Letters to the Editor
blunderdog
Published Letters: 509 Editor's Choice: 10
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No Cleric Here, But...
[Read the article: Cleric: Your sexy outfit is killing me!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I had an interesting experience the other night that peripherally relates to the original piece. Hopefully this post won't be misinterpreted as sympathy for the cleric mentioned in the article--that's far from my meaning.
It was Halloween. I had just had a nice date which had included a few drinks, and was feeling relaxed, happy, and just slightly and pleasantly aroused, thinking about seeing the woman again. I got on the subway to head home.
At the next stop, a flock of young people (I'd guess seniors in HS, thereabouts) got on, having come from some kind of Halloween function--many of them in costume. The girls in the group were uniformly dressed in sexually provocative costume. One girl who'd dressed as a pink traffic cone was ALMOST not sexually provocative--but when she turned around, I saw that she'd cut holes in the top part of the cone and glued in fake rubber breasts, right over where I estimated her own would be.
So there I was. Surrounded by nubile girls with cleavage and buttcheek prominently on display.
I looked. There wasn't much happening on the train. Just a midnight ride home for us all. And all these little lovelies hanging their bits all over.
I looked. Goodness, there sure was a lot to see. I wasn't staring crassly at body parts--I can get magazines and movies and such when I'm in that kind of mood. But I could surely enjoy and appreciate this harmless display.
I looked. I realized that I was getting some looks from the girls. I stared at my hands. I played with my iPod. I pulled out a book, but really wasn't in the mood to read.
I looked again. I realized that a few of the girls had now nudged a few of the boys, and I was getting looks from a couple of the boys now, too.
I had to move to another part of the train. I walked to the far side of the car and surrounded myself by middle aged commuters.
What a situation. I'm no fundamentalist. I didn't have any complaint with the outfits these girls were wearing. I didn't stare and gape at young breasts, legs, asses. I didn't fixate and drool. I'm certainly not interested in physical relationships with anyone in that age-range. They were all around me, though, and yes, appealing as simply and powerfully as any beautiful view might be.
After having moved, the girls were clearly no longer concerned with me, and when I glanced back to that crowd from time to time, I realized that the girls were furtively "checking out" the other older male passengers too. They wanted to see if they were being stared at, looked at, noticed. When they saw guys who were looking at them, they adjusted their costumes--pulling down the crotch-dusting skirt, pulling their bra straps, crossing their arms.
What in the hell is a normal healthy straight man to DO in such a situation? Was my "male gaze" painting me as some kind of enemy? Was the only behavior permitted to me as a passenger on the train to stare at the floor, so as not present some kind of "threat"?
There seems to me something clearly different going on in the culture today than I recall from when I was at the same age. I don't know exactly what it is, but I'm sure not comfortable with it.
I expect a few posts (or a ton, who knows?) which will tell me that I was actually staring, gaping, fixating. Suffice to say, if there IS the expectation that guys should gouge their eyes out rather than look at pretty women in provocative clothing, something has gone seriously wrong with our sexual politics.
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Seems like Broadsheet will Cover ANYTHING
[Read the article: Are you sexually jealous of Hillary Clinton?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]What an odd thing to post about.
Hot tip: there's a guy who lives on the streetcorner who'll loudly proclaim that Hillary's a shoo-in for the Presidency because there's a lesbian conspiracy to get her elected.
Anyone want to comment on that "story"? Why not? This post demonstrates just how low the bar is set. More power to Mary, anyway, even if she's wacko. It's a women's issue, because she's a woman writer, I guess.
(If anyone's curious, I can give the address of the streetcorner.)
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Self-Fulfilling
[Read the article: Should Bush open up the oil spigot?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]In effect, a high price of oil acts as a de facto carbon tax that will inevitably drive investment into exactly those alternative technologies that the Democratic senators want the government to subsidize. Without a doubt, it's a regressive tax that disproportionately hits poor and working-class people. But it might make more long-term strategic sense for congressional Democrats to look for ways to cushion that blow that don't involve pushing down the price of oil. Because actually enacting a carbon tax or cap-and-trade mechanism with teeth is going to be an extremely arduous undertaking, fought every step of the way by energy industry lobbyists.
As was already pointed out on the first page of comments, this isn't even close to right. The fact that the tax hits the wrong people is precisely why the effects are counter-productive. Making the tiny number of speculators richer is paying the very people in the best position to stop buying oil for not doing so.
In other words--it's the same guys getting rich who are buying and flying private jets, maintaining their heated outdoor pools in Connecticut, and buying their kids Humvees.
The poor bastards who Leonard cites as bearing the disproportionate share of this "regressive tax" can't afford to do much about the energy policies of the country.
Oops.
I guess it's indicative, though. The liberal independent media can occasionally miss the point of the rich feeding on the poor because of the current political facts on the ground. Our government is so completely out of step with American sentiment that the policies most informed Americans support would be politically arduous and bitterly opposed by lobbyists.
There's a progressive view. I'm confident we'll continue to run the US into the dirt, too.