I would briefly like to comment on a few points discussed on your website. Firstly, I have never considered myself to be feminist and will agree with the fact that an abundance of feminist literature is exaggerated to an extreme point; at the same time, your defense of mankind, in my opinion, ignores the facts concerning women in history.

You seem to believe that there are equal opportunities in all areas for both men and women and the only thing I can infer from that is that you feel women throughout history have had these opportunities, otherwise, how do you explain the vestiges of a male dominated society. Please keep in mind that suffrage for females only came about this century and consider the primary owners of most wealth in this country- white males. Just look at the list of presidents to see that fact. Not only in the realm of politics, but also finances. As the saying goes, "money talks" and this is especially true in a consumer oriented country like the United States. Just turning on the television, which i rarely do, or observing advertisements will show you the target audience-with things like scantily clad women (in may i remind you, mostly in high heels with fake breasts, both of which are an extreme detriment to the body), sports (not that women can't like sports, because i myself am an avid participant and spectatory), etc. -what is the point of targeting white men? Obviously because they have the money.

And as far as your statement about men, more times than not, bringing in the loot to support the family, well if there were a more equal salary status maybe we could be more independent financially, but that would threaten the existing structure; if you look at the facts, women in general earn lower salaries than men. I will readily admit that this is beginning to change (although not at the expense of white males as you claim, only now they will have to compete with women for jobs-which actually might lead to higher standards anyway, by the mere addition of competion), and in actuality, it might be well founded because of the lack of educational resources offered to women- they stayed at home and took care of everything remember? The only way to rectify the situation is to start at the beginning- as children. I feel that language is a very powerful force and is the vehicle of learning for the most part; how then can a young girl grow up proud to be female when her world of language is dominated by male terms (which some might argue is changing also) such as: the inclusion of females in the generic term man and the assigned he as the accepted singular pronoun, the famous "one small step for man, one giant step for mankind", "mail man", pronounced "man and wife" (as she simultaneously adopts his last name as hers and is often sent mail sent to Mrs. Husband's entire name), and "man the oars" to name a few? Some may see this as a trivial issue, but it has all the virtues of propaganda, such as: frequent repetition, used by well respected sources (University texts and professors- who are mostly male), begins at an early age, and covertness. And as for your comment about "Women and children first", in my opinion it's not a gracious gesture out of concern, but an implication that we can't take care of ourselves, reinforced by the knight in shining armor coming to rescue his "damsel in distress". Well, I for one don't need anyone to rescue me and resent the fact that women are placed on the same competency level as children.

The mere fact that you state "In public life women have gained increasing formal recognition", implies that they haven't had adequate recognition in the first place which seems to contradict parts of your argument that women's fight for rights is unfounded and they have an unwarranted vendetta against men. In many parts of the world, female children are still considered far less valuable than male children in general. I read in the paper the other day of an Egyptian family trying to have a boy and when they got a girl, the father was outraged, stormed out of the hospital complaining that he wanted nothing to do with her. (Sorry I do not have the source, but this is informal, right?)

By no means am I justifying "male bashing", because taking it to such extremes does harm to both sexes, but your site made me very angry as a woman to have such strong factual history blatantly denied. I feel as though men and women both have an equal amount to contribute to each other and to the world, just qualitatively different. Anyway, I hope that you seriously consider what I've discussed and think about all the Salem Witch Hunts in the mean time; women persecuted out of superstition, condemned and stereotyped by whom?- Men.

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I also beg to differ. Fundamentally all your statements conform to orthodox feminist perspectives on the relations of sexual power between men and women. You have a thorough knowledge of the realms of disputation and ideology. Given that you also believe in improving the treatment of women relative to men, you have all the crdentials to give yourself the title. In fact, just because some feminists are more extreme in their outlook should not deter you, just as a person can identify as Christian yet not have to believe in refusing blood donations from ....men.

I cannot address all the points that you raise but I will address two for the sake of argument. The issue of suffrage you raise is telling. When you raise the issue you must identify which country is in question. I only have good information on Great Britain so I will use the statistics and facts from there. In the 19th century very few people had democratic rights and only a select number of people made important political decisions. Britain was at the forefront of democratic movements though not the leader. Toward the middle of the century a select number of upper class males where able to participate more in the decision making process. This increased with some agitation until several million men were able to vote. (2.2 million adult men out of a population of 22 million). Crucially, one of the reasons most people were excluded was according to the requirement of owning property. Without property the person was ineligible. Men were assumed to make voting decisions on behalf of the family and as women's property was combined with that of men upon marriage the idea of women voting was considered irrelevant. My understanding is also that suffragists were not interested inthe vote for all women, but for women of property. Furthermore there were strict rules on voting age rights. There was a belief that people were not sufficiently mature to vote until they were 21 there was also certainly some prejudice toward women being sufficiently mature. Now the point you make is that women did not vote until this century. (Full suffrage in 1924 in Britain) The fact remains that many men (in Britain) also did not vote until the 20th century. While discrimination is evident it is not of the scale of insidious prejudice which is characteristically invoked to generate indignation at the oppression of women.

I recently saw a very similar clever ideological dissimulation on the subject of the Olympics. A feminist expressed outrage at women's exclusion from the Olympic games at their modern inception. Woe and martyrdom! However that was in 1896 and the following games had female representation, thus making the issue virtually irrelevant. It should be pointed out that some women agitated against females participating. But much more significantly, we know women have a completely separate set of events and sports. If women had to compete equally in any sport there would literally be no female medal winners at all...except in the hop skip and whine. By having separate events women are given an opportunity to be honoured as exceptional athletes, within their sex and thus they are also frequently given equal star billing to the male athletes competing in similar events but performing at a higher level. I personally take no great interest in sport and the superior performance of male athletes is purely a technical observation. However, how do you maintain the claim of patriarchy under such circumstances?

Now to your claim that men own most wealth. It should be said that the Uinted Nations is also a feminist organisation because we see it reciting figures that women own 1% of the world's wealth and do 80% of the work or some such statistic. I do not know the true figures and facts for poor countries but I can say that my figures for the US paints a different picture. Some recent figures cited suggest that women own 80% of the wealth in the US. This may be attributed to their capacity to save, to their management of family finances and particularly due to their inheritance of jointly earned income and property after the death of a husband. (Men die almost 10% earlier than women, leaving a vast number of women with sole entitlement to accumulated savings.) In Australia women have a slightly higher rate of home ownership than men. I quote this from the Office for the Status of Women and the figure has solid logic. The reason is because women marry on average 3 years younger than men and they buy a house jointly. It should be mentioned that a house is by far the single most significant purchase made by people.

These are simply two primary issues and on each of the points you raise below there is a similar series of arguments. As you may notice I do not necessarily disagree wih some grey areas of your claims.

I am not trying to simplify the issues. I am trying to point out subtleties and complexities to expose the grandiose feminist statements seen constantly in the public eye as propaganda.