A Fox News column this week advised that women should be nicer to men if they wanted to have an easier time staying in relationships.
Just weeks after Fox News host Bill O'Reilly and co-president Bill Shine were fired for a history of sexual harassment at the network, Venker's column appeared on FoxNews.com.
"At the end of the day, most men just want a woman who’s nice," she opines. "'Nice,' to a man, means being soft, gentle and kind. It means asking your husband how his day was and really listening. It means doing something nice for him with no expectation of getting something in return—you know, the way you did when you were dating."
Women, however, do no want the same thing, according to Venker.
"Ask any guy you know, and he’ll likely give you example after example of women they know who said they wanted a nice guy but in reality wanted a bad boy," she writes. "That’s because just as most men are attracted to femininity, or softness, most women are attracted to masculinity. And masculinity is hard. Gruff. Take charge."
"That’s what men like: women who are easy to love," Venker insists. "Problem is, women have been taught that being a nice or solicitous wife equates to servitude, as though a woman’s niceness automatically equates to being a mouse—whereupon her husband will walk all over her."
"Most husbands have no desire to lord over their wives, but they don’t want to fight with them either. All they want is peace," she concludes. "And the nicer you are, the more likely they are to find it."
The column did not go over well on Twitter.
