I think it's tacky. Erin Aubry Kaplan writes with zest and humor, but I wish she'd write about something else.

When did the OED drop "decorum" from the dictionary?

I don't know how you drew that implication from what I wrote, and I don't know why, unless you're one of the Archetypal Angry White Men.

If you want to gripe rather than work on yourself, it's your choice. I think it's a silly choice, myself, but it's not my business.

No, I actually can't see it, and I think it's a case of mindset.

Women are barraged with feedback and helpful tips, hints or outright demands that we improve ourselves in all ways at all times -- from housework to sex work to getting advanced degrees. There are supposed to be no limits, which makes it positive hell when there's no limits and people 20 years younger than you are racing up four staircases and wondering why you can't improve yourself to keep up. "You" in this case, meaning me. Because the belief is, that if we work hard enough we -will- improve ourselves.

I'm never going to go jet-propelled up the steps of the Uffizi, but I'm going to walk more: that's the mindset. If you can't do it all, do what you can.

Is it that men don't have the same mindset? If you need to improve, give up because it's hopeless and you haven't made the grade? THAT's not helpful.

You know, I never thought all those helpful hints were worth a damn, but maybe they just are.

How do -you- see it? Because we sure are not thinking on the same planet.

Minimum standards. That's language I can understand. There are plenty of them, and the standards get higher and higher every day -- and more and more remote, the older that women get. I'm at the age of invisibility, except that I've learned to project. It annoys the girlz in their slip dresses that I won't get off the planet and bequeath them my jewelry, but I enjoy annoying them. It annoys the boyz in their suits that I may be age in grade, but I'm senior to them.

That's the thing. Even after the minimum standards are raised to a level individual women realize that height, age, body type, money, etc. absolutely preclude their being able to attain, the feedbackers and footbinders insist that you TRY.

Some women are able to walk away or opt out. Some don't. It's easier to get on the @!$@!$ treadmill and talk about organic food than listen to the feedback as it amps up.

What's the take on repetitive feedback among you all? It's been my observation that when you don't like something, you invalidate it and turn your backs. How wrong am I on that?

Brightstar -- why on earth would I care what you think of feminism except if I've had a hard day (which I have) and want to pot trolls?

Are you saying that what you are interested is sexual gratification and women's availability in and of itself is valuable to you?

I know there are women interested in "sport sex," but again, the feedback loop is such that "being there" and "being interested" is just not enough.

That being the case, you can complain or you can do something about getting what you want.

Personally, I think that's pretty much sex without people, and you could achieve the same results with a Real Doll, but I have definitely been socialized to believe that.

When I was in school, we called them Queen Bees and had the saying "you ain't been trashed till you've been trashed by a sister."

In my cash, it was the chair of my department.

There are also male-oriented women, meaning that they observe male standards and respect only male validation.

There's a heck of a lot of range of ideological and personal viewpoints. Camille Paglia's point that Sarah Palin represents a kind of blue-collar feminism that my particular brand (second-wave, Ivy, more like Hillary's) doesn't quite get is a good point. The problem is that it raises all sorts of other challenges. Including talking out of both sides of her mouth, given her fundamentalist views. How you can have fundamentalism without St. Paul, I don't know, but then, I don't have to. She does. That she doesn't makes me think she's in bad faith.

I like what I've seen of Sidwell graduates, and they've got the infrastructure in place to put a wall between the two Obama daughters and what their parents don't want getting at them.

It isn't as if they're leaving a public school to go to a private school, either. The Obamas have chosen schools with superb academics.

Incidentally, I'm a graduate of an inner-city mill-town high school. Would have killed to go to prep school, but it worked out okay. Of course, if I'd needed 24/7 security--the Carters made a bad mistake sending Amy to public school. Too much press, too much Making A Social Point.