Letters to the Editor
djbollman
Published Letters: 366 Editor's Choice: 13
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Are you sugessting that wome don't believe this:
[Read the article: Hello, sailor! (Kapow!)]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The insistence, though, that, if the whole picture is seen it is shown to be true that men have most of the power and women don't...
and that women don't feel any "global" sense of vicitimization or moral superiority? I hope that is true but I find it hard to believe. I would be happy with even the assertion that it was true because it would indicate an awarenss that there was a problem with the femsup view. I see occasional efforts to deny or obscure certain inconvient implications of this viewpoint, but not much evidence that it is really repudicated by most women.
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Your're not suggesting that "antifeminist" and "in need of therapy"
[Read the article: "Men want facts, women seek relations on Web"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]are synonomous are you? (of course it's possible to be both).
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How are they going to determine what is the right time?
[Read the article: Are you there, God? Can you put off my period?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Considering the number of people who are shocked and horrified that 16yolds are interested in sex this could be a real problem.
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I don't really consider myself an antifeminist, even in the current sense
[Read the article: "Men want facts, women seek relations on Web"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]too many right wing, Concerned Women for America etc. connotations and the problem is not simple; because men and women ARE different real "equality" can't be simply treating everyone the same, and very few women REALLY want eveyone treated the SAME, rhetoric to the contrary. In fact though treating eveyone the same wouldn't solve the problems. The thing though that makes it hardest to discuss the issues is the attempt to define every attempt to gain more power and influence for women or to alter something to womens' advantage(often very legitimate goals) as seeking simple equality, (since equality is a moral absolute no competing claims or interests need be allowed), but then real gender differences can't be disucssed and taken into account in crafting solutions that work for everyone because this would call into question the use of the term equality to describe what is wanted and thus open the door for requests for compromise and balancing of different interests and points of view. Add to this the the new and improved puritanism, at least for straight men, (a goal shared with the right although they want to apply it to women and gays as well) and the unwilligness to acknowlde that there are limits to what the govt. and social pressure can do to make someone or some group entirely comfortable without becoming totalitarianism. To some women the goal is the greatest possible social and political power for women, period. It's somewhat analagous to the christianist right: since god is on our side anything we do to gain more power for god is really best for everyone.
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I don't think there is any question that pathologically early puberty exists
[Read the article: Are you there, God? Can you put off my period?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]and should be treated if it can be, I just hope that a medically and scientifically valid standard can be developed and used. Given that most people all over the political and social spectrum are, well..insane MAY be a SLIGHT overstatement, when it comes to anything inolving sex this might be a real challenge.
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The terminology that is used to summarize the findings may not seem to make much sense
[Read the article: "Men want facts, women seek relations on Web"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]but this by itself doesn't prove that no meaningfull information is being revealed about behavior, and because the behavior revealed seems to match so called "setereotypical gender roles" people notice. Can something be insulting AND meaningless at the same time? It may be wrong but it seems if there's an insult there's has some meaning.
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My impression is that it is generally accepted now
[Read the article: Are you there, God? Can you put off my period?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]that 17yo is too old and that the average age being this high was due to malnutrition and disease
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Incidentally I hope it is understood that males, whatever may be the case for girls,
[Read the article: Are you there, God? Can you put off my period?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]are not interested in sex from the age of 12 on due to peer pressure, or some such, but due to hormones. The ONLY reason teenage boys don't have sex is because they can't or because, for whatever reason, total fear, religious or social, is dominating the situation. This is tacitly ackwoledged (nobody tries to raise boys self esteem to keep them from having sex, and in fact evidence shows that HIGHER self esteem in boys is correlated with more and earlier sex) but should be more overtly accepted.
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Food critics have a tough job because the fact is that food, no matter how good,
[Read the article: Food slut]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]ISNT like great sex, unless you are starving, but it's interesting enough , since everyone eats, that everyone has an opinion.
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There is a difference between reading and imagining vs watching
[Read the article: The joy of sex writing]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]a reality that someone that someone else has put on film, so in a sense the two really shouldn't be compared, but the "erotica yes, but porn, how boring/tasteless/etc.blah blah blah" attitude is misplaced: what if the picture in your mind, created by reading the kind of erotica that you like, could be reproduced exactly on the screen? Would porn then still be boring? Maybe technology will be able to help, I'd like to have the ability to put myself in the picture; the presence of the other male adds to the realism but that fact that it's not me detracts from the appeal, hence the popularity of "lesbian" sex in straight porn.
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It's interesting what has happenned with Ipod porn just in the last few months
[Read the article: "Men want facts, women seek relations on Web," take two]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Everyone said who would want to watch porn on their tiny ipod when everyone can watch all the porn they want on their pc or laptop. Well it turns out that lots of people apparently want to watch more porn than they have been able to up until now (apparently pcs and laptops aren't secure/safe/private enough) even if they have to watch it on a tiny ipod screen.
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To like porn as i t is rather than to accept it's potential in theory requires
[Read the article: The joy of sex writing]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]a certain degree of motivation i.e horniness to overlook the problems with it. If you apply a very conventional standard of what consitutes a good non porn acting performance, i.e are the people believeable in the roles and convincing in the performance of them, it's hard, some say impossible, to find commercial porn that qualifies, and amateurs who like what they are doing usually aren't very attractive (although even a little attractivness counts for a lot in this case)
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Sex writing is obviously very very popular, hundreds of "romance" novels
[Read the article: The joy of sex writing]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]are published constantly, they are all versions of the same thing but the appetite for constant supplies of new incarnations is endless, just like the constant appetite for more pictures of naked women. I love to see women reading them. Now, when people talk about "serious literary erotica" maybe they are talking about something else, where the motivations for reading it are more complex (or maybe they aren't)
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If it's meaningless then I guess a lot of people are getting upset for no reason.
[Read the article: "Men want facts, women seek relations on Web"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Glad they'll know better now