Sir, - She gave them flowers, chocolates and multiple bruising," to paraphrase one of the more tawdry adverts seen around the country recently.
She left the comfort of the coven and rose to question some of the tenets of her audience. In doing so, she pointed out her misgivings about fundamentalist feminism without ever using the phrase "as a woman" (which is generally a redundant phrase unless it is spoken by Mike Tyson).
The general response from people who can access the media is one of agreement and wholesale support to the extent that if she decided to run against the President, Mrs Robinson (who was described by Marion Finucane as a card carrying feminist), she would leave the present incumbent with the same amount of ballot papers as Austin Currie (remember him?).
What is the response from organised womanhood? Firstly, they question whether or not she had the ability to write the "smug little speech" herself, then they ask by what right she may speak it. The occasion was wrong, they say. "I wouldn't personally have made that speech." "She has not been elected," they cry. What a pathetic little bunch they really are!
Are these the same people who speak of the disenfranchised in society, who attend "workshops" in working class areas, who speak of the rights of homosexuals, whoa have opinions on East Timor, Nigeria and nuclear explosions in Mururoa, who attend conferences in Beijing, wear little coloured badges on their high couture lapels, who speak of a "caring society," who rant about sexism, ageism, racism in children's books and look for "positive discrimination in the workplace? Yes, they are, I hear you cry!
When it comes to one of their own, or, as they would describe; her, a person of correlative gender (Andrea Dworkin) we see the hypocrisy of their thinking. The veneer of their version of a caring, warm society" comes' loose and the carefully applied make up of plurality begins to slip.
A woman scorned and all that! - Yours, etc.,
Drumbrawn,
Newtownmountkennedy,
Co. Wicklow.
PS - I hope I am not accused of being brutist.
PPS - Are women in the home who read The Irish Times W.I.T.H.-I.T.?