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That article is really an outrage! I also wrote a letter to the editor, and would encourage anyone who can spare a few minutes to do so, too. If there wasn't widespread sentiment that man-bashing is okay or even "normal", that article would probably never have been published. Here's what I wrote (I could have gone on for hours :-), but I guess keeping it short and to the point is better):
Dear Editor,
I must say I am shocked and outraged at your writer Josephine Hart's Article "When men became heroes". Has the anti-male sentiment in the anglo-saxon world become so pervasive that men now have to die publicly in droves to be recognized as something other than “children", "potential rapists" and "committment-phobes"? The only reason the current generation of men and boys might seem “somewhat lost”, as Ms. Hart writes, is precisely the sort of unrelenting, almost instinctive contempt of men she so despicably displays in her article.
(Just as an aside, I was a little puzzled to read that “soldiers taught us in two world wars that sacrifice is as much a male as a female virtue”. As far as I know, the overwhelming majority of dead soldiers were men – just as the overwhelming majority of dead firefighters in New York City were men.)
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While I must agree that Ms. Hart has generalized an entire generation of men with her words "somewhat lost," I'm actually glad she wrote the words "not all men are rapists, etc., etc." It doesn't outrage me at all. Why? Because more people need to know those things.
Feminism has created a stereotype of men as villains. Why are we attacking someone who is attempting to destroy that stereotype? Seems to me we may be quashing some of the very voices we need to change the stereotypes.
Just my opinion.
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"...sacrifice is as much a male as a female virtue. They reminded us, in case we had forgotten, that men often become heroes and in doing so they will stand as beacons for a somewhat lost generation of young boys and men."
The author of the article claims that virtue is "somewhat lost to a generation of men" - yet she goes on to say that the men that died had virtue.
What virtues do women have and men lack? I think the author is blindly sexist and is having trouble with the fact that men sacrificed themselves for the common good of society, as the majority of us do every day.
When articles like this get published, I think that it is obvious that the current generation of women might be the ones lacking virtue...
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This woman is not attempting to destroy any stereotype. What she writes amounts more or less to "all men are potential rapists, etc. except for those who died in the rescue effort at WTC." She is actually reinforcing the stereotype. Her message is that men are automatically classified as a potential rapist, commitment-phobe and general asshole, but if they *die* to save others, then that classification may not apply. It's pretty incredible that one can even write this sort of crap and be published. I pity the men in the UK and USA - I know that this sort of thing wouldn't be published in any German or French mainstream newspaper. Fortunately, our culture has not (yet?) become so anti-male.
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What she writes amounts more or less to "all men are potential rapists, etc. except for those who died in the rescue effort at WTC." She is actually reinforcing the stereotype.
I didn't take it that way at all. She didn't write that all men are rapists, etc., except those who die to save others. She said that the men who died to save others proved that the stereotype is not true. Big difference there.
I do agree, though, that it is wrong for men to have had to die to break the stereotypes in her mind.
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It's pretty incredible that one can even write this sort of crap and be published. I pity the men in the UK and USA
As a journalist, I believe it is *every* individual's right to have his or her voice heard. People may write whatever they like. The problem with the US and the UK is not that women are writing misandrist garbage and it's getting published. The problem is that male responses to the misandrist garbage are not.
I'm not bashing your country, Phil. I actually hope to visit Germany someday. But I wouldn't give up the U.S. First Amendment for anything.
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by Anonymous User on Thursday September 20, @10:38PM EST (#7)
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As a journalist, I believe it is *every* individual's right to have his or her voice heard. People may write whatever they like.
Sure, say whatever you want. But if a newspaper publishes something racist, sexist then it has lost all credibility. Trash like what we read in her article SHOULD NOT BE PUBLISHED. She can think it, she can write it, but the moment someone chooses to publish the sexist ideas of a human being, they have endorsed the idea and cannot be trusted ever again.
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Trash like what we read in her article SHOULD NOT BE PUBLISHED.
Why not? I agree with you that it's trash, but I support with every ounce of my energy the right to publish it. Without the publication of all ideas, we cannot grow as people. Unless we are exposed to points of view different from our own, we cannot successfully argue against them. I cannot condone a newspaper that refuses to publish an opinion simply because other people disagree with it.
