A Letter to Post Columnist Ian Shapira on His Article About a Pedophile Priest
A fifth letter that asks "Why doesn't the Post publish similar articles about the female abuse of men and boys?"
Dear Mr. Shapira,
I respectfully ask that you take the time to read this letter about your recent article in The Washington Post, Minister accused of sex abuse landed one high-profile job after another.
As a brief introduction, I’m a lifelong reader of the Post who nevertheless has long noticed the paper’s feminism-inspired gender bias, provable by its imbalanced coverage of domestic violence1 and made undeniable by its 2018 publication of the op-ed Why can't we hate men?, where the paper provided a platform for a radical feminist to broadcast to the world a Nazi-like hatred for men.
In the past few months I have published open letters to other Washington Post columnists in response to their articles written under the paper’s Abused by the badge series.2 Although I commended these columnists for their fine work on both the investigation and the resulting articles, in these letters I implicitly posed the question,
“Why doesn't the Post perform similar studies about the abuse of men and boys?”
I then offered some suggestions for other investigations about the abuse of males that the Post has unconscionably ignored for decades. These suggestions are listed below and are thoroughly documented in this post. (The links below go directly to the respective section in the summary document.)
Abused by their Teachers: The Sexual Abuse of Boys: to examine the rape of boys by their female teachers
Abused by the Washington Post: Male Victims of Domestic Violence: to examine how the Post has neglected male DV victims
Abused by Feminism: Marriage, Fathers and Families: to explore feminism’s often-stated goal for the destruction of fathers and families
Abused by American Women: Sexual Assault and #MeToo: to examine the hypocrisy of #MeToo and false accusations of sexual assault
Abused by the Federal Government: Young Men and Title IX: to examine how the federal government has abused the civil rights of young men at U.S. colleges and universities
Abused by Chivalry: The Gender Empathy Gap: to explore“… the striking and disturbing indifference of our culture to the suffering of men and boys in stark contrast to our evident concern for the suffering of girls and women.”3
Abused by the Police: How Feminism Forces Police to Enforce Unfair DV Laws: how unjust feminist-driven laws have implemented a two-tiered system of justice that is horribly biased against men
Abused by Females: Boys and Sons Sexually Assaulted by Women and Mothers: to examine how boys are sexually abused by females, including boys who are abused by their own mothers.
In regard to your article, I also want to commend you for your fine investigation, but want to open your mind to how the Post and the rest of Western media has waged a biased, one-sided war on men, focused almost exclusively on male misbehavior (sexual and otherwise), without providing anywhere near equal consideration of female misbehavior (again, both sexual and otherwise), effectively propagating a myth of innocence, a world where females are only “sugar and spice”.
Before I continue, please understand that I have the deepest sympathy for the victims of Jeff Taylor, the minister profiled in your article. As a father of three millennial children (two daughters and a son), I’m horrified by the sexual abuse committed by too many pedophile clergymen, and the religious organizations that hide and protect these sexual monsters.
But I have even deeper sympathy for males — men, but particularly boys — as they are twice victimized: first, they’re also often horribly abused by women, but their abuse is almost completely ignored by the Post – and by society at large. These men and boys are victims of “… one of the abiding myths of our time”, the stereotype of innocent women.
This myth is thoroughly documented in a book by self-described feminist Patricia Pearson, When She Was Bad — Violent Women and the Myth of Innocence, which summarized the reality of this stereotype of innocent women:
“Women commit the majority of child homicides in the United States, a greater share of physical child abuse, an equal rate of sibling violence and assaults on the elderly, about a quarter of child sexual abuse, an overwhelming share of the killings of newborns, and a fair preponderance of spousal assaults. The question is how do we come to perceive what girls and women do? Violence is still universally considered to be the province of the male. Violence is masculine. Men are the cause of it, and women and children the ones who suffer. The sole explanation offered up by criminologists for violence committed by a woman is that it is involuntary, the rare result of provocation or mental illness, as if half the population of the globe consisted of saintly stoics who never succumbed to fury, frustration, or greed. Though the evidence may contradict the statement, the consensus runs deep. Women from all walks of life, at all levels of power—corporate, political, or familial, women in combat and on police forces—have no part in violence.
It is one of the most abiding myths of our time.
“…as if half the population of the globe consisted of saintly stoics who never succumbed to fury, frustration, or greed.”
Mr. Shapira, please open your mind to this anti-male bias that is so prevalent at the Washington Post, and consider speaking out about the Post’s undeniable feminist-inspired gender bias.
Sincerely,
Stephen Bond
Publisher of "Letters to The Washington Post" Substack
This observation was confirmed by a February 2023 report by The Coalition to End Domestic Violence that described a 10-Year Suppression of the Truth on Domestic Violence by the Washington Post.
From a video clip of anti-feminist Janice Fiamengo talking about the empathy gap