LETTER: Men have sexual responsibilities

Editor,

Through his thoughtless letter published in the Feb. 7 Utah Statesman, Michael Jones has managed to embarrass himself and the entire concept of education. The radical bra-burning suffragettes that he describes and assumes to be the predecessors of “the women of today,” did fight for the right to vote and today, they fight for the right to choose. Perhaps he’d like to explain to one of these “weak and timid” ladies that in their struggle for equality, they forgot to tell all us girls how to “take our pills once a day” and “tell our man to wear a condom or get lost.” Lest we become impregnated by that dreaded “free-range sperm” as he put it. I wonder, Mr. Jones, where does that free-range sperm come from? He asks, “Are we to understand that ladies are so naive that they don’t realize that if they have sex without protection, that they could get pregnant?” No. You are to understand that if a man and a woman have sex with or without protection, it is possible for a woman to become pregnant.

Mr. Jones can talk to his conservatives about reviving sex education in our public schools; apparently he could use some of the same. He writes, “Women need to take responsibility for their sexual actions.” By his logic, unplanned pregnancies happen because women are too “dim-witted and immature” to force men to take some of their own sexual responsibility? Really, he has portrayed man as a clueless and sexually incompetent being that requires a woman to take full responsibility for using birth control. Let’s think for a moment … Surely a man can remember to wear a condom if he is not, as Mr. Jones put it to the woman, “too dim-witted, weak, timid or immature.” His comment about ordering women back to the kitchen wearing pearls and a corset to make his dinner is an offensive and degrading manifestation of his character.

Sexism, like racism, has no place in a college newspaper.

Vanessa Kirkpatrick