Toxic Men Get All the Attention. But Not in These Plays.

Would someone explain internalized misogyny which becomes abnegation? I was too old for the fem lit courses. Is Ophelia from "Hamlet" an example? Is that the root of anorexia nervosa? Mean girls? Help! Misogyny I understand and it begins at home.

Bit of a rant. I enjoyed this article up until the claim that NASA “kicked” a female astronaut off the spacewalk due to sexism. That is false. https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/03/yes-nasa-has-canceled-an-all-female-spacewalk-no-its-not-a-conspiracy/ Anne McClain – the astronaut in question – was the one who first raised concerns about the walk. What happened was that on earth, she’d fitted a large-sized EVA suit. Once at the ISS, however, she found it was too big. This isn't unusual – unsurprisingly, launching someone into orbit at 17,600 mph plays havoc on the body, and can cause all kinds of unpredictable physical changes. Any time spent outside in space, including space walks, is inherently risky. EVA suits are heavy and difficult to maneuver in, and even brief spacewalks are physically demanding – astronauts often compare it to running a marathon. Imagine trying to run a marathon in clothes that are a size too big for you. Now imagine those clothes weigh 100 pounds, and that a single trip could be fatal. That's why you don't want to send someone out in an ill-fitting EVA, if at all avoidable. To be clear - I don't question the article's overarching premise. But I find these casual inaccuracies problematic when discussing sensitive issues like sexism, because they can detract from discussions of ACTUAL sexism. They also force a reader to reevaluate an author's credibility, and question what else the author hasn’t actually verified before claiming as fact./end rant

Good news about the "Oklahoma!" TV series being better than it abounds is that Bekah Brunstetter may have enough clout to make this one go well. Remembering that "Anna and the King" sitcom, the laugh track busting a gut as Yul Brynner flung the Western-style dinner napkins at everybody. They did ditch the laugh track by the next week, IIRC. There was also this "lord and master" joke at 0:12 in this "Debbie Reynolds Show" trailer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCOdI1GwmDQ This was in the blurb (as still on imdb) for the pilot of the "Anna and the King" sitcom in the 1970s: "With Anna's assistance, the King hosts a dinner party to impress the visiting British." Can't you almost read that as "With Ethel's assistance, Lucy hosts a dinner party to impress the owner of the Tropicana."

“”the voices of female playwrights are elucidating a pathology that skews all our sympathies — leaving us feeling a reflexive twinge for guys like Jud Fry, onstage and in the world.” (Which way will TV take this? For real - Shades of that "Anna and the King" sitcom, where the laugh track had a ball as the King insisted on passing out the high-class napkins as if Yul Brynner were playing Lucy to Samantha's Eggar's Anna/Ethel Mertz.) It was a rumor for a while, but two weeks too late for April fools - with Dan Fish's "Oklahoma!" feeling like the impetus - it’s now real - “Oklahoma!” the TV series, no kidding. "the story of farm girl Laurey Williams and her courtship by two rival suitors.” I’d love to see Rodgers vs. his daughter Rodgers, an extreme talent herself, who in life at least threatened to sue her dad for plagiarism. Maybe in the week’s Pulitzer spirit, Yorkey and Kitt (“Next to Normal” and “Freaky Friday,” both scores filled with genuine thrills) could take on Mary Rodgers’ “Freaky Friday” where Richard  Rodgers and Mary Rodgers switched bodies! Or maybe Jud and Curly switching bodies, so Curly shoots, but it’s really Jud in Curly’s body shooting Curly in Jud’s body!

Are Women Human? This is the title of two sets of essays, one by Dorothy Sayers, the first woman to graduate from Oxford, and one by Catharine MacKinnon, feminist lawyer and academic. Both books are worth a read (Sayers' was a favorite of mine when it came out), but those who most need to read them probably won't. I have to say that Cat People seems to be something of a litmus test, and my reading of it does not accord well with the description here. Yeah, the guy was a loser, but I found the young woman more egregious by far.

I recently saw, "Anger." It was a great recapitulation of many meetings in a department of psychology where I used to work. Down to the baseball bat (spoiler alert). Women just used to sit in silence, averting their gaze. Men staged tantrums. Occasionally there was pizza. Talk about absurdist.

There is no such thing as 'toxic' men. There are only men. And Women. Nothing else. Why would such a highly offensive vapid social construct not be offensive to normal thinking people? Help us understand?

It is so great to see America tear it self apart socially and culturally, while wages stagnates, as women take a greater and greater role in society. Feminism, proving the misogynists right since Cambrian explosion.

I look forward to the play Halley Feiffer writes about nepotism.

I have always thought that The Taming of the Shrew was in many ways feminist: Kate is miserable, and while it is unfortunate that the over-the-top meanness of Petrucchio (and his maleness) are what helps her change, for me the ending of the play says everything. Kate and Putrucchio are playing a game, but the other men at the table cannot see that and though their own marriages are happy and their wives not shrewish and angry, they stop seeing their wives as individuals whom they love but as creatures to "tame." Kate's anger was viral; her sister's anger will be real and focused on what seems destined to be a surly husband who has o good reason to try to control her. Of course, the play is also chauvinistic, as were the times in which is was written, but like all great writers, Shakespeare revealed more than he expected to (as he also did with Shylock).

Thank you for this well-stated, thought-provoking essay. Watching "Anger" I felt repeated inflicted pains. You helped unpack those feelings with your incisive comments.

Thank you for the illuminating review.

"Anger" where the children shun their loving mother in favor of their abusive, narcissist father (who is incapable of love)... isn't all that far from the reality experienced by far too many women (and men) coming out of abusive marriages, me among them. I haven't seen my two younger teenage children in almost two years, in defiance of court order. YES, I Feel Anger! You don't say much about the story in "Do You Feel Anger?" except in a thumbnail, and the perversity of it... but yes, the disordered abuser Projects his (or her, abusers can be female) disorder on to the innocent Target and then uses the children as weapons to abuse the Target by proxy. It's called Domestic Abuse by Proxy. What happens to the child is called Parental Alienation and it's in the DSM-5 as child abuse. Lovely that "Anger" is in the theater. Too bad that it will probably never make it out of NYC. It's a play many suffering children (and their Targeted parents) need to see. They LIVE its toxic reality. I wish plays like this could get wider play, especially if any good.

I was feeling something similar watching "Mayor Pete" announcing his candidacy. I don't know if it's OK to just repeat this, but in case it is: I wrote yesterday afternoon this in the comments under Jesse Green's review for "The Cake," where a fellow reader named Kathleen had said: "And when you put it that way, well, everything changes. I don't mean that everyone is suddenly enlightened, but everything changes... a little." Watching Mayor Pete Buttigieg announce his candidacy now, and my thoughts went back to Jesse Green's review, and to what Kathleen said. Maybe it's that my ears have gotten older, but I swear - the chants of "Buttigieg! Buttigieg!" just now sounded like "U-S-A! U-S-A!" Maybe thanks to what we're facing in Washington, everything is changing - a lot, and a lot faster than we could have hoped. I know. Other people's thoughts on this have sent them to the Politics section. Mine headed more to the Arts sections, where as subjective as everything arts must be, things seem to make much more sense than politics. But they're getting more and more related, as the need seems to be growing. (Thanks if it's OK to repeat this here. Speaking of anger, I've felt for a long time that Amy Klobuchar was our best hope, since before the revelations started about her office staff. My feeling now about her is maybe people take a job with her with their eyes open, and I think she's the best to pull us out of this. But who knows who'll announce in a month?)