Letters to the Editor
Zaynab
Published Letters: 209 Editor's Choice: 23
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Oh, a play on words! So original!
[Read the article: Pussy saves broad!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I was a little wary of this whole Broadsheet idea - now I know why. As with many other woman-centered blog-type media, it's never long before words like "pussy" start getting batted around in a way that is obviously supposed to be either clever, perhaps even cutesy. Frankly, it just comes across as forced, and more than a little creepy.
First, even though Broadsheet is a sort-of blog, and thus doesn't have to provide any truly relevant content or commentary, I'd still like to see something that constitutes an interesting tidbit or even NEWS. This story is not news, and wordplay does not make it so.
It seems as though Ms. Traister was just DYING for an excuse to have a chance to use the word "pussy". Ha. Ha. Ha. As in "cat". Clever. I get it. Grow up.
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LEAVE?
[Read the article: Once the kids are gone, I don't want them coming back]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Wow. He'd actually leave his family if his daughter moved back home? Something much, much deeper is going on there.
Daughters don't "outgrow" their fathers. Clearly there is more to this story that the guy is telling, or maybe there is more to it than he even realizes. You don't "cease" having a relationship with your child at 16 - the relationship is still there, but in this case it's just a cold and unspeaking relationship.
Cary, I'm really surprised that you wouldn't have addressed that at all.
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Sigh - where have you people BEEN?
[Read the article: Sushi, maki or me?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Agreed. This dining experience was profiled ages ago in just about every feminist 'zine available, as well as some mainstream magazines. C'mon, tell me you heard about it!
I was taking classes at a university two years ago and was constantly being approached by earnest young hippies imploring me to sign petitions banning the practice in Seattle. Why? These women are not sex slaves - they are paid well and do it willingly.
Food and sex are linked in a way that is difficult ot explain and impossible to do away with (ESPECIALLY in Japanese culture). This is just a very unsubtle way to make money off of it. Don't tell me sashimi doesn't make you think of oral sex - it's MEANT TO make you think of oral sex.
I think the problem so many people have with the practice has to do with the fact that the woman is lying still, and is passively allowing the activity, rather than dancing, wrapping her naked body around a pole. But there's very little difference in terms of objectification - the gyrating stripper actually has about as much say in her own destiny as the nude woman covered in raw fish - that is, it's her choice, and she can leave at any time.
Sanitation note: There usually is a barrier between the sashimi and the woman's skin - Saran Wrap, or something of the sort. All depends on city sanitation laws.
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Woah...
[Read the article: Honk if you're uncut!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]What a great round of letters. The bumbpersticker actually confused me, too, because it pictured part of a pair of scissors on it - made me wonder if maybe there was someone dumb enough out there to not know what a foreskin is. I actually dated a guy once who didn't know he'd been circumcised - his mother never bothered to tell him, and it just never occured to him that it might have happened. So I kind of assumed that some people just don't know the difference.
I didn't realize that people were so vehemently opinionated on this topic, either. Circumcision is standard in my religion (mind you, we do it much later, at age 8 - and a big party is thrown around the occasion), and I don't know anyone (family or friends) who is longing for his long-lost foreskin. I mean, it's not a topic at the dinner table or anything, but even men I've been intimate with seem to consider it a very mundane issue. Are most of the intactivists here female? Just curious.
And, to the poster who equated male circumcision and female circumcision - don't. Men are circumcised to prevent infections (sure, showering should be able to do the trick, but it doesn't always). Circumcised men are able to have rewarding sex lives in the same way that uncircumcised men are. Female circumcision, on the other hand, is meant to take away her ability to enjoy sex. If male circumcision completely removed the penis, then you could make the comparison. Otherwise, bugger off. They're completely different.
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Stupid, stupid
[Read the article: Honk if you're uncut!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Um... I don't think the reader found this bumbersticker stupid - she just didn't get the joke, see? It says, "if men were meant to have a foreskin, they'd be born with them", right? Well, the thought that come to most people mind is "but men ARE born with foreskins". People who "get it" then say "Ooooh. Good one." People who don't get it go "Wow, someone is so stupid that they don't KNOW that men are born with foreskins."
The reader may not have been particularly good at understanding irreverent humor, but I don't think it was meant to undermine "intactivist" ideas. She just didn't "get it".
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All we are saying is give salam a chance...
[Read the article: Tariq Ramadan on the crisis in France]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]As another American Muslim, I love to hear these calls for liberalization, modernization, and secularization within our faith; however, I have to agree that these intellectuals have a minimal impact on the process of enlightening Islam.
I've read countless books, articles, and speeches by these liberalizing Muslims. There are even groups that are dedicated to a more rational Islam - see www.muslimwakeup.com for some good reading. We can be as modern and as liberal as we like a Muslims, but fundamentalists/terrorists aren't really found among our ranks to begin with.
The problem as I see it is that even if we do manage to create a secularized Islam, one that is peaceful, thoughful, rational, feminist-loving, and so forth, we're still outnumbered by the ignorant and the fearful - two characteristics that almost guarantee a fundmentalist outlook. There a few hundred thousands of us - there are a billion of them.