As a 1970s IU grad, I was first gladdened, then saddened, when a Google search on Mary Winkler (the Tennessee wife who killed her preacher husband) led me to an IDS column (Amy Obermeyer's "'Foxy' ladies," IDS April 6).
I was glad to be reminded of my old student newspaper, but saddened to see that the old 1980s/90s "Women's Studies World View" still holds sway on the Indiana campus.
Ms. Obermeyer, in true Third Wave Feminism style, takes the occasion of a woman's murdering her husband and makes of it an opportunity to preach about men's violence against women.
And in a perfect example of how Capital-F-Feminists distort the truth, she quotes a statistic (more than three women are murdered by their intimate partners every day) without the accompanying fact that for every three American wives murdered by their husbands, two American husbands are murdered by their wives. It's easy to get people outraged about female victims, if you pretend that male victims don't exist. But it's ironic to do so when you're talking about a male murder victim.
The math and science majors in the Daily Student's readership will appreciate what I'm talking about if they take a look at Ms. Obermeyer's next statistoid: "Additionally, 33.5 percent of female homicide victims are murdered by their intimate partners, compared with less than 4 percent of male homicide victims." Now take that, and factor in the fact that male homicide victims are more than five times as numerous as female homicide victims, and you'll understand something about the way statistics are "cooked" for your
consumption.
Domestic violence is real, dear readers, but it is not synonymous with "violence against women." Time to get with the century, and cast off these so-20-years-ago
dogmata.
Michael Snyder
Alumnus
Dissenter to Day of Silence had chance to empathize with others
To Adam Sedia (in response to the Day of Silence editorial dissent, IDS Tuesday): Your point is well taken. All those quiet people walking around me while I went to class today was really a pain. I could barely hear my iPod above all the silent ruckus! Man. Somehow I think that if gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people and their allies were to hold a loud demonstration, your argument would be eerily similar — that you don't want to hear them, and couldn't they hold some sort of silent vigil so passersby can choose to ignore them? After all, you can't unring a bell. That said, I'm glad Day of Silence has such a profound effect on you. Personally, I choose not to speak on Day of Silence as a way to reflect on what it feels like to be silenced — to be unable to express who I am — throughout the day. I see that for you, however, it is the opportunity to feel what GLBT people feel every day -- "disrespected" and "treated ... as inferior by forcing (them) to accommodate those who choose to be difficult." I hope that for one day you felt all that oppressive silence cramping your style and that, when the day was over, you reflected thoughtfully on the experience and have a newfound respect for what some people are forced to go through for years, because that's really what Day of Silence is about. Becky EdmondsFreshman
