Letters to the Editor
Allie_
Published Letters: 1242 Editor's Choice: 109
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shaking my head
[Read the article: Save the males]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]As a purely practical matter, the species would get along just fine with 1/100th of the men it has - a single man can impregnate hundreds of women in the time it takes one woman to carry a child to term. And the men who remained (the straight ones, anyway) would be rolling in clover.
I'm kidding, y'all, calm down.
I agree that men's health issues are as important as women's. If someone wants to sell a blue toaster to promote testicular cancer awareness, I have no problem with that - my uncle died of testicular cancer when he was just 18 years old. It's more common than you think and it kills young men. Apart from Lance Armstrong, when have you seen testicular cancer in the news? I wouldn't buy the blue toaster, mind you. But I wouldn't buy the pink toaster either. My support of charities and my selection of household items are not linked, and I prefer it that way. In fact, I'd venture to say I'm allergic to people trying to push any agenda through consumer goods. Ask me for a donation, and I'll pull out my wallet. Try to sell me a crappy cloisonnes pink ribbon pin, and I'll walk on by.
However, Kathleen Parker doesn't stop at saying that men's health issues are just as important as women's. She takes it a step further, saying that women have convinced the world not to pay any attention to men's health.
The pink crusade took off in part because, let's face it, women are formidable organizers. They also have successfully convinced the nation that medical research is sexist and biased toward men. Though this myth has been largely debunked, it persists as a perception.
Really? All a myth? I was reading a psychological study only two days ago that interviewed only male subjects. I've seen first hand the attitude doctors have towards heart problems in women. Whatever's going on isn't simply a myth. I'm not sure that "bias" is the right word to describe it, however; bias implies conscious choice. This is more of a blind spot than a deliberate bias, which is why awareness efforts worked to get funding for breast cancer research. Medical researchers have a lot of blind spots - the difference between adults and teens in their reactions to drugs is another big one. I'm willing to consider the possibility that there are some male health issues which fall into one of these blind spots. Just don't pretend the other ones don't exist.
We're ingesting toxins? Women are stressed during pregnancy? Hey, thanks for mentioning it, let's do something about that.
It's this last point - percentage of male births may be dropping because women are stressed during pregnancy - that makes me shake my head in wonder at Kathleen Parker. Girlfriend, that isn't a male health problem. That's a FEMALE health problem, stress in women. It has an impact on males; fewer male babies are born when women are under stress. Surely the logical conclusion to draw from this is that men and women depend on each other; what harms women, harms all humanity, and what harms men, harms all humanity.
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What does it taste like?
[Read the article: Dark chocolate goes green]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You seem to have forgotten to mention.
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already outlawed
[Read the article: Sacred whores or sex slaves?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Note that the practice has been outlawed for 50 years. Why doesn't the government get serious about enforcement? Imprisoning people like the parents who didn't see what the big deal was because they got money out of their daughter would go a long way towards stopping the practice.
I'm not convinced there's a lot of honest belief here. There are people PRETENDING to believe, but men who want to visit hookers and parents who want to pimp their daughters so they can build a bigger house aren't exactly disinterested parties. The "sacred prostitute" they interviewed for the article certainly didn't seem to consider her position very sacred. She doesn't talk about dedication to the goddess, she talks about her parents wanting money.
By the way, sacred prostitution for goddesses is hardly a novel concept - just to give one instance, Babylon was famous for the sacred prostitutes at its temple of Ishtar. The historical and archaeological record doesn't support the new age idea that goddess worship was empowering for women.