Posted by
Graham Shaw on Wednesday, September 27, 2006 12:30:51 PM
Lovely Ladies of the ASU Women‘s center
(womenscenter@appstate.edu, )
,
I am a student at this university, despite the fact that I find the notion that women need an entire center dedicated to their needs to be inherently sexist I do find myself monitoring your site every now and then. This is a great act of courage for me and any male who logged onto the website last year, because every male was sexually harassed on the site by anti-male quotes such as “Behind every successful man there’s a surprised women,” and “A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do, a woman must do what he cannot”.
However, I digress (despite the fact that I was not properly compensated for my pain and suffering) since your site promptly removed the quotes when you were exposed to the world for your man hating quotes. The purpose of my letter today is to point out a massive oversight on your website lets start out with this quote:
“Family life itself, that safest, most traditional, most approved of female choices, is not a sanctuary: It is, perpetually, a dangerous place.” (http://womenscenter.appstate.edu/index.php?module=pagemaster&PAGE_user_op=view_page&PAGE_id=222&MMN_position=25:25)
An anti-family quote such as this should be balanced. There is a plethora of pro-family quotes that should be added to the page, why? Well according to your mission statement you are supposed to “…celebrate the diverse Appalachian State University women's community…”. There are many women out there who want to start a family and by putting such an anti-family quote on your site without adding one to encourage women to form families you are in direct violation of your own mission statement.
But wait, your center also claims to “…enhance awareness of the challenges facing women on this campus and in this society”. One of the challenges facing women is poverty, a women is less likely to live in poverty if she is married, particularly if she has a child. This anti-family comment encourages women to remain single, and perhaps have an out-of-wedlock child which will almost certainly send her spiraling into poverty. Are you trying to enhance awareness of social problems facing women by making them more prevalent?
I’m certain that this was an honest mistake and that you will take action to put up a pro-family quote on your site very soon.
We’re not done yet. After looking over your weblinks page I am very shocked to see that you have a total of 3 “pro-choice” (including NOW and the Planned Parenthood EC site) websites but only one pro-life website. You also have 3 pro-homosexual websites.” Are you honestly implying that the “diverse Appalachian State University women…” are all pro-choice, pro-homosexual?
If you wish to truly live up to your mission statement then you should add a few pro-life websites, as well as websites that promote traditional ideas of romance between a man and a woman. Sites such as www.iwf.org and www.eagleforum.org are good places to start. These will also give you a good source of pro-family quotes in order to counter balance the anti-family quote you’ve placed on the site.
You are welcome in advance for my pointing this problems out to you. I look forward to the changes you will soon make on your site.
Farewell beauties,
Graham P Shaw