Letters to the Editor
MWise
Published Letters: 253 Editor's Choice: 19
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Wanting it
[Read the article: Sex drive in a patch?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"But if you wanted it, wouldn't you actually *want* it?" Not if your body chemistry isn't working in concert with your mind. By your logic a man who can't get his dick hard even though he really really really wants to have sex just isn't trying hard enough. If a women wants sex and her body isn't responding in the way she wants it to, should she just be expected to try harder or shouldn't she be allowed to get help??? Women with early onset of menopause or radical hysterectomies...should they get to enjoy sex if they want to? Oh but you don't really think they want to, or just not enough. It's very patronizing for you to say that a person who wants a more satisfactory sex life is "worship[ping] at the Secular Materialist Church of the Immaculate Consumption." Sex, especially sex within a sustaining relationship is spiritually fulfilling. FSD goes far beyond just want, it can encompass having the desire but not the ability to be aroused or to come to fruition. This is not something that is necessarily caused by an indifferent husband who is consumed by "Victoria Secrets" model. I give a woman enough credit that when she walks into her doctor's office and asks for help with her sex life she's looking for something more than being told to have a cup of coffee with her husband. A woman with an indifferent husband is more likely to seek help at a lawyer's office.
And I would never ask a "spiritual" leader for sex advice. Especially the ones that DON'T HAVE SEX or don't admit that they do.
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geek boys
[Read the article: Death threats dog female blogger]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Please stop bashing all the geek boys, a lot of them are great people. I've never felt that the field was dominated by sexist pigs. It more that since women are underrepresented in the industry a woman will more likely experience multiple instances of harassment. If there were a lot more women, the harassment gets spread around. I also have found that as the ratio of men vs women balances out the men seem to be more aware of what they are saying and tend to tone it down. I think with only one or two women in a group the men forget that they are in mixed company and say stuff that otherwise they wouldn't. That's not to deny that the tech industry is free from it's fair share of male idiots. At one job I was the only woman on my team and I had to deal with sexual comments and inappropriate touching. The men that did those things were not confused or autistic. They were well aware of our sexual harassment policy and it was absolutely clear that grabbing your coworker's ass was crossing the line. The more loner types that I worked with never would have considered doing any such thing. Hell some of them would barely look me in the eye; they weren't coming anywhere near my hiney. I've also worked in a sales environment and in the political arena with what are supposed to be "people persons." And several of those guys were jerks and made a game of cornering the new office intern in the copy room. I guess you could say they were more social in their harassment style as they liked to work in teams as opposed to the tech guy that liked to go solo on the ass grabbing. Assholes are assholes all the world around.
On a side note, we might get into heated discussions here at Salon, but I've never seen anyone threaten another person or post anything close to what I saw on the Rageboy and Sierra sites. We can be harsh on each other, but I've never seen it taken that level of foulness.
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support
[Read the article: North Dakota teens need parents' permission to take care of their babies]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I support having parents involved in their children's medical decisions, but is withholding care the way to go about it? If a girl shows up at her doctors office and she's pregnant and needs medical care, shouldn't that care be given along with counseling on how to tell her parents and help her do so in a safe way. There is no more likelihood that if she is turned away at the doctor's office that she's going to tell her parents than she would have in the first place. The more likely outcome is that she hides her pregnancy and if she does make it to term without prenatal care her baby is at risk for health problems. The worst outcome is that she hides her pregnancy and either tries to self abort or has the baby in secret and abandons it or kills it. If a girl feels like she has no one to go to, she's more likely to do something desperate than if she has responsible adults helping her.