Brace for the Whirlwind

Sir: "Hell knows no fury like a woman scorned." Man, you are paying for your immature notion that you prove manhood by sexual exploitation [Aug. 31]. You failed to understand woman's need for love, protection and companionship. The sexually liberated office girl or career woman mistook your lust for love and turned on you when she realized her mistake.

Your wife, aware of your infidelities and lack of interest, began to see her lot as slavery and her life as meaningless and dull.

Brace yourself, fragile man. You are reaping the whirlwind NOW.

GLORIA TAYLOR Denver

Sir: Equal pay for equal work? Fight like the devil for it. Burn your bras (if you don't sag). But, please, don't deny your femininity; it is a part of your significance as a human being (it is not nearly all of your worth, although some of my sex seem to think it is). And, I beg of you, do not throw your children into day-care centers; she (he) needs you. Rearing a child is no menial task, but is too momentous to be subordinated and too important to fail. Its importance and difficulty should be recognized, in fact.

Don't stop singing, Kate, take a sad song and make it better.

DOUGLAS L. THOMPSON Bethlehem, Pa.

Sir: You bet I'm a supporter of Women's Lib. I, a woman, worked my way at night through college and grad school; I now hold an M.S. degree and have a tenyear background of executive secretarial work in business and industry. Within the last year, I have worked my way up from secretary to acting head of a department in a medium-sized industry. However, I do not hold the title, and I earn $3,000 to $5,000 less than males holding jobs of less or similar responsibility, and who for the most part do not even hold a bachelor's degree.

It is no wonder that there are angry women demanding fairer treatment. I have to repress my anger because I am unable to find another job in management; and if I rock the boat here, I get fired. There are no calls for women in management regardless of capability, background or education. If I were a guy, I would be very much in demand. But being a woman, I have educated myself right out of the job market.

(Ms.) KAY B. KNOX Stamford, Conn.

Sir: Hold on there, gang, before this thing gets out of hand completely! As a woman, wife, mother and full-time student, I am all for equal job opportunities and equal pay, etc. But how about equal share of the blame for the position we're in? Each one of those "male-chauvinist-female-oppressors" had a mother, right? And she probably showed him just how it is done, right? As every freshman sociology major knows, mothers bear the lion's share of their children's "role identification." So, moms of the world, loosen the umbilical cord! You have nothing to lose but your kitchen privileges.

EDITH KANT NORTON Alplaus, N.Y.

Sir: This Women's Lib thing will relieve the male of an awful lot of his responsibilities, not only to his wife and family but also to himself. For that reason, I, as a man, welcome it with open arms and empty tranquilizer bottle.

GEORGE L. STRAYER JR. Fort Meade, Md.

Sir: Leaving aside the woman who has no one to support her, if a woman can't stand staying home with her preschool children at the most crucial stage of their lives, what in the world did she have them for? Who is supposed to run these round-the-clock child-care centers--robots? Men? Other downtrodden women? I raised four children and it was a labor of love, but I have no desire to raise someone else's children. In my opinion, it has nothing to do with Women's Liberation but is just plain passing the buck.

(MRS.) ADRIEN B. PECK Thermopolis, Wyo.

Sir: I've always felt I was above most of the men I know. Now why should I suddenly want to be their equal?

BOBBE IDASPE Tucson, Ariz.

Sir: Lionel Tiger should have put more emphasis on the study of psychology before he took the Ph.D. That might have prevented his dismissing as trivial every moving force in the expanding human makeup outside of genetic predetermination and breeding practices. It's possible he might have stumbled upon some indication of the human being's capacity to mimic and incorporate, often termed "learned behavior." Evidence pointing to the importance of what is learned after we are dropped, chromosomes and all, on this earth represents too great a body of truth just to be swept under the rug by some Rutgers social anthro man. I mean, my woman's genes did not jump into the kitchen; they were pushed. I am not quite yet the feminist that Women's Lib would wish me, but give us one more fatherly exercise in polite condescension like Tiger's, and I'll be over the hill.

SAMMIE ANN WICKS San Francisco

Sir: The doctrine of the Trinity discloses partiality in leaving out of deity all trace of femininity. One of the three should be a she. To manifest divinity required a real nativity, and that required maternity, a woman's creativity. Which one of the three should be a she? Because the cosmos needs a hostess we recommend: Father, Son and Holy Ghostess.

(THE REV.) ROBBINS RALPH Avon Park, Fla.

Sir: An open letter to Ms. Varda Murrell: Although the womanifestoes of your movement seem to me to be womental herstrionics, I can bear the threat of seeing womanacles on the male. In spite of your monuwomental attempts at a neoro-womantic revolution, your womanifest destiny, as sure as womenopause, is to be a revolutionary womanque, you and all your sheroes, Kate Millett, Gloria Steinem, old Uncle Tom Montagu, et al. But I turn purple as a girlsenberry when I see the wo-manner in which you try to womanipulate the Manglish Language for your inhu-woman purposes.

