A certain kind of woman seeks guidelines on travel because they have been made very afraid, not because there is any particular danger for her in any particular place.

I do dispute the idea of one poster that a "street smart" woman can sense if a place is dangerous or not. In my experience as an ex-pat, people are very bad as assessing danger outside of their own communities, and there is a puzzling belief that if there is a lot of pick pocketing, then most of the crime must be non-violent. There is also a wierd sort of romantizing of the locals and doing things you might not do at home- i.e. dancing with a lot of strangers because they are just so expressive and warm hearted down there. I bet most Dominican women don't dance a lot with strange men, and an American woman visiting a new city in her own country wouldn't either.

Rule of thumb: if you wouldn't do it at home, don't do it abroad. And some of the very worst crimes that happenend to gringos I knew had alcohol or drugs involved. And those were all to men, by the way.

I clicked on the article because I was curious how the author would explain why she felt she had to flee the US to find cultural freedom. This premise went unexamined, but whatever.

The other, more important unasked question is: what responsibility does beautiful Lebonon bear for it's current situation? Does Hezbollah's inferior fire power entitle it and Lebanon to perpetual victim status? Is Lebanon some sort of underage country, unaccountable for it actions? Or- if we accept that it was too weak, not merely unwilling, to deal with Hezbollah, where is the authors examiniation of the how that guerilla group, which no one doubts would slaughter more civilians if it could figure out how, got Lebanon into this fix?

I agree with everything the post said, yet I don't begrudge any poor murdered woman the interest and sympathy her case genrates. Sometimes I hear in the backlash a little misogyny and derision, like: for get about that ugly, stupid rich white woman! As if to examine the wierd young blond victim obsession means we have to dehumanize the young blond victim.

Even if it DID pervent implantation, how extreme is it that we are debating whether a minutes or hours old "pregnancy" is more important than the autonomy of the woman? Prolifers depend a lot on the spectrum of personhood throughout a pregnancy to further their cause. They focus on third trimester abortions and they show pictures of very developed fetuses when speaking of their cause. Yet they won't be able to show a picture of the microscopic cells they believe have more rights than a woman. Pro-lifers should be very honest with themselves about what they themselves would do in the emergency room after a rape- take the pill, or martyr themsleves for the supposed, possible cells? Asking them to be honest about what they'd choose after unprotected sex with a boyfriend or husband would be asking too much.

Everyone should take a deep breath and calm down.

First, little girls want to be like their moms, like little boys want to be like their dads. I don't think that there is anything wierd or "sexualized" about a frou-frou woman having a frou-frou daughter, and I resent the implication that womanly things somehow taint little girls. I think this is an insidious form of misogyny, one that sneaks into the minds of feminists. Like liking barbies and the color pink and pedicures are all bad, and if she was a girl worth her salt she would just be a tomboy.

I have a six year old girl, and while I try to teach balance between caring about your appearance and everything else in life, I realized early on that it was rather mean of me to belittle the unicorns, rainbows, play makeup and pretty shoes that she likes. She plays soccer with pink shinguards and a matching skort. She fishes with a Barbie fishing rod.

The X Games themselves are a good example of how it's sponsorship that makes sports popular, not whether women or men play them. Men's sports tend to be given all kinds of sponsorship, even when they lose games and money. Women's sports aren't given the same promotion.

Has anyone else noticed similarities between extreme animal rights activists and pro-lifers? Both are obsessed with powerless beings beyond all normal and reasonable limits, even to the detriment of those who they deem flawed and unworthy of compassion or consideration ( i.e., sick or hungry humans and women, respectively).