I sent the following open letter to Washington Post Columnist Janay Kingsberry to allow for her to respond before I submitted this to A Voice for Men. Unsurprisingly, she didn’t reply.
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Dear Ms. Kingsberry,
I respectfully ask that you take the time to read this letter in its entirety and to thoughtfully consider what I say here.
As a lifelong reader of the Washington Post, I’ve long noticed that the Post has a clear bias in favor of women. This bias is self-evident by the Post’s gender columnist who only champions the female perspective, and by a repulsive 2018 article published by the paper, Why Can’t We Hate Men?
Your recent article on the Post’s “The Lily” web sitei, U.S. women are largely dissatisfied with how they’re treated. Most men don’t see a problem, and The Lily site itself (devoted to millennial women) are both additional examples of this bias.
I’m writing to Post columnists to get them to recognize and to correct this gender bias.
As the father of two millennial daughters, I’m not insensitive to issues of gender equality. However, please allow me to share a personal story that I hope provides you a completely different perspective.
When my youngest was in the 8th grade, I went with her as a parent chaperone on a field trip to Washington DC. The class had been given a list of questions for them to answer about each place they visited that day.
For the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the question was “How many female names are on the memorial wall?” When I politely asked my daughter’s teachers why there was no question about the number of male names on the wall, they just stared at me dumbfounded.
Do you know the answer to the question posed to these 8th graders? It’s eight! All were nurses.
Do you know the answer to the unasked question? As of May 2021, there were 58,273 male names, each one representing a man killed in the Vietnam war – many of them dying horrible deaths.
That’s nearly 7,300 times more male names than female names!
This is but one of a limitless number of examples of what is known as the “gender empathy gap”. You, like most Americans, have likely never heard of it. This 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.”ii
The empathy gap:
Is why my daughter’s teachers would disrespect the sacrifice of more than 58,000 men by asking only about the number of female names on the wall.
Is why a presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, once declared that “Women have always been the primary victims of war”. If you don’t think this is a completely preposterous claim, please read this article, which articulates why Clinton’s statement “…isn’t a different perspective. It’s a lie”.
The empathy gap is why thousands of articles just like yours focus only on women, completely oblivious to men’s far greater suffering, despite easily obtainable facts.
Males:
- live six years less than women
- suffer 94% of workplace deaths
- are 80% of the homeless
- are 80% of deaths by suicide
- are 76% of homicide victims
- are more likely than women to be charged with crimes, receive 63% longer sentences on average, while women are twice as likely to avoid incarceration if convicted iii
- form the only group who, via the Forced Labour Convention of 1930, is still subject to a type of slavery (aka “military conscription” – the law exempts “able-bodied males between ages 18 and 45 from the ban on slavery and forced labor”)
- finally, males are at least 50% of the victims of domestic violence (just ask Johnny Depp or golfer Tiger Woods, or comedian Christopher Titus, or model Lewis Burton, or baseball player Chuck Findley, or John Bobbitt) and yet are nearly 100% ineligible from receiving assistance from taxpayer-funded DV shelters. If you don’t believe that women perpetuate at least 50% of DV, please read this law review article, written by a woman.
Despite these well-documented male disadvantages, feminists have convinced many that men instead have “male privilege”. If you believe that men are privileged, please view this video.
But the gender empathy gap is even more insidious and widespread than just these undeniable facts, and this gap has always been, quite literally, right in front of us. As the late men’s rights activist Marc Angelucci once wrote,
“We simply don’t care much about men. In fact, the devaluation of male lives is so entrenched in our psyches and endemic to our system that we refuse to see it — even when it’s smack in our face.”iv
An example that proves Mr. Angelucci’s point is the way that mainstream news sources report on the injury or death of men and boys versus the way that they report on that of women and girls. When men are injured or killed, they are often referred to as “workers”, “soldiers” or even “people”. When women are injured or killed, they are usually referred to as “female” or “women”, and their gender becomes central to the story.
A prime example of this gender gap in the media is when the Boko Haram terrorist group kidnapped more than 200 girls a few years ago. There was international condemnation and a global “Bring Back Our Girls” campaign started. First Lady Michelle Obama was photographed holding a “#BringBackOurGirls” sign.
But there was scarcely a trickle of media attention when Boko Haram killed hundreds of boys – many burned alive – months before the girls’ kidnapping. Please view this video about the shameful neglect of these boys’ deaths – because they were male.
In closing, allow me to provide a quote by Supreme Court justice – and three times-wounded Civil War veteran – Oliver Wendell Holmes:
“All societies rest on the death of men”.
If you really think about it, he was right, don’t you think?
Ms. Kingsberry, I respectfully ask that you help to set the record straight. You could start with a column that admits the truth about how it is men who are most mistreated by society, and not women.
Do you have the courage to write such a column? Do you have the courage to tell the truth?
PS. I’m cc’ing other Post columnists to whom I’ve previously sent letters about their own gender-biased columns.
Karla Miller, Work Advice Columnist; a letter about the purported gender wage gap
A NOTE TO READERS:
This is the second open letter of many more that I plan to write to Washington Post columnists who write gender-biased articles. Unsurprisingly, neither columnist to whom I sent letters bothered to respond.
In order to increase our leverage and to let these biased writers know that there are many who object to their slanted reporting, please consider sending Ms. Kingsberry a polite email to let her know that you agree with the contents of this article. Please keep it civil and respectful. Like my wife and two daughters – who I’ve so far been unable to convince of the excesses of feminism – Ms. Kingsberry is not a monster, she’s only misguided.
If you hear back from her, please add a comment to let us know.
i The Lily is “A product of The Washington Post, … a destination for stories central to the everyday lives of millennial women.”
ii From video clip of Janice Fiamengo talking about the empathy gap, starting at about 6:25
iv Gender Bias Toward Males Frequently Gets Overlooked Daily Bruin Online, 2/20/01
