Is Frida Ghitis Stupid?

No, probably not, but that didn't stop her from asking a stupid question in the form of her CNN article “Are men stupid”.

Ghitis opens her article with a repetition of the title's rhetorical question: “Are men stupid? How else can we explain the endless parade of otherwise successful individuals, who by all appearances seem intelligent and competent, and yet risk destroying their careers and their personal lives over the chance to have a sexual escapade?”

The attendant question, how else can we explain the parade of successful, intelligent men who risk personal destruction by exposure of their sex lives; has a very obvious explanation. But to understand this requires recognition of a basic element of modern social identity. Women are the arbiters of what is publicly agreed constitutes a “good man”. Borrowing from Ghitis's rhetorical stylings, let's ask ourselves, how else can we explain men's willingness throughout history to die in the protection of women. Well, maybe men are stupid after all, maybe, but let's continue. Add to the fact that masculine social identity depends on feminine approval, the further fact that men, like other human beings are sexual creatures with both biologically driven sexual needs, as well as socially driven sexual needs – and most of them, being adults, are going to find ways to satisfy those sexual needs.

This probably seems tediously obvious to some readers, but seeing all the dots and actually connecting them is, apparently, difficult for some individuals. I apologize for the possible insult to readers in presentation of such rudimentary didactic. Frida Ghitis is invited to re-read this as many times as necessary, but there won't be a formal quiz.

The fact that powerful, male, high profile leaders of industry are regularly ruined by public exposure of sexual misadventure tells exactly nothing about male stupidity. Of course they have sex, thats what people do. People with vaginas and penises have sex. Those who are rich and powerful have more access to sex than those who are poor and powerless. What's revealing is that men, when outed in their sexual pursuits are publicly chewed up, spat out and destroyed. When Dominique Strauss Kahn shagged a hotel maid ( if we accept that part of the story ) the entire world lost it's collective shit because this was a rich powerful man expressing his sexuality in a way that didn't conform to woman-approved male sexuality. Kahn's wife was surely never so stupid that she imagined the head of the IMF didn't pursue some strange on the side, but DSK going off the reservation of the socially approved sexual trade union meant he had to be destroyed.

Intelligent, successful, powerful men with a lot to lose being regularly demolished when their sex lives become public doesn't indicate men's stupidity, it indicates the power of female-defined male social identity. Frida Ghitis's CNN article might have been a better article if the thesis had been “Are Women Jealous Tyrants”.

Ghitis's exposition of apparent male stupidity is frustratingly short on substance, but manages to list athletes, politicians, bankers and other public figures in an attempt to equate pursuit of off-brand poon to mental malfunction. The only real stupidity in the presented narrative being the antiquated and obsolete notion that men, whether they are rich and powerful or not should continue to defer to a collectivist puritanical feminine judgement of where when and with whom it is allowable for men to seek consensual sex with other similarly inclined adults.

Is Frida Ghitis a judgmental, puritan scold with an inadequate grasp of human nature and a condemning hatred of any male sexuality which doesn't directly profit women?

Yep, apparently she is.

Frigiditis: noun

1] A mental disorder characterized by systematized delusions and sexual disfunction whereby healthy sexuality expressed in high visibility individuals including public figures becomes a focus for social condemnation. This is a socially corrosive mental pathology which in low mental function observers can be contagious. Outbreaks of frigiditis have been observed in correlation with high levels of societal misery and absence of individual happiness in community members.