A Letter to Washington Post Staff About “The Big Shift” Series
False Claims Made While Celebrating the Financial Progress of Women
Dear “Big Shift” Columnists,1
I respectfully ask that each of you takes the time to read this letter about “The Big Shift”, the Post’s recent series that celebrates the financial progress of women, and to thoughtfully consider what I say here.
As a brief introduction, I’ve been a lifelong supporter of equal rights for women. Even as a young child, before Betty Friedan and second wave feminism, I intuitively supported equality for women because I recognized that my own mother would have been happier not being limited by her gender role.
Twenty years ago, I would have been blindly and enthusiastically supportive of The Big Shift’s message of female progress and achievement.
But for the past two decades I’ve had increasing doubts about feminism. After doing much reading and research, it’s now clear to me that, like most other “social justice” movements, feminism has lost its way, forgetting about its original, noble goal of freeing women from the constraints of their gender role, instead changing into a movement that is now driven more by the hatred of men than working towards true gender equality.
You know: an equality that includes the concerns and rights of men and boys.
Proof of this observation can be found in the gender bias of The Washington Post, most notably by the paper’s imbalanced coverage of domestic violence,2 its blind support of a mythical gender pay gap and, finally, by its 2018 publication of Why can't we hate men?, where the Post provided a platform for a women’s studies professor to openly and shamelessly express a Nazi-like hatred for men.
For the past few decades, the Post has essentially served as a propaganda arm of the National Organization for Women; The Big Shift series is just the most recent example of this fact.
Please don’t misunderstand. I don’t object to women gaining financial equality and even independence. What I do object to the one-sided, biased, and often inaccurate depictions made in the Big Shift’s supporting articles.
A key example, The Big Shift – and feminism generally – completely ignore the financial gender advantages that women have always enjoyed. According to The Myth of Male Power, a book written by a former board member of NOW’s NYC chapter, Warren Farrell:
In 1990, the wealthiest women’s net worth was MORE than that of men! Women averaged $1.17 million, while men averaged $1.11 million.
“How can so many of the wealthiest people be women when women hold none of the top corporate jobs? In part, by selecting the men who do and outliving them.”A 2000 U.S. Census Bureau study found that female heads of households have a net worth that is 93 percent that of male heads of households.
A study of large shopping malls (including men’s and sporting goods stores) found that seven times as much floor space is devoted to women’s personal items as to men’s. Both sexes buy more for women. “The key to wealth is not in what someone earns; it is in what is spent on ourselves, at our discretion— or in what is spent on us, at our hint.”
Overall, women control consumer spending by a wide margin….
In restaurants, men pay for women about ten times as frequently as women pay for men— the more expensive the restaurant, the more often the man pays.
The Big Shift’s articles also propagate provably fraudulent feminist claims:
Closing the gender pay gap one job offer at a time is a cartoon-illustrated article that is jam-packed with misinformation about the mythical pay gap, for example, not realizing that the U.S. women’s soccer team that claimed “gender discrimination” actually made more than the men’s team! 3
Please see my illustrated reply that challenges the many fibs and fabrications contained in this article, and my letter to the Big Shift staff.
Personal finance columnist Michelle Singletary’s article Five myths about women and money that need to be debunked contained a sixth myth that Ms. Singletary completely overlooked: the myth of a gender pay gap. Please read my open letter to her that challenges her mistaken belief in this mythical gap.
In the upcoming days and weeks, I’ll be writing open letters to some of you to open your minds to the gender biases contained in your own Big Shift articles.
In the meantime, you may wish to read The Goddess That Failed, a special International Women’s Day article by anti-feminist Janice Fiamengo. The article describes how feminism hasn’t been good for anyone – including its supposed beneficiaries:
“For over 50 years, the movement has been mired in fraudulent claims, myopia, special pleading, double standards, abandonment of principles, manifold hypocrisies, and emotional incontinence.
“It has continually misrepresented the situation of women and men, and has induced in its female adherents an unhealthy mix of wounded self-regard, festering resentment, and self-righteous indignation, often overlaid with an unfounded conviction of moral superiority and contempt for the unenlightened.”
Sincerely,
Stephen Bond,
Publisher of "Letters to The Washington Post" Substack
“Big Shift Columnists” include about a dozen writers who have so far contributed to The Big Shift series. They are listed in an “About this project” box at the bottom of the main page.
My 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.
See any of the YouTube videos by “Nate The Lawyer” for a thorough dismantling of the U.S. women’s team’s claim of pay discrimination