Every Wednesday, when I open my Chicago Tribune, I wonder yet again why they bother printing a separate weekly section called "WomenNews." I'm disappointed to see Salon doing essentially the same thing. I don't understand why this is necessary. Isn't women's news just human news? If you need a place for celebrity gossip and fashion, use The Fix and create a style section. I've been reading Salon for years and have never wished for a special section devoted to my gender. Why would I need that?

Believe me, the woman reminds me of fingernails on a chalkboard--I can't stand her. But I don't understand the first word of this post. It seems really odd to use that type of adjective here. How does it affect the story? Who cares about her dress size?

Interesting. I live in Andersonville, too (I'm half of a heterosexual 30-year-old married couple, no kids), and I would never perceive it as a "bar-scene" type of neighborhood. Sure, there are a few bars, but this isn't the city's premier destination for nightlife at all. Granted, I've only lived in the 'hood for two years, but I perceive it a quaint spot with a mix of gays, single straights and DINKs, and married couples with families. Everyone appears to get along fine... but maybe that's actually not the case?

Jeffrey, that was hilarious. Thanks for the laugh!

This may sound silly, but I'm so glad that you exist... and that you write.

"Women's bodies give fertility signs, and observing them to avoid sex during fertile times is simple, and as effective as the Pill when properly done."

But if sex is meant for procreation, why would one abstain from sex when fertile? That's a form of birth control. If NFP is as effective as the pill, a married couple could simply have sex "for pleasure" (not to mention intimacy, love, etc.) for 3, 5, 10 years without having any children at all.

People who practice NFP are people who have already decided they want large families.

"First, if you happen to have the bad luck to be male, a high-end undergraduate education is definitely and strongly biased, as an experience, in favor of women. There is no men's center. There are no courses on men's studies. There is a strong feminist presence, and you get to endure things like female students who buddy up to female professors, especially in the humanities, and idiotic course selections that include stuff like feminist literary theory. I literally had to read this ridiculous bullshit about the "presence of the metaphorical phallus" in literature."

I'm a woman, and I didn't see any evidence of this at my college, a small, expensive liberal arts school that I attended in the late 1990s. There was no women's center (what is a women's center, anyway?). I think there were courses in women's studies, but I didn't take any... most people didn't. It was a small minor. I never witnessed a phenomenon of female students "buddying up" to female professors... what does this mean, exactly? Most of my favorite professors were men, and I majored in History and minored in English. And are there colleges that require all students to take feminist literary theory? I didn't study any such thing, and I'm wondering why you did.

I find it baffling that men would think college is "strongly biased" toward women. I don't think the examples that you provided prove that at all.

It's hard for me to imagine the purpose behind thongs for seven-year-olds (I've seen them at JC Penney's) and low-rider jeans for second-graders. If these clothes aren't trying to sexualize girls way before their time, what message ARE they trying to send? A little girl with her thong peeking up above her low-rider jeans definitely isn't "cute" or "frou-frou." The whole idea of this Libby Lu place is really disturbing.

Please have this article proofed! It's a bit hard to follow and there are glaring punctuation errors...

This article brought back such great memories. I loved all the Ramona books and have saved them for any children I have in the future. I love knowing that Ms. Cleary's stories still live somewhere in the back of my brain!

Superman and Lois Lane are not married. Superman and Lois Lane have sex and create a baby. If that makes Lois Lane a slut, doesn't it make Superman one, too? sheesh. I can't believe people still trumpet this double standard. (Hey conservatives, at least she didn't have an abortion.)

That article is terribly insulting to men. What kind of man wants to spend his life saddled with a partner who isn't his intellectual equal and never leaves the house? Those'll be fascinating dinner conversations, I'm sure. How boring.

Oh wait, I guess the article is saying that men don't actually want a partner. They just want someone to not work outside the home (because men want to be 100% financially responsible for everything, right? no stress there!), raise their children and do the housecleaning, and nag them to get that suspicious mole checked out. I wonder what these non-educated, non-earning women are supposed to do once the last child is off at school... sit at home watching TV and vaccuuming? Paging Betsy Friedan...

The previous poster was right: the pool of women in this country with college degrees earning more than $30,000/year is HUGE. Good luck steering clear of us, guys.

"Especially if the plots are all about harried yet glamorous women heroically juggling kids, career, and romance, in spite of the evil/clueless men trying to keep them down. Sprinkle in a few shopping sprees, and some light hearted man bashing and your there!"

As a 30-year-old woman with a career and a fun city life, these are exactly the kinds of books I avoid like the plague. I don't want to read books aimed at and marketed to woman my age. I just want to read good books. Lately I'm into Ian McEwan and Ernest Hemingway.