Last week I sent a letter to The Daily Bruin, a retarded cousin of The Daily Californian, regarding this crap. The relevant portions of the letter are:
Dear the Daily Bruin:
I enjoyed reading [the author's] article today. It's refreshing to see that arguments that have been played to death in Ms. Magazine for years can still be published anew in the Daily Bruin.
There are, however, a few holes in [the author's] story. First off, Lizzy Borden was real person, who committed a real double-murder with a real axe. Accordingly, her characterization by "our culture" as mentally unstable is more an accurate portrayal of empirical facts than a sinister plot to subjugate women.
[I then gave a boring a properly excised explanation of the independent etymologies of "hysterectomy" and "hysteria" from the Greek word "huster," meaning "womb," to counter the author's claim that "the word hysterectomy is derived from the word hysteria".]
Finally, while I don't doubt that a woman killing or otherwise injuring a man (or woman for that matter) in a fit of insane rage will face mitigated prosecution, these statutes are part of broader provocation and emotional distress laws which have been common for centuries and apply to both women and men.
I applaud [the author's] attempts to break free of her own "blame the media" approach by using historical and linguistic arguments. But these arguments must be accurate and complete in order to be effective.
Matt H.
First-Year Law Student
Today the Bruin published a ham-fistedly edited version of the letter, with one glaring substantive change: the last sentence in the second paragraph now reads: "Accordingly, female mental instability is more an accurate portrayal of empirical facts than a sinister plot to subjugate women."
So in one awkward stroke of the cut-and-paste the esteemed editors have transformed me from a somewhat thoughtful commentator on gender issues into a raging misogynist. More importantly, I now share with Steve the dubious honor of having been beasted by a second-rate college newspaper.
Bastards! Maybe you could misquote various legal things, thereby making it seem like you have an excellent case for suing them out of existence. Once they're good and scared, you could reassure them that you wouldn't sue... You'd settle for a retraction, as long as the retraction loudly admitted that the parentage of every editor was questionable.
Ah, my poor Holohan. Had my travails taught you nothing. I say, never trust a helicopter pilot, a man named Jolbert, or the letters editor of a college rag.
Being a psychologist-in-training, it's good for me to know in advance that I'll be tying the knot with a raging misogynist who believes mental instability is an accurate portrayal of facts about women.
The arguments used in the author's article seem to be straight out of Betty Friedan's "The Feminine Mystique" (1963)... not only in that she doesn't seem to know exactly who to blame for either women's (mental) problems or the depiction of such problems, but that she seems to totally ignore the fact that men can be and probably are affected by other kinds of media messages and social factors in ways that are as, if not more, debilitating. Men also have societal pressure, not necessarily to be attractive, but to be independant, stoic and professionally successful. It's nice that she came up with such a good topic, women being unfairly depicted as inherently hysterical creatures, but she failed at making her case. BTW... I'm not surprised about the laws being softer on women who commit crimes of passion during their "time of the month"... Some women really do have a harder time of controling their emotions during that time than others. I only wish that all the dumb, bitchy stuff I do during that time period could also be looked upon so understandingly.
it's not so much that women are irrational and illogical...they're just less rational and logical than men are. i mean, who would you rather have a conversation with: a man or a woman? right, a man. girls have breasts though.
Can we talk more about breasts? I really like them. They are great. Can I get an Amen?
oh yea and Matt- Sorry about the paper thing. That's what you get when you trust college people. I bet the editor was a woman too. Can't trust women as well.
Well Paul... looks like you are trying to start a fight here. Matt... that original article looks like it is written by a second year sociology student, and I think it is pretty funny that the editor gets to edit the letters to the editor. That is certianly one way for them to get people to shut their pie hole.
p.s. Amen.