Anyway, thought I'd drop by and link you to the letter to the editor I just sent in for a class assignment. It's for a course on Women's Sexualities, and we had to find an article in Canadian print media that made us angry. The assignment is due tomorrow and I've been trying to find an article that makes me angry for, like, a week now...turns out I do not get angry very easily.
Then, today, I was checking the various newspapers' websites, as I have done daily for the past week, when I came across this article: http://www.thestar.com/living/article/1063983--how-to-have-a-long-happy-marriage-without-medication
Below is the letter I wrote in response. I'll let y'all know if The Star publishes it! (P.S. Read the article first, then my letter!)
Marriage and Sexuality are not one-size-fits-all
Re: “How to have a long, happy marriage – without the medication” by Nancy J. White
I would like to take issue with the article written by Nancy J. White, published on October 3 on the Toronto Star website, featuring an interview with Iris Krasnow about her new book. This book, The Secret Lives of Wives, sounds like a fresh, insightful perspective on 21st-century wives, which is, regrettably, more than I can say for the tone of the interviewer’s questions. There were several instances in the relatively short excerpt of the interview in which I detected a decidedly judgmental air in these questions.
It was completely unnecessary for Ms White to end a question with “that doesn’t sound like a happy marriage” or include other judgments like “that sounds very 1950ish” – such comments certainly did not add anything positive to the interview, except that I found myself admiring Ms Krasnow for the diplomacy of her responses and the skilful avoidance of Ms White’s leading questions.
Neither women’s sexuality nor marriage has ever been one-size-fits-all, even when Ms Krasnow’s octagenarians first wed, and feminists have worked tirelessly to bring this deceptively simple fact into the open. Ms Krasnow, for her part, attests to this by presenting a number of anecdotes from happily married wives of varying ages, who have discovered a variety of strategies to make their marriages work for them and their partners. This is reflected in Ms Krasnow’s wish to “give people the freedom to rewrite the rules of their own marriage and not feel propelled to adhere to a gold standard marriage, which does not exist.” I acknowledge that some of the featured wives’ lifestyles may be seen by some as unconventional, but, as Krasnow stated in response to one of Ms White’s questions, “I’m not judging her marriage,” and I sincerely wish that we would all extend the same courtesy for, in all actuality, who are we to judge?
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