Since you folks keep telling us that even though it is called "feminism" it really is about the rights of everyone, why don't you defend this guy's clothing choices?

Oh, for pity's sake. I'd like to be attacked for positions I actually hold, not for stuff you make up.

When I was in high school, our school held a "Pride Day" each Friday. Pride Day was meant to "instill self-esteem in the student body" according to the handbook; in reality it was the day prospective parents were allowed to tour the campus, where we would all look like good little senators-in-training instead of the hooligans we were on the other four days of the week. The uniform for Pride day consisted of:

for girls: A skirt or dress, pantyhose or stockings, and appropriate dress shoes.

for boys: a dress shirt and tie, slacks (not jeans), dress socks and dress shoes.

Well, we girls asked the administration if we were allowed to wear dressy pants instead of skirts. No. So next Friday, our entire grade arrived at school with the girls wearing slacks, dress shirts, and ties, and the boys wearing pantyhose and dresses.

I've never been so proud of so many people in one place at one time. Everybody showed up, all the guys, all the girls, even the science teacher. The administration were not amused. Rather than allow us to wear our forbidden clothing, they dismissed classes for the day and sent the entire 10th grade home. The teacher was apparently lectured about her responsibility to inform staff in case of future mutinies.

In other words, I support your right to wear aquamarine pants, and I'll gladly sit through detention in support of it.

:P

One of the things that helps me is reading psalms. Try it, even if you're not religious. Many of the psalms, written in days of trial and oppression, are surprisingly timely. And the words are comforting in themselves - I don't mean that these are comforting thoughts. "Those people who enslaved us and asked us to sing songs of our homeland for their amusement, I wish someone would knock out the brains of their babies against some stones" is not a comforting thought, a kind thought, even what most people would think of as a "religious" thought. It is, however, a human and perfectly comprehensible reaction to evil, even across thousands of years and thousands of miles. Reading these naked emotions of a stranger, running the gamut from hope to fury and frustration, helps to put things in perspective.

37 is a good one.

(Another thing that helps me is reading Salon - good to know not everyone is insane.)

Um, Ben? Healthy body fat percentage for a man is 13-17%. An athlete about to enter a competition can temporarily get it down to the 6-13% range through diet and exercise, but it's not healthy to maintain it at that level.

So, here's my question: are you lying, or are you anorexic?

I hope all these dipshits have long, happy marriages, and all their daughters ask to be married in mom's wedding dress.

Why have a wedding in the first place if it's going to make you miserable? Get married at the registry office and donate the cash to charity. Buying a dress you'll grow to loathe so much that wrecking it seems liberating (my friends and I used to trash our notebooks at the end of the schoolyear, but we didn't volunteer to be high school students) is sick and twisted.

And I'm appalled that the article doesn't mention that future generations might want mom's dress. Do people go into marriage today with such an expectation of failure that it never occurs to them?

Because it supports me, not you.

Professional athletes who are currently competing can drop below the recommended range of body fat ON A TEMPORARY BASIS. It's not a good idea to live like that.

So, you're an anorexic. That explains a lot.

Since someone mentioned him, I have a story about Dostoevsky (hmm, my spell-checker prefers it without the y) and Authoritarians.

I mentioned earlier that I just spend a weekend with my Authoritarian in-laws. They like party games. (If they ever shut up for a second, they might start thinking, and the possibility scares them.)

One game involved this electronic thingy called "Catchphrase". It generates a random word, you try to get your teammates to guess the word, and then you toss it to the next person before the buzzer goes off. If the buzzer goes off before the team guesses correctly, the other team gets to guess. We played men versus women, which was sad because my husband and I were the only people with large enough vocabularies to recognize many of the words, and we were on opposite teams, so we kept giving away points to each other.

So... My (step)father-in-law shakes his head (for about the fifth time) and says, "Is this even a word? I'll sound it out. First syllable is like the Spanish word for two..."

Needless to say, the buzzer went off before anyone made a guess. He displayed the electronic thingy for the rest of us; it read "Dostoevsky."

Remember that, folks. Bush's supporters include people who not only don't know what books Dostoevsky wrote, they don't know he was a Russian novelist, don't even recognize that his name is a name.

I realize that my in-laws could recognize themselves from this story, but the chances of either of them reading Salon are about the same as Cheney suddenly deciding to quit his job and open an organic smoothie stand.

Thanks, I've read the Koran. Your point?

Reading through your letter again, I realize that you seem to have mistaken me for someone else. I don't appreciate that. I haven't mentioned Israel in anything I've written.