I've always liked your posts. You seem like a thoughtful person. But your observation that men perpetrate most of the misandry in pop culture seems off the mark to me. I agree that, if we want to oppose misandry we need to address males who exhibit that behavior. That's simple enough. I assume you agree that we should also address women who do, right?

But men in the advertising business or who write scripts for sitcoms, etc. are just schlubs trying to earn a living and hopefully advance in their professions. If it sells to the audience or market, you do it; if it doesn't, you don't. The ad copywriter who spends a lot of time getting his political philosophy or sexual politics right will be out of a job in short order. The one who depicts men but not women as "cavemen" becomes wildly successful. If you were in the ad biz, would you ignore that lesson?

It's the same as in the 1950s when Betty Friedan complained about short stories in women's magazines that depicted "career women" as less happy and satisfied than their stay-at-home counterparts. Almost all of them were written by women. Obviously the same held true for female roles in the movies and TV depicting the same thing. Did that detract from Friedan's message? Not to me it didn't. Did it to you?

The point is that popular culture plays, among other things, a pedagogic role. It "teaches" us what society deems to be appropriate behavior. And when popular culture depicts female violence against men to be acceptable, as it almost always does, people absorb the message, as they did when women were taught that a career was detrimental to their wellbeing.

And why shouldn't men take this issue up with women? In the first place, there are plenty of writers, producers, directors, etc. who are women. More importantly, I think you're old enough to remember when this culture didn't denigrate men the way it does now. It can't be an accident that this has come about after 40 years of feminism. What else explains the change?

So feminists need to get the message too. And indeed, who better to convey the message of gender equality, that DV is wrong regardless of who does it, than feminists? But they don't, and that's a big problem, both for feminism's reputation and for men.

You're right that feminists are a reasonably diverse group, but there's no evidence I can see that they believe in gender equality. If they did, they'd demand to register for the draft and be drafted if that ever became necessary. They'd demand to be placed in combat positions in the military. They'd demand that popular culture stop depicting female violence against men as appropriate. They'd demand that family courts enforce visitation orders and that state legislatures enact presumption of shared parenting laws. They'd demand that DV laws and practices affect men and women equally and that women be portrayed as abusers of men as often as vice versa. They'd acknowledge men to be appropriate parents and that children tend to need both parents for an optimum outcome. They'd complain about the denigration of men as stupid, sex-obsessed, incompetent louts in popular culture. But they don't.

I could go on and on about all the ways feminism would be different if feminists actually promoted gender equality, but I'll spare you. Suffice it to say that it's one of the main reasons I no longer call myself a feminist, having done so for about 30 years.

Feminism can't have it both ways. It can't promote women at the expense of men and at the same time claim to favor gender equality.

Yes, that was my letter. The hoops I had to jump through to get them to print something that looked anything like my actual thoughts was truly remarkable. I know you'd be as amused as I was.

At Glenn Sacks' suggestion, I read the USA Today piece, shot off a letter and forgot about it. A few days later, I got an email saying they wanted to publish my letter with, ahem, a few changes. What they proposed to publish over my name bore literally no resemblance to what I had written which was to the effect that the writer's misandry was inappropriate and entirely gratuitous. I refused my consent to publication.

There followed the most bizarre set of emails from the (female) editor all of which added up to the fact that she was terribly upset that I knew what I was talking about and wouldn't back down. It was all quite entertaining and predictable.

The letter is still not really mine, but it's a lot closer than what they tried to get away with.

Glad you saw it.