A Letter to Washington Post Columnist Theresa Vargas About Article on High School Student’s Winning Science Project
Dear Ms. Vargas,
I respectfully ask that you take the time to read this letter about your recent article, A teenager used AI to study a very real issue and just won $175,000, and to thoughtfully consider what I say here.
Please note that I’m a proud lifelong reader of the Post who has nonetheless 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 two horrible, undeniably gender-biased articles: Why can't we hate men? and Amber Heard’s infamous op-ed that ultimately embarrassed the Post1, cost Heard millions, and proved beyond doubt that men can be victims of violent women. In response, I’ve been sending letters to Post columnists who have written articles that perpetuate this same gender bias.
Your article is, unfortunately, another example of this bias.
Please don’t misunderstand. I’m not saying that your bias is intentional. It’s more a case of simple ignorance. And The Northern Virginia high school student that you write about, Emily Ocasio, is an amazing, intelligent young woman who undoubtedly makes her parents very proud.
But you both don’t see something that is right in front of you, and that you don’t notice because of your own gender prejudices. This prejudice is right there, in both your article and Ms. Ocasio’s project:
Your article:
“It takes considering who we view as worthy of victim status after a crime happens. Whom do we see as the most innocent, the most vulnerable, the most deserving of our sympathy? And whom don’t we?”
Ocasio’s project:
“Ideal victim theory proposes that victims perceived as weak, vulnerable, etc. will be treated better. It is important to analyze differential coverage of homicides in media, not only based on race, gender, and sex identities…”.
Which group do we “… see as the most innocent, the most vulnerable, the most deserving of our sympathy” or that is “… perceived as weak, vulnerable”?
The obvious answer is “females”, but Ocasio is so focused on viewing her results through the prism of race, she fails to recognize the most obvious group that scores lowest on her “humanizing coverage” data, despite it being visually clear in these graphs from her study:
Even when the facts are right in front of us, we fail to see which gender is “less humanized”.
Males are victims 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 former presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, showed a selfish disregard for overwhelmingly male military sacrifices by declaring that “Women have always been the primary victims of war”. This article explains 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 females, completely oblivious to far greater male suffering, despite easily obtainable and documented facts.
Males:
· live six years less than females
· suffer 94% of workplace deaths
· are 80% of the homeless
· are 80% of deaths by suicide
· are more likely than females to be charged for similar crimes and on average receive 63% longer sentences, while their female cohorts will be twice as likely to avoid incarceration if convicted. (see Estimating Gender Disparities in Federal Criminal Cases)
· form the only group who, via the Forced Labour Convention of 1930, are still subject to a type of slavery – aka “military conscription” – and unlike their female peers, are forced to register for the draft or face serious, life-altering penalties
· males are at least 50% of the victims of domestic violence3 and yet are mostly ineligible to receive assistance from taxpayer-funded DV shelters. It’s truly Separate and Unequal Domestic Violence Victim Services!
· finally, males are 76% of homicide victims
This gender empathy gap has been thoroughly documented in a nearly 700-page book that should be required reading for all Post columnists: The Empathy Gap: Male Disadvantages and the Mechanisms of Their Neglect.
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.” [from Gender Bias Toward Males Frequently Gets Overlooked Daily Bruin Online, 2/20/01]
The way that mainstream news sources report on the injury or death of men and boys proves Mr. Angelucci’s assertion.. When men are injured or killed, they are often referred to as “workers”, “soldiers” or even “people”. When women are injured or killed, they are usually referred to as “female” or “women”, and their gender becomes central to the story.
An illuminating example is when the Boko Haram terrorist group kidnapped more than 200 girls several years ago. There was international condemnation and a global “Bring Back Our Girls” campaign started. First Lady Michelle Obama was photographed holding a “#BringBackOurGirls” sign.
But there was scarcely a trickle of media attention when Boko Haram killed hundreds of boys — many burned alive — months before the girls’ kidnapping. Please view this video about the shameful neglect of these boys’ deaths — because they were male.
Yet despite these many obvious and well-documented male disadvantages, feminists have deceitfully convinced millions that men instead have “male privilege”. If you believe this feminist myth, please take the time to view this video.
Ms. Vargas, I can only hope that you’ve read this far. If so, I thank you. I pray that I’ve opened your mind to the harsh reality of male lives, but a reality that is denied in tens of thousands of articles like yours.
If I have, please help me to convince reporters, columnists, and management at the Post that they need to reconsider their entire coverage of gender-related issues to eliminate their feminist-inspired anti-male gender bias.
In closing, allow me to provide a quote by Supreme Court justice — and three times-wounded Civil War veteran — Oliver Wendell Holmes:
“All societies rest on the death of men”.
If you really think about it, he was right, don’t you think?
Sincerely,
Stephen Bond
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.”
From video clip by “anti-feminist” Janice Fiamengo talking about the empathy gap, starting at about 6:25