as a 16 year old female I take great offense to what Obierne says. My parents are divorced, they did wehn I was 8 and frankly I couldnt imagine them being married it would be hell, and my mom is the breadwinner bewteen her and my stepdad. thats just how it is. also I tend to be considered intelligent but half the time I could not honestly figure out the rationality behind O'biernes arguments, they just were not logical. She believs that she got everything out of merit that it was just happenstance that the feminist movement happened and suddenyl females can enroll into law school and get better wages? Its ridiculous! Also maybe she should look up title IX and female athleticsm before and after, or is being an athlete bad, she would just cook? But wait having a chef's job owuld be awful as well. I frankly am not for the military giving leniency to women in applying for jobs I think it should be equal, women should have to do just as much as men to get in, but hey if they do then they have every right to go to war. as for women in the workplace I am proud of my mother working, never have I regretted being born to a working mother, NEVER. She is a role model, my father works just as much and my stepdad works part time. even with this if I were to want to be a stay at home mother my family would be accepting, I dont think I would ever want to be but still. Obierne's theories just do not ring true to our generation at least in a city and never will. this idea is pure 1950's, it is ugly I am ashamed that someone could think this, a lawyer no less! If people start to believe her by the time I'm thirty I still will be paid 72 cents on the dollaw and her using the nawa act against itself is absurd. Im sorry im rambling Im just so angry, the fact anyone could believe this is not only pathetic, ridiculous, and demorlaizing, but scary as well. I hope anyone who reads this will do so with agrain of salt. a poll: I think its great this article was the typed intervbiew, did anyone think her arguments were rational? it seems the recorder caught her own lies

Thanks to previous letter-writers here for affirming an alternative to Mrs. O'Beirne's spirited defense of the status quo. We can consistently say of right-wing ideology that it appears more logical than whatever piece of a solution to an evolving problem we're trying to develop and articulate at the moment. Part of that was hinted at by Ms. Traister: it's much easier to display grounded thinking when you're working from a system that's been built and refined over millenia.

The argument where Ms. Traister fell hardest was in her attempt to win by pointing to exceptions. Connecting feminism to only the exceptions allows for its motives to be trivialized and individualized. Sure, that one hypothetical girl in the antiquted abstract small-town can fight her good fight to do whatever she needs to do to self-actualize. And if she ends up being the enemy of the people in that town, railed against, silenced, run out for expressing a truth that little place can't deal with she's elevated her life to the best art. It's an even better story in the big city.

That girl will never succeed perfectly, but neither will anyone.

I spent this MLK Day volunteering at a meeting place for the mentally handicapped and then at a nursing home. Most of that volunteering involved listening. And watching. I could go on for a long time about every interaction that touched me, but I'll just point out what was the best. The nursing home held an Martin Luther King Day Tea Party, and I sat at a table with a man named Bill who'd been visiting his wife and caring for her every day for four years. She's reached severe onset of alzheimers, but aside from admitting that the last few years have been hard, he only mentioned the positives of their good life together. He fed her, held her hand, cooed at her to smile and praised the gleam he saw in her eye, taking on faith that the woman he shared his life with could hear. I think she understood.

We need to take care of each other, and keep government and corporate culture from blocking us off. But we need to keep words written on top of words from blocking us off as well. Our minds and hearts change through living, not sounding off, though the experience of this 23 year old guy may not be true for fat cats in washington or nyc.

Unfortunately, activists do need continuing problems to keep their jobs as activists. Just like politicians. Thank G-d for republicans for being so hard on us until we get up and do it ourselves. Now if only I can find a way to give it back and inspire as little resentment in them as they get from me.

It just proves how easy it is to put women down, and that a "successful" middle class white woman is the one to do the job. I wish Salon would interview some white supremacy pundit who would delineate the many ways blacks have suffered because of civil rights. You and I know they are there and we know their arguments. It's just they are afraid to show their faces. I would really look bad on T.V. with O'Beirne or Coulter because I would just say "you're stupid","you're a liar", or "who pays you?",to their "points".

Like O'Beirne, I'm aging, and I too look back with nostalgia on the norms of my youth, but realistically, America will never go back to those times. I just hope most of us won't have to go underground, the way things are going.

What I found interesting is that even Ms. O’Beirne could not say that women want to stay at home without qualifying herself several times over. In the end, the only point that she made was that some mothers want to stay home while their children. Fortunately, feminists are making it possible for them to do so without ending their careers.