At least where I come from, they also exaggerate the dangers around you so that you'll purchase as much as possible.

Risk is risk. You can live with it, if you think it's rationally small--or you can panic and go buy whatever promises you 'protection'. No difference between men and women here, except perhaps in how often they're told that 'the risks are big'.

Where are the stats, again?

It's the difference between research and commercials--the latter exaggerate, the former don't. Just google a little and you'll get a good description.

Even though I agree, VirginiaL, with the basic point that everybody is responsible of the level of ignorance kids have of STDs, I disagree with your basic tenet here.

Check stats for STDs in 19th-century England. Check stats about syphilis in general throughout history. Very high -- despite the total absence of any 'goading' for kids to have sex.

Kids can have sex like crazy rabbits without (too) much danger of STDs--if they're informed about them and how to avoid and deal with them. They could also have sex 'just only one time...' and be infected. It's not the amount of sex you have (or are 'goaded' into having) that determines this--but how much you know (or don't) about STDs and the situation in the area where you live.

No, they're real diseases. I wished schools would 'therapeutize' them by actually treating students who have them, but that's unlikely.

I don't think anybody would find this situation funny or even fair at all, no matter what one thinks about 'the soul' and its post-mortem destiny. But by basing the criticism on such obvious cases, can't the right-wingers just add some provision that says in a few well-determined cases (like anencephaly) abortion will be covered -- so that the harlots who just want to have free sex without the consequences that God in His Wisdom (cue to famous Joy Division song) had meant to exist?

But at least it is good that people start thinking about how many situations are actually covered by the word 'abortion.' It's not as clear-cut a case as the anti-choicers want to make it.

you've got that one right.

Oh, I'm so sorry Eulogy has gone to heaven! I'm still hoping he'll tell me more about all the eternal writhing. It was beginning to sound sooo comfy...

you do realize that Ms Clark-Flory agrees with your main point ('you can't have it all')? So, whatever you're criticizing, it's not this post -- you do understand that, right?

Just checkin'.

Traditionally, women (career or no career) were browbeaten much more often by ye olde husband who wanted his meals ready and tasty. Nowadays this is not obviously the case, but I for one would like to see the stats--you might be right, dick, but that's not obvious. Actually, I'm not sure it's overwhelmingly women complaining about men not going beyond the bare minimum, I think it's people complaining about others not doing what they were used to having from their parents when they were children.

I don't know; can Rove et al. really be that machiavellian?

The problem with a coalition like the Democratic party (this was Amity's expression, but the more I think about it the more I agree with her) is exactly that getting everybody to vote the same way is difficult. So in any issue that is not unanimous in the coaltion--and given the nature of American politics, very few are--getting all elected Democrats to vote one way is a problem. (The Republicans are having an easier time doing this now, but that's because they're the 'opposition.')

I suppose that, for those who care about one specific issue (say, abortion rights), it would be better to concentrate on how the electorate is going (and there may be some signs that the electorate is going more anti-choice). The religious right is doing a good job of spreading their opinion around -- if liberals could do something similar, especially in so-called red states...

Maybe 'having it all' is an outgrowth of the 'American dream' -- since after all it's possible that someone's (American) dream is exactly to 'have it all'.

But since not all dreams come true, this one doesn't either, at least not for every single man or woman who ever indulged in it.

But to me this sounds like common sense. Frankly: is anyone really still telling girls or boys that they can "have it all" these days? That there won't be trade-offs between family and work? Is this still a frequent line in the life of American families?

rather than about leaving the only party that gives you any chance of actually influencing in local politics.

Again it all boils down to numbers. If you had 150-million+ people after all claiming they'd vote exactly as you tell them to, you wouldn't have to take any shit from any majority party anywhere. Since you don't, you'll do a disservice to your own cause if you insist on leaving the one party (or actually coalition, as Amity pointed out in the other letter thread) that actually supports your cause.

Maybe Americans need more civics lessons. Politics is the art of the possible--not the art of dreaming that we're living in a more perfect world than we actually are.