A Letter to Washington Post Columnist Jose Del Real About a Mother Raising Her Son to be a “Good Man”
Dear Mr. Del Real,
I respectfully ask that you take the time to read this letter and to thoughtfully consider what I say here.
I’m a proud lifelong reader of The Washington Post who has long noticed the paper’s gender bias, most notably its imbalanced coverage of domestic violence.
But my pride in the Post turned to quiet outrage in 2018 after the paper published the following two disgraceful, bigoted articles:
Opinion | Why can't we hate men?
In response, I’ve been sending letters to Post columnists who write articles that perpetuate the same biased, one-sided depiction about gender as these two articles.
Your recent article titled A MOTHER’S CHARGE–In cowboy country, a single mother tries to raise her boy to be a good man is an example of this gender bias.
Please don’t misunderstand. The story about “Sarah”, a single mother of a 5-year-old boy was both touching and tragic. I have great empathy for Sarah and her little boy, and I found both Sarah’s damaged childhood and her son’s difficulty making friends incredibly heartbreaking.
But the real, barely concealed message of the article is clear: it’s essentially the same one as the 2018 op-ed, “Why can’t we hate men?”
Don’t believe it? Then consider the “MASCULINITY IN AMERICA” heading above your article. Does it portend a positive article about American masculinity?
Anyone who is familiar with the Post’s gender bias against men already knows that it doesn’t.
For proof just do a search for “masculinity” on the Post website. What you’ll find is that most stories are about “toxic” or otherwise undesirable masculinity, and almost none that show the good, even noble aspect of masculinity (e.g., “Titanic”, “military deaths”, “9/11 first responders”, or even “loving fathers”). If the Post was honest, the heading would have read “TOXIC MASCULINITY IN AMERICA”. Finally, the Post doesn’t seem to have any similar articles headlined “FEMININITY IN AMERICA”. Why do you think this is?
Your article is rife with this same negative attitude about men and masculinity.
For example, the very first paragraph is a not-so-subtle dig at “sexist” men, who expect Sarah to smile and be “chatty and cheerful” in her tight clothes. But who’s being sexist here? Sarah is using her femininity to manipulate men to get them to tip more. Isn’t that the same thing that Hooter’s waitresses do? Isn’t it plausible that’s the reason why Sarah stopped wearing a bra while waitressing? Even her female coworkers thought so: “Sarah was ‘sexualizing’ herself”.
Next, you include several statistics about abuse caused by men, but with the exception of a glancing reference to “data from the FBI” ¹, you don’t provide sources for these numbers, leaving readers unable to verify their accuracy — or even their authenticity. And readers should verify because for decades feminists have exaggerated, distorted, or outright lied about abuse statistics.
If you doubt this, a quintessential example can be found in the work of a psychology professor at Kent State University named Mary Koss who did research on college sexual assaults:
“Pioneering a tactic that recent surveys have made into a ritual, Koss refrained from asking her subjects whether they had been sexually assaulted. Instead, she explored particular behaviors, which she treated as evidence of sexual assault even when the law (or her subjects) did not. … Koss infused the answers with her own ideological biases. She classified as “sexual assault” incidents that 73 percent of her subjects did not consider to be sexual assault. This technique enabled her to declare that 25 percent of college women were victims of sexual assault [emphasis added].” [from book The Campus Rape Frenzy — The Attack on Due Process at America’s Universities]
It’s worth repeating: For decades feminists have exaggerated, distorted, or outright lied about abuse statistics.
To be fair, your article does tell readers about male suicides:
“They are endemic out here, especially among men, who, according to data by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2020 accounted for 84 percent of suicides in Wyoming, which has the highest rate per capita of any state. Another part of ranch life. The male suicide rate in the state is more than twice as high as the national average.”
But it’s not just “another part of ranch life”. It’s just another of many, many disadvantages of simply being male … EVERYWHERE!
