Love: Worth Defending or Is She a <i> Poseur</i> ?

I think Lorraine Ali got a little carried away with her passionate, women’s rights shtick regarding Courtney Love (“Courtney Love and the Flip Side of Criticism,” Calendar, May 27).

It’s true that Vanity Fair’s Kevin Sessums did ask Love whether during lovemaking she was “a top or a bottom.” But, taken in the context of Courtney’s constant sexual clowning, Sessums was only joining in the spirit of the fun--as if he had a choice, as Love had just apparently disrobed in front of him for a bath. My guess is she didn’t feel exploited.

Courtney Love’s appeal cannot be judged via contemporary standards of political correctness. She turns off the moral conservatives and she turns off the humorless indie rock Establishment--hopeless conformists who long ago forgot why they started bands in the first place.

Women rock as hard as men. Currently, they are beating the pants off the guys with the best guitar rock available. And, Lorraine Ali needs to understand that all human beings, including men, are sex objects. Credit Courtney Love and Liz Phair for not being paranoid about it.

BRIAN BENTLEY

Los Angeles

While I agree with Lorraine Ali that female rockers are making some of the most compelling music around, the hostile sexism of Ali’s essay, with its “us versus them” mentality, is almost enough to make me want to listen to male artists only. Virtually everything Ali says is inaccurate, from her assertion that Jim Morrison and Johnny Rotten were universally “worshiped” for their rebellious attitudes, to her claim that male performers aren’t questioned about their sex lives.

As for Courtney Love, I rate her as a no-talent poseur whose current celebrity is due to rock fans’ collective sadness and guilt after the suicide of her husband. But I wonder whether Ali would ever have the critical integrity to criticize a female performer.

WILLIAM PLATT

Sherman Oaks