Letters to the Editor
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Are you begging for comments?
Don't worry; they'll come.
Anyway, there's nothing particularly controversial here. I agree that focusing on the broad category of "boy" sure is fun politically, but doesn't really contribute to the educational conversation. Better to focus on a rigorous curriculum and improving the quality of education at underfunded schools/schools serving underprivileged children. To the boy who complains about being left behind, well, he's just proven he's a boy and not a man, hasn't he? Suck it up, dude.
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Are Feminists Necessary?
It's amazing how feminist analysts always manage to turn the debate around and - like the Republicans before them - blame men for doing exactly what they, themselves, are guilty of. The basic argument that feminists (though they rarely have the guts to come right out and say it) have been shoving down our throats for more than a decade is: men, fathers - male role models - are not necessary to the healthy development of young men.
In other words, like wacky Maureen Dowd said (and was crapped on by some feminists for ONLY because she was stupid - read: politically moronic - enough to come right out with it, even though it's OBVIOUSLY what most feminists think) Are Men Necessary?
And you call us sexist.
The gracelessness - not to mention selfishness, heartlessness, and mindlessness - to actually believe this, as I believe most feminists do ("pro sex" or not - and note: they don't call themselves "pro men"), shows that feminism hasn't changed one iota since the rotten, hypocritical, purely sexist Dworkin days. So let me ask you: are you going to start imagining that phantom bellhops are attacking you, too? Like Dworkin did, before she flipped her lid?
How bad does it have to get for young men before you grow a heart, drop the self-serving politics, and contribute ideas that might actually HELP them? How many more young men have to die in gang wars? How many more have to go to jail? Our jails are TEEMING with young men, because they didn't have the guidance they needed (the MALE guidance) to help them discipline themselves and avoid the temptations of gang life.
You know what? I take that question back. I already know the answer. You don't give a rat's ass if they all died. I really believe that. Dworkin was a psychopath, and she masked her psychosis by trying to portray men as even worse (her way of justifying her dementia). On one of the links off Carnival Of Feminists (provided in another Boradsheet post) - "Official Shrub" - there's a rule that says male writers can't post opinions on the message board that point out that men suffer from discrimination, as well. Preposterously, they actually have a term for it - they call it: "What About The Mens Phallusy?" - which is meant to be satiric and clever, but actually only proves how fascist feminists still are in their thinking, and their desire to completely control the conversation.
It all has to be about how women are the ONLY victims - it's never the other way around, because, well, how can you take political advantage if you admit you can be corrupt, too? That you can abuse your position for personal gain, even going so far as to ignore the stunningly obvious - that young men are in horrible trouble in this country from a lack of male guidance? Nah, you might lose a little political traction if you admit that. Better to let the young men (who have no influence, anyway, right?), dangle, drop, and rot.
You only want power. You don't give a shit about the truth, or solving social problems. It's the same trash you were selling before, and like before, it will fail, earn a backlash, and bury you for ten years.
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Did you....
go to GFS?
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Rich white crisis debunked - the real crisis ignored. Again.
Well, Rebecca, your headline is half right. The article was all about debunking the image of the boy crisis being about white middle/upper class kids. The one important paragraph you glossed over was the fact that THERE IS A CRISIS ABOUT BOYS. They just happen to be poor. Is it a class issue or a gender one? How about both.
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re: Two Sides To The Story (not that you'll ever learn that)
Nothing like starting a post with "Are Feminists Necessary?" and then providing a lengthy diatribe that illustrates exactly why we most certainly are.
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I hope the actual debunking was more substantive than this post suggests
or maybe I don't.
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Debunked?
Perhaps the most disturbing thing about this particular article (and Traister's embrace of it as evidence that there is no boy crisis) is the fact that it exhibits the very kind of elitism that I thought upper-middle-class white feminists had abandoned long ago.
Reading the original article in the Washington Post, I was struck by the authors' language: "our boys," they write, are not in crisis. It quickly became apparent that by "our boys," the authors were referring to those attending the "wealthiest schools," those matriculating at "Ivy League colleges," and so forth. At one point, the authors concede that if there is indeed a boy crisis, it afflicts blacks and rural whites.
Fine. But this doesn't make it any less of a crisis, any less of a problem. It certainly doesn't "debunk" the problem, as Traister seems to suggest. It merely identifies it with far greater specificity. That the boys who are having trouble are not the offspring of elite academics should worry us more, not less. These kids have precious little access to the kind of services, educational or otherwise, available to boys -- and girls -- living in upper-middle class white suburbia.
To Traister, and the authors of the Washington Post article: don't be too quick to dismiss something as a "crisis" if you have trouble identifying with the group or groups whom it truly describes. "The Real Boy Crisis" might have been a better title for the Washington Post article. But "The Myth of the 'Boy Crisis'"? Yikes -- welcome to George Bush's America, where if you're white and rich, things are going just great. And if not? Tough luck.
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Who Cares if Boys Can't Hack It?
Finally, the "Boy Crisis" is debunked. Yet another "crisis" the media in this country are famous for fabicrating when they can't think of any real news to publish. Even if it were true, who cares? If boys want to slack off and smoke pot rather than study, then good riddance. There are plenty of capable women who are willing and able to take the high-skill and high paying jobs that men have been unfairly awarded over the years. Let the boys rot in the gutter with their heroin addiction or find menial minimum wage jobs. While they try to repair the roofing in their delapidated housing, maybe they'll finally realize they should have taken school seriously.