Two centuries of #!&%*&#

For Her Own Good:
Two Centuries of the Experts' Advice to Women

by Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English

This turned out to be a dense, scholarly book.  I enjoyed it immensely, but I'm not enough of an expert to comment on it.  I think it's sound, quite sound.  Some of the theories may lack support, but I took them as theories, not conclusions, and so was not perturbed.

I especially appreciated the author's determination to refrain from making snarky comments about the aburd, ridiculous or downright hateful nature of the experts' advice.  Ninety-nine point nine percent of it was pure bullshit--in a cultural context.  Losing the race to the moon?  Our children needed more discipline to grow up to be engineers.  Or...

First--as she outgrew her girlhood--a woman had to renounce the pleasures of the clitoris and transfer all sexual feeling to the vagina. [...] When a woman accomplished the task of renouncing the clitoris, she symbolically set aside all masculine strivings (penis envy) and accepted a life of passivity.

That definition of the woman's role--passivity, lack of pleasure except in service to others--resulted in the ultimate stupid theory of all stupid theories:  women were inherently masochists, and menial labor and sexual humiliations were what it took to make her truly happy.
The authors did remark, at that point:
(The explanation of "masochism" is so convenient and totalistic that we can only wonder why the psychomedical experts didn't think to extend it to other groups, like the poor and racial minorities.)
I'll let 'em have that one.  How can you not get a little snippy in the face of so much well-meaning (or ill-meaning) stupidity?