Letters to the Editor
Jan VanDenBerg
Published Letters: 52
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I'm going to start ready Dear Prudence
[Read the article: A 19-year-old wants my husband]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I like these little advice column vignettes as an amusing break from work, but Cary's advice is far too often wrong wrong wrong, which impels me to post comments -- which is a waste of my time.
Salon, you really need to look into, if not replacing the pathetic Cary figure with someone who has a lick of sense, maybe just ADD on another advice columnist . . . ?
Jan VanDenBerg
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Typo alert -- I'm going to start READING Dear Prudence -- is what I meant
[Read the article: A 19-year-old wants my husband]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You know, on Slate.com.
Jan VanDenBerg
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Great article --
[Read the article: Our broken political discourse]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I couldn't agree more.
I like to watch TV with the sound turned off, too.
The bizarre disconnect between the talking heads on TV, suspended in their hermetically sealed, glassed-in world constantly working their little mouths like a so many guppies in an aquarium, and the public, which has been fooled one too many times already and just isn't listening anymore -- that is the real story.
But the guppies don't know it.
Jan VanDenBerg
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Rebecca Gomperts is a hero!
[Read the article: The pro-choice pirate]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I have so much respect for a person who will step out there and DO something about this issue.
It is obvious that the right to abortion is fundamental to women's eventually gaining control of their lives and escaping the twin hammers of rampant physiology and male sexism.
And women escaping their ancient role of maximum propogator is fundamental to not wrecking the planet.
Women's bodies evolved in a world with about 100,000 to 500,000 humans at any given point. There were no environmental barriers to our unchecked spread and propogation; any tribe which out-bred the next only gained by that, in terms of power, wealth and dominance.
This is no longer the case. We are crowding and despoiling our globe. Women's bodies are programmed by nature to produce 8 to 15 offspring. We now want 0, 1 or 2. That is hundreds of monthly egg-producing cycles which each must be prevented from becoming a pregnancy and none of our contraceptive technologies are up to the task. Hard to access, complicated to use, beset by side effects, unreliable, controlled by men, expensive to many . . . contraception is inexact and women become pregnant far more frequently than anyone prefers.
Ergo, abortion.
It's a technology we need to deal with reality as it is. It helps women maintain a rational life with some predictability to it, to begin with. It helps women have the ONE or TWO pregnancies in their entire life they want when they want them, not when they just accidentally happen. Planning, foresight, best practices, prepared parenthood, best conditions at birth for children -- that's what abortion allows us.
Those who oppose it propose what -- unwilling mothers to illtimed, unwanted, ill-parented children, the excess of whom are destroying the globe? All for the purpose of keeping women down. These people are closet sexists and are living 12,000 years in the past. We aren't chipping Clovis tips anymore and women don't want to get pregnant every time they cycle, either.
Grow up and get real, folks!
Time to face up to the logistics of living within our environmental means. Keeping offspring to that ideal one per female, a female who is fertile 12 times a year for 30 years, even with the best of contraception, is going to require some abortion. No escaping it.
I have followed Rebecca Gomperts escapades for some years now and she has been influential in the abortion rights debates in Ireland, Poland and Portugal, where progress is being made.
HURRAY FOR HER!!
Jan VanDenBerg
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What kind of creep would put that kind of personal info about a woman out for all the world to see?
[Read the article: I have guilty knowledge about my girlfriend]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Relax, buddy, that ex-boyfriend was a total, utter, complete creep. I'm sure she hates his guts.
As long as you don't beat her with a coathanger, you have nothing to fear as far as "measuring up" to any weirdo who would do something like that.
Does she know this blog is out there? If so, wouldn't she tell you, since if she doesn't tell you, she knows she is running the risk that you will find it any day and believe the crap in it. Is she living with that anxiety?
I'll bet she doesn't even know it is out there.
If she doesn't know, she should be told. She can handle the truth better than being lied about and kept in the dark.
It is probably full of lies. Anyone who would do that to a woman would surely lie about her, too. Who else is reading it? Does the creep still mention her in it?
At the least, it is a vicious invasion of her privacy.
First, you need to be sure she is aware of the blog. Since she has never mentioned it, I suspect this. This is your absolute obligation to her. You have to be sure that she is aware of what is going on.
Then, maybe she should be encouraged to confront this jerk, maybe via a lawyer, and get this garbage pulled down.
Jan VanDenBerg