I couldn’t believe this letter to the editor in today’s Virginian Pilot. The writer, Eugene Walker, is a local high school teacher and blames females for the behavior of males:
Many of our young women carry themselves, speak, dress and behave in the presence of males in a way that would lead many honorable people to label them as unpaid prostitutes.
Really? Is that what you think of your female students?
Walker goes on to say:
Realistically, many of the boys at Landon high school will meet modest, chaste girls in college whom they will marry and treat with respect because they will perceive a sense of value in them based upon how they carry themselves.
However, many clueless young women may end up in another violent case of boyfriend abuse as their shameless male counterparts deal with them in accordance with their own perceptions.
O-M-G. How old are you, Mr. Walker? This is 2010, not 1950. About the only thing you didn’t say was that women were responsible for being raped.
I hope the parents where you teach see this letter and complain. I hope the principal where you teach sees this letter and sends you to some training, because you obviously need it.
VIVIAN J. PAIGE | All Politics is Local 
Most of the blame for the boys behavior is theirs because they know better! If they didnot know better then the blame rest wtih their parents!
You’re absolutely right, Vivian.
After all, we ALL know that there’s no correlation between an abusive background and entering into abusive relationships as adults!
You live in a parallel universe, James. The letter writer made NO effort to link abusive backgrounds to abusive relationships. You just made that up.
The parallel universe is yours, Vivian. In it, people — and women are people, too — aren’t held responsible for their behavior. While a certain minimal respect is due to all, anything more is EARNED, and too few today earn or demand more than minimal respect. People who treat themselves with contempt should hardly be surprised when others respond in kind.
So while your sense of decency may have long since departed, at least you’ve still got an imagination.
Well Jimmy can dance, and Jimmy can love,
Jimmy can push, and Jimmy can shove.
Jimmy can hang out; Jimmy can talk tough.
Jimmy can get down, Jimmy can throw up.
But Jimmy can’t read.
***
I know the best way to get offended, beat-down, woe-is-me men to circle their wagons on the wrong hill is to have Maureen Dowd complain about something. But as a man who considers himself reasonably well-adjusted, I’m more than a little offended by the notion that I or any other man shouldn’t be considered capable of reigning in my emotions or perceptions when confronted by a woman in skirt hemmed above the knee.
Let’s remember the Maureen Dowd column started as a discussion of a private school alum who murdered his former girlfriend at U.Va. These implicit and explicit smears of a deceased young woman are just outrageous.
U.Va. is a once all-male school that has its own history of racism and sexism that it is busily trying to erase. My first year, eight women were raped and beaten. One response from a highly placed official: “We never had this problem before we had women here.”
This is just classic sexist blame-the-victim mentality, along with a very good dose of “how could this happen to a boy from a such good family? Where did we go wrong?”
Bottom line, little rich stinkers get away with a lot at U.Va. They always have, and they probably always will. Athletes also get away with a lot. And when men victimize women, rich or poor or in between, somebody is almost certain to blame the woman.
Single-sex schools producing males with ridiculously ignorant views on women and society? So so shocking.
Mr. Walkers editorial about young women’s dress and actions seems to support The Taliban and their requirement of burqas and our own religious right that has a very narrow way for women to comport themselves in an acceptable way. Interesting to note that in 2010, women or girls are still held accountable for the misogyny still rampant in Afghanistan or Virginia.
Right, but at least the Governor changed his mind in 2009 and decided it’s okay for women to work, after all.