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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
MCM
Published Letters: 140 Editor's Choice: 19
Since homosexuals can't be legally married in California, insisting upon marriage for insemination is insisting on a legal impossibility as qualification for legal status. How can this be, well, legal?
If the woman, straight or gay, was clearly unfit, the issue would be worthy of discussion, but turning a physician into a moral touchstone is a travesty of law and medicine.
Of greater concern is the evolving notion that physicians and pharmacists duty is to themselves and their religious beliefs rather than to their patients and to their professions. Whether the request is for birth control or birthing, the province of medicine is to distribute health care and law to set the standards of health care, not the morals of those who need it.
Ms. Traister is right to be frightened and disappointed by Magazines like Total 180! and the women who claim only the value added to life is with children. The magazine, which I've seen, and the women involved display an alarming ignorance that makes me doubt they are doing their kids any favors.
Have any of the women producing this magazine taken a history course? To turn to the 1950's! Is it the clothing that appeals? The laugh track of Leave It To Beaver? The House Unamerican Activities Committee?
The good old, idealized 1950's, when blacks had their own water fountains, when married couples on TV had to have twin beds, when women weren't allowed to have their own credit or own property, when birth control was illegal, when women were routinely and legally paid less for the same work as men and, oh yes, rape was a misdemeanor and a wife legally could not be raped by her husband, even if they had separated or were divorced as long as she wasn't the property of another husband. It wasn't women staying at home that changed these things; it wasn't their kids; it was the women themselves.
Childbearing is not a miracle. Child rearing is a time consuming task when the kids are little, but come on, at some point they do take care of themselves. After all, that is the goal of parenthood.
It is a convenient myth that children are better served by stay-at-home moms. Human beings evolved within a mutually supportive community of shared childcare and eldercare which encouraged exploration and challenged the young to learn for themselves, not the undivided attention of a single parent. I cannot help but suspect that the definition of motherhood is linked to identity as a mom, a role which comes complete with status, security and big power in a very small, self-defined world.
Women who crave children often make a deal with the devil, dismissing adult relationships in favor of focusing on their children. Thereby teaching those children, especially the boys, that they are the center of the universe, that women live to serve, that women live to make things for others, not to make something for or of themselves. Creating a life for others is never as interesting or as challenging as creating a life for yourself.
Feminism is about placing work in a political context. Women who stay at home work, but as long as that work is considered an exception to the work force rather than a condition of it, the choices around parenthood are limited ones. Feminism is an examination of how power is related to gender. Power is still related to gender, men have it, women don't because men make more money - more money for their time and more money overall - and money moves civilization. Men are also making the decisions that affect women's lives because men are in the position at work and in politics to do so.
How many women will evaluate the constitutionality of abortion laws? One. How much power will she have? None.
As for humor, these women need to read more. Jean Kerr wrote about domestic matters within a social context. She realized the limitations of parenthood when she found herself unable to have an adult conversation when out with associates of her husband, theater critic Walter Kerr. Jane Austen wrote only about domestic life because it was what she was allowed to write about. That she did it with a sense of sarcasm and irony, tinged with anger and wit is what makes her a great writer. Austen is read by high school girls, not high school boys.
I didn't get hooked on The West Wing until a couple of years ago, when I was in Spain. My Spanish friend explained that she loved the show because the wit seemed terribly American to her. Also, as she did not draw a line between personal and political positions, she found it refreshing to watch people in government portrayed as fallible, even fragile, as opposed to omnicient, better than the citizenry.
The fantasy of having a government made of people who see themselves as public servants rather than simply power brokers, keeps me watching. Mostly I enjoy - or enjoyed - the emphasis on intellectual merit as much as political savvy. The race for Bartlett's sucessor pitted candidates of intellectual and moral stature against each other and against a system that knocks the values right out of you. The characters in the WW are smart, flawed people who fail as often as they succeed. Even success is mitigated by trade-offs and concessions. In that there is no fantasy.
In an time when many of us want "none of the above" as a selection on our voting forms, when our leaders are not so much leading as dragging us into a maze of terrors, when public dialogue is pumped up hyperbole and intentional misdirection, the language of hope is not spoken by our politicians or journalists, but by fictional, television characters. Alas! My voter registration card for a president who understands mathematics, knows history, speaks Latin, yet doubts his own capacity for understanding even as he questions the existence of God.
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 survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
219 Democrats and one Republican join in favor of the legislation, which passed by a narrow margin
Salon headlines in your mailbox
