Louise C

I am weary of the number of people on here saying idiotic things like "ooh, you shouldn't be reading Harry Potter or Twilight, you should be reading Good Literature."

Rubbish. People should read what they want to read. A good book is a book that you can't put down, and I couldn't put down Harry Potter or Twilight while I was reading them.

Do people who prefer 'classics' to books by the likes of J K Rowling and Stephanie Meyer really regard themselves as superior beings?

We are constantly told on this site that our present royal family are 'not really British' because they have German blood. I find this quite baffling. Royal families generally intermarry with other royal families, and always have done. You can scarcely find a British monarch in any period of history who has not married a foreigner, because that's what royalty does. How does having German blood make our royal family any less British than the British royalty of the past, who had Saxon, French, Spanish, Italian, and bloods of all nations?

I personally find this obsession with racial purity very weird. What is it all about?

I have several times seen bizarre comments to the effect that 'women didn't do anything before WW1' or, in a comment I read today 'women were just strange little kitchen critters before WW1'. Quite apart from the fact that I hotly dispute the idea that a woman is not working if she is in the kitchen, it is simply nonsense historically. Women have ALWAYS had to work throughout history. So whence comes this strange idea that they didn't?

A question posted earlier in this section described a girl who was working a 48 hour week in a coffee shop. Apparently the asker of this question considered this girl not to be in the 'real world' and moreover categorised her as 'lazy'.

Now, if coffee shops are not in the 'real world' then what I want to know is, what world are they in? And if a person who works a 48-hour week is 'lazy' then what kind of hours do you have to work in order to not be considered 'lazy'?

Someone on here recently answered a question about what modern women have to offer with the comment "If you want a woman who can't think for herself, go back to 1942". is this what people really think of women in the past? do they really believe that it didn't take intelligence to get through WW2? do they really believe that women in those days didn't have to think for themselves? Why?

A question posed on here earlier suggested that feminism is about respect for women rather than rights for women. So I would like to ask the men on here what qualities or abilities in a woman make you feel respect for her?

I was surprised to see on a question from a woman about whether or not married women should work, a number of comments suggesting that it is 'slavery' if she stays at home. How is being in the comfort of your own home, able to do what you have to do at your own pace and taking breaks whenever you want, more slavery than being stuck in some dreary office at the beck and call of your employer all day long? Especially as (judging by what I read on here) a great many men expect their wives to work AND do all the domestic work, cooking, childcare etc as well? Is a woman at home really more of a slave than a woman at work?

time and time again on this site I read sneering and dismissive comments about women in the past "women were just housewives' 'women didn't do anything except cook and clean' 'women weren't taught to read' 'women weren't taught anything of value'. All these comments are untrue and insulting to the achievements of the women of the past. I can understand men making comments like these, but quite frequently they come from alleged feminists, who ought to know better. Why? The latest idiotic commnet in answer to a query about whether women were allowed to read in the 16th century was 'women couldn't do anything with it except bake a bunch of cookies'. Why do feminists have so little interest in, and so little knowledge of, the women of the past?

I have noticed on this site today a lot of questions about men getting presents for their wives on mother's day. I find this quite surprising as in the UK mother's day is supposed to be when children give their mothers presents, treats etc.

If, as seems to be the case, it is in America a time for men to get their wives presents, then why call it mother's day at all? Why not just call it wives day and have done with it?