By: E&P Staff After weeks of being the lone New York Times Op-Ed columnist to fail to provide any bonus online content for the paper's new pay program, TimesSelect, Maureen Dowd has finally joined the pay-for-play fun. But was it just the opportunity to promote her new book that did it? Will she now post original material regularly or was this just an exception?
Actually, it all stems not from one of her opinion columns but a feature with her byline in the Sunday Magazine ten days ago. That essay was adapted from her new book, "Are Men Necessary: When Sexes Collide." A few days after it appeared, the Times said Dowd would answer questions from readers about it at her TimesSelect page. Now nine questions and answers have appeared.
Here are two samples.
*
Q. Doesn't it seem curious that this resurgence of the girlie girl and sex kitten seems to be running parallel to the great religious and political conservative movement engulfing us today? What are we doing wrong in letting the lessons some of us learned in that period go quietly by? Whether by folklore, story-telling, or by virtue of your upcoming book, shouldn't more be done to show the risky effects of insular dependence on the man in your life?
? Barbara P. Hageman, Brewster, Mass.
A. I recommend reading Ariel Levy's new book, "Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture." It has a lot of interesting material linking the red state surge and the self-actualized sex kitten surge.
In my book, I make the point that we live in a society that is so derangingly sexualized, it's not a sexy society. You can't think about sex clearly if all you're thinking about is sex, whether it's an obsession over celibacy or nymphomania. America has always been conflicted about sex, its puritanical side clashing with its prurient side. But now, with the ascendance of the prudish religious right and the numbing oversexualization of commerce and culture, America seems positively bipolar about sex....
*
Q. When your wife renounces books for catalogues, when she begins to idolize Blanche Dubois and starts going to Mass again . . . when your grad-school daughter says her mother is letting her mind go to waste, what is a husband to do? You build a modest career by avoiding the twin pitfalls of being boss and being bossed, then one day you look in the mirror and see Mike Doonesbury. Are we going back to the future or forward to the past?
--Chandler Thompson, Las Cruces, N.M.
A. That is my question exactly! I love your e-mail. Please read the whole book and get back to me with your thoughts.
Comments
No comments on this item Please log in to comment by clicking here