Dear Mr. Wemple,
I respectfully ask that you take the time to read this letter about the Washington Post’s involvement in the Amber Heard fiasco and to thoughtfully consider what I say here.
As a lifelong reader of the Post, I’ve long noticed that the paper has a clear gender bias. This bias is self-evident: the Post has a gender columnist who only champions the female perspective, and for decades the paper has published hundreds or even thousands of articles that only depict domestic violence as “men battering women”, ignoring massive evidence that women equally batter men. (For proof see The Partner Abuse State of Knowledge Project.)
Amber Heard’s 2018 op-ed is another glaring and unmistakable example of the Post’s gender bias.
I’ve waited three weeks since the Depp-Heard jury’s decision, hoping that someone from Post management would write something about the misguided decision to publish the Heard op-ed. I had even hoped that the Post might issue a mea culpa and finally admit that, yes, the paper does have a gender credibility problem.
Naïve thinking, I know.
Instead, the Post added a feeble editor’s note to the op-ed and then passed the responsibility to you to “explain” the Post’s error.
So that leaves me writing to you about your op-ed Depp-Heard case hinged on the world’s worst #MeToo op-ed.
First, contrary to your article’s title, Amber Heard’s editorial was not the “world’s worst #MeToo op-ed”.
That disreputable distinction clearly belongs to a repulsive June 2018 article, Why Can’t We Hate Men?, published a mere six months before Heard’s op-ed. This #MeToo-inspired rant was written by the director of women’s studies at Northeastern University, who had the gall to openly and shamelessly express a Nazi-like hatred for men in a major American newspaper.
Do you think that it was appropriate for the Post, whose slogan is “Democracy Dies in Darkness” to print it? Do you think, as some of the article’s more than 3,300 (vastly negative) commenters responded, “just change ‘men’ to ‘Jews’”, is a fair summarization of this hateful article?
Are you – or anyone at the Washington Post – concerned that a woman, so rabidly biased against men, is allowed to teach at a major American university?!!? If not, wouldn’t you agree that this is yet more proof of a gender bias problem at the Post … indeed across the entire United States?
Next, while I’m sure that you’re an experienced and capable writer, I must ask, “Why did the Post ask its media critic to write an op-ed about the Depp-Heard defamation trial verdict?” Given the worldwide negative light on the Post’s decision to publish Heard’s article I would have thought that someone from the Post’s management team would have written something.
Especially with articles like this online:
“A publication with any semblance of ethics might have asked Depp for comment about the sexual violence claims before running with the allegations — then subsequently spiked the op-ed or sicced its reporters on the case for more fact-finding. But not The Washington Post.
“That paper, which loves to blather in its self-important tone about how “democracy dies in darkness,” didn’t bother to turn the lights in the direction of Heard’s claims. Instead, it gave her a free pass to air her dirty laundry against her ex-husband and consequently enabled her to paint herself both as a victim and a crusader of the Me Too era.”
In order to provide the balance missing from the Post’s original op-ed, and following the ACLU’s example, I have ghost-written an “imagined rebuttal” to the Heard/ACLU article with Mr. Depp as the “author”. This rebuttal deconstructs the original article and, paragraph by paragraph, provides a more balanced and truthful examination for each.
I implore you read it and forward the link to Post management. In case you decide not to read it, here are its major points:
- Feminists have threatened and committed actual violence against researchers who have told the truth about DV: that women commit at least as much domestic violence as men. This is feminism’s Big Lie.
- Feminists have lied about many other things, including the wage gap, or claiming that women don’t make false accusations (e.g., Duke and UVA rape cases) or commit sexual abuse.
- The Washington Post has a long, troubling, and provable history of feminist-inspired bias, thus helping feminists to propagate their many lies.
- On their website the ACLU says that its main purpose is “…to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country…” but the organization spectacularly fails to meet this objective for one group of citizens: male college students.
- The federal government – including President Biden – through their acquiescence to the US Department of Education’s unlawful misuse of Title IX to handle sexual assault allegations at the nation’s colleges and universities, is complicit in violating the civil rights of male college students.
Were any of these truths conveyed in either the “Hating Men” or the Amber Heard / ACLU op-ed?
No, the Washington Post has completely ignored easily proven facts like these for decades.
In closing, let me include a quote, curiously enough, from a former writer for Cosmopolitan magazine named Sue Ellen Browder. In a book written by her, Subverted: How I Helped the Sexual Revolution Hijack the Women’s Movement, Ms. Browder perfectly described the situation at your newspaper:
“Unfortunately, the free press is only as free as the minds of those journalists, editors, and writers who work in the field. I had already become that strange paradox of mankind that’s especially commonplace among journalists: I had become both the deceiver and the deceived.”
Mr. Wemple, by now it should be clear that this is what has happened at the Washington Post: on issues of gender the paper has become both the deceiver and the deceived.
Sincerely,
Stephen Bond
* * *
CC: Other Post columnists who should be interested or to whom I’ve previously sent letters about their own gender-biased columns:
Monica Hesse: as the Post’s gender columnist, when will you do the right thing and speak out against feminist lies and your paper’s one-sided gender bias?
Emily Yahr: you seem to have had the most Post articles about the trial … thought you might be interested enough to write an article about “Depp’s imagined rebuttal”. Just a thought.
Karla Miller, Work Advice Columnist: wrote two articles about the gender wage gap
Janay Kingsberry, Multiplatform editor for “The Lily” web site: wrote article about “dissatisfied U.S. women”
Kate Cohen, “Contributing columnist”: wrote two articles about college men
Julianne McShane, “Gender & Inequity journalist”: wrote two gender pay gap articles, female doctors underearning their male counterparts and a proposed NY city law requiring employers to include salary in job postings
Miriam Berger, “Reporter covering Middle East, Foreign Affairs”: wrote article Abuse Surging During The Pandemic
Candace Buckner, Sports reporter: wrote biased article on “Men Behaving Badly”
