I am such a fan of working class men. Hell, I'm a fan of anyone who knows what it is to sweat and endure and risk something other than ego. And I believe you're right when you assert that some women encourage their men to share and then shrink from what they've shared. I think men have to swallow a lot of gut-rotting emotions. And I've posted various times on Broadsheet that young men are 15 times more likely to die an accidental death and that's a national tragedy and even moreso because it goes largely unreported. Soft Rush Limbaugh ironically touts that "Dangerous Book for Boys," but what he doesn't understand is that boyhood is already DEADLY dangerous for many boys. I taught dangerous boys and saw a few lowered into the Earth.

I'm not going to rebut them because they're valid...and well-argued.

Did you note that I think some feminists are kooks? Likewise, I think it's kooky when men swarm these pages with their self-pity posts, which doesn't endear most folks to their positions and certainly doesn't make them more attractive to women, if they are straight.

...is the only hope for our species.

I'd like to ask a fundy just when is God going to make the Earth bigger, without changing gravity, of course.

Oh, yeah, there's the Rapture. So, until then, we can procreate like bunnies.

"To demand that marriage means sex -- but not children -- is to defraud the creator of His joy and pleasure in seeing the saints raising His children."

Cool. If they're His kids, let Him pay for childcare.

Duh.

You were catty the first time. Now you're imperious. I really don't know how to respond. If you want to chat some time, then give me an opening.

True story: I once dated a guy who spent the whole night complaining about women and how unfair the world was for men. I was younger then and nodded and nodded. Now, I'd leave, which is what I'm going to do now. This thread has become unfun.

However, a closing thought: most modern people have no idea of how difficult life was just a bit back, when people's teeth rotted and they worked 16-hour days and they lived to be 50, if they were lucky. Most of us get to live a couple more decades, but life is still so short and I don't want to spend it nodding at someone or arguing with that someone who believes that theirs is the most important suffering and everyone must listen, again and again and again.

And especially this: "This generation doesn't do real sacrifice or even pay for our own wars. That's what grandkids are for!"

This war was brought to you by the party of alleged fiscal responsibility, low taxes, and Leaving No Kid Behind and they've guaranteed that millions of American Kids will be left behind as they pay the taxes this generation wasn't willing to pay.

...to play a tape warning me about the perils to "our Christian heritage."

"Do you support the war?" I interrupted her.

"I support the troops," she said.

"Who doesn't," I replied, "so saying you do means nothing. But do you support the war?"

"I support our president," she said.

"But as an alleged Christian," I asked, "how can you support a man who refuses to turn the other cheek?"

"We can't just let them kill us!" she said.

"Only if we were to follow the Christ's example. Only if we were to be Christians. There's no greater glory than martyrdom."

She sputtered and ended the conversation.

I too wonder how many neocons even understand that this is the FIRST WAR IN AMERICAN HISTORY that we aren't financing. Beyond that, it's a war that came with tax breaks for Paris Hilton and her ilk.

We will pay and pay and pay. And then our grandchildren will pay. And their grandchildren.

I went to Harvard and was almost crushed twice, by the debt and by class. I'm just folk, even today. My nearest neighbors are a welder and a sweat shop seamtress who can afford her house because it's public housing. There are 4 races who live on my block. So, when I arrived at Harvard, it seemed a brave new world, that had such people in it, but the holidays are a reductive way to explain my experience there: my classmates would jet away to Prague or Thailand. I stayed and drank coffee with the security guards.

"You can afford to go," my classmates asserted. "You just choose to not go."

And that's what they thought they knew. Rather, that's the faity tale they told themselves so that they could sip coffee in Prague without a hitch.

Thanks for asking. Curiosity is a kindness. My focus for a couple decades was social justice work. There's not much money in taking care of poor folks. Now I'm a freelance writer, thus the humble digs, but I dig humble digs too. Living in a multi-racial, working-class neighborhood feels like home, since my sibs and I slept 3 to a bed (and later, when we were richer, only 3 to a room).

Fitzgerald wrote, "The rich, they are different than us."

Or something like that. I should have googled it, but I'm juggling some tasks here.

And a beloved friend said, "I don't think the rich lack compassion. They lack understanding."

I think both of these are true. When I lived in Boston, like a Dickens' waif, I would pass restaurants where rich people ate and laughed and laughed and laughed. I saw them, but they didn't see me. Likewise, if I walk in the neighborhoods where rich people live in my town, I'll sometimes pass their parties and hear the clinking of their glasses and I understand that waifs don't get to clink glasses and tip their heads back and laugh. Someday, since I have 3 novels under contract and other books too, I might get invited to such parties as a curiosity, but that kind of curiosity isn't a kindness.