To the Editor:
Re “Free to Be You and Me. Or Not,” by Pamela Paul (column, Dec. 5):
Ms. Paul does a wonderful job in reminding readers what the recording and e-book “Free to Be … You and Me” was all about. And, critically, it bravely means that a lot of the trending thought on gender and gender politics could also be misguided and even dangerous.
To my thoughts, the issue shouldn’t be innate gender id that doesn’t match biology, however fairly society’s project of inflexible definitions of what gender is. If a boy or a lady can really specific themselves nevertheless they need, with out concern that they don’t seem to be conforming to those definitions, then the actual fact they’re biologically male or feminine shall be largely irrelevant, and there could be no want for a biologically male particular person to “determine” as a lady or girl, and vice versa.
“Free to Be … You and Me” was an essential step towards that form of “genderless” world, and it’s unlucky that its message is being misplaced and subsumed by a unique form of gendered society, the place individuals have to create new gender definitions to determine with.
Mark Patrick
Tucson, Ariz.
To the Editor:
My dad and mom, having listened to “Free to Be … You and Me” as children within the Seventies and ’80s, noticed match to cross it right down to my brothers and me. I notably loved listening to the reimagined delusion of Atalanta, who rejected her father’s insistence that she needed to get married and as a substitute determined to journey the world on her personal.
The story helped me to know the enjoyment in breaking freed from conventional expectations round gender, and so I discover it unusual that Ms. Paul used this album to advertise her extra inflexible perspective on gender id.
She argues that it’s nice to problem gender norms, so long as we proceed to insist that intercourse is inherently binary — and he or she pats herself on the again for having like different liberated children “accepted the truth of organic science” as regards to her personal id, whereas rejecting “the fiction of gendered social conventions.”
I imagine {that a} really liberated method to gender is one which embraces fluidity over any form of strict binary. Then we are able to really construct a future the place we’re free to be you and me.
Andie Walker
St. Paul, Minn.
To the Editor:
Pamela Paul raises essential factors. As one of many individuals who helped discovered Ms. journal and the A.C.L.U.’s Ladies’s Rights Undertaking, I used to be lively within the feminist motion when “Free to Be” was coming into being. Ms. Paul is appropriate that our objective 50 years in the past was to unshackle girls and boys from gender stereotypes.
At this time younger youngsters face a “smorgasbord” of complicated labels (gender id, gender expression, gender efficiency) together with the notion that their gender was “assigned at delivery” however is definitely no matter they really feel themselves to be proper now.
This notion has led to harmful medical intervention, and it encourages the very sex-role stereotypes we fought so exhausting to rid society of. It’s opposite to our lived expertise and the truth that every of us features on a spectrum of human sexuality.
Brenda Feigen
Los Angeles
The author is the creator of “Not One of many Boys: Dwelling Life as a Feminist.”
Memo to Writers: Write. Learn Aloud. Edit. Repeat.
To the Editor:
Re “How the Spoken Phrase Shapes the Written Phrase” (The Story Behind the Story, Dec. 11):
Sarah Bahr’s description of New York Instances reporters who learn their copy aloud earlier than submitting it to an editor makes their apply sound like an aberration.
Because the common columnist for The Minneapolis Star Tribune on the craft of clear writing, I’d be stunned to study that any author has not been inspired to undertake the apply.
All of the writing coaches I do know of — and well-known authors who’ve produced books on writing properly — checklist studying copy aloud as one of the crucial essential steps in writing clearly.
Clear writing outcomes from rewriting, and rewriting advantages from studying drafts aloud. An extra profit comes from having another person learn the copy aloud to the author.
Gary Gilson
Minneapolis
To the Editor:
I commend an extra state of affairs to studying your draft aloud. I beseeched my college students to keep away from enhancing on the display screen.
I urged them, as a tried-and-true different, to print out their drafts, then step away from the desk. Subsequent, mindfully self-edit — pen and draft in hand — from begin to end. Then the second could be opportune to learn aloud the draft below building.
Submitting a paper with out self-editing would possibly very properly end result within the dreaded C+ vary!
Michael H. Ebner
Highland Park, Unwell.
The author is emeritus professor of American historical past at Lake Forest Faculty.
How Incapacity Shapes Perspective
To the Editor:
Re “Musician With Down Syndrome Upends Various Sound” (The Saturday Profile, Dec. 3):
Thanks for this text on how the expertise of incapacity contributed to the musician Miguel Tomasín’s distinctive sound. What impressed me was how the author demonstrated that incapacity could also be part of an individual’s expertise, however not their core id.
Mr. Tomasín’s success is earned and his personal. He brings us pleasure by way of his music, along with a much-needed name to motion to interrupt by way of institutional limitations and biases.
I’m a particular wants lawyer and the mom of an grownup daughter with developmental disabilities. The individuals I meet with disabilities are remoted. They inform me they’re handled as if they’re ailing or don’t belong. Because of this, incapacity advocacy focuses on authorities funding for home- and community-based providers so that folks with disabilities will be part of their communities.
A narrative like this issues, as a result of it reveals how change begins when individuals worth the particular person and acknowledge their intrinsic presents and abilities.
Saundra M. Gumerove
Jericho, N.Y.
The author is president of the board of administrators at AHRC Nassau, a social providers group for the developmentally disabled.
World Cup Followers Don’t Converse for All Arabs
To the Editor:
Re “Israeli Journalists at World Cup Get a Chilly Reception From Arab Followers” (information article, Dec. 4):
Gauging Arab public opinion based mostly on interviews with World Cup followers in Qatar — the place anti-regime Iranians had been scared to share their names with the media and the place European groups had been compelled to desert plans to precise help of L.G.B.T.Q. rights — is a futile train.
The article means that individuals who reside in Arab nations which have peace treaties with Israel are unified in opposing normalization. However in autocracies, there are few correct reflections of public opinion. It’s a mistake to attract broad inferences about in style sentiment from a handful of anecdotes.
When gauging Arab attitudes towards normalization, one should think about that some Arab governments have handed legal guidelines that criminalize the advocacy of normalization and have sponsored social shaming campaigns focusing on peace supporters. To cowl solely the anti-peace faction, whereas pro-peace Arabs face harassment and prosecution, harms the hunt for peace.
Hussain Abdul-Hussain
Washington
The author is a analysis fellow on the Basis for the Protection of Democracies.
Supply: NY Times
