Commercial Relationship Advice: Mostly Harmful

[apel]

This was originally posted as a response to a friend's reaction to a nasty piece of relationship advice by Tracy McMillan on Huffington Post. I'm screening comments from people who aren't on my LJ friends list. My usual comments policy applies. Don't comment here if you don't like it.

Tracy McMillan has a book to sell. That's why she's writing

Comments

[istar]

Whoa, that post was a real stinker. I'm sad that Tracy had a rough childhood that affected her adult relationships, but that doesn't give her license to project her own issues onto every other woman out there.

Also, that oxytocin thing is total bullshit which has been soundly debunked by actual scientists, so someone didn't do her fact-checking. ARGH. It's frustrating how misinformation has a way of spreading much more widely than actual facts. :(

[cybermule]

Rah!

[maetang]

Wow. That is some article she's produced. And I don't mean that in a good way.

I got through reading it by turning all the "you"s she's doling out into "I"s. The way I see it, it's a basic strawman/strawwoman argument - it says more about her than anyone else.

I mean if the price of getting married is letting some complete stranger on the internet tell you you're a bitch/shallow/a slut/liar, etc, which healthy woman in her right mind is going to want to get married on those terms?! If that's the kind of self-hating attitude she's applied to herself to get married 3 times, well, all I can say is: "I'm glad NOT to be like her!"

[marypcb]

as a women, I find it helpful to be reminded that men are afraid and insecure too; it's good to remember that the projection of sucking-it-up, brave, no-crying, no-caring, just watch TV masculinity is a projection and men are real, emotional, fragile people underneath too because that expectation of how controlled men should be can make it hard for them to express emotion or insecurity. getting from that to enabling crap behaviour for the honour and validation of Having A Man is bullshit.