Letters to the Editor
sweet_byrd
Published Letters: 22 Editor's Choice: 2
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Reasonable conclusions
[Read the article: Would-be pilots grounded by wives!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"When the husband told the stay-at-home mom of the 1950s that he was going to spend a Saturday afternoon taking flying lessons, she acquiesced, he said. Today, he said, in a two-income family, she is more likely to say: 'You are not. That's your day to take Johnny to the soccer game, and what the heck are you doing spending our hard-earned money on flying lessons?'"
The reason that the stay-at-home mom of the 1950s didn't complain was that she had the time to do 100% of the work to keep the house and take care of the kids. That was (in theory, at least) her job, just as bringing home a paycheck was her husband's. Today's two-income family has not had their home and family obligations magically disappear because both adults are working. And while (in general) today's man does spend more time on housework and with the kids than the man of the 1950s, it isn't as much as his wife does. Is it any wonder she looks askance at him spending the money they have both earned, and the time he gets by not doing his fair share of their domestic duties in doing something risky, expensive and of limited utility? Wouldn't this be the reasonable conclusion?
Evidently not. The proper conclusion is that women are swiping all the disposable income, and shuffling all the housework off on their poor, henpecked husbands, so that they can buy expensive shoes and eat bonbons all day.
Sheesh!
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Busty Brainiac Bothered by Breast Bigotry
[Read the article: Smart boobs]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Unfortunately, the stereotype of big boobs = dumb is really out there. I have noticed that, no matter how demurely I dress, some people tend to speak to me as though I am half a cookie short of a batch. I like to think that they are actually wrong, and not picking up on any actual lack of intelligence -- and my two post-graduate degrees would tend, I hope, to back this up.
I can only guess that these people are reacting to the size of my (unaltered, for the record) chest. It appears that it takes one visual signifier to nullify another, since when I wear my glasses (in the same clothing and to similar audiences), the number of people treating me like a brainless bimbo drops off quite sharply.
Of course, breast size doesn't have much, if anything, to do with intelligence, but there is this idea floating around out there that you can be endowed with either boobs or brains -- but not both.
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Same old paternalistic crap, new spin
[Read the article: Can abortions be compared to cigarettes?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Sure women may be technically "adults", but anyone without a penis just isn't capable of making rational, informed decisions about their own health and well-being. We need men to protect us from the big, bad world.
You know, if people are going to systematically underestimate, undervalue and infantilize me, I'd rather they didn't pretend that it is all for my own good. The honesty would be refreshing.
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Because if there is a penis involved, THEN we can take it seriously...
[Read the article: Ovarian cancer: Silent no more]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'm glad that women have more information about the symptoms of this potentially fatal illness, but for real progress to be made, it will have to be accompanied by a shift in medical thinking. Western medicine is notoriously bad at allowing problems with "subjective" symptoms to slip through the cracks. It cannot be an accident that problems such as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Fibromyalgia, and Chronic Myofascial Pain Syndrome began to be taken seriously around the time that (predominantly male) soldiers began complaining about Gulf War Syndrome. The reality of those who live with such illnesses didn't change, but the doctors' outlook did, prompted, IMHO, in no small part by the fact that men began to complain of those same clustered symptoms.
Even when the signs of illness or dysfunction are blatant, the medical outlook about women's health can be spotty. Case in point: a friend of mine spent months with prolonged gynecological bleeding -- and spent months trying to get a doctor who would do more than simply say "wait and see" -- in spite of her passing out from anemia and blood loss. It seems to me that, were she bleeding from her nose for eight months, action would have been taken far more quickly. What is it about the involvement of feminine organs that seems to give doctors the idea that complaints can be ignored, belittled or dismissed?