Letters to the Editor
MG
Published Letters: 14 Editor's Choice: 2
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Praying hard for better days
[Read the article: Prayin' hard for better dayz]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]So-called "gangsta rap", as a sub-genre of rap, went out of popularity in the late 90s. Rap now is much of the party-style rap, more concerned about having fun, boozing, and getting in good with the ladies. Rap stars dress in suits(e.g. Jay-Z, Puffy), but I don't think for a minute that if rappers and their fans all started dressing in suits that people who are already so inclined will stop thinking of them as "thugs' or "primates".
Rap as a genre appeals mainly to young men, and like other genres who also have the same audience(see heavy metal) will talk about women in a derogatory fashion, and be filled with a certain amount of nihilistic anger. To young men, women have all the power, and much of life is beyond their control. Sooner or later, most grow out of this phase. But rap, as it stands now, is geared far more to the suburban youth than it is towards the black youth. It makes sense, who is the bigger audience after all? But rap captilizes on the African-American position as the "exotic other" in American culture, with the typical young male fascination with violence and sex intertwined. In that sense, rap says far more about white culture than it does about African-American. Some rap is good, and some is bad. The fact that a person is attracted to the more nihilistic rap rather than the uplifting type reflects on the person, not the genre.
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The economics of it all
[Read the article: My lunch with an antifeminist pundit]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"Prior to feminism's encouragement of these millions of women to work, one man with an average education and job could support his nuclear family in some semblance of middle-class comfort. Now that women have entered the workforce in such huge numbers, it is a catch-22: women have to work because you can no longer support a family on one income, but they can't survive on only one income because there are so many women working and lowering real wages. It has been decades since this trend started, and though there are many complicated factors that go into what makes an economy, you simply cannot ignore the negative impact of millions of previously non-working women flooding the job market. It had to have made some impact, and a basic understanding of economics dictates that their impact on real wages was negative overall."
But you could say the same for any group which was shut out of the American system, and not allowed to work at jobs that they may have have wanted to work. For the longest time, African-Americans were not allowed to participate in many fields, now they are. Do we also blame the lowering of wages on them, and demand that blacks be re-segregated to preserve the wages of everyone else? Of course not.
In this day and age, a woman who chooses to stay at home, and not work, is taking a huge gamble, not only with her own life, but her children's lives as well. This is no longer the era where divorce was unthinkable, and people had to stay chained to each other, completely miserable. At any time, if a woman's husband develops a roving eye, or itchy fists, she may have to scramble to find some way to make a living. Study after study has shown that after a divorce, women and children's standard of living goes down, while a man's goes *up*. So choosing to work, with or without kids is an entirely rational decision, just as much so for a woman as for a man.
If a woman chooses to work, and that is what makes her happy, then why not? If a man chooses to work, and that is what makes him happy, then why not that either? For most people, this discussion has no meaning, since most people *have* to work, just to keep the lights on, and supper on the table.
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A Woman's Name is Her Own
[Read the article: Do the kids get mom's name, or dad's? How about alternating]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]A woman's name is her own name, just the same way a man's name is his own name, not his father's. If a woman chooses to change her name, then so be it, but it certainly shouldn't be mandated. It has always made more sense to me for children to have their mother's name, if for no other reason, we at least know that she is their actual mother. I wonder how many children are out there with names that suggest a patrilineal background that is a complete work of fiction?
If giving up the identity that you have known for all of your life is so easy, especially now that women have a professional name and reputation that requires preserving, I wonder why not very men avail themselves of this option? There is something to a name, whether people choose to acknowledge it or not. And nowadays, one shouldn't automatically assume that one sex should do all the changing.