CAMBRIDGE MISOGYNY

To the Editors of The Crimson:

I would like to clarify your story of December 18 on my departure from the Signet Club dinner last Saturday evening. I accepted the Signet's invitation well aware that it was male dominated" and that only in the last year or so had women been elected to membership. I left the dinner because a crudely sexist toast was given, insulting to women in general and in one allusten, to the woman president of the Stenet in particular. The style of Mr. Mayer's toast was chauvanist in the extreme and degrading not only to women out to the club steward being toasted.

I had expected to find at the Signet a liberalized, though not radicalized attitude toward women. I found a group of token women myself included, expected to enjoy the sexist humor of a traditional stag club. I was deeply distributed by the fact that Mr. Mayer's monologue was received with hilatity and applause by those prevent, including both men and women who I am sure if asked, would say that they had found it offensive. I felt the atmosphere of dinner to be so decadent that I lost all desire to read poetry in such a situation or to collaborate with it further.

If the humor of Mr. Mayor had had blacks or Jews as its theme I hope it is true there were people or that roads who would have found if necessary to protest. Until those men who think of themselves as civilized liberals examin the fear and hatred of women underlying their jokes and amusements, they will go on perpetuating a puerile and false virility in themselves and their sons. Until elite women begin to protest the reification and devaluation of women in general, their influence and dignity in male institutions will always be at the mercy of a misogyny which can break through even the most cultivated and civilized veneer. Adrienne Rich