A New York Times article on an all-female prom for Muslim girls in Hamtramck, Mich., ends:
The jubilant energy of 100 young women feeling victorious and beautiful filled the room.
Do we ever get to retire the nauseating “strong women together” rhetoric, with its implication that females still need to have their self-esteem raised and their “voices” finally heard? It is inconceivable that an article in the mainstream media would include a sentence like:
The jubilant energy of 100 young men feeling victorious and handsome filled the room.
Males are simply absent from elite consciousness, except as a competing category of earners whose de minimis pay advantage over “victorious and beautiful” women can only be explained by sexism. The idea of celebrating them is even more foreign. When was the last time an elite press organ checked in on a Boy Scout jamboree, perhaps the last remaining institution for male bonding besides sports teams and Special Operations?