Letter: Men of violence

LETTER:

Men of violence

Sir: In one breath Yasmin Alibhai-Brown (Comment, 15 October) acknowledges that discrimination is alive and well in the workplace, that violence against women persists, that there is an increasing proliferation of infantile and misogynistic magazines like FHM and Loaded, which men buy. In the next she asserts that things are actually quite good and we should be working "with" men. Pardon me - but which men exactly? Are we to divide them into "nice men", like our dads and lovers; and the Others? This is childish tabloid-think.

The day I open my newspaper and read that men's lives are stunted by discrimination by women at work, the day the figures show that a considerable percentage of men live in fear of rape, and the day I walk into a shop and find men degraded and laughed at in row after row of magazines - that is the day I might have some sympathy for their plight.

Ms Alibhai-Brown needs to wake up. We all know kind and wonderful people who are men. But that doesn't mean that men have not made a society which is violent, misogynistic and partriarchal. They have.

POLLY CLARK

Oxford