Letter to the editor: September 11, 2014

To the editorial staff of The Pitt News,

I would like to commend the editorial staff of The Pitt News for using their platform to address an issue that’s incredibly pertinent to much of college-aged students’ social interactions: male entitlement. Unfortunately, 20-something-year-olds typically don’t realize that this can come in the form of not only drunkenly accosting women in Steel Cactus or catcalling from your porch in South Oakland but also in the form of someone thinking that, perhaps because they are a “nice guy,” they deserve a woman. All of the above stem from a psychological degradation of women that reduces them to nothing more than a sexual object —​ something that can be won or something that is owed to them. Unfortunately, very few men in college will be exposed to such viewpoints without taking any sort of class that focuses on gender or women’s studies, leaving their culturally-ingrained, yet unconscious, misogynistic tendencies intact. And, to that end, I find great value as a reader in Wednesday’s editorial in that, hopefully, it delivers its poignant message to anyone who doesn’t seem to understand that male entitlement is not only real but a real problem.

Thank you kindly.

Matt Singer

Editor in Chief

Pitt Political Review