Letters to the Editor
Published Letters: 292 Editor's Choice: 33
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Sorry...
[Read the article: Introducing Salon's cheeky new women's blog]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]...but no thanks.
Granted, I'm a male, so I'm not the target audience for this blog anyway. But as a self-identified feminist who is not afraid of the word, I have to ask for whom this blog is intended.
Beyond the mediocre name and the fuscia color scheme seems to lie only gossip and triviata. (Yes, I know it's early days yet, but first impressions matter.) When you look at smart blogs helmed by women, like Wonkette and Stay Free!, and modern feminist magazines like Bitch, it is readily apparent how mature and sophisticated women-led and women-oriented material can be. This effort just seems so terribly retrograde by comparison.
Frankly, I expect much better from Salon. I have been a long time subscriber, and will likely continue to be one. But efforts like this make me wonder how connected Salon remains with its audience.
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"Catfighting" again?
[Read the article: Catfighting your way to the top]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The blog is barely a day old and there's already two articles using the derogatory term "catfighting". And this one also leads off with porn-favorite term "girl-on-girl" as well. Funny, but I didn't realise the workplace was full of girls. Shouldn't they be in school instead, and leave the jobs to the women?
I remain baffled by this whole blog. Maybe you want to be edgy, but the controlling board won't let you be genuinely edgy, so you have to resort to this kind of thing instead. Maybe some marketing study said this was the only way to save Salon. Maybe I just don't get it because of the old Y chromosome. Whatever the case, I'll be surprised if this feature is still here a year from now in the same form. If it is, I'll be surprised if I'm still subscribing to read it.
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Can we redesign Broadsheet?
[Read the article: The worst place on earth to be a woman]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I have to agree with Laura, the dissonance between those two adjacent pieces is palapable. Surely the celebrity stuff could easily be moved to The Fix, where it can be safely ignored by people (like myself) who don't care two whits about it? Meanwhile, Broadsheet could be reworked to focus on the pieces with real impact. Indeed, it could even be (pardon the term) broadened to cover all news that touches on gender issues, rather than just pigeonholeing news as "women specific".
I humbly suggest a transmogrification along these lines. I'll go further and suggest a new name, "Liaison", which is an almost-anagram of Salon and which implies that it's a go-between for all gender-based news. The seed is already here, in the excellent pieces you have posted interspersed among the fluff. All that's need is a move to a more concentrated format. Keep the important news and, instead of ghetto-izing women, ghetto-ize the trivial stuff.
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Am I alone is seeing the irony...
[Read the article: Gender-coded holiday shopping]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]of an article on gender-stereotyping in the cheeky pink Broadsheet?
Must be my Y-chromosome acting up again.
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Thanks for the heads up!
[Read the article: Targeting Target]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I've sent them an email as well, explaining to them that they're also losing a customer who, as a middle-aged male, is never going to need the pill. Companies allowing this kind of personal leeway are, morally and practically, one step away from putting up signs that say "we don't serve coloreds". And if this thing really is codified in law, it's a damn stupid law that needs to be overturned smartish.
I also agree with the poster who said that the liberal billionaires et al should get their own chain going. It'd be great to have a socially responsible alternative to these places.
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This isn't quite fluff
[Read the article: White pride denied]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The idea that a People magazine property would publish a positive article about white supremacists is a pretty newsworthy item, I'd say. Because this isn't just another piece on the Olsen twins, this is a small move towards the mainstream assimilation of a dangerous fringe movement. A positive article in a popular magazine would give a subtle but unmistakably real nod of approval towards this racist mindset, and would open further inroads for any similar ideology.
Some people might see this as a trivial bit of news about a minor pop sensation. I see this as an important refutation of not just banality, but of a banality that too often cloaks discord and hate, and thereby infiltrates in secret.
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Not too different from America?
[Read the article: No birth control for Hindus]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I feel that a similar process is at work over here, though operating more tacitly. It seems, at least anecdotally, that most abortion protesters in America are white people, and that they protest at clinics where white women go. And it's always seemed to me that that part of their opposition to abortion is that white babies are being killed. This in turn plays to their unspoken fear of being "outbred" by other races, much as this Hindu pundit fears being outbred by Muslims. I'm not saying this is the sole, or even the primary, reason for their opposition to abortion specifically and birth control in general, but I've long suspected that it is a factor.
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Subjective sexiness
[Read the article: "Sexy" outfits bad for women's careers? The hell you say!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Sorry djbollman, but you're wrong. I'm definitely a male and I can definitely state that sexiness is a subjective matter. I find no appeal in what is deemed mainstream sexy - supermodels, porn actress, and pop divas. That artificial "beauty" just doesn't do it for me. Sure, it works for a lot of guys, and many of those same guys believe that it's the same for every other male. But some of that is social programming, and some of that is the male desire to "have" a woman that (they think) all other males will be jealous of.
Simply put, anyone who thinks there is one standard of sexiness or beauty is a dupe, guided by mainstream pressures into thinking this is an absolute instead of a relative. In reality, one's perception of sexy is as individualistic as one's taste in music or foods. And in that way both genders are alike.