A Letter to Washington Post Columnist Monica Hesse About Recent Article on Domestic Violence

Dear Ms. Hesse,

I have no doubt that you’re aware of my efforts to challenge The Washington Post’s longstanding gender bias.

Over the past 18 months I have copied you in letters I’ve been sending to Post columnists who have written gender-biased articles.

I’ve prefaced these letters by saying that, while I’m a proud lifelong reader of the Post, I’ve also long noticed the paper’s obvious bias, most notably by the paper’s publication of two undeniably prejudiced articles in 2018: Why can't we hate men? and Amber Heard’s infamous op-ed.

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In March of 2022, in response to your article about the “strength of Ukrainian women”, I wrote you a private email that asked how you could write an article about a very small minority of Ukrainian women who volunteer to defend their country, but not mention how men are obligated to fight, being forbidden to leave the country.

Your article published in the Post earlier this month, The slippery language around domestic violence, shows that, at least so far, my efforts to open your mind to both your and the Post’s gender bias have come to naught.

Your article is yet another example of the Post’s imbalanced coverage of domestic violence, propagating an underlying message that only women are victims of domestic violence.

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Please don’t misunderstand. I recognize and deeply empathize with women who do suffer violence at the hands of men. But I also recognize that roughly equal numbers of men also suffer violence at the hands of women. Domestic violence is a terrible, complex problem, made even more complicated by the “slippery language” your article discusses.

But particularly after last summer’s Depp/Heard trial that clearly illuminated how women can be violent perpetrators and men their hapless victims, how can you write an article that only discusses female victims?

Ms. Hesse, I know that your position as a “gender columnist” at The Washington Post really means a “female perspective gender columnist”, but you seem to forget that there are two sexes. In the interest of true – and fair – gender equality, won’t you please consider and start writing about the other “half of the population”?

Before you write another article about domestic violence or gender issues, may I suggest you review the following information?

• Visit The Partner Abuse State of Knowledge (PASK) website, a great source of evidence that proves that women are at least as violent as men.

• Take the time to view a presentation found on the PASK website, The uncomfortable facts on IPV (interpersonal violence). Presented by Dr. Tonya Nichols, a professor and researcher at The University of British Columbia, I believe this video is the best single summary of the available data that disproves feminists’ depiction of DV. (If you don’t want to spend the time viewing the video, my Substack article, Domestic Violence: Feminists Can No Longer Hide the Truth, provides a good summary.)

• Read my Substack article Domestic Violence: Feminism’s Big Lie. The article provides a brief history of how feminists used threats of violence against two women who spoke up about domestic violence perpetrated by women.

• Read my Imagined Rebuttal to Amber Heard’s 2018 Washington Post Column for a point-by-point analysis and rebuttal to anti-male prejudice contained in Amber Heard’s article.

Finally, you really must read Australian men’s rights activist Bettina Arndt’s January 2023 article Feminism was never about equality. It includes reference to a video made by another men’s rights activist, Janice Fiamengo:

“Feminism was never sane. It was never without deep rancor and bitterness against men, never free from the claim that women were absolute victims of male predation, never uninterested in destroying the family, never accurate in its claims about women’s social situation, never unwilling to slander men in the most vicious and unpitying ways, and it never expressed any appreciation for men nor recognition that men had made any contribution to society or that men had ever acted out of love and concern and compassion for women in the laws that had been made or social instruments that had been developed over time. It was always a deeply misandrist, man-hating, man-blaming kind of movement.”

Ms. Hesse, in closing, and with the above quote in mind, please allow me to again plead to you:

As the Post’s gender columnist, when will you do the right thing and speak out against feminist lies and your paper’s one-sided gender bias?

Sincerely,

Stephen Bond

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FOOTNOTES

1. Especially with articles like this online:

“A publication with any semblance of ethics might have asked Depp for comment about the sexual violence claims before running with the allegations — then subsequently spiked the op-ed or sicced its reporters on the case for more fact-finding. But not The Washington Post.

“That paper, which loves to blather in its self-important tone about how “democracy dies in darkness,” didn’t bother to turn the lights in the direction of Heard’s claims. Instead, it gave her a free pass to air her dirty laundry against her ex-husband and consequently enabled her to paint herself both as a victim and a crusader of the Me Too era.”