British followers of this blog may recall the BBC radio series Letter from America, a 15-minute programme about topical issues in the USA, presented from 1946 to 2004 by Alistair Cooke. Letter from America was always interesting and insightful, and sometimes entertaining, which is more than I can say for a five-pages-long letter I’ve just received from an American feminist. I’ve redacted her name.
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Justice for Men & Boys 
Does she genuinely think transcribing the same tired old empty rhetoric and debunked claims and combining it with a conciliatory tone is suddenly going to convert you to the feminist cause? It’s just another exercise in mental masturbation and doesn’t achieve anything other than making her feel smug and self-satisfied and all of us like shooting ourselves.
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This is typical of the sort of essay a sixth-former would write about feminism using ‘trusted’ sources such as the Guardian, Independent, the BBC, everydayfeminism etc
The problem is that every gender disparity has to be viewed through the lens of women’s oppression. For example consider the average couple. Say the woman earns 80% of what her husband earns over the course of the relationships (earning gap). We also know women spend around 80% of household income. So does this arrangement benefit the woman or the man? Perhaps neither, but to use the earnings gap to demonstrate women’s oppression is surely a bad argument.
Its the same thing with historical gender roles. They also have to be seen through the lens of women’s oppression. Karen Straughan in particular has done a great job of dismantling this opinion with some of her earlier and best videos.
Did you reply to this letter Mike? If so it would be interested to see what you said (and if she replies that would also be of interest).
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Hi DF. I wouldn’t reply to such letters anyway – there would be no point, and there would be an opportunity cost – but she didn’t leave an address or contact details anyway.
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I wonder if she is actively & publicly denouncing the radical feminists she implies she doesn’t like?
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If this woman would stop listening to her feminist dance therapy tutor for about 10 minutes she could do the research required to debunk every statement in this letter, all tired worn out feminazi trash. You would think that if she wanted to go to the effort to write this crap she could actually take a little time to read the data and use some reason. All she did here was waste the time of 100’s of people.
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The letter reminded my of Warren Farrell’s “journey. Key appears to have been the opposition of N.O.W. to equal parenting rights upon divorce. Because of course the young Warren would expect the logic of feminism to do everything to encourage fathers to do child care. But he found that the “leverage” contact disputes gave women in gaining bigger financial settlements trumped the feminists of the NOW supposed theory. And here again the logic of the theory gets overridden by self interest. For inflated pay, accelerated promotion and same pay for office work to dangerous or unpleasant work, almost universally done by men. Having set out the idea of benign sexism the correspondent then uses it to claim additional “leverage”.
In any real world analysis the practical issues of birth and nursing infants would be seen as just that, a practical issue. Inevitable for mothers but not for women in general. Just as who consumes in a “consumer society” is as important as who earns. And as the Fawcett society has alerted us how women are huge beneficiaries of taxpayer funding.
Melanie Philips pointed out how feminism is essentially an idea of the teenager. And the petulant self absorbed at that.
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