Sir, – I was – for obvious reasons – drawn to Jennifer O’Connell’s column about “middle-aged male insecurity” (“War on woke is really about middle-aged male insecurity”, Opinion & Analysis, December 24th). The examples she chooses are clearly alarming: Jeremy Clarkson, Elon Musk, Ron DeSantis, Boris Johnson and others. The list is long.
But there is another list that is longer, quieter, and not always visible in the public domain. The recent film An Cailín Ciúin (The Quiet Girl) provides a powerful demonstration of this. I don’t want to spoil this fabulous movie (which everyone should see), but one of the male characters epitomises a very different kind of man: strong, kind, and – yes – prone to silence, but also given to what Buddhists call “wise speech”. He might say few words, but he chooses them with care. His actions speak of wisdom, restraint and love.
As Jennifer O’Connell points out, “there are still decent people out there who won’t be goaded into cruelty in the service of a manufactured culture war”. For every Clarkson, Musk, DeSantis and Johnson, there are legions of men who are horrified by the excesses of contemporary discourse, quietly ignoring the noise, and steadily building lives of connection, trust and – despite everything – hope. – Yours, etc,
BRENDAN KELLY,
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Dublin 8.
Sir, – So the “war on woke” is “about middle-aged male insecurity”, according to Jennifer O’Connell. Really ?
Ageism and sexism in one phrase.
It is time that all journalists “woke up” to the reality of the horrors of the Uighur camps, starvation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Somalia, oppression in North Korea, the exclusion of women from education in Afghanistan – but then that would indicate an awareness of real horrors.
It’s time for people to wake up all right. – Yours, etc,
AILEEN HOOPER,
Stoneybatter,
Dublin 7.