The letter-writer's last paragraph concerns me for the future of his marriage. He writes:

Would a gay guy be less likely to hit on me if my wife were dressed up more and even had makeup on, as opposed to the hippie look that she favors? There is the option of my changing my dress style, but I think that since I was not the one complaining about the incident, I should not be the one to change. Any thoughts?

I always thought marriage is something mutual -- that each member of the couple wants to make the other one happy, and that compromising when feasible is one major way to make this happen.

But despite this, I suspect a gay male is likely to base a guess that another male twenty feet away is gay mainly on that other male's appearance, and to a lesser extent on the other male's visible actions. Why the letter-writer thinks his wife's appearance should be the crux of the matter, I have no idea.

If he really cares about making his wife happy on this issue, he should

a) adjust his dress and perhaps mannerisms to lessen the likelihood of being mistake for gay,

b) avoid milieux that are heavy gay pickup spots,

c) if he and his wife do happen to find themselves in a gay hangout again, perhaps they should act more obviously like a romantic couple (occasional caresses, etc.), and

d) not accept social overtures from gay males without first making it clear that he's not gay.

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(Although this should be nothing to get upset about, I can easily sympathize with the wife's preference that her husband not be mistaken for gay. I'd guess it has nothing to do with homophobia.)

If the letter-writer has any interest in preserving his marriage, however, he will graduate from the juvenile attitude that "It's her problem, so why should I do anything to help."

The author concludes with

Boys may indeed need our attention. But I can’t help feeling that it’s a shame for Tierney to frame this debate around the idea that if girls advance, boys somehow suffer. Can't we all advance together?

I find this statement disingenuous. IF we were in a world of unlimited funding, fine. But guess what? We're not.

Even though I usually disagree with Tierney, I agree with his observation that since the available funding is finite (as though the author didn't know that!), its allocation is subject to rethinking when comparing women's programs to potential men's programs.

Women have been getting funding for special programs to help in their advancement for many years since Betty Friedan raised the modern U.S. consciousness to recognize that this was necessary -- and rightly so.

But now that in a significant way it's males who are hurting (not going to college, Dear Author, confers a significant life disadvantage in the U.S. nowadays), suddenly anyone who wants to shift some of that finite funding to assist males in their current time of need is a bad guy?????

This is precisely as ethical and honorable as -- when the need for special programs to help minorities overcome years of oppression dawned on many Americans -- some whites' saying, "Hey, all that money and those job opportunities went to us before, so why should we let any of it go to anyone else now?"

I'm wondering: In case any Broadsheet contributors have basic principles other than approving solely things that directly help women, what principles might those be?

For example, do you have any compassion whatsoever for people who are, by accident of birth, not women? And if so, has there ever been a Broadsheet item that remotely suggests this?

This article begins

As if B-roll of murdered 6-year-old JonBenet Ramsey at her child beauty pageants wasn't enough to turn your stomach for a lifetime, . . .

Would some kind soul please explain the expression B-roll ? (I've never encountered it before.) T.I.A.

Denise RIffle's letter sarcastically points out that there are many areas in which women have it worse than men.

I could not agree more.

It's *also* true that this is not relevant to the question at hand -- of whether boys need more help than they're now getting, in order to complete high school and go to college.

(And, of course, it's *also* true than men are vastly more the victims of both societal and military violence than are women,

that males die about seven years sooner than most women, and that males are the victims of rape (mainly in prison) at almost half the rate that women are. And yes, in all categories the perpetrators of violence are overwhelmingly men, which shows only that we *all* need protection from these jerks.)

The reason I put that in parentheses is that men's burden, serious though it is, does not in any way cancel out women's burden -- nor vice versa. Too bad some one-track-mind women aren't able to see this.

Oh, and about that wage statistic: 10-15 year ago I looked into this and found that when you compare men & women in the same job category women were being paid 91-93% of what men were. This is still unacceptable, but it's not nearly as bad as that "76%" would indicate. Now 10-15 years later, I have little doubt that the gap has narrowed further (but the BLS website was down this morning so I couldn't get the data). Finally: SInce to an employer an equally qualified women would be a bargain at 99% the pay rate, one step that couldn't hurt is if women became better wage negotiators.

If Angelina Jolie ignores common sense, as well as the advice of numerous health professionals, it is totally bizarre that anyone might question this -- after all, she's a mom-to-be and is automatically exempt from following the societal strictures of normaly sane behavior.

I cannot imagine why anyone would question this.

And if she decides to cross the street without checking for traffic, then of course that is totally fine -- hey, she's a mom-to-be.