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Saturday, Nov 7, 2009
Re_lyc
Published Letters: 39
Just registering my approval as a long time reader--Salon's letters section has become a baffling and alienating place of late.
(Plus I just wanted to register my beloved screen name before someone else snaps it up.)
I know you're just reviewing a film, and perhaps it snows throughout the entire movie, but jesus christ, you're journalists, Nova Scotia has no snowier a clime than New Hampshire. Salon shouldn't be perpetuating the cultural stereotype that Americans, ignorant of anywhere other than America, are constantly perpetuating cultural stereotypes. Now if you don't mind, I'll just retire to my igloo. I've got blubber that needs chewing.
. . .if Broadsheet were to get all up in arms about this, the first letter would be a criticism of how humorless and strident middle-class feminism is, how the gals at B'sheet should just 'loosen up' and save their ire for the 'important' issues. It doesn't strike me that B'sheet's giving the stupidity and misogynism of this t-shirt a pass, necessarily, but does it really require the full-on feminist smack-down? Isn't a wry mention and joke about the bad grammar pretty much about all that's needed here? Or should we be focusing on dismantling the patriarchy one dumb t-shirt at a time? We're in for a long haul if so.
I have nothing but respect for your opinion of the t-shirt, but I'd like to point out you spent more time criticizing the values of Broadsheet and making sneering implications about its 'white, middle-class' hypocrisy than you did slamming the shirt. My point is, with some people, Broadsheet can do no right whichever approach it takes. When they're light-hearted they're accused of not being serious enough about feminism, when they're serious, they're accused of being strident and out of touch.
. . .just to confuse the matter even further. (Garden hose? Support hose?)
It seems to me those of you who don't have a problem with sperm donor and birth parent anonymity have this idea that everyone involved in these transactions has unassailable rights except for the human beings who are being created and brokered. Men who decide they like the idea of mass anonymous insemination have a total right never to know a thing about people they've fathered. Would-be parents have a total right to have a child by any means possible, without having to jump through tedious bureaucratic hoops or worry about their child's eventual desire to know where they've come from. As far as I'm concerned the 'right' to have a child and the 'right' to donate sperm anonymously are dubious at best. The only innate human right I can intuit in this threesome resides with the child--the right to know who you are and where you came from. Look, these are human beings and human lives you are so blithely fucking around with. It is audacious and arrogant in the extreme to make a statement like:
"Why should they have the right to contact a stranger who was simply doing their mother a favour by donating his genetic material?"
In a society that privileges and fetishizes the biological family in the way this one does, it is crazy-making that we then turn around and try to sell this BS about 'some stranger who donated genetic material'to adoptees and sperm donor babies. All of a sudden people are told biological connections, family, and genealogy doesn't mean squat. Like another letter writer noted, this is the height of hypocrisy. Why is an infertile couple's 'right' to parenthood considered so holy and unassailable while an individual's right to their own human biological roots is considered questionable at best, selfish and petty at worst? The commonplace ethics around this issue are completely upside-down if you ask me.
May I suggest you start your own blog? You can ride around on whatever hobby-horses you like and the Broadsheet threads can stay on-topic. Everybody wins.
I have to agree with the Anonymites that it's not actually much of a piece. Nut graf anyone? Hugh Laurie is sex on a stick: Well duh. Not enough to hang an essay on.
Plus, hands off. He's mine.
This post is like an all you can eat buffet for the Broadsheet Angry Troll division. Brightstar! Quick! Fire something off before your computer screen is completely obscured by foam.
We're not even allowed to laugh at beauty pageant contests anymore? Why not just cancel Christmas while you're at it.
(and let me just say I love love love the NY'er), is their regular reliance on played-out 'tried and true' contributers. They just don't seem willing to look outside a very narrow circle when it comes to their content. If I see another piece of fiction by Alice Munroe, I might swallow my tongue. And, apologies to David Sedaris fans, but Jesus Christ, that recent thing he did about hanging out with his boyfriend listening to Kate Bush and worrying about all the birds outside made me think it's time he handed over the reigns--maybe to his lunatic sister Amy.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The Maine fight was supposed to be the dress rehearsal for repealing California's Prop. 8 -- but gay marriage lost
Once one obtains Seriousness credentials in the Washington media, they are irrevocable no matter one's conduct.
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