Letter: Jacob Wirth on ‘Cat Calls don’t impress, they come off as creepy’

Dear editor:

Feminism is the advocacy of women’s rights on the grounds of political and social and economic equality to men.

Recently I feel feminism, in most cases, has just become a group of women that find their sole purpose in complaining about and belittling men on the grounds of some believed slight.

In last week’s edition of The Eagle you ran an article titled Cat Calls don’t impress, they come off as creepy  by Sara Labor.

In the article, Ms. Labor jokingly refers to herself as a “femi-nazi.” As I read the paper, I began to associate this new word with the degenerated variety of feminism I just described.

The entire article was about how much she detests most men. She doesn’t like pet names and she can’t stand cat calls. Fine, but it’s a double standard.

If a man cat calls a woman he is being disrespectful but if a man is on the receiving end of a female’s salacious comments, it’s no big deal.

They are only paying him a compliment, right? The gender dark ages, which feminists have fought so hard to improve, are almost over in America.

Women can do everything that a man can, and according to our laws no one can say otherwise. Women now have just as much of a say in their futures as men.

Pet names, like those in “A Doll’s House,” can no longer be used to bring women down unless they themselves accept it.

The fact is, pet names have just become a way to address someone. It is up to the recipient to discern the context of the name.

Most men and women who use pet names on strangers are only using them to make an interaction more pleasant.

Sometime after I read the article, the author and I had a rather heated debate on the subject. After about an hour of discussion, we discerned it was all for naught.

Though both of us raised some very good points, in the end neither of us had convinced the other of anything. I left feeling very unfulfilled.

I thought about it for some time after, and finally I realized why the article ground on so many of my gears.

The article was solely convicting men on their immature comments, demanding that they “grow up.”

If, Ms. Labor, is indeed the feminist she claims to be in her article and she believes in gender equality, then why is her article so one-sided?

– Jacob Wirth, junior of Sidney