Letter to the editor

Men are still needed

Greg Heller-LaBelle in “Male: the Obsolete Gender”… Men are still needed

Greg Heller-LaBelle in “Male: the Obsolete Gender” (Opinions, Monday, Jan. 13) nicely summarizes a common radical feminist fallacy regarding men, stating the case that men are useless for women (besides as suppliers of sperm for women to procreate, which one could argue is also technologically unnecessary with the advent of cloning). Our society increasingly tends to view human persons and their value in terms of usefulness, e.g. women are useful for sexual pleasure, children are useful for parent self-fulfillment and therefore only when the child is wanted, and men are useful for … well, we haven’t quite come up with an answer for that one yet as LaBelle says. However, we need to remind ourselves of the fact that human persons are valuable in and of themselves, regardless of utility. Furthermore, we humans are social beings who need each other for much more than reaching things on tall shelves; we need each other for personal growth. Pope John Paul II says that only in the “gift of self” does one find oneself. As a young woman and a self-declared feminist (in the true, non-male-hating sense), I second that notion. So, guys don’t get too scared – we women need you, but we need you to be real men who know how to commit yourselves to relationships and who know what self-sacrifice is. Only you can give yourself to a woman; we can get the warm blanket, tall stool and back vibrator at the local Target.

Angela T. Fortunato

GSPH