For a newspaper to do that, it must assume that I am not intelligent enough to make up my own mind about the arguments there in front of me in black and white.
Like government before it, the media has no place telling me what I should or should not think about any topic. It should simply allow people to speak their pieces, and let the rest of us decide for ourselves.
By the way: the definition of publication isn't bound to print on the page of a newspaper or between the covers of a book. Once you write something, and distribute it, it is considered published. Your comments, my comments, and every other post on this board is, by definition, "published" because more than one person can read and digest it. So you can pretty much assume that when one writes, one is going to publish.
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Hi Nightmist,
Just in case you don't know, Germany (and AFAIK, all other Western European countries) has an article in its constitution which is fully equivalent to the US constitution's first amendment. And I fully support *everyone's* right to voice their opinion in any (non-violent) fashion they choose.
However, every newspaper, radio station or other media outlet has the right to choose what it publishes and what it doesn't, a right it exercises every day. For example, if I were to write an article advocating the killing or deportation of all Muslims from my country, it would be very hard for me to find a newspaper willing to publish that. I might find one or two fringe neo-nazi newspapers willing to publish it, but certainly every major newspaper would reject it.
So, what amazes me is that a 'serious' mainstream newspaper like the Times has published this article. Probably nobody even noticed how misandrist it is. To me, that seems to demonstrate that contempt of men has become an integral part of UK culture.
When I say "I pity men in the UK and the US", that's because of these countries' anti-male culture, not because misandrist drivel gets published. Now whether this anti-male culture exists or not is certainly open to debate, but men's responses to said drivel not being published certainly is (further) evidence that it does indeed exist.
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The misandrist culture does, indeed, exist. I simply take issue with the statement that it "should not be published."
Yes, the media controls what content is included, but we should not and cannot put our own limits on what that content should be.
If the media wants to run misandrist bullshit, then they will. And there will always be a Men's Activism News Network or some other source to provide the truth.
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More people need to know that men aren't rapists? I detect conceptual difficulties. The statement
"We learnt that men are not all children, potential rapists and commitment-phobes. We learnt because they taught us with every step they took, trudging their way up the stairs of the World Trade Centre to almost certain doom while others walked down to the hope of safety."
is tantamount to the assertion that, prior to the WTC catastrophe (I once worked there, by the way), it was understood that men are children, potential rapists and commitment-phobes; now, we see that this was mistaken, at least in the case of the men who risked their lives to save others during the atrocity of September 11th.
Bizzare.
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That's my point, DrMatrix. Women in the U.S. are convinced that all men are rapists, children, and commitment phobes. The author of this piece was obviously convinced of it. Therefore, we need more people speaking out on behalf of men, more people to point out that the concept women have of men nowadays is not fact.
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My point, and Scott's point is that it took a tragedy to "learn" this about men. Note that the writer uses the word "learnt" twice in the quote.
How does the writer explain how she could be so profoundly mistaken about men? What about the disturbing suggestion that it took heroism in the face of an atrocity for some people to realize they might have been profoundly mistaken? Does that mean if the terrorist attacks never happened, those mistaken individuals would still be as bigoted as ever? Why isn't a journalist asking these questions? That doesn't strike you as odd? Is it enough to say, "Well, they learned they were wrong, now they're informing others."? Somehow that response seems woefully inappropriate.
It doesn't surprise me that a journalist wouldn't ask these questions - one eventually internalizes institutional values to get along as a journalist (and as a scientist, in my case); one doesn't get very far in an institution without learning to effectively censor one's self, and to pre-empt legitimate inquiry.
I suggest reading some of the articles of Adam Jones on men and the media; for example,
The Globe and Males
The Other Side of Gender Bias in Canada's National Newspaper by Adam Jones http://adamjones.freeservers.com/globe.htm
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Speaking as a journalist, I can assure you that there are those of us who DO NOT censor ourselves, but are censored by our publications. I've written on a variety of men's issues for my newspaper, and all but one of the columns has been discarded by my (female) editor.
In other words, it's not the writers/reporters who censor themselves, it's often the editors who do the censoring.
