Letters to the Editor
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Where Are They?
Where are all these easy girls who just open their legs for anybody? I'm sure as heck not finding them.
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it's not mutually exclusive
she blames men/patriarchy for all the problems in the world and she is happy to do so i.e not complaining
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What I meant was
she's not complaining about being a spinster.
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And really
Just because I point that out does not mean she is my "guru," nor does it make me responsible for defending everything she says on her blog. Feminism is not, in fact, a cult.
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anyway why does it matter if men are "confused"
if they aren't "smart" enough to "figure out" what you want them to then you don't want anything to do with them anyway, so who cares? Other than as an opportunity to gloat I don't see the point.
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Hooray for AKA Smith
I actually liked him. How was I to know he was a serious pothead? Such a talented musician!
That has to be the most hilarious thing I've read all week.
I hope you did the right thing and turned his talented ass in to the cops so he could spend some time in jail.
After all, why do we have laws if we're not going to use them?
Now law enforcement -- that's a job that helps a man stay manly.
Well, until the donuts kick in, at least. But that can take years.
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People like Stepp....
...really resent that women act like individuals and refuse to see themselves as "guardians of the world's morality," or "gatekeepers of sexuality." God forbid women might want to live their lives and exercise their talents _just_ like men do instead of being wifey and mother their entire lives. Stepp reminds me of this poster on an author board I frequent who was always whining that feminists "scared" all the "good men" into being wimps so "real" women like her couldn't find no hubby. If women like her and Stepp believe this, why on earth don't they restrict themselves solely to house and kids instead of making money? That's one of those mysteries no one has ever cleared up about women like them and O'Beirne and Flanagan and...
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I'm really bored......
... with articles based on the fact that "young women today" are having meaningless sex all over the place. While the sexual norms of each generation do vary, I believe this is an extreme overstatement. Journalist are continually using this "fact" to theorize and make further assumptions. How about if we ignore articles that are based on the rampant sex of Generation whatever-it-is as overreaching attempts at getting published?
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I don't believe men are confused
Well most of us at any rate. The simple fact is we're just sick of your shit, is all. We're not baffled, we're just not feeding into whatever crackpot micromanaging nonsense you want to club us over the head with today. We don't even hate you, we're just bored with you.
If we have an opinion we're bullies and abusers. If we don't we're being passive aggressive. You've got an answer for everything don't you? Well here's mine. Go fuck yourselves. Back of the envelope? The cost benefit isn't really worth it anymore. You're not that special.
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The easy answer
For the people wondering why it's okay for women to use "masculine" forms of expression, but not for men to use "feminine" forms, the answer is that masculinity is seen as the preferrable (or strong) position and femininity as the undesirable (or weak) position. So it is understandable, in a gender role situation, that people of both sexes would want to be view as powerful actors (via the masculine trope). A male, who automatically has authority to adopt masculine signifiers due to his birth gender, is scorned for choosing to abandon those cues in favor of feminine ones. Likewise a female who assumes masculine cues may be seen be some as arrogating power not bestowed by her birth gender.
Frankly, I'm all for the death of gender-based roles. I realise this will never occur completely, so long as there are the biological differences to contend with, but they certainly can be reduced from the stifling proscriptions we've endured for centuries. So unlike the antifeminist authors and posters in this discussion, I welcome the changes afoot.
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late bloomers
men come into their own later than women. probaly always have, it's just that men and women weren't on the same career tracks. yep, girls are into their first job, great apartment, while guys are still playing video games or watching movies in their parents' basement. but at 30, the guy pulls it together and the girl is either stuck at a low rung on the ladder or leaving the workforce to have a baby. ten years after that, we've lost a lot of both sexes, but then casual dining chains need cooks and waitresses don't they?
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All is in chaos
I agree with the notion that it's a very confusing time to be a young person (though, being 29, it may be time for me to stop thinking of myself as such). We've got far higher expectations for our own financial and emotional success, and fewer opportunities to live up to those expectations. We've got no one model of success to live up to. Where our parents had a relatively narrow set of socially acceptable choices, today's society is more likely to step back and say, "whatever makes you happy." There are more ways to structure our careers, more ways to structure our relationships, more ways to structure our own sense of meaning. It only makes sense that this would leave us all scratching our heads, wondering if we're doing life right. Choosing our life paths has become more complicated than choosing between cell phone plans.
Is this a bad thing? I think not. Instead, I think some confusion is a reasonable price to pay for a more flexible and tolerant social order. Without the guide of a single concept of manhood that men are expected to strive for and women are expected to desire, it stops being a question of "what do women want?" and starts becoming about "what does this individual woman want?" I think men still make the mistake of thinking that the former question is still relevant, a mistake that leads to more than a little misunderstanding.