ROLAND GRASS Macomb, ILL.

Sir: When a man gets a rupture, often as a result of lifting a heavy object or otherwise striving to serve a female, why can't we term it a lusnia instead of a hernia?

GEORGE BIDERMAN Manhattan

Sir: Kate Millett says, "I have a lot of trouble getting jobs." Just how much call is there for anyone who is a specialist in-Victorian English literature?

ALLEN C. DEMMIN Middleton, Wis.

Sir: Inspired by your cover story, my wife raved eloquently for two hours last night about Women's Liberation. Then she said to me: "And don't forget to take out the garbage before you come to bed."

ROBERT M. LEARY Schenectady, N.Y.

Not One Word

Sir: Protests were heard on hundreds of the nation's campuses after the Kent State incident, and I was one of those who advocated strike at my own university. But after Physicist Robert E. Fassnacht, a graduate student, was killed by a bomb set off by what is believed to have been an "antiEstablishment" group [Sept. 7], not one word was heard from the youth leaders of last spring condemning this tragic act.

I call for the students of this nation to denounce acts of violence and specifically the killing at the University of Wisconsin in order to discourage those who are responsible for the killing from continuing on this course.

We must let them know that soon they may find themselves fleeing not only from the police and FBI, but also from students who see this as a step backward in our struggle for necessary changes. GREG FUCHS Storrs, Conn.

Realities

Sir: Angela Davis [Aug. 24] frequently indicated her approval of violence, but liberal sympathizers have dismissed this, while worrying about her "right" to be both Communist and teacher. One can only wonder how much their refusal to admit reality shaped the reality in the Marin County Courthouse early this month.

CHARLES SCHOOR Baltimore

Unkneaded Dough

Sir: For God's sake, somebody stop them before they blow $49,190 of Uncle Sam's money for research into how to make sourdough starter [Aug. 31]! I've been making sourdough starter for years, and I'll give them my recipe free. Or if they're squeamish about old-fashioned methods, they can buy dehydrated starter from Sourdough Jack--right there in San Francisco. (MRS.) MARION NICOLAY Glastonbury, Conn.

Reason for Existence

Sir: Your article on Golden Gate leaps [Aug. 24] erroneously stated that New York City does not classify its suicides and that bridge jumpers are listed as "accidents." The reason for the existence of the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner here is precisely to investigate and prop erly classify all unnatural deaths. This includes more than 1,200 suicides annually --sleeping-pill overdose is the most common means of suicide; next most common is jumping from buildings (more than 300 a year); third is hanging.

Jumping from bridges is uncommon here --less than a dozen a year--and this type of death is never called an accident. Indeed, a current misconception that suicide is high among blacks as compared with whites in Manhattan is because blacks prefer jumping from buildings which can be classified as suicidal immediately. Whites prefer taking sleeping pills which can be determined only after chemical analyses, usually too late for inclusion in vital statistics.

MICHAEL M. BADEN, M.D.

Deputy Chief Medical Examiner

The City of New York

Manhattan

Sir: Your article leads me to wonder why, in this ''land of the free," our lives belong to the state. Why, in an overpopulated America that is drowning in its own garbage, whose citizens are guaranteed the right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," are those same citizens criminals if they seek death, liberty and the surcease of misery? Isn't relief from misery the pursuit of happiness? Shouldn't Americans be free to choose it?

BETTY BIRKELAND Chicago

Higher Losses

Sir: In your article, "Insurance: Politics at Fault" [Aug. 31], you used a figure of $5.1 billion as the annual tangible losses resulting from automobile accidents. This statistic, an estimate developed during the Department's Automobile Insurance and Compensation Study, refers only to the loss of the half a million fatally and very seriously injured victims. When the losses from the much more numerous minor-personal-injuries or property-damage-only accidents are included, total tangible losses would probably be in the $15 billion to $16 billion range annually.

RICHARD J. BARBER

Deputy Assistant Secretary for

Policy and International Affairs

Department of Transportation

Washington

Hazards of Strine

Sir: The hazards of "strine" for visitors to Australia [Aug. 24] are illustrated by the experience of an English writer who was autographing copies of his work in a Melbourne department store. When a lady shopper handed him a book and asked the price--in the local dialect--he wrote innocently: "To Emma Chizzit, with kind regards."

It seems likely that strine is doomed to extinction, to be replaced by an export version of American TV-announcer accent. This will not represent a startling improvement even for tourists, who may wonder why they traveled so far to arrive in sunnier Baltimore.

JAN GEBICKI North Ryde, Australia

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