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Saturday, Nov 7, 2009
Moontiger
Published Letters: 13 Editor's Choice: 3
I'm a long-time Salon reader, almost from the beginning. I remember when we called this whole section "Mothers Who Think." I liked the implications of that. I was sorry when it went from an intelligent section aimed mainly at women to some kind of generi-human interest thing.
And now, we have some kind of cutesy title for news purportedly of special interest to women? Uhhh, I'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt, but so far I'm expecting my intelligence to be insulted. We didn't need a typical women's section type thing here. I'm fine with the regular news, thanks all the same.
If we must do this, can we put the implication that we think back in the title? Please? With stories and columns to match?
Ghettoizing articles like this as "women's news" rather than "human rights abuses" is exactly what people are grousing about. This is something everyone ought to see, not just people who happen to share the same biological plumbing with the people being abused. Why are abuses that happen to women relegated to women's issues, when abuses that happen to men are news?
And not in the general interest news and politics section, or even in War Room? I know plenty of men who are interested in whether or not abortion is legal, and whose voting and worldview are illuminated by this issue. Why must we segregate something as important as the real reason most of us are are going to be opposed to Alito's nomination as a "special interest" reason?
If Salon really wants to have a special "women's interest" section covering stupid girly crap like fashion and cosmetics and celebrity garbage that only certain kinds of women are all that interested in, fine, whatever. I don't read the sports news or the celebrity gossip stuff now, and I don't bother to click on the sections where they are because I know they won't be of interest to me. But please, do not put actual news stories of interest to everyone in this section. I don't want to have to sift through the garbage to find the stuff that should have been elsewhere.
Oh, now if we don't agree with the wingnuts on the right, our cities will be left to drown and burn in natural disasters?
Gee, I thought we left New Orleans to drown because everyone there was poor and the wrong color. Now we hear that the criteria for the government abandoning you to your fate is disagreement with government policy.
Can't these damned wingnuts make up their mind?
If conservatives have to resort to propagandizing and breaking laws and coercion to get their "truth" across, it sure looks less like the truth. Unless, of course, you spell truth P-R-A-V-D-A, but of course that kind of manipulation of the news never happens here, right? ::cough::FOX::cough::
And I continue to wonder why even 30-something percent of the public believes them....
For a man, the experience of wanting a child and anticipating the birth of a child is an emotional experience. I don't want to diminish that. I have no doubt that many if not most men love and want their children, and grieve when their wanted and anticipated children are not born.
For women, it's a physical and emotional experience, with potential risks to health and life. Those risks should not be taken unwillingly. A man should not be able to force a woman to bear those risks if she does not want to. A man cannot truly understand what it is like to grow a child under your heart, in your body, with you every minute of every day. It's just not an experience a man can have. A man also cannot understand the terror of the prospect of being forced to bear a child one does not want. Paying with your blodo and flesh is not the same as paying with money. Men understand what it's like to pay money to support a child they didn't want, but it's not the same. Child support never killed anyone. Childbirth still occasionally does.
For what it's worth, I'm a feminist and I wholeheartedly believe that if a man does not want a child a woman is bearing, at birth his parental ties should be severed and he should owe nothing towards the child's upbringing. The choice was the mother's, and she should bear the consequences along with the child. That's as fair as I can imagine it getting.
Because the deal is, the people reading this article are not the ones who need convincing. Those of us who do not agree with the administration, and who have seen Bush and Cheney as usurpers and liars and dangers to the republic from the beginning are powerless, as we have been since Bush first came into office.
Are the conservatives, the REAL conservatives, and the independents, and the people he conned into voting for him seeing this? Do they care? Because the only people who can save us from this mess are the ones who voted us into it.
I wish I had hope that they could see him for what he is now, when they wouldn't or couldn't before. When will the real conservatives stand up?
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The Maine fight was supposed to be the dress rehearsal for repealing California's Prop. 8 -- but gay marriage lost
Once one obtains Seriousness credentials in the Washington media, they are irrevocable no matter one's conduct.
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