Letters to the Editor
Rowyna
Published Letters: 105 Editor's Choice: 36
-
you need to talk to your husband about his lack of respect
[Read the article: I've had three miscarriages and my husband won't wear a yarmulke]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I am not of the Jewish faith. When I enter a Jewish temple, I wear a headcovering and respect the traditions of that temple. If the religion has traditions that I simply cannot abide by (such as the practice in some Mosques of sitting women in the back, as they are considered lesser beings), I do not attend the service.
Your husband has a right to refuse to go to the synagouge, and instead be included in your family's other holiday activites. He does NOT have a right to refuse to respect the traditions of the synagouge when he is there, however. This is common manners. You should respect his right to refuse to attend, and he should respect that if he DOES attend, he should wear a hat.
Have you had a real talk about the infertility thing with him? How important are children to him? Are they very important? How important is your Jewish culture to you? Is it very important? The two of you need to honestly work this stuff out. How important is it to him/you that the children would be fathered by him? I'd think that might be a really big deal to him, to be raising kids who weren't biologically his, to revere a God he doesn't believe in. Maybe the yarmulke thing is a kind of (lame) protest about his non-involvement in these things.
-
doesn't really matter what the author says...
[Read the article: Dumbledore? Gay. J.K. Rowling? Chatty.]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I read about the "outing" of Dumbledore by JK Rowling with some amusement. It was quite the media sensation! An author, outing a character like that, retrospectively. The thing is, I don't believe her. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a homophobe, and I wouldn't have a problem with a gay character, its just that to me, Dumbledore isn't gay. I've always believed you can love and be infatuated with a friend without necessarily being sexually attracted to them... so when I read HP, Dumbledore being gay never crossed my mind.
And no disrespect to JK, but authors don't always know what they're talking about. Tolkien stringently denied that LotR had anything to do with WWII, but most of his readers and critics ignored him. Books aren't just about what the author says they are about, but rather what the reader takes them to be. My reading of HP isn't the same as anyone elses, and certainlly probably isn't the same as JK Rowlings, but that's the beauty of a good book. Thats why people have book clubs, to sit and discuss their interpretations of it all.
So it's all well and good if JK Rowling wants to tell us her interpretation of the books she wrote, but it would be a mistake to think of that as THE ONE TRUE interpretation, which somehow stands above all others.
-
your boss is getting off on controlling you
[Read the article: My boss says I'm a lesbian but I'm not!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Totally ignoring the inappropriateness of Cary's response, I'd just like to say I think your boss is getting off on controlling you. Lesbian, straight, whatever - what's important here is that she "Knows you better than your know yourself". Now, if thats not controlling I don't know what is. She is obviously incapable of treating you with respect and as an intellegent individual who can make her own choices.
The only way to deal with this sort of controlling person is to say "You're wrong, I know exactly who I am, and don't appreciate you thinking you know more about me than I do. I'd appreciate it if in the future you could keep your opinions about my life to yourself, because you've known me for what, a year? That hardly makes you an expert on me or my sexuality. I'm straight, and I don't need to prove that to you. What I do need is for you to back the F off."
-
Not surprising at all
[Read the article: Women and the credit crunch]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]There is a study (Ayres study) done about how race and gender affect the prices that car salesman quote to customers. In the study male and female, black and white testers who are sent out to car dealerships, and all gave the car salesmen the same set of facts. They were all roughly the same age (late twenties). They all drove the same kind of car into the lot. They all dressed neatly and conservatively. They identified themselves as college-educated professionals (sample job: systems analyst at a bank). And they said they lived in the upper-income Chicago neighborhood of Streeterville.
The results were that on average the white guy is quoted a car at on average $1000 less than the black man, and the women also get worse deals than the white man.
So, if thats how car salesman act when confronted by the same background for people, then why not home loan salesmen? Cars and homes are similar "big ticket" purchases, with a lot of cultural image attached to them. It is absolutely no surprise to me that when confronted with exactly the same set of background information on 2 loan applicants, the men get a better deal than the women (and especially the black women). It goes on all the time. The only reason you don't see it more is that home loans and cars are individual purchases, they aren't the sort of thing sitting on the shelves in walmart. But if walmart was a haggle-based system, you'd better believe that a pack of gum would cost $1 for a white man, and $2 for a black woman.