A chara, – In both the original article by Arlene Harris ("Lord protect me from easily offended snowflake girls", Life, October 18th) and the letters of reply (October 19th, 20th), there is an unstated assumption – unstated because it is just so obvious – that words or expressions that are demeaning, offensive or aggressive towards women are being used primarily by men rather than other women. Hence the connections being made to the exclusion of women from politics and Donald Trump's locker room.
UK cross-party think-tank Demos conducted a large trawl of UK Twitter posts and identified 10,000 that were “explicitly aggressive and misogynistic”. We are not talking about “babe” or “doll” here, but insults such as “bitch”, “slut” and “whore”. Women posted slightly more than half of these messages.
That figure has risen since Demos’s last study, and other research has shown it as high as 60 per cent. Doubtless, there is some convoluted way of saying it is still all the fault of men. Self-hatred due to oppression by the patriarchy, perhaps.
Before we comfort ourselves with the notion that this is British data, Co Tyrone is a hotspot for such tweets and shares first place in the UK rankings with Merthyr Tydfil in south Wales. – Is mise,
DAVE SLATER,
Kilkea, Co Kildare.
Sir, – On a recent flight, I found my myself offended when the male captain announced that the two “beautiful” female cabin attendants would be looking after us for the flight. After reading Arlene Harris’s article this week, I wondered if I would have been as equally offended if it had been a female captain telling us about a “hunky” male attendant. I think I would have been as equally offended. But really, we all know that the latter would be unlikely to happen – and not because of a lack of female captains or male cabin attendants. – Yours, etc,
ASHLING
DALY BOUKTILA,
Dublin 6.
A chara, – Godwin’s Law asserts that as an online discussion grows longer, sooner or later someone will compare someone to Hitler.
It took just three letters before Arlene Harris was compared to Donald Trump following her piece on the snowflake generation. Is an update to the law required? – Is mise,
STEPHEN McCLEARY,
Donabate, Co Dublin.