Something sort of similar is going on with my parents' dog. He keeps hemorrhaging from his nose and refusing to eat. The vet can't find out the trouble without doing some multi-thousand dollar procedure. My mother is beside herself not knowing the right thing to do. This dog is also a gentle soul trapped in a big, brutish body. He's part worlf, part German shepherd. I've never known such a sweet beast, and with such a sense of humor. He's been such a friend to my parents since my brothers and I have been gone. So I understand what this woman has lost. Bruno sounds like a very dear creature.

Dear Salon:

I understand and applaud your commitment to pluralism. It is true that there is no right perspective, and that everyone's perspective is potentially interesting. But there are better conservatives than the charlatan hack Camille Paglia. Surely by now you have discovered the formula behind her supposedly fresh, bold insights. She frames some aspect of current events/popular culture as a big problem. Then she declares that although she's always been staunchly loyal to the left, this time they've just gone too far; she's getting off the crazy train right here. She summarizes the stereotypical "liberal" response to whatever problem she's supposedly addressing and dismisses it. Then she summarizes the stereotypical "conservative" response to the problem, deplores the way it's been mischaracterized in the "liberal" media, and formally adopts this position as her own, willing to sacrifice reputation and recompense because she is so brave. It is insulting that you keep letting her get away with this. Please stop. If you want some decent conservative analysis (and for the record, I do not think this is necessary), you could do worse than George Will or Christopher Hitchens. That is my 2 cents.

Posts like this perpetuate bridezilla wars by reinforcing false dichotomies. Just stop.

That is the best advice to this person so far. I've been suicidal before. When people would tell me to get therapy and meds it just made me want to kill myself more. Animals really do help though.

Imagine that the compliment dudes are not students, but construction workers. You can imagine them on a college campus if you want to, bringing the library entrance up to ADA compliance or some such. See them in their white hard hats, sweating in the hot sun, singing out those compliments. Nice hustle. I like your smile. Don't they suddenly seem so much less innocent? Thus it becomes clear how much social status informs what people are allowed to do. And this is why I think an enlightened construction worker would also be a feminist. He would realize that women's freedom is his freedom also.

The letter writer's situation and mine are not that different. I am a bit younger, but not that much. 34. And it's not that I don't want kids. The idea is just terrifying. My husband is lovely, my PhD program is demanding but rewarding, money is tight but life is comfortable. So why add kids to the mix? I guess I like the idea of raising someone. But I had a miscarriage in January and it was awful and caused me to rethink the whole process and concept of having a child, i.e. if a miscarriage at 7 weeks was that painful (on the order of being dumped by someone I was really in love with), why sign up for a lifetime of the kind of vulnerability? I have read all of the letters here with great interest, and can say with certainty that I am no closer to a decision than I was before. Reading these letters has done nothing but reinforce my suspicion that no one's advice can be taken at face-value, because everyone is motivated by his/her own insecurity-based agenda. The people who assert that 38 is too old or that people who have kids don't finish their PhDs are *particularly* unkind and unhelpful.

Let's suppose you're right about there being a large number of emotionally damaged grad students posting on Salon. So what?

You seem to be confused about what patriarchy is. Patriarchy is the ideology guiding patriarchal institutions (including but not limited to: state, church, and family). One does not need to be a man to participate in patriarchy. Likewise, no individual man can embody patriarchy. Patriarchy privileges men, but its primary concern is the concentration of power in the hands of a few people.

You might enjoy taking a women's studies class at your college. At the very least it would give you a sense of what feminism is about, which would allow you to argue against it more effectively than you have been doing here.

Salon, you have been sucky and irrelevant for quite some time. I think this article may represent a new low, however, in terms of mistaking TV-land for the real world. I know the argument that television tells us things about "our culture." I think this is true to a point, but Salon conflates TV and "our culture" so egregiously that sometimes I wonder why you don't just come right out and say that you are promoting these shows.

Way to shift the focus away from climate change and habitat destruction and onto the supposed hypocrisy and self-righteousness of people who care about those issues. Corporate media scores again. I thought Heather Havrilesky was smarter than this.

Get. Rid. Of. Her.

What's next, Ann Coulter gets a column here?

Leave it to you, Camille, to blithely assert that the male gaze makes everything hotter. Wake up, all you post-feminists out there. If the male gaze is hot, it's because you have, like generations before you, eroticized it. How do you think patriarchy maintains its power?

seems to sum up the attitude of rude, noisy neighbors very succinctly.