>Flanagan frets and frets about how biology is inherently unfair to girls, but she shockingly neglects to mention the fact that birth control (and abortion) is the way to level the playing field. Anyone who really cared about girls would be spilling ink over sex ed and access to birth control, not this blind lamenting about how weak and fragile girls are.<

Ah, but Flanagan thinks she _does_ care--in that she doesn't want to see girls foolishly ruin their chances to be virgin-until-wed-and-good-wifey-moos-thereafter to her sons. :) Flanagan and those of her ilk honestly believe that no matter how independent a girl is or how much she's accomplished, her main value is still as a virgin, then wife--and on that value hangs civilization's only chance to remain civilized. Their columns are a steady drumbeat intended to scare girls (and their parents) into thinking that their idea of wifehood is still the only right one no matter how many times it's been proven that one size doesn't fit all. Walsh is right on to call Flanagan out on this crap--the latter is a concern troll of a particularly poisonous sort. Think Delores Umbridge from Harry Potter--all sweet and caring-seeming, but underneath raging that "children" won't listen to what she has to say.

Sorry Joan,

I usually agree with you, but this time I think you've misread the Flanagan article and the reader response to it. Many women, including very liberal liberals like me, have been waiting for someone in the print media to make the case that Flanagan has made.

I have not seen the movie--a serious flaw, I agree; however, I absolutely cringe every time I see the trailers for Juno--Chirpy,very pregnant girl walking down the school hall, boyfriend ruefully admitting he cannot grow a moustache. "Right on" or some such rot. Flanagan is right. Juno is a fairy tale. In real life one of the parents would have decided they should adopt the baby, or Juno, on seeing her baby's fingernails, would have decided she couldn't give her baby up after all.

In contrast, I am of the generation written about in the book The Girls Who Went Away. All of us who went to high school before the pill knew those girls-- the ones who got pregnant and went away to "boarding school" in mid-semester. The truth of their condition was spoken of in hushed tones in the hallways and usually we never saw them in school again. No sane person wants to return to that era. Three cheers for the fictional Juno and her resiliency and the parents and culture that support her. At the same time, all of us today know of the parents searching for children they gave away and adopted children searching for their parents. It seems that the Moses in the bulrushes theory does not work as well in the long run.

I'm not faulting the fictional Juno for not understanding that at 16 but I also am not going to fault Flanagan for pointing out that at the very least life is considerably messier than the movie Juno suggests that it is.

Pat

San Jose, CA

didn't anybody tell you that back somewhere along the way?

dowd and crystol and all the other disregards are not recommended reading? why?

crystol is stale and boring copy, sure but nobody writes fresher language on the big stage like sister mo- nobody!

o.k. i really disapprove of most all of what, say chrissy hitchens writes, but i read him because his language is usually above average. dowd says things i do not agree with and certainly a comparison of our lifestyles would show a contrast (to put it weakly). but word choice surprises and humor and scratchyness and cattyness and pseudocattyness, come on, joanie, mo is the queen of the dropliners and you know it- the glenn gould of the wonks and wonkwatchers, she is!

i read you, for example- and disagree sometimes. sometimes a lot! but i read your pieces.

advising against reading this or that columnist is just wrong. how long of a committment is a column to read?

i read drew pearson (when he was mentoring jack anderson- while his one-time protogee, "what's his fox ignorance"? was still in grade school!) it di not turn me into a yalie.

so please lay off the "don't read so-and-so" you may start to sound like cheney- or crystol.

i'd read cheney, too if he would ever write something.

rimbeau was a right wing arms merchant and old mr. coutry club whites, tom wolfe himself is a hoot and pleasure to read- he voted for cheney twice!

someone writes well- we read 'em. they start to slide down- as when they begin to ask readers not to read someone they do not like, for example, then we click on another link or we pick up another section of the broadsheet.

why don't you try adding a little more humor?

just you wait untill you read dowd after bloomberg gets in the race!

you don't know what you might be missing if you don't read her then!

be well,

your devoted reader,

minnesinger5

"the emotionally curdled Maureen Dowd." Best, period.

Suggest checking our Judith Warner's column in NYT. Reader comments were thought-provoking, insightful and showed some depth -- in short supply these days.

Flanagan frets and frets about how biology is inherently unfair to girls, but she shockingly neglects to mention the fact that birth control (and abortion) is the way to level the playing field. Anyone who really cared about girls would be spilling ink over sex ed and access to birth control, not this blind lamenting about how weak and fragile girls are.

Nobody argues that an unintended pregnancy is fun for any teenage girl (or for any grown woman, for that matter). But Flanagan's column is just one more expression of the "girls are delicate, they must be controlled" line of argument that's enjoyed a disturbing resurgence lately (see Laura Sessions Step, Wendy Shallit).

Anyone who really cared about girls would be out there fighting for access to birth control, sex ed, working to empower them to make their own independent sexual choices, and working to change society so the choice of single motherhood isn't a sentence to poverty and moral disapprobation. Someon who really cared to help girls certainly wouldn't be publicly lamenting how inherently weak girls are.