- Top Features:
- War Room
- Glenn Greenwald
- Broadsheet
- Joan Walsh
- Camille Paglia
- Since You Asked
- Follow Salon:
Read other letters about this article
I haven't read the other letters posted, so I may be repeating a point here. But this article cries out for angry protest letters. It's as if the author wrote it with some anticipation of rage. I love controversy as much as the next person, but I'd prefer not to have it generated through racism, sexism, and stupidity.
Of course, I'm enraged that Ms. Dickerson, who I would assume to be an intelligent woman, would use her intellect to castigate a cultural group for daring to look at the body with sense. I'm enraged that this same intelligent writer wouldn't be looking at more important issues facing this same cultural group and the nation at large.
I suppose that like Camille Paglia, Ms. Dickerson may thrive on letters like my own. I wish she wouldn't. We get too much right wing, bigoted prejudice in the mainstream media. I don't need more of it here on Salon. Salon doesn't need Bill O'Reilly's on staff. Bill has quite enough voice as it is. If Salon's writers want to generate controversy, why don't they do it by voicing views from the left-wing, views that we don't generally hear?
Ms. Dickerson, please do better for yourself and us. I'm not generally a fan of Dr. Phil, but he might ask an appropriate question: How is writing like this working for you? How is it working for anyone?
P.S. Ms. Dickerson and Ms. Paglia are both women. I know that we have a tendency to find it easier to castigate women. However, I hope Ms. Dickerson does not hide behind this truth to bolster some sort of victim/martyr image she may wish to hold for herself.
She is castigating women. She's slinging the stones. The fact that she is a woman (and Paglia is a woman) makes the stones hit harder. Since I feel (as a woman) I've just been hit by a misogynistic stone telling me to go get a smaller backside, I would contend that Ms. Dickerson is not the issue I write against. (I'd write the same if Glen Greenwald wrote this, or any other male writer.) I'm writing against her identification with (and spinning for) sexism and racism.
