My previous post, “Take Back the Tit,” elicited some very interesting, insightful comments.  I received the following response as an email, and I am publishing it with the author’s permission because I think it brings up some controversial ideas.

In my post, I suggest that it is sometimes the female voice that tyrannizes other women.  This writer responds:

“As a child of the seventies, I never quite “got” the whole women’s movement ethos. I was reared in the deep South in a house full of women, my father having died when I was three, and went to a girls’ school from the 7th to the 12th grade. I never DIDN’T see women in positions of authority and was stunned to learn that our sex was so miserably oppressed. The more I observe and the older I get the more convinced I am that women have always been deeply complicit in their own destinies, and if they’re put-upon doormats, the vast majority of them have no one to blame but themselves. My grandmother, born in 1898, would never have allowed herself to be treated disrespectfully by anyone, man, woman, or child.  Most of the disagreeable social and cultural “rules” complained about so vociferously by women, seem to be established by women themselves. What’s up?

I read a funny, accurate novel years ago by Florence King called When Sisterhood Was In Flower. It’s probably out of print now, but I highly recommend it.” ... Read more.