Everybody has to do the best they can with the cards they've been dealt. The number of fulfilling careers available out there is clearly inferior to the number of people who want to enjoy working. The result is that most people don't enjoy work. It has always been like that throughout history; hell, today it's a lot better than it used to be; and still it's true that most working people won't be getting anything other than money out of their work.

The mommy wars are indeed only about that little segment of the population for which the career vs. family choice does make sense -- they can choose, so they should indeed worry about which choice is the best one. I don't think it's a wrong discussion per se. If this happens to be someone's demographic, I'm sure he/she (yes! men too!) does experience suffering about these choices and their consequences, and I don't want to belittle any suffering. The only problem is that this demographic is (by far) not the largest one. Most people simply have to survive, as many previous posts have already eloquently described. Feminism shouldn't be just about the moneyed -- or 'choiced' -- elite.

Interesting how an article about how young girls are being dressed as oversexed individuals ends up getting reactions about the war of the sexes and who's being victimized by whom. I suppose there must be something wrong going on in society for so much acrimony to gather up so quickly. Lots of hurt feelings.

Hey people: very young teenage girls dressing sexy is not bad in itself, as long as people are aware of the consequences. Boys are always aroused, but being actively encouraged will get them more than simply aroused. Please let the girls understand that, and realize that they'll have to deal with the consequences -- reactions from boys, and, yes, also from older males. And females. If the girls are doing this out of peer pressure or to get attention from everybody or a reputation of being 'cool', well, then some parenting is in order here. Please talk to them! Communicate and educate!

And, for those young girls who are not doing this just to fit in or because they think slutty looks are the modern equivalent of being a princess... for those who actually want to affect boys... then they are indeed jumping ahead and doing the kind of thing (some) older girls and women are doing. If they understand that and still want to do it, okay, but please understand the consequences. It's not that different from driving: if you do risky things you may end up sorry.

I agree with the points of the two previous posts (though the last one is perhaps a little more aggressive than necessary). Oppression and discrimination are decreasing, but are not gone; there's still work to do. But one also must realize that the 'insidious things' that are left are not as bad as the ones that have already been defeated; they are, well, more 'insidíous', and may in some times have a larger component of the reality of life and what it's like for all humans and a smaller component of oppression. Yes, some of the things these women complain about are not discrimination, and men also have problems with them. So it may be time to go over to a more humanistic vision of at least these issues; they are the same for both sexes and seem to be looming larger and larger in everybody's problem landscape.

Yep, times are getting harder. But things have been harder than in America in most other countries of the world for quite a while -- believe me, giving your virtue for food or transportation in my native Brazil has been going on for quite a while now. And not only for girls; boys also get to sell theirs to get ahead.

I suppose the conclusion is that we'll always have to do what we have to do to get by.

Like the others above, I can't tell what the author was thinking -- I hope s/he will make his/her intentions known at some point -- but I agree it sounds like a criticism of pro-lifers by making them look stupid/misogynistic enough to want to support date rape. Even if this was not the intention, it clearly can be co-opted and read as such.

But I must say Amazon shouldn't have removed it. Because it's in poor taste? Hm, I've seen lots of t-shirts with messages about flatulence and hate messages at politicians that seemed to me to be incredibly tasteless (regardless of their possible truth value); yet I don't think Salon columnists would go as far as trying to get them off Amazon.com. Hey, as a sensitive male I was duly offended at the 'Boys are stupid, throw stones at them' t-shirts some time ago; regardless of whether or not they were meant as jokes, they're tasteless. But I wouldn't advocate removing them from shops. I don't like them, so I don't buy them, I criticize them, I even criticize those who chose to buy them. But I don't want to forbid them. If anything, they're interesting evidence about how offensive people can be in their attempts to make their points.