Paul Tudor Jones Mansplains Many Insightful Truths About Mothers In The Workplace

carinnPaul Tudor Jones, hedge fund billionaire and macro trader, didn’t know he was being recorded when he spoke to audience of University of Virginia students and alumni, which might explain why he felt comfortable to say such despicable, sexist, anti-family remarks about mothers — and fathers.

Jones remarks began after a question from the audience wondering why there were only men on the esteemed panel at the U-Va’s McIntire School of Commerce.

”You will never see as many great women investors or traders as men ”” period, end of story,” Jones said. ”And the reason why is not because they are not capable. They are very capable.”

The problem is these foolish women go on to procreate.

”As soon as that baby’s lips touched that girl’s bosom, forget it,” he continues. ”Every single investment idea .”‰.”‰. every desire to understand what is going to make this go up or go down is going to be overwhelmed by the most beautiful experience .”‰.”‰. which a man will never share, about a mode of connection between that mother and that baby,” Jones said, according to a video of his remarks The Washington Post obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. ”And I’ve just seen it happen over and over.”

My favorite part of his response was its complete lack of regard for the actual question — which inquired “what it would take to get more diversity on such panels.”  Apparently we are supposed to read his comments to mean that absolutely nothing will get more diversity — not flexible work-policies, better maternity leave policies, or childcare options.  Nothing will ever erase the instant lobotomy that is a woman putting a baby to her breast.

Later Jones tried to elaborate, but his interesting use of pronouns only made it worse.

Jones said trading requires a ”very specific skill set” and focus that is vulnerable to emotional events, such as divorce. ”The emotional distraction that comes from divorce is so overwhelming,” he said. ”You can just automatically subtract 10 to 20 percent from any manager if he is going through a divorce.”

Since it is not statistically possible that only men get divorced, I can only assume he means only men care about divorce.  Using his two examples, men slip up at work when they get divorced, but only women lose their touch when they have babies.  Apparently having children does not register on a father’s emotional register.  And he should know — Jones is married and has donated the sperm to create his own four children.

Jones has since backpedaled and released a statement to the effect that he was talking only about a very small and intense group of traders known as macro traders, but we can be sure he spoke with such “honesty” because he was assured the panel was not being recorded.

To encourage an ”open and candid discussion,” Dean Carl P. Zeithaml made it clear the symposium was being held in a Vegas “what happens in the room, stays in the room,” style.

”No quotes with attribution should leave the room,” Zeithaml said. ”We must prohibit any discussion or description of the event in print or video, through electronic media or through Internet-based technologies including Web sites, blogs or social media, such as Twitter or Facebook.”

To recap, we weren’t supposed to hear the hard truth that women are capable, but mothers are not.  Men don’t care about becoming fathers, but they will be affected by divorce, probably because they will be distracted by dating a younger woman while their wife is home cooking dinner and caring for the babies, and probably because he will then have to spend time in arbitration to give said old wife as little of his money as possible to pay for the new wife’s engagement rock and lavish lifestyle.  No word, however, on whether Paul Tudor Jones actually believes he is the character Don Draper or whether he was just channeling him at the symposium.

(photo: memegenerator.com)

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