Site Presented By
Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Most men don't consume ourselves with being so self-absorbed as this writer apparently is or so insecure. We typically have more important issues to tend to like working to pay for these things, health insurance, a mortgage payment, and a whole host of other issues so we don't have the luxury to be self-consumed and ruminate about this. We would just prefer that our wives enjoy sex and not use it as some patheic bargaining chip. Now, the follow up argument I can hear is "but we can have children". So what! Children tend to kill the sex life anyway (by virtue of the wife being "too tired" but how can men be, even though they are working harder and putting more hours in?) but children seem to be one of the most effective methods for a woman to wrangle herself a man and put the family on the financial 18-year plan. The only men that don't know that their sex life is essentially over with children are those that have never been a parent yet. The other issues seem to be that with women having children at older ages in life the affects on their bodies are much more pronounced and therefore tend to kill any romantic intentions a man may wish to muster up. Realistically, if men merely thought about the consequences of children and getting married most would not do it.
Anybody else ever notice that the editors always choose more letters that give some sort of positive spin to Salon's editorial judgement than not, even when anybody counting Pros and Cons could tell different? (They put in a few objections, but usually only the milder ones, that also include strokes for Salon.)
Spin job.
I do think that Salon is changing and agree with Kim about the dubious merits of sharing declarations one's sexual prowess. There are ways to describe the situation without resorting to braggadocio, in ways that could be much more racy and engaging, if indeed sex is what's selling. It's not that Salon readers are prudes, as it's clear that not all sex-related articles raise such ire. I also think a headline article should be a substantial piece, which can be personal stories about varied topics such as motherhood, sex, or the troubles in the world. Just do it well! Good God, the Real Doll piece was a headline story embarrassment. (A longer version is on Saltmagazine, so one can interestingly get a sense of the Salon editorial process.) A great example of a well-written, crappy story taking the headlines in October of 2005, which was SUCH a slow news month. I've been reading Salon since 1996 & remember the Hyde hype, Mothers Who Think, the Sex column, etc. I think we all want to read good articles and I recall a time when it wasn't so hard to find them here. While some may think all of this is "whining," I think these posts give critical feedback to the magazine:
-We want fresh, relevant stories
-Headline stories should merit their position
-Less "reality TV-like" infotainment (infotain us in smart, clever ways that don't pander)
-Personal stories need not read like a LiveJournal entry
-People found value in this article, but some readers were put-off by the tone
Please Salon, don't bore us all with this tepid writing. Sex is a drag, then it gets better. Whoo Whoo. I kept reading, because I was suprised that Salon would even publish this dreck.
I love how "he" - a male doctor pronounced a woman who had just given birth six weeks earlier as "ready." I wonder if a female gynecologist would have given the same advice.
Apologies, for some reason the body of my previous letter was not published, only the subject heading and my signature. Strange, and I have no idea how to fix it, so I'll just attempt to post the same letter again. Here goes...
We practice physical excercise daily to stay in shape, but clearly not everyone remembers to practice the emotional excercises of tolerance, curiousity about others, patience, empathy, grace, humour, or common decency. I wonder which kind of sloth, physical or emotional, is more damaging to us.
I almost didn't write this letter, because it talks about reader reaction to the piece, rather than the piece itself, but after witnessing the level of intolerance spewed out by Salon readers, readers who I thought were above this kind of thing, I had to say something. To not speak up would have been akin to clamming up when your buddy tells a racist joke. Cowardice is just as ugly as intolerance. I had to say something, or else I'm just as guilty.
"So, like, before I had a baby I was, like, totally awesome at sex, like Miss Type A, y'know? Like I read the Kama Sutra and shit, totally off the hook. But then, like, I got pregnant, okay, and, like, during my pregnancy everything was like, totally cool, I was still, like, awesome at sex. But, like, then I had this baby & everything was all, like, sore down there? It, like, totally sucked cuz I couldn't have sex or anything and, like, that's all I really care about anyway so, like, when the Doctor told me I could start having sex again I was sooo stoked, but, like, the Doctor totally lied to me and shit! Cuz it, like, totally hurt like the Amityville Horror, y'know? Have you seen that movie? With the evil house and shit? Cuz that's totally what it was like. So like, next time I am sooo totally not going to listen to what the doctor says and, like, do my own thing and shit. So, like, that's the article, what do you, like, think?"
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