These by far predominantly male suicides are but one of a limitless number of examples of these disadvantages, and of what is known as the “gender empathy gap”.
You, like most Americans, have likely never heard of it. This empathy gap is “… 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.²
The empathy gap:
Is why a presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, once declared that “Women have always been the primary victims of war”. If you don’t think this is a completely preposterous claim, please read this article, which articulates why Clinton’s statement “…isn’t a different perspective. It’s a lie”.
The empathy gap is why thousands of articles just like yours focus only on women, completely oblivious to men’s far greater suffering, despite easily obtainable facts (note that this link provides detailed references for its statistics).
Males:
· live six years less than women
· suffer 94% of workplace deaths
· are 80% of the homeless
· are 80% of deaths by suicide
· are 76% of homicide victims
· are more likely than women to be charged with crimes, receive 63% longer sentences on average, while women are twice as likely to avoid incarceration if convicted [See Estimating Gender Disparities in Federal Criminal Cases for proof.]
· form the only group who, via the Forced Labour Convention of 1930, is still subject to a type of slavery (aka “military conscription” — the law exempts “able-bodied males between ages 18 and 45 from the ban on slavery and forced labor”)
· finally, males are at least 50% of the victims of domestic violence (just ask Johnny Depp) and yet are nearly 100% ineligible from receiving assistance from taxpayer-funded DV shelters. If you still don’t believe that women perpetuate at least 50% of DV, please read this law review article (PDF), written by a woman.
Despite these well-documented male disadvantages, feminists have convinced many that men instead have “male privilege”. If you believe that men are privileged, please view this video.
But the gender empathy gap is even more insidious and widespread than just these undeniable facts, and this gap has always been, quite literally, right in front of us. As the late men’s rights activist Marc Angelucci once wrote,
“We simply don’t care much about men. In fact, the devaluation of male lives is so entrenched in our psyches and endemic to our system that we refuse to see it — even when it’s smack in our face.” ³
Mr. Del Real, how else, other than the gender empathy gap, can we explain why the Post publishes so many stories like yours — often as a part of October’s Domestic Violence Awareness month — and so very few about males who are also suffering and dying?
With your permission, and in the interest of “true gender equity”, let me suggest a little experiment.
Go to Post management and propose an article that describes just one of these Wyoming suicides, in just as much sorrowful detail as your article about Sarah.
Will they agree and allow you to write it?
For some reason, I have my doubts.
Sincerely,
Stephen Bond
Who knew that some fifty years later feminists would begin a process that would turn these men from noble heroes into “patriarchal oppressors of women”?
Other Post columnists to whom I’ve previously sent letters about their own gender-biased columns have been separately cc’d this letter:
Monica Hesse: 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?
Karla Miller, Work Advice Columnist: wrote two articles about the gender wage gap
Janay Kingsberry, Multiplatform editor for “The Lily” web site: wrote article about “dissatisfied U.S. women”
Kate Cohen, “Contributing columnist”: wrote two articles about college men
Christine Emba, Columnist: wrote an article about “condom stealthing”
Julianne McShane, “Gender & Inequity journalist”: wrote two articles on the gender pay gap
Miriam Berger, “Reporter covering Middle East, Foreign Affairs”: wrote two articles about domestic violence
Candace Buckner, Sports reporter: wrote biased article on “Men Behaving Badly”
Erik Wemple, wrote a column about the Amber Heard fiasco
Paul Farhi & Ashley Fetters Maloy, wrote a column about “MeToo Five Years On”
For other letters to Post columnists see my Letters to The Washington Post list:
FOOTNOTES:
1. This paragraph pertains only to the article’s statistics about abuse caused by males.
2. From video clip of “anti-feminist” Janice Fiamengo talking about the empathy gap, starting at about 6:25
3. Gender Bias Toward Males Frequently Gets Overlooked Daily Bruin Online, 2/20/01
By Stephen Bond on October 25, 2022.
Exported from Medium on February 28, 2023.