<<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.?>>

God Bless Francis. It is true American women are a bunch of whining crybabies who want things handed to them.

This expectation of privilege is why most American men no longer take FEMINIST American women seriously or respect them.

<<Your bluster about court being the ultimate proving ground does not impress me. As you and I both know, you get the justice you pay for.>>

unless you are a man in divorce court, then you get your clocks cleaned.

have you been to divorce court lately? Maybe back in the prefeminist 1950s kids were given automatically to the mother... but nowadays fathers fight for full custody and many get it, and then the mothers are liable to pay child support. If the father was a stay at home dad, he can also sue for alimony, just like any woman.

Any parent given full custody is the exception to the rule. Mostly because of feminism, and the notion of fathers and mothers sharing in the parenting of a child, joint custody is the rule.

There's no point in talking sense to brightstar. He's just going to go back to braying his delusional crap about how much he hates women and how much the world supposedly hates men. Then he'll return to tending his collection of dismembered Barbies and fantasizing about the day he takes a real live woman apart.

Moira, the only byproduct of feminism in the accounting of your life is the belief that your achievements would not have been realized without it. You've been successful because you set your mind on certain goals and avoided distractions or pitfalls.

No one gave you the power to control your fertility. That was already there. Women have always the final say regarding sex. Granted, societal pressures to have children early and often are not what they used to be, but neither is the concept of having a lot of kids because the family farm needed the labor.

Most telling is the bitterness exhibited in your letter, despite your successes. If that's not a byproduct of feminism, it is certainly a trait often found in women who identify themselves as such. Maybe that's part of O'Bierne's problem.

Here's Rebecca Traister, preparing to ask a question for O'Bierne about a "quotation" from Catharine MacKinnon in her book:

Yes. The MacKinnon quote about how all heterosexual intercourse is rape is old news. There has been a whole other wave of sex-positive feminism in part in response to ideas like that. ...

In fact, the "quote" reported here as "old news" is a fabrication. It does not exist. Catharine MacKinnon never said this, although the view is commonly (erroneously) attributed to her. The one notorious example in which she was "quoted" as saying this was a column by Cal Thomas in March 1999, in which he quoted a passage from Daphne Patai and Noretta Koertge giving this (mistaken) gloss of MacKinnon's views, and then (apparently too lazy to pick up the book to get his citations straight) mistakenly claimed that MacKinnon was the author of the book and that the quotation was in her own words.

This has already been pointed out to Salon twice in the letters in response to the article, within hours of the publication of this story (letter from "Anonymous" at 9:36pm, Jan 16; letter from Mike Connell at 4:19pm, January 17th). A couple weeks ago The New York Times book review publicly posted a correction to Ana Marie Cox's review of O'Bierne's book, which committed a simlar hower. Why hasn't Salon published a similar correction to this interview, which contains a plain misstatement of fact?

For more information, see the Snopes.com article at http://www.snopes.com/quotes/mackinno.htm and the welcome, if belated, editorial note to the New York Times book review at http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/15/books/review/15cox.html

(Study question: If George Stephanopoulos were talking to George Tenet, would it be "George on George"?)

Actually, Becky, I've seen interviewers do that kind of cutesy introduction with men, too. No need to bristle with offense, not EVERYTHING is a patriarchal conspiracy to destroy wimminkind.