Is it fair? I say no. Not because it has it's facts wrong but because of the tone. Everything the post says about Gilbert is spot on but the author could have turned the anger down a notch.
On the other hand, it is an accurate representation of the way a lot of men now feel about women and divorce. If someone ran a poll of men on whether they agree with the paragraph below I suspect the numbers would be enough to give most women the chills.
In fact, divorce stats paint a clear picture to the contrary. In marriage, it is women who go stone-cold at the drop of a hat, turn off their empathy with no effort, and do extraordinarily cruel things to a spouse without a trace of remorse. Sure, men sometimes screw around, but they are usually conflicted and sorry when they do so. In my entire life, I have never – not even once – heard a woman express regret or contrition for betraying her husband or boyfriend, but I have heard many men do so.Just recently I was writing about the perils of telling girls and women that they are morally superior beings. Elizabeth Gilbert's angry little book is a good example of this.
(Read the whole thing here.)
By the way, Elizabeth Gilbert's idea isn't even original. A few years earlier a woman named Laura Fraser wrote a book about a voyage of discovery after her divorce called An Italian Affair. She, however, actually deals with so profound ideas instead of lot of touchy-feely nonsense and, for the most part, does not trash her ex. And she didn't make nearly as much money out of it as Gilbert.
I must admit, until today I had never heard of Elizabeth Gilbert or her husband. I tend to not pay attention to newpaper headlines about people who seem so clearly "over the top," maybe at my own peril. These are the people the masses look to as role models, God help us. Nonetheless, from what I've read here, realistically it is women who are thrown into poverty after a divorce unless the husband is loaded and most aren't. There have even been books written about the "feminization of poverty," which I can assure you is real. Reading about these people does the average woman a disservice if she believes that by divorcing her husband she will live a life like Elizabeth Gilbert, it "ain't" gonna happen for 99% of women, and it leads them down a garden path. But it sells books and newspapers and people can get off vicariously reading about it, so maybe that's the real message here.
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