Dear Elizabeth,

I read your essay entitled "We (Women) Have The Power" with a mixture of disgust and pity. Quite frankly, I found it to be extremely offensive. How dare you lay the blame for the situation we women find ourselves in at our own feet. In our culture, girls are raised to be subservient and accommodating. Many of us were abused physically, emotionally and even sexually as children. How can you expect us to behave in the rational, logical and self-controlled way that your essay suggests we must?

Your directive that we bond only with good, caring, sensitive and supportive men is ridiculous. As you well know, unless perhaps you're independently wealthy, a lesbian or a supermodel, there just aren't enough good men to go around. We have to choose from what's out there, and that doesn't leave us much to choose from.

Your ideas about choosing biological fathers remind me of Hitler's eugenics programs. And the idea that we can choose a biological father different from the parental father shows your incredible naivete about what's possible and practical in the real world.

After reading the bio on your web site, I can only say that I am glad that you did not have children who you could raise and inculcate with your vicious and destructive ideas.

I hope God forgives you for your hurtful words and thoughts, because neither I nor anyone I know will.

Charlotte ^Note

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Dear Charlotte,

I appreciate the e-mail you sent me, reproduced above in its entirety, because I suspect many others share your viewpoint, and because I really want to address the concerns you have raised.

I first want to request that you accept responsibility for your own feelings, rather than projecting them onto inanimate objects or ideas. You can begin by saying "I found myself extremely offended by your essay" instead of "I found it to be extremely offensive." This is no small matter. To start eradicating our feelings of helplessness and victimhood, we must begin my acknowledging that our thoughts and feelings are our own. They are not, and cannot, be imposed on us by external objects or ideas. So, I grant that you find yourself feeling offended by what I have written, and I'm sorry you feel that way. I encourage you, however, to examine the source and appropriateness of these feelings. What is there about the ideas that:

• women are responsible for the condition in which we find ourselves, and
• that by taking action, we can, without anyone else's intervention, drastically improve our condition

that you find yourself experiencing as aversive? From whence do these feeling arise? What keeps you from thinking about these ideas without any feeling at all? What prevents you from thinking about these ideas with a feeling of elation and hope?

The next point you raised is, I think, a crucial one. You observe that girls in our society are conditioned to be subservient, and that they are often abused. I agree completely. But who is doing the conditioning and who is at best permitting, at worst inflicting, these abuses on our children? It is, of course, ourselves. If we want this cycle of abuse to be broken, then we women, and we alone, must rise to the occasion. We must overcome our conditioning, first by recognizing that we can overcome it, and then by conscious effort and hard work, perhaps with help from support groups or counselors. We must strive to recover from the abuses we have experienced first as children, then as girlfriends, wives, and employees. Not all of us will succeed in these endeavors. But none of us will succeed if we do not try; if we do not recognize that our problems result entirely from our past choices and behaviors; and if we don't learn that we can solve these problems in the future entirely through our own efforts.

You noted that there are not enough good men to go around. I agree with this also. This leaves us, I think, with a relatively few fundamental choices:

1. Find and partner with one of the relatively few good (i.e., respectful, caring and supportive) men.
2. Dispense with our intimate relationships with men.
3. Establish a relationship with respectful and supportive women.
4. Settle for a man (or men) who will not treat us with respect and be supportive.

Of these options, only the last will lead to the perpetuation of our problems. Choosing any of the first three will immediately and effectively eliminate abuse in our personal lives. And if we partner with men or women who are also good parent material (as defined in my essay), and if we ourselves are good parent material, then we can enjoy the added benefit of being able to raise healthy and secure children, if we so choose. Moreover, any such children would embody and carry on the values (e.g., respect for women) that we all desire. What I have just told you, Charlotte, is that if we want to end the cycle of inequity and abuse of women, then we women must make some hard choices, and for many of us one of those choices will be to avoid establishing relationships with men.

But things may not be as bleak as I have suggested in the previous paragraph. I believe that if we women, as a group, choose not to tolerate disrespectful and unsupportive behavior on the part of our male acquaintances, then men will begin to shape up, becoming more respectful and supportive. You see, I am quite convinced, and research confirms, that they need us far more than we need them.

Your last substantive point was that my proposal that we choose the biological father of our children carefully, and my suggestion that the biological and parental father need not be the same person, were both faulty. Let me deal with these in turn.

Your concern that carefully choosing a biological father reminded of you of Hitler's eugenics program is not surprising, as it reminded me of the same thing. Of course, my proposal, unlike Hitler's, is not designed to result in a race of ubermenchen. I only desire that our children have a high likelihood of being physically and emotionally healthy, in part because I believe that such health greatly enhances the ability of a person to be respectful and supportive of others, and in part because I care about the physical and emotional well-being of our children. And I'm afraid I have little sympathy for the idea that a genetic crap-shoot is somehow more virtuous than trying, through informed decision-making, to provide our children with a better chance for a healthy childhood and adulthood.

My suggestion that the parental and biological father need not be the same person is a prescription for new and dramatic action rather than a reflection of what is typical in today's families. On one hand, the kind of parental father I have suggested that we choose will have little problem permitting the use of a sperm donor if he is convinced that this would probably greatly improve the physical and emotional health of his children. On the other hand, it is not necessary that the parental father be involved in the decision at all. It is now socially acceptable and economically feasible for women to have children out of wedlock. This permits us to choose the biological father without concern for any subsequent parental father's input. We can, if we so desire, later choose a good parental father to help us raise our children.

The proposals in my essay call for radical change because I am convinced that only such change has the potential to lead to the solution of our critical problems. I have no illusions that making these changes will be easy, either for us as individuals, or for American society as a whole. It will require hard work, difficult decisions and sacrifice for many of us over the next two or three generations. Will the ultimate results eventually justify these sacrifices? I think so. The alternative, i.e., forever blaming, and vainly trying to change, "society" while we and our daughters remain subject to abuse, unequal treatment and disrespect, is simply unacceptable to me.

Thank you again for your e-mail, Charlotte. I hope this response has been helpful.