To the Editor:
Re “The Limits of ‘Lived Expertise,’’’ by Pamela Paul (column, April 25):
As a trainer of many college-level fiction workshops at Stony Brook College within the Eighties and ’90s, I confronted again and again the query Ms. Paul addresses.
Can males write from the feminine standpoint? Can girls write from the male standpoint? Can girls write about warfare? (This was earlier than girls had been really discovered within the trenches.) Can white folks faux to know the Black expertise, and vice versa?
I discovered it my responsibility to assign the writing of tales throughout boundaries, and the outcomes had been great. When folks started creating characters not like themselves, others within the workshop typically most well-liked the outcomes to writing that didn’t problem the creativeness and empathy.
In any case, youngsters’s books (and grownup books too) use animals to show in regards to the human expertise. Is there anybody who doesn’t imagine that Peter Rabbit was terrified and relieved to get again to Mother?
Or for that matter, what grownup is shocked when Napoleon and his fellow pigs take over the farm and destroy the dream of equality in Orwell’s “Animal Farm”?
Carolyn McGrath
Charlottesville, Va.
To the Editor:
Isn’t it patently apparent that direct expertise finest informs expressions of that have?
This doesn’t preclude others from describing the style of chocolate, the feeling of skydiving or the enjoyment of intercourse. But simply because the testimony of eyewitnesses is sought to bolster credibility in jurisprudence, so ought to voices of direct expertise be deemed the gold normal.
Charles Ellis Harp
Victoria, British Columbia
To the Editor:
For these in psychological well being fields, in addition to for these within the arts, the problems raised in Pamela Paul’s glorious dialogue of making an attempt to actually perceive one other particular person whose lived expertise could be very completely different from our personal are additionally related.
In our medical work we have now no selection. We social staff, psychologists and psychiatrists — or at the least most of us — haven’t been psychotic, horribly depressed, deeply traumatized or addicted. However our job is to attempt to perceive as finest we are able to the opposite particular person’s lived expertise in order that we can assist them.
To be actually understood is a profound expertise and one during which the humanities, together with the therapeutic arts, could play an necessary position.
Susan A. Winickoff
Brookline, Mass.
The author is a retired medical psychologist.
To the Editor:
Denzel Washington has no lived expertise as a Scottish king. Does that imply he shouldn’t play Macbeth? Now that can be a tragedy.
Patricia McLain
Olympia, Wash.
Golf Is Not Only for the Wealthy
To the Editor:
Re “Loathing Golf Taught Me to Confront My Personal Prejudice,” by Jane Coaston (Opinion, April 21):
Ms. Coaston writes about her distaste for golf and the golf world. I want to write a contrasting viewpoint.
Initially, her perspective that golf is a recreation for wealthy folks is fallacious. Sure, nation golf equipment are costly, however 80 p.c of golf programs are open to the general public, they usually value a median of $36 per spherical. Clearly the typical golfer isn’t the nation membership snob that she envisions.
Having been {golfing} for over 60 years, I admit to having met lots of rich and profitable folks round a golf course (is there one thing mistaken with that?), however I additionally meet folks of each stroll of life between golfers, caddies, and upkeep and meals service workers.
Golf is an $80 billion business that contributes $4 billion yearly to charity and employs over two million folks. The land that golf programs are on have moved towards being friendlier to the setting and to birds and animals, though admittedly there may be nonetheless room for enchancment. Most golf programs make their amenities obtainable for faculties and charities in addition to group and personal features.
Definitely my viewpoint, the alternative of Ms. Coaston’s, can be biased, however she actually has not seemed rigorously sufficient at most of the optimistic points of the sport.
Daniel Cohen
Pearl River, N.Y.
Ladies Freed From Excessive Heels and Pantyhose
To the Editor:
Re “They’ll Return to the Workplace, Sporting Uggs” (Thursday Kinds, April 14):
“I don’t have any endurance for uncomfortable clothes,” says Shira Lander, a professor of non secular research at Southern Methodist College in Dallas. That the period of uncomfortable, restrictive and infrequently painful clothes seems to be waning quickly ought to be no shock.
Ladies have skilled a freedom from sartorial bondage through the previous two pandemic years — and who can be keen to return to painful excessive heels, pantyhose and cinched waistbands after that?
Is that this actually a phenomenon created by the sweatpants pandemic tradition? The pandemic could have been the set off, however one thing way more consequential seems to be at play.
As girls turn out to be extra highly effective in financial and cultural spheres, we now not have to endure the discomforts of tight skirts or spike heels with a purpose to please the male species. Simply as males have had comfy and cheap clothes choices for many years, girls, rising within the ranks, are starting to understand that very same delight.
With energy comes privilege — and even Uggs.
Elizabeth Langer
West Tisbury, Mass.
The author was a co-founder of the Ladies’s Rights Regulation Reporter.
Supply: NY Times
