...that in this age of digital media, and cheap online distribution, television show productions will somehow find a way to become more autonomous and less dependent on the big media conglomerates. Perhaps if something like this someday emerges, where independent TV productions are able to soldier on on their own and come up with their own distribution scheme, some of these woefully underappreciated cancelled shows (Carnivale was my personal heartbreaker) can be reborn and revived.

That, anyway, is my wish for the future of televised entertainment.

Nobody is hired to be a role model. It is not a position that can be marketed, as the qualifications for it, and the benefits of it, are entirely subjective, personal, and nonmaterial.

The notion that part of your job is to be a role model, be you a teacher, a file clerk, or a professional athlete, is a major over reach on the part of the employer. It essentially makes you the possession of your employer, giving them power to dictate every aspect of your life and denying you space for personal freedom to be yourself. It high time that employees stop tolerating this, and stand up for the right to live their own life on their own time.

I agree with the other posters. Salon is my internet home base. It has been ever since I discovered it six years ago.

If I might take this opportunity to make a humble suggestion - how about a Libertarian columnist or blog?

Well, for one thing, I know of only one country - Israel - that drafts women into its army (I could be wrong about this, so please enlighten me if I am). If the US were to institute the draft, I doubt that women would be included in it. Even if women were drafted, it is even less likely that they would be sent to the front lines. This, I think, is part of a globally held prejudice concerning things confrontational - men fight, women don't.

On a more mundane, personal level (and all good feminists know that the personal is political), this translates into an assumption that in all things confrontational or adversarial, from standing up to the boss or landlord to actually confronting hostile assailants, that men will take the lead in standing up and taking on the challenge. This prejudice was put on particularly grotesque display recently when John Derbyshire of the National Review criticized the men of Virginia Tech for not directly confronting (and protecting the women from) Cho Seung Hui. If Mr. Cho had confined his activities to a sorority house, would such a criticism have even been considered about the sorority sisters who didn't resist Cho?

In a more benign light, in matters of sex, relationships, and dating, men are expected to be the active, initiatory party (the flip side of being confrontational), regardless of whether or not they are comfortable with that roll, and all of the social risks associated with it. Yet, in this roll, men are faced with a further conundrum, in that men who are open about their sexuality and their sexual interests are often viewed as perverts, or even at times as threats to their female peers. Women who are similarly open about their sex lives are rarely viewed in the same light or with the same disdain. This commonly held prejudice against male sexuality, in this day and age, can have real world consequences in the form of job termination and potential legal liability. I don't want to be as hyperbolically paranoid as Jessica Valenti is with her concept of the "rape schedule," but I do think that the possibility of being fired or sued for a slip of the tongue or a miscommunication is present in the minds of most men while they are at work. I know that women can be sued too, but I doubt that many women spend much time worring about who they may or may not have unwittingly harassed.

Coming up with this list was a challenge for me. I am not inclined to make the personal political (perhaps this is another burden of masculinity that women don't share). I also have no real expectation that any of it will change any time soon. I accept it all as simply the challenge of being a man in today's society.

What about you? What are your thoughts on the benefits that women are unfairly denied and the burdens that they unfairly bear?

"I can understand that men feel attacked by feminism at times, but men often ARE the sole beneficiaries of benefits that rightfully belong to both genders."

Men are also often the recipients of burdens that perhaps should rightfully be shared by both genders. This fact is never addressed by feminism. It can't be, because, as I have previously stated, the notion that engendered power is stacked in men's favor is integral to feminism itself.

I can't say that I feel victimized by feminism, but I do think that I, as a male, have gender related concerns of my own that feminism cannot and will not address.

I believe in equal treatment under the law.

I believe in equal pay for equal work.

As I said in a previous post, I don't believe that those ideas are owned by Feminism.

My problem with Feminism as a school of thought is that it, almost by necessity, pits one gender against another. No matter how it evolves or changes, I am not sure I can envision a brand of feminism that doesn't in some way posit men as unfair beneficiaries of something that rightfully belongs to women. I think that that notion is an oversimplification of gender dynamics, and the many subtle and not-so-subtle power implications at play within them.