Letters to the Editor
achilleselbow
Published Letters: 294 Editor's Choice: 17
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Conflation on both counts
[Read the article: It's hard to be a dude these days]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Both Tracy and Stepp are conflating issues. As one of the few Salon readers who actually belongs to the generation being discussed, I thought Stepp was right on in this paragraph:
"The young man who desires a particular young woman has always had to work for her affection, but years ago he knew what he was supposed to do: Ask her out, pick her up and take her home, times 10," writes Stepp. "Today, as likely as not, there is no date. She will drive herself, meet up with him and either offer to pay for herself or insist on paying. She may bolt later, or they may land in bed the same night, but chances are he won't have a clue why either happened."
...but trying to tie that to women having more high-paying positions becomes like the chicken or the egg question: did women change their sexual behavior because of their growing equality in the career field, or did the latter happen because women could no longer expect men to court and pay for them? The most you could say with any accuracy is that both are related to the cultural shifts of the 60's and 70's.
Furthermore, it is sad and somewhat sexist indeed that Stepp simply assumes that 'what it means to be a man' has everything to do with sex and the pursuit of women, and that without the latter, men are left in utter confusion. There was in fact a time when that constituted a very small portion of what it meant to be a man, but unfortunately in our sex-obsessed society, this formulation might be true for both genders.
Tracy, on the other hand, is over-reacting by dismissing the entire piece as some sort of call for a return to patriarchy. I think Stepp's piece was more descriptive than prescriptive in tone. Some of those descriptions were flat out wrong. What she got right, however, was the need for SOME sort of new guidelines for inter-gender relations that are applicable to our new era.
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Blonde Redhead!
[Read the article: Music Video: "Top Ranking," Blonde Redhead]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I used to think Coheed and Cambria's vocals were disturbingly high, but then I heard these guys. Good stuff.
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Here we go...
[Read the article: China's birth control disconnect]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Here come the right-wingers to proclaim this story as the kind of dystopian scenario that results from legalized abortion. Actually, the only problem that I see with 'abortion as birth control' is that it's far more inefficent and harmful to women's health than normal birth control. Apart from that it's interesting to see the complete reverse of our country's attitude regarding abortion - it's like some kind of Bizarro-world. Yet another example of the huge influence religion has over government.
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Deontology
[Read the article: Tom the Dancing Bug]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]...is the understanding of moral theory based around the concept of duty. Thus, any given act will have a deontic status (permissible, forbidden, obligatory) depending on what duties are outlined by the theory. For Kant, the primary duty of all human beings was to treat other human beings as 'ends in themselves'.
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Terrorism
[Read the article: This Modern World]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]To Anonymous:
You're right. Because we all know terrorism isn't caused by poverty, globalization, or any worldly phenomena. If it were, we'd have to actually accept some responsibility for eliminating these factors, and we can't have that. Better to believe, as all of us right-thinking people know, that it's simply caused by Evil (TM) and that to attempt to explain it any further is the same as 'justifying' it.
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Pshh...'dinner'
[Read the article: Tony Cartoons: It's Warcraft]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I know, what the hell is it with people having to go for stupid reasons like "oh, my mom is calling me for dinner" or "oh man, gotta go to work"? And why is it always so freakin' hard to find a healer? Sigh...
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Paying for bags? Gasp!
[Read the article: Plastic bags are killing us]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Just a small nitpick, but you made it seem like stores charging for bags was such a new concept. First of all, it makes perfect capitalist sense, since it's the store's bag and they pay to have it produced. Second, it's already the norm in most of Europe. I don't much relish the idea of having to pay for a bag either, but it would be worth it environmnentally. The least they could do here is ASK if you even WANT a bag, instead of just automatically double-bagging a candy bar before I even have a chance to stop them. I suppose a cashier job turns you into an unthinking machine to the point where you don't even realize that bagging something that i could fit into the palm of my hand actually makes things more difficult for 'the customer'.
Coming from the Soviet Union, where everything was a scarce commodity, my family has a sometimes annoying habit of hoarding plastic bags. Unfortunately, it never occured to us when I was growing up to take them to the store (though if they had charged for bags, you can be sure my grandma would have brought 10 each time). I carried this annoying habit into college, but by the end of semester I would have a drawer full of plastic bags to get rid of. The point is that even when you make an effort to reuse plastic bags, it becomes pointless when they're so overproduced and when you're literally bombarded with them every day.