Letters to the Editor
Anonymous_Too
Published Letters: 187 Editor's Choice: 2
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Several thoughts
[Read the article: Work sucks? Blame her!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I think there are several issues going on here, and I think finger-pointing isn't constructive, unless it's aimed at ourselves.
1. Overall, we demand a very high standard of living. We insist on home ownership, the kinds of cars that require payments, new clothes every year for the adults as well as growing children, regular meals out. Our parents and grandparents might not have had two full-time working adults in the house, but they didn't always have these things, either.
I actually remember when my parents bought their first house, and when my father took on his first car payment. They didn't start their family after these things happened, which is what we expect of people now.
2. Women's work isn't valued. It's insisted upon and taken for granted by a certain segment of the male population, but that's different from being valued. It's also sneered at by women who don't do it themselves. End result? Nobody wants to do it. Frankly the reason I can get away with being as domestic as I am is because I'm a single mother, not a wife. When I tried this stuff as a wife, I was treated like crap.
Saved money, in our collective heads, is worth significantly less than earned money. It's even worth less than spent money. This is a huge, huge problem.
3. Corporations are in place to serve shareholders, not customers or employees, and companies that don't play ball get bad press even when they're profitable.
4. We have it in our heads that nobody should have any comfort or perks unless they're somehow a victim. As a culture, we are unkind unless we're acting out of pity. We think it's okay to make people work 60 - 80 hours a week--unless there's some kind of catastrophic mitigating circumstance. Problem is, it makes everyone else envious and distracts all involved from the real point: no one should be required to work that much. Period. It's not even very productive. It's just busy. Productive and busy are two different things.
There's undoubtedly more, but that's what I can think of at the moment.
Women do make a convenient scapegoat on stuff like this, though. If I remember correctly, we're responsible for every societal ill. Sadly, this was also true before feminism, so I don't think feminism can be blamed. I just think it's sad that feminism wasn't able to correct it.
I'm starting to think that nothing every will.
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Sensation during sex
[Read the article: Planned Parenthood's condoms for women]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I think we agree that it is probably a miracle that men and women ever get together, if women felt as little during sex as men do with a condom
they CERTAINLY never would.
Um, dick? From a physical standpoint, women don't feel much during sex. Activities requiring condoms rarely stimulate the clitoris directly. Penetration means reduced sensation for women, unless the couple takes active steps to remedy this.
The female equivalent of a condom isn't a vaginal barrier, it's a dental dam.
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Trying to change things
[Read the article: Draft cards yes, bras no]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]As much as a few us may agree here that the draft should be for both genders, few people care enough about this to make any attempt to change the status quo.
On the contrary. Back in the late 80s and early 90s, some of us did try. However, we were faced with either blatant opposition or simple apathy, and the bulk of those doing this was...
..wait for it...
...men. Men were most opposed to having the draft leveled or abolished.
However, now that the draft is a possibility, the tune is sounding a bit different.
Meh. I'm having a hard time finding it in me to care anymore.
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Civil Service
[Read the article: Draft cards yes, bras no]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Wouldn't it be great if American kids, at 18, ALL had to work for three years in community gardens or on community roads, in hospitals, nursing homes, or wherever they were most needed?
This was our argument for the "serve your country" types, that countries could be served in a lot of ways that didn't involve weaponry. Even better, it would allow kids to get a taste of the real world before they started college. Lack of focus + insanely expensive educational institutions = disaster.
Nope, had to be weaponry involved when countries were served, and women couldn't handle it. That was the bottom line.
Selective service looked very noble, adult and masculine when war was a distant memory. Now that it's a real possibility, men are scared. They should be. Complacency can kill, literally in this case.
Ironically, the Iraq vet I know personally is a woman.