I dislike a lot of things about American feminism. I grew up in Venezuela where we don't have laws like community property that protect women after a divorce, and even though there are laws for child support there are very rarely enforced. Yet, many divorced and single mothers become tough matriarchs in Venezuela, in the middle class they climb the corporate ladder and pay for their kids up bringing, in the lower classes they work hard at low pay jobs and pay for their kids upbringing. Guess what, all these mothers get to give the finger to their kids' fathers and stand with their heads high because they don't depend on the men's monthly check. In Venezuela, the worst insult you can give someone is to insult their mother. Whether you are a man or woman, you insult my mother you better get ready to be punched in the face. Mother is sacred, whether she stayed at home in a good marriage or whether she worked full time, single and left the kids with a nanny. Why is mother sacred? because over the generations Venezuelan women have earned their respect by being strong and independant without the government's help. They are the only reliable source, when men and government fail, Venezuelan women are out there earning their pay, raising their kids, running things.

When I went to college here in the US I was flabbergasted at all the complaining educated, intelligent women do about how the government doesn't help women do this, doesn't help woment do that. I thought to myself "This is is independence in America?" They want women to become better than men by relying on the government, on public policy, on subsidies? I still don't understand it.

I learned independance by my mother telling me never depend on anyone dear daughter, because in this life you're on your own. My grandmother, my friend's mother, my neignbor, they all shared this mantra with us little girls. We learned we make our choices, the men we choose, the way we stick with them, and the way we leave when things go bad, the way we decide to have kids, and how those kids will always be ours to raise, maybe with the help of a father, maybe not. We're on our own on those choices and we don't go to the government about it. We tighten up our boots and fight the fight.

To this day American feminism hasn't taught me anything not even an tiny little bit better than what my mother, my friends mother, my neighbor and all the other women in Venezuela taugh me since I was a small little rugrat.

I loved reading this interview - I thought Ms. Traister did just fine against the crazy insane anti-feminist feminist - and some of the letters to the editor in response were cool, too. I'd just like to say that, as a young woman with a pretty strong sense of duty who wants to get married eventually, I am looking for one of those new-fangled men who might/would want to stay home and do a significant share of raising the kid during the formative years. Not only is this kind of guy appealing, he is also SEXY SEXY SEXY.

I grew up in a lower middle class family with parents who shared some Mrs O'Beirnes attitudes and therefore my parents spent what little they did have on my brothers college education. I instead scraped and worked and bled my way through a state college to get a B.S. in Information Systems. For 14 years as I worked diligently with much overtime to become among the best in that field I was consistently paid less, disrespected and passed over for promotion by men who were not as qualified, not as intelligent and quite bluntly did not work as hard. Similarly, when global offshoring hit hard we were the first to lose our jobs while incompetent men kept theirs. Anyone maintaining that there's no pay or gender discrimination in industry, at least industry that offers some life of sustainance, is simply full of it.

Whatever I would have liked to have done or how I would have liked things to be was simply irrelevant. Like most women in the world, working was essential to my survival. I thus have little use for the diatribes of the financially secure. And while the hard work was and continues to be my own, I sure am grateful for the women before me who wedged the door open a crack or so.

I suggest if Mrs. O'Beirne's wants to understand women like us and do the nation/world some actual good, she might stop blathering all that idiocy about evil feminists and instead work towards a more equitable system such that the women who DO want to stay home or work from home have the option to do so.

I have it on very good authority that his abrasive management style was a concern before he was hired.

Harvard was going through a core curriculum dispute and the man who was supposed to be the leader was not leading effectively.

The media storm over his comments about women scientists did not create his problems with the Harvard faculty -- those problems bubbled up long before he told women scientists they couldn't do science.

That media storm just happened to take place at the same time his conflict with the faculty over the core curriculum was coming to a boil.

You can read all about it in the Chronicle of Higher Education. That's the only place where that story was covered with a respect for the facts.

His vote of no confidence had nothing to do with feminism or with restricting his free speech. The president of a university is not faculty -- the president's job is to manage the faculty, and an abrasive and dismissive management style is a perfectly legitimate reason to call for the dismissal of a manager.

In any workplace in the world, if a manager is not effective at leading the people he's supposed to be managing -- he or she can be fired. There's no injustice whatsoever about that.

That's why univeristy president is not a tenured position. Because their academic freedom isn't an issue. They're not hired for their intellectual output, they're hired for their management skills.

But happily, he and the faculty are getting along much better now.

His non-firing was not any kind of loss whatsoever for "feminists".

And he's heard enough by now from the women scientists he insulted that he's gotten a good education in the obstacles women face through their careers that have nothing to do with their genes.