My handle here and on LJ: from Larry Niven's Man/Kzin wars.

And I will scream and leap if someone reminds me that kzinnret (female kzinti) are bred to be stupid. I am an OLD-FASHIONED kzinrret, by Larry's own agreement.

This whole discussion reminds me of the endless debates in Dear Abby or Ann Landers about how to put the toilet paper on the toilet-paper roll.

(Please don't make any analogies; I already self-censored the verb "insert.")

Myself included, haven't we got anything better to do?

Call me a bluestocking, but this "let's keep it light" tone -- put it this way: if feminism annoys some people, "feminism lite" will simply produce a flakier sort of straw feminist for them to try to torch.

There's at least one Anonymous here who is sounding like the most judgmental "grup" here, and I doubt I'd believe him or her if s/he didn't know what a "grup" was.

Yes, yes, I realize, all must be Sacrificed to the Chil-Dren. Potter IS about children, but not the icons to which Anonymous, in a terrible disincentive for parenthood, is harping.

I've read the "put away childish things" phrase.

I've also read Tolkien's statement that there is a difference between the Flight of the Deserter and the Escape of the Prisoner ("On Faery Stories") and Le Guin's essay "Why do Americans Hate Dragons?"

A parent in touch with his or her imaginative, myth-creating and appreciating side is a parent better able to relate to children for whom the whole world is a discovery.

No, it won't get them into middle management or Harvard. Not necessarily. But it -will- get them into a fuller life than the Gradgrinds of the world.

Are you seriously claiming that all Potter fanfic or all fanfic = online porn?

Myself, I'd call it a false equivalence.

Are you usually allowed to get away with that sort of thing?

As we say downtown: Fuhgeddaboudit.

What if it were a porn hobby?

As Aslan might say (but probably not about porn), that is someone else's story, and you're trying to change the subject to a ground of your own choosing.

This is the second time you've tried it.

Do people really let you get away with it?

Can the anonymous say "rhetorical questions" or just cut and paste them from the sites they hang out at?

Can they grow some originality?

Can they stop feeling sorry for themselves?

Will they let me transfer the stupid Viagra spam I get to them because, clearly, they need it?

Those are rhetorical questions, too.

In the first place, I'm not going to waste words or logic on topic drift and canned posts.

In the second place, elsewhere here on SALON (I don't expect you to have read it, so I will take the time to explain it to you in small words), I explained the genesis of my netname.

I have been Greeneyedkzin since I came online in 1989. I know that a modern kzinrret is bred for limited intelligence. I also know that the old-style kzinrret was highly intelligent and highly aggressive, quite capable of the suitable kzin scream and leap.

Furthermore, after hearing far too much about this, I cleared it with Larry Niven, an old friend and collaborator who agrees that I am an old-fashioned kzinrret.

In other words, don't TRY to be clever. You never know what you'll run up against. East German judge awards your post a 1.

I'm not crazy about Belkin's brand of hyper-privileged post-feminism, but there's an issue here I don't think we've dealt with.

Business clothing and accessories, for women and men alike, can be viewed as a system of signs. You may not know why a person doesn't "fit in," but it's quite possible it's because that person is dressed "wrong," wears the "wrong shoes" or carries the "wrong bag," or even doesn't wear makeup.

A few examples. I was dinged from one job because the interviewer thought I dressed too "old" and didn't wear makeup. In point of fact, I was wearing a very formal Brooks Brothers suit and moderate makeup to interview at a shop where the women tended to wear bright silk shirts, gabardine trousers, and heavy warpaint. It would have been a bad cultural fit.

I understand the semiotics of women's clothing well. Men's clothing? It's trickier for me to get, but I do know that investment bankers dress differently from brokers, and they all dress differently from people in the creative field. What's more, they dress differently by corporate standing, as do women, and they dress differently for different occasionsl.

Before the crash of 1987, we were riding high. The men were wearing double-breasted suits, white-collared and cuffed shirts, and Hermes ties. The women were in colored suits, bright silk shirts, high-heeled pumps and colored stockings. In the days after the crash, EVERYONE reverted to dark suits. and white shirts. The men did not wear their bright braces or Hermes ties, but the yellow Brooks ties with black speckles, while the women went back to plain hose: we re-assumed the most conservative uniform.

In a nobler world, these things wouldn't matter. But in the one we live in, these are elements that denote belonging. Just as there are cultures in which Birkenstocks, jeans, and symbolically decorated T-shirts are the only "proper" dress.

Think of it as karma in action.

Obviously, your publishers read your books.

And this escapee from a veterinarian's office is not advocating a form of social engineering HOW?

Because he's right wing?

GMAFB.

Oh really? And from which MRA board did you take those numbers, and what is their basis? Aside, of course, from wishful thinking.