top of it. It's not like they can ask the government for any help such as day care or paid parental leave given their anti-govt. principles. It may seem counter-intuitive but they may actually be acting in their own best interest (at least in the short run). For women who can only find employment in crappy jobs with little respect, getting a man to work for you might seem like a good plan. But those pesky women who work with him are screwing the whole thing up.

True, not to mention the perceived sexual threat that the working women pose to the fundie SAHM, which is the same reason (at least in part) that they are so keen on policing what other women wear. If you're in a situation where you are 100% dependent on your husband, the possibility of him leaving you must be horrifying. Since they seem to believe that men cannot control their lust, it must seem more practical for them to demand that all women stay home, and cover up when they are out, than to hope that their husbands will refrain from affairs or "sinful" thoughts when they are away from home.

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I personally suspect that these formerly-working fundie women are jealous. I suspect that they were not particularly good at their work. I suspect that they weren't well liked or were not high achievers. And it's hard to admit that you are the problem. It's easy to say that the system is the problem, and everyone else is doing it wrong.

(I also know it's easy to yell "you're just jealous!" whenever someone disagrees with you... but I can't imagine any other explanation for why someone would get so upset about something that they aren't affected by)

Yes, this. I've known several lawyers, some good and some not, who left the profession for various reasons and the ones who were good at what they did or who at least had some backbone tend not to begrudge other women their choices. The folks I knew who were unhappy and jealous/judgmental of others as lawyers seem to have taken that home with them.

And all I had do to get ahead was be cute and form a father-daughter relationship? Dang, and here I've spent the past few years working my tail off. Ugh - TH just drives me nuts. I swear I think she lives in some kind of warped fantasy world.

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40-year-old woman lawyer here.

Jim's entire rant can be summarized as "Waaah! How dare these women get opportunities that should be saved for worthy men like me?"

I've always had female bosses, so I can't comment on this alleged male mentor/female mentee dynamic, but it makes sense that when you have a profession that rapidly switched from being completely male dominated to being equally balanced within one generation, you are going to have more male older lawyers and more female younger lawyers.

I have never wanted to know anything about the personal lives of the male lawyers that I have worked with.

The line about maternity leave was nuts. Here's how I look at my (unpaid) mat leaves: I started practicing at the age of 24, and expect to practice until at least the age of 65, and likely beyond that. In the context of a 40-year career, taking off some time here and there is pretty insignificant. If the average female lawyer has 2 kids, with 6 mos. mat leave with each one, that's a total of one year - or 1/40th of a career.

I wonder how Lousewife and followers read Judges, Chap. 4 (the story of Deborah, who was a judge, military and civilian leader, and prophet).

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I personally suspect that these formerly-working fundie women are jealous. I suspect that they were not particularly good at their work. I suspect that they weren't well liked or were not high achievers. And it's hard to admit that you are the problem. It's easy to say that the system is the problem, and everyone else is doing it wrong.

(I also know it's easy to yell "you're just jealous!" whenever someone disagrees with you... but I can't imagine any other explanation for why someone would get so upset about something that they aren't affected by)

I agree with this. I'm not impressed with the Non-TH's writing (it moves at a glacial pace), and I doubt Kelly C was a very effective teacher. Furthermore, they don't have the soft skills that make a co-worker pleasant to work with. Sadly, I've dealt with women like this, and it's no picnic. I'm glad these women were thwarted early in their careers and skeedaddled back home. They are not an asset to the workplace at all.

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