Letters to the Editor
rsw123
Published Letters: 13
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Christie Hefner, pimp
[Read the article: Queen of Playboy]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Like her father, Christie Hefner is a pimp. That she is a woman makes no difference; ditto the fact that (like her fellow pimp Larry Flynt) she has some liberal/left-wing views. Pimps, like johns and porn users, come in all political persuasions.
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"Parental breaches"
[Read the article: How to humanize a killer]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Re. the writer's reference to "terrible beatings or parental breaches, such as a mother working as a prostitute or a father putting the mother in the hospital and molesting the sisters": these do *not* belong in the same category!
Granted, a mother's involvement in prostitution no doubt makes for a chaotic environment for a child, and is also often accompanied by the mother's addiction to the drugs that enable her to cope with her abuse in prostitution. However, the mother may well have entered prostitution as a last resort, precisely in order to support her children economically. By no means does she belong in the same category as a father who "put[s] the mother in the hospital and molest[s] the sisters." The prostituting mother deserves compassion and help in getting out of prostitution, for her children's sake as well as her own. The father deserves a long prison sentence.
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I don't think so
[Read the article: Ann Coulter: Feminist wart hog]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I think Rivers has her head up her ass on this one. It has ever been true that patriarchy props up and trumpets and rewards those women who vilify feminism and other women in general. They are patriarchy's "chicks up front" and they reap the rewards. That's nothing new, and it's no success of feminism -- rather it is part and parcel of patriarchal backlash.
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Rape-myth detector activated . . .
[Read the article: A fellow teacher got drunk and told me a secret]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Cary, is there any particular reason why you say that down the road the letter writer "may begin to feel that [the woman's] story is not completely accurate or truthful"? Given the absence of any given reason for suspecting that this woman is mistaken or lying about her experience, your observation seems like a gratuitous invocation of nasty old myths about women's supposed tendency to lie about rape and molestation. What gives?
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stick to your guns
[Read the article: All the guys I'm dating want me to shave down there]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The letter writer's instincts are absolutely correct. The increasing pressure on women to shave their pubes is directly attributable not only to pornography, but to the incessant fetishizing of childhood therein.
It's not just bona fide "child porn." The net is full of "teen" porn in which the supposed youth, innocence, virginity etc. of very slight girls -- with pigtails, lollipops, schoolbooks etc. -- is made into a huge fetish. (The fact that these girls are of age -- or as the porn term has it, "barely legal"-- is irrelevant to the harmfulness of the material. In fact, it's almost worse because the user can tell himself he's "not really a pedophile.") The shaved pubes are an essential part of this and have increasingly become the norm in other porn.
Don't believe the hype, ladies. If it seems important to a guy that you shave down there, ask him how much pornography he uses. Then give him the boot. A better guy may come along or he may not, but believe me, you don't want the other headaches that come from being with a heavy porn user.
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HE is the abuser -- get out
[Read the article: We've got an anger management problem]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Cary really missed the boat on this one, articulating a number of the worst myths about abuse -- that it is a "dynamic" between couples that "they" need to work on "together." Bullshit. It may well be that this woman, once free of her abuser, needs to do some therapeutic work on her own painful past and whatever issues it has left her with. But that is not the problem in this relationship. The problem is him: he is an abuser. (The fact that he blames her and messes with her head -- he's "emotional," not angry; she just doesn't understand him! -- is one of the signal features of abuse.)
I recommend that the LW go out immediately and buy Lundy Bancroft's book *Why Does He Do That?: Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men*. (Bancroft has worked with ab users for years and has impeccable insight into the way their minds work, their manipulative tactics, etc.) For that matter, Cary, it wouldn't be a bad idea for you to read it too!
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Sex offenders lie
[Read the article: A local pastor is on the sex offender registry]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'm baffled by Cary's advice to go only to the pastor himself. Sex offenders lie. They are manipulative. They do not take responsibility for what they have done because deep in their heart they do not think that what they have done is wrong. To rely on this guy's word is utter folly.
Check the public record, talk to people who know.
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Be "manly," not "weak and stupid"?!
[Read the article: A fellow law student broke my nose and joked about it on Facebook]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Cary, you really blew it here: "It's the smart and manly thing to do. The weak, stupid thing to do is to try to tough it out." Do I even need to explain what's wrong with this? . . . OK I will: to contrast "smart and manly" with "weak and stupid" casts women (and "unmanly" men) in the role of the latter. It's very insidious, this process of trying to get a man to do something that he really ought to do by assuring him that it's "manly," what a "real man" does -- you know, not like those weak, cowardly pussies also known as women.