A Letter to Post Columnist Karen Attiah About Her 'Why do men kill women’s plants?' Article
Attiah Doesn't See Her Own Hate and Prejudice
Dear Ms. Attiah,
I have little doubt that you’re aware of my efforts to get the Post to recognize its imbalanced coverage of gender. I’ve been writing letters to Post columnists since 2018, after the Post published its Why can't we hate men? article.
You might recall that this past January I wrote to you about one of your articles, Female bodybuilders, big and strong, are still no match for vile men. In my letter to you, I took you to task for your anti-male sexism:
Wouldn’t it offend you if I titled an article about female sexual misbehavior, “Men, big and strong, are still no match for vile women”?
With your recent article, Why do men kill women’s plants?, it appears that my earlier appeal to your sense of fairness has fallen on deaf ears. Your recent article, like the “vile men” one, is dripping with anti-male sexism.
Ms. Attiah, what I say below is not intended to be mean or insulting. I’m going to speak honestly and bluntly to get you to recognize your own bias, your own prejudice against men. Like millions of other women (and men), you’ve been so brainwashed by 60+ years of feminist cultural and political indoctrination that you’re no longer able to see your own sexism.
As an example, although you obviously didn’t recognize it, you’ve publicly admitted to committing domestic violence and perhaps elder abuse against your own father:
“I wrote about it at the time, utterly enraged at the landscapers and my father, who had allowed them to mutilate the tree — so angry that I took a pair of scissors and threatened to execute his favorite pothos right in front of him, to give him a taste of how I felt.”
Here’s the definition of DV according to the Department of Justice’s VAWA office. I’ve highlighted those coercive behaviors you’ve directed toward your father:
Domestic violence is a pattern of abusive behavior in any relationship that is used by one partner to gain or maintain power and control over another intimate partner.1 Domestic violence can be physical, sexual, emotional, economic, psychological, or technological actions or threats of actions or other patterns of coercive behavior that influence another person within an intimate partner relationship. This includes any behaviors that intimidate, manipulate, humiliate, isolate, frighten, terrorize, coerce, threaten, blame, hurt, injure, or wound someone.
In short, you took out your anger at these men against another man, your own father!
(You’re not the only woman who has unwittingly publicly admitted to committing domestic violence against a family member. In 20182 the Post published a rant by a Victoria Bissell Brown where she admitted to 30 minutes of “from-the-gut yelling” at her husband, for “a small, thoughtless, dismissive, annoyed, patronizing comment”.3)
That you only focused on the misdeeds of men, without asking – or likely even considering – whether women might also be guilty of similar misdeeds, is prima facie evidence of your gender prejudice.
In the interest of true gender equity, may I suggest that you do a column (or more) on some of the following categories of Women Behaving Badly in Gardens?
Category: Why Do Women Destroy Gardens?
Woman destroying rooftop garden arrested
Brisbane woman ‘wrecks’ doomed community garden
Woman cited for destroying neighborhood’s plants
The winner in the Women Destroying Gardens is Maureen McGlade, who drove her car over a family’s garden… because they “criticized a local alderman”
Category: Why Do Women Bury Husbands and Other Men in Their Backyards?
Wife killed husband then kept him wrapped in plastic in the back garden for 18 YEARS
Woman admits to shooting her husband to death and burying his body in their back yard
Bucks County woman shot longtime companion to death, tried to bury body in yard
Minnesota woman charged in death of ex-husband found buried in backyard
The gold medal winner in the Women Burying Men in Backyards category is Dorthea Puente, who killed and buried in her backyard at least nine of her male tenants.
Category: Why Do Women Bury Children in Backyards?
18-year-old woman gave birth at home and buried her newborn daughter in the backyard
Ms. A.H. Miller, Kansas childcare provider kills babies, buries them in backyard
Marinette Pezin, serial baby-killing mother buries them in backyard garden
The gold medal winner in the Women Burying Children in Backyards category is Malikah Diane Bennett, who forced her 13-year-old daughter to help bury her 4-year-old sister in the backyard.
Kind of makes men who destroy their wives’ gardens — even those who deliberately do so — look like choir boys in comparison, doesn’t it?
Category: Why Do Women Use Plant Poisons to Kill Their Husbands?
Giulia Tofana, a 17th-century used poisonous plant belladonna to help kill up to 600 husbands
Tofana wins the gold medal in the Women Using Poisonous Plants to Kill Their Husbands as no other woman comes close to killing so many men.
Ms. Attiah, before you write another column that denigrates men — and only men — may I suggest doing a little introspection as to why you continue to write these misandrist columns and why the Post keeps publishing them?
Although an intimate relationship is commonly a sexual relationship, it may also be a non-sexual relationship involving family or friends.
The same year that the Post published the “Why can’t we hate men?” diatribe as well as Amber Heard’s defamatory op-ed
“I yelled at my husband last night. Not pick-up-your-socks yell. Not how-could-you-ignore-that-red-light yell. This was real yelling. This was 30 minutes of from-the-gut yelling. Triggered by a small, thoughtless, dismissive, annoyed, patronizing comment. Really small. A micro-wave that triggered a hurricane. I blew. Hard and fast. And it terrified me. I’m still terrified by what I felt and what I said. I am almost 70 years old. I am a grandmother. Yet in that roiling moment, screaming at my husband as if he represented every clueless male on the planet (and I every angry woman of 2018), I announced that I hate all men and wish all men were dead.”