My daughter, blessed as a toddler with a stocky build, a strong resemblance to her father and a fearless personality was universally assumed to be a boy. My son had curly blond hair and long eyelashes-- and a preference for pink clothing. We didn't plan it this way (really) but they both have unisex names.

We seldom corrected a wrong assumption-- why make people feel bad? Long before kindergarten everyone knew the sex of both children. A little bit of gender identification happened naturally. They are both normal teenagers now, different only in that they are both very comfortable with the opposite gender in a way that most kids aren't.

Pushing a child into a proscribed gender role is like deciding your child will be an athlete or a musician. Why force a child into a mold?

I think what these parents are doing is wonderful and really, not that big of a deal.

Like many a nerd girl in the seventies I watched endless Star Trek reruns, memorizing entire scenes. It was a huge part of my childhood which is why episodes like “Turnabout Intruder” depressed me immeasurably. It was as though Rodenberry decided to take up Aristotle’s question about whether or not women have souls and in the end decided that we don’t, not really. At least not enough of a soul for a command position.

I was beyond happy when Kate Muglrew, a great actress with plenty of swagger, was picked to play Captain Janeway, but then the series writers saddled her with a terrible story line. Irrevocably, irretrievably lost in time and space with nothing but a really good bartender and some serious coping skills--What the hell? You could hear the entire nerd nation think en masse; “Mom’s great and all but we had more fun when dad was here.”

Signed,

Brain and brain, what is brain?

You given voice to one of the most intractable predjudices in this country: the prejudice against overweight people. Everyone agrees that the solution to "our looming health crisis" is for overweight people to exercise more. Everyone agrees, that is, until a fat women is seen running in public, subjecting real atheletes to the sight of her "flab".

As a fat middle-aged women I'd like to suggest that we find another fat middle-aged women to pick on. Oh that's right, there aren't very many fat middle-aged woman in the public eye. Wonder why? We're a pretty big segment of the population.

When people feel free to blame Oprah for everything from dumbing down the american novel to ruinning sports it makes her a hero in my eyes. Not because she can run a marathon or a conglomerate, but because she has the courage to get out of bed in the morning and face the onslaught.

I saw the Samatha Bee TDS segement and it didn't strike me as out of bounds for the Daily Show. The real issue is that people are not comfortable with transgressive comedy when the source is a women.