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Misunderstood Message

I am sorry to be the irritating person who is responding to a letter in response to her own letter in response to a column. However, I feel I need to defend myself here, especially since Erin Wilson and Lee Cleghorn seemed to misinterpret the point of my Jan. 30 letter, “Watch what you write.” I would invite them both to re-read that letter, and I then would like to pose a question: Do you see either the word “sexist” or “sexism” written once? I didn’t think so. Perhaps that is because that was not at all the point of my letter. I even stated, “I would almost say … go ahead and throw around an insult like that if our female-male ratio were reversed.” I have myriad times dealt with sexism and have learned to turn a deaf ear to it. The idea that I was “scorning Danny for being sexist” was formulated by Miss Wilson and Mr. Cleghorn in “Take jokes less seriously” and “Do not over-scrutinize,” respectively, and was in no way my personal intent. And Miss Wilson — thank you. I am well aware of what the women’s liberation movement was. Personally, I have never needed to take part in or support any movement to recognize my equality to males. In other words, I am not, as you have both pegged me, a feminist. And I certainly did not label Danny Baram “Boston University’s resident sexist male.” Come on Lee … talk about “over-scrutinizing.” And yes, perhaps I did fail miserably at trying to make my letter filled to the brim with witticism. Maybe next time I should take some pointers from Mr. Cleghorn, who did not neglect to inform us that his mother is, in fact, a woman (so glad to hear that, by the way). And let’s not forget the “truly prophetic” inquiry of whether or not it should be “socially acceptable” to insult penguins. Yes Lee, I would say without a doubt you definitely have 20 times the degree of insightfulness that I do.

For both of you, let me now clearly point out my original intent, so it is not overlooked a second time. It seemed very bold of Danny Baram to set up the scenario that he did, including a “stupid [female] classmate,” when, in fact, (as Lee pointed out), the gender ratio of our University is not in his favor. This to me is almost the equivalent of a democratic citizen writing a letter to the current U.S. Congress including a scenario about a stupid Republican. Why bother making a statement like that when your audience outnumbers you? And yes, I did say he was thick-headed because I think it was thick-headed of him to make this comment. I did not, however, say he was sexist. Lee and Erin, next time please read things carefully before responding to them.

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