Sir, - John Waters is confused about gender (Opinion, January 13th). I accept that men have problems and that a commission might be set up to address them. However, to call it a "commission on the status of men" implies a defensive body to protect men's superior standing.
Any privileged group which is undergoing an erosion of its privileges tends to protest that the pendulum has swung too far when it has barely moved. So it is with many men. Many of the problems now being experienced by men and boys are the result of failing to understand, or to adjust to, the gradual erosion of their still very privileged position.
Any advance for women affects men. If the woman does less of the housework, the man must do more. If more women get the top jobs, fewer men get them. If women refuse to be patronised, a man who can't understand this will have a difficult life. We need help. We need to help each other. But we don't need people who tell us to defend our outdated and indefensible privileges.
As for the dramas and advertisements of which John Waters complains, these ridicule sexist men, not all men. The attack on sexism is not a "holocaust", and men who support it are not "collaborators" but fighters for human rights and human dignity. - Yours, etc.,
Kilclooney, Kilmachthomas, Co Waterford.