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Then how do you explain your tepid response to this article? It's as if the absurdity of the notion that someone could come away from the World Trade Center terrorist attacks having learnt (again, note that the Times author uses this word twice) that men aren't all children and rapists is off the journalistic radar. That's what a person comes away with regarding the worst surprise attack since Pearl Harbor? It's not even possible to raise the question that this is grotesque, if not because of self-censoring, then because the "right" values have been so thoroughly internalized that the question of grotesqueness doesn't even occur as a possibility. It's just taken as a good thing that the message that men aren't so bad after all is getting out. The context in which this message is getting out is off the map, off the radar, dismissed as outside the spectrum of admissible opinion, beyond nuance.
Of course journalists are going to vehemently deny that anyone tells them what to think or write, or what questions to ask. The ones that don't internalize the right values don't make it very far.
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DrMatrix & Nightmist,
From my distant view, I suspect that, when it comes to independent journalism, the Darwin effect comes into play: if your personal ideology, and hence the tone of your writing, don't follow the lead offered by the media management, then you just don't survive in the business very long. Hence, the ones who survive are the ones who espouse the correct (left) points-of-view.
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I don't think my response was tepid at all. My response was that this woman finally came to realize that men are not all rapists, yet we're bashing her for it. I'd hardly call standing up for my own arguments against the reactionary whims of this thread tepid.
Yes, the fact that this woman believed prior to the attacks that men were all scum IS grotesque. The fact remains, however, that MANY women nowadays think like that. The author of this piece is the prodigal child, realizing the error of her ways and returning to her father's arms.
I'm not self-censoring at all. I'm being practical rather than reactionary. Being reactive rather than proactive is what turns many people off the men's movement.
Again, I would prefer it had men not had to die for this author to realize the error of her ways, but I'm not going to bash her for finally seeing truth.
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Not true, frank. Everyone in my office knows what my points of view are on feminism and the men's movement. Many of them have counter-opinions, yet my columns still run and my opinions are still made known.
There are times when I am censored, and I've had heated, heated arguments with my editor over that censorship. Ultimately, though, I ended up having to compromise some portions of text to get my column in print.
That's just the way it works. Sometimes you have to compromise. But NO ONE tells me what to write, think, or say. Nor will they ever.
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No one is bashing Hart; I'm writing from (what's left of) Manhattan, New York City, presumably thousands of miles from Hart, whom I've never met and who presumably resides somewhere in the United Kingdom, so I have an alibi if there is any spurious charge of bashing.
We're criticizing some vague general statements that Hart makes about people generally; we're not bashing her. This article is hardly the story of a woman's personal journey from a beknighted misandry to wisdom in the wake of the events of September 11th. That's a misreading of her words. She did not suggest that she now sees the error of her ways; she uses the editorial "we" to suggest that we learned the error of our ways: "We learnt that men are not all children, potential rapists and commitment-phobes. We learnt because they taught us with every step they took... ."
If Hart wrote that she came to realize that she was wrong about men, that would be one thing, and I would tend to agree with you; speaking for everyone is another matter. It seems as far as Hart is concerned, in the wake of September 11th, everyone is a reformed misandrist.
The point is that it's OK to find Hart's silly statements and their misandrist context deplorable on their own terms, without the implication that one has to adhere to some reactionary fringe of the men's movement to say so.
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I never doubted that she makes generalizations about everyone in that column (see some of my earliest posts on this thread). But I can also tell you that commentators like her use "we" often, even when they're only referring to themselves.
I don't know her intentions behind the use of "we," but often it is a literary device for making your audience feel included in your lesson. In other words, she's saying: "I learned these things, and you should have too if you shared my opinions."
I've used "we" in numerous columns, but never because I was generalizing the attitudes of my audience. Instead, I attempted to point out lessons from which I believed everyone could benefit, regardless of their opinions. When I happen to be writing about my own personal experiences for my own personal benefit (and I do that often as well), I use "I."
Again speaking from the journalist's perspective, I can also tell you that audiences read a LOT into text that just isn't there. I get hate mail all the time from people who assume I'm making some kind of point in my text that never really even occurred to me.
Language is imprecise, DrMatrix. From a scientist's standpoint, I'm sure you know that, and not everyone is going to come away from the same article with the same point of view. Sure, you can find Hart's comments deplorable if you like, but I'm going to stick to my original opinion about them as well and say that the first letter to her posted in this thread was entirely reactionary, written in the heat of passion, and without any real thought about the contents of that column.
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