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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Published Letters: 329 Editor's Choice: 37
If the fitting rooms are full of nursing mothers, and there's no place to try on clothes, then sales might decrease, and stores might close, and then there might not be places to sit and breastfeed.
Just sayin'...
Then, there's this: "People who envision having a baby often forget that they are creating an entirely new human being who will leave in a few years as an adult." Honey, I forgot the toddler would grow up!
Mieszkowski seems amused--in a patronizing way--by VHEMT's assertions, but it does seem that there are a great many people who don't seem to grasp that childrearing is more than just a collection of Kodak moments. I suspect that they come from the same pool of folks who adopt that golden retriever puppy because it's so cute and fluffy but drop it off at the shelter, neglected and unloved, because they didn't realize it would get so big and require so much care. The only difference is that there's more social sanction against abandoning children than there is against abandoning unwanted pets.
VHEMT is tilting at windmills, but if they are making people think more carefully about whether and why to have children, they're providing an important service. If their ideas became more widespread, they could help to prevent some serious family dysfunction, neglect, and abuse...if only the societal pressure to reproduce weren't so overwhelming.
Apologies for posting song lyrics, but I can't say it any better than this.
"Everyone knows you can�t trust a woman whenever that time rolls around;
Everyone knows she can go crazy when her mainspring gets unwound;
At that certain time, a woman is prone
To indisposition and it�s not unknown
For her to be touchy, a little bit slow,
So we can�t entrust her with running the show.
Everyone knows you can�t trust a woman, she might slip out of gear -
She bays at the moon, she�s a walking womb a dozen times a year.
Low on ego, high on id,
Victim of her hormones, her mind�s like a sieve,
You can�t trust a person who might flip her lid
Every twenty-eight days.
Everyone knows you can�t trust a man whenever that time rolls around;
Everyone knows he can go crazy when his mainspring�s overwound;
The needle points north, south, east and west,
He�s never at peace, never at rest,
Victim of his hormones, running too fast,
Steering the ship with his mind on the mast.
Everyone knows you can�t trust a man, things can slip out of gear -
He�s a walking, talking divining rod ten-thousand times a times a year.
And the power and the glory, the whole damn show,
Everything except that old status quo
Can all go to hell when the signal says GO ...
Any time of day."
--Peggy Seeger, "Everyone Knows"
I'd like to see my nieces grow up to be whatever they want, but at ages four and five they want to be princesses *and* architects, so they're each getting a dress-up kit and a set of Tinkertoys. If you keep giving them stuff they won't play with just because you think they should, you're just throwing money out the window.
Besides, when I was a little girl I liked to dress up in my mother's old bridesmaid dresses too; that had much less of an impact on me than my father and teachers telling me over and over, directly and indirectly, that I was no good at math, science, or computer programming while praising and encouraging my brother and my male classmates.
Where are the men?
Why is this yet another story about the "plight of the working mother" with no mention of husbands and male partners and the compromises they should have been making? Single mothers excluded, of course, but if this is all about the woman who returns to work after raising children, it means that there must have been another breadwinner in the picture somewhere.
I'm just going to keep asking this, over and over, until men, collectively, recognize that they're just going to have to change if they "want it all"--the happy marriage, the successful career, the well-bred children. This isn't the 1950s, boys--you're going to have to pitch in and make some sacrifices. And it's not going to be easy. Just ask the women, who've been putting up with this garbage for decades.
That was the whole of my comment.
Double ew.
You know, I'm not a mother and never plan to be one, but I'm starting to feel downright maternal and protective toward all those fertile young twenty-somethings that Ross and his ilk claim so highly prize. Somehow becoming the reproductive vessels of such Sensitive New-Age Guys and bearing little carbon copies of them seems like a terrible price to pay for that nice shiny bit of finger bling and an MRS degree.
And I have to say that if I weren't already married (to a nifty guy who doesn't want to breed and doesn't care about my sell-by date), I'd definitely prefer singlehood over the Type-A narcissists Dowd seems to think are the only eligible men in the world.
Poor Maureen. She apparently doesn't think she can do any better. Who the hell would want to marry a New York uberhack? I'd go into a convent first.
Newsflash! There are sexist pricks on both sides of the political spectrum! Who knew? Bet these guys have bona fide "liberal" academic credentials, degrees from Amherst, sisters who went to Smith, and purty young (non-"fat") wives with expiration dates.
I will happily give my husband oral sex, but I wouldn't be caught dead in public with a lollipop shaped like a penis. Does this make me self-loathing?
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
