Letters to The Washington Post: The Year in Review
Democracy Does Indeed Die in Darkness
It’s been 5 ½ years since The Washington Post published, on June 8, 2018, a #MeToo-inspired rant written by Suzanna Danuta Walters, the director of women’s studies at Northeastern University, who openly and shamelessly expressed a Nazi-like hatred for men in a nationally read American newspaper.
By the time the Post published this article, I had been a five-decade long subscriber, but one who had also long been aware of the paper’s gender bias, most notably its imbalanced coverage of domestic violence1 and its support for the provably false myth of a gender pay gap.2
Since 2018, I’ve been sending letters to Post columnists who wrote articles that perpetuated this gender bias. Unsurprisingly, with only one exception, I received no responses, so starting in 2020, I began publishing these letters online as “Letters to The Washington Post”.
This post provides a review of the “Letters” project for 2023.
In 2023 The Post Mostly Continued Propagating Gender Bias Against Men and Boys
Articles About Domestic Violence
The Washington Post has a long, troubling, and provable history of feminist-propagated bias about domestic violence.3 This bias ultimately resulted in the Post’s disastrous publication in 2018 of Amber Heard’s op-ed that defamed Johnny Depp. Following are letters sent to just a few of the many Post columnists who last year wrote gender-biased articles about DV:
A Letter to Monica Hesse explained to the Post’s gender columnist why her article, The slippery language around domestic violence, helped propagate a biased, feminist-driven view of domestic violence, where only women are victims. I also provided references that prove that women are as violent as men.
A Letter to Emily Nix explained why her article, Why do women stay with their abusers? Here’s one overlooked reason, proves that Nix is completely unaware of the fact that more than 50% of DV is perpetrated by women.
A Letter to Mark Jenkins explained why his review of an art show, Phillips Collection show commemorates victims of domestic violence, was a particularly egregious example of the Post publishing what is literally domestic violence propaganda.
A Letter to Karen Attiah explained why her article, “Why do men kill women’s plants?”, 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 her own gender prejudice.
Gender Pay Gap Myth
Despite considerable contradictory and readily available information disproving the existence of a gender pay gap (see footnote 2), the Post continues to publish articles that propagate its existence.
A Letter to Columnists Aaron Gregg and Jacob Bogage explained to these two young men how, in their article, Women’s pay was starting to catch up. Now progress has stopped, with little thought and even less research, and despite lots of easily-available information, they have simply regurgitated the feminist propaganda of a gender pay gap.
A Letter to Contributor Josie Cox explained why her article, Here is a key way the U.S. lags behind its peers on gender equality, perpetrates the myth of a gender pay gap. As proof I examined a gender pay gap in the U.S. Congress.
Sexual Assault & #MeToo
A Letter to contributor Shirlene Obuobi explained why her article, Rude comments and bottom slaps: The things female doctors put up with, completely ignored equivalent sexual abuse that male doctors put up with — in particular the specter of false accusations.
Gender Empathy Gap
The gender 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.”4
A Letter to Donna St. George explained why her article, Teen girls ‘engulfed’ in violence and trauma, CDC finds, uses hyperbole to distort and magnify the problem, and mostly overlooks the violence and trauma experienced by boys, particularly in their much larger suicide rates.
A Letter to Theresa Vargas that explained why her article, A teenager used AI to study a very real issue and just won $175,000, overlooked the clear and obvious data in the report showing that teenage males suffer even more than teen girls.
A Letter to Columnists Donna St. George, Katherine Reynolds Lewis, and Lindsey Bever explained how their article, The crisis in American girlhood, completely overlooks the even greater crisis in, and suffering by, American boys.
A Letter to Post Cartoonist Ann Telnaes explained the hypocrisy of her Memorial Day, 2023 cartoon, which uses an image of military graves on Memorial Day to make a point about how these dead soldiers — essentially all male — fought a war against two feminist-inspired injustices, “sexism and loss of bodily autonomy”, without also acknowledging how today’s feminism perpetuates these same injustices.
Other Gender Bias at the Post
Following are a select few letters sent to Post columnists that challenge their unrecognized anti-male gender biases.
A Letter to Monica Hesse explained why her article, A woman on the moon: How has one small step taken so long?, which claimed sex discrimination prevented women from becoming early astronauts, completely overlooked the obvious reason why women weren’t initially included in the space program: they didn’t have test pilot experience, a skill developed only by men because ONLY men were required to serve in the military.
A Letter to Ann Hornaday explained why her review of the “Barbie” movie completely missed the movie’s underlying theme: the feminist-inspired hatred for men (see “Why can’t we hate men?”, above).
The Good News: In 2023,It Appears That the Post is Beginning to Recognize its Gender Biases
I wrote letters to Alyssa Rosenberg and Megan McArdle about their articles, Liberals don’t like talking up marriage. Here’s how they can start and Children will benefit if we face this fact: Married parents are ideal, about a new book that analyzes the advantages of having intact, two parent families, “The Two-Parent Privilege” . While I consider it progress that these two columnists wrote about “improving marriage” and “children being better off with married parents”, I explained that both they failed to mention that feminism is the major cause of unmarried parents and fatherless children.
In A Letter to Christine Emba, I explained why her blockbuster article, Men are lost. Here’s a map out of the wilderness, did a thorough job of describing the symptoms of today’s crisis of masculinity, but it completely overlooked the obvious cause of the crisis she bemoaned: a relentless, hateful, sixty-year feminist campaign of political, legal, and cultural indoctrination directed against men and masculinity.
Finally, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention several positive articles about men published in April of last year. I appreciate the Post publishing these articles:
A silent crisis in men’s health gets worse, by Tara Parker-Pope and Caitlin Gilbert
Why melanoma is so deadly for men, and why it doesn’t have to be by Andrea Atkins
Body dysmorphia in boys and men can fuel muscle obsession, doctors say by Ian McMahan
We’re missing a major mental health crisis: Teen boys are struggling, too by Jennifer Fink
Black men face many more health hurdles. An expert discusses why by Steven Petrow
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.
In 2009 the Department of Labor produced a report, An Analysis of the Reasons for the Disparity in Wages Between Men and Women — Final Report which disputed the wage gap:
“… the raw wage gap [between men and women] continues to be used in misleading ways [emphasis added] to advance public policy agendas without fully explaining the reasons behind the gap.”
From a video clip of anti-feminist Janice Fiamengo talking about the empathy gap, starting at about 6:25