In defense of the sanctimonious women's studies set || First feminist blog on the internet

Month: June 2012

Putting the money where their hearts are

This story about an elderly widow who was hit with a major tax burden because she was married to a woman and not a man is a sad read. The women were together for decades and made a series of great real estate buys, amassing quite a bit of wealth. Ms. Windsor (the surviving wife) cared for her partner for years through an illness, to which her wife eventually succumbed. Then, because of the Defense of Marriage Act, she was forced to pay enormous sums on her wife’s share of their assets — sums she would not have had to pay if she had been married to a man. Yes, it’s Rich People Things, but it’s still a wildly unfair application of the estate tax. The end of the piece, though, particularly stood out to me:

My dealbreaker: Obnoxious, pseudointellectual elitists

We all have relationship dealbreakers. Maybe you disagree on issues of politics or religion. Maybe he’s a vegetarian and you miss eating meet. Maybe she’s into Marvel comics and you’re hard-core DC. Maybe he’s left-handed and your elbows bump into each other at the dinner table. Maybe, as with Melissa Jeltsen’s failed relationship with “an androgynous punk rocker named Duke,” he just wasn’t intellectual enough for you–or as she put it, he didn’t go to college.