Letter demonstrates need to end anti-woman hatred

By Gus Bode

Dewey Cooper, were you in attendance at the conference in Beijing? Maybe if you had gone and tried listening to the concerns raised, you would not have the ignorant opinions you expressed on Nov. 2. Hardly a fling, the conference wasn’t about promoting hate but ending it ending hate toward women, like the hate evident in your letter. The only hate resulting from this conference is the hate of men directed at women women who want to make the world a safer place to live in.

You make unfounded, irrational accusations that reveal the fear you have of women having any power. Why shouldn’t women strive for political power? Women are 51 percent of the world population. Should not their interests be represented?

The right not to have sex is as important as the right to have it. Have you heard of Bosnia? The hundreds of girls and women systematically raped by their captors? The right not to have sex means the right to not be coerced or forced into it, to be treated as a respected human being. Because some men want to maintain the assumed male privilege of complete unobstructed access to women’s bodies, they resort to hysterical accusations that imply that they are the victims of women’s evil schemes and false accusations.

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You make cheap stereotypical shots at feminists as if they are monsters. Those like you are the real monsters to be afraid of. Women do not wish to seize male assets only to reclaim the assets that are stolen from them on a regular basis by a power structure that devalues them. If any are guilty of seizing assets, it is the women-hating men who never learned the childhood lesson of sharing. If anyone has a gluttonous helping of political power, it is self-serving men.

That’s the reality. The conference in Beijing represents, in part, women’s desire to make issues that concern women count as much as issues that concern men. Is that so terrifying? And perhaps this conference wouldn’t have been necessary if the mothers of people like you had opted to skip sex.

Graduate student, cinema and photography

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