Dear Marion,

Now its my turn to sing the praises of your letter as being
wonderful. To my reading at least, it contains keys that unlock
the answers to many questions. I intend to incorporate it into
chapter 39, and perhaps chapter 40 of Die Freunde. If the novel
should ever be published and there were royalties, you would get
your share.

> Thank you for the, once again, most lively and entertaining letter. 
> I was actually about to go home early, being very sleepy
> because I've entered a minimal-sleeping-at-night period. 
> But your letter, like a garden hose that goes out of control,
> spurting cold water in all directions, woke me up. 
> So I made a cup of coffee and am launching into a discussion with you
> without delay.

I hope the coffee tasted good; it certainly did wake you up.

> It was gratifying to learn that Margaret neither bites not scratches. 
> Actually it's not the first good report I've had about her. 
> You were lucky, but so was she.

About her, I'm not so sure.

> So, as you say, you have nothing to fear from Feminism. 
> Yet I know you are deeply committed to understanding life,
> so let's talk about this.

"For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground
and tell sad stories of the death of kings."
                       Richard II, iii,2.

> If the goal of anti-semitism were to insure that the rights and privileges
> of the goyim would not be less than those accorded the Jews,
> then I would be in favor of anti-semitism because my goal is to see
> that each individual, Jew or goy, man or woman,
> has similar opportunities and privileges. 
> In fact, though, the goal of anti-semitism is to deprive Jews
> of the rights and privileges accorded the goyim. 
> That's why I oppose anti-semitism.

I find myself in respectful disagreement with you. Jews such as
you and I are hated, because we are God's Chosen People. The goyim
are envious of us, because they know, and we know, that we are God's
Chosen People.  Two or three years ago, when walking past Orchard
Circle, a few hundred feet from home, Nathaniel was taunted by some
of his high school classmates for being Jewish, he faced them down:
"That's because we do everything better than you," he told them,
"You're just envious." In contemporary America, the envy is of material
wealth: we control Goldman-Sachs, Lehman Brothers, and Wall Street. For 
Martin Luther the envy was theological: _he_ wanted to be God's
elect, and to prove his election, he was philosemitic in his youth,
and implored the Jews to join him in his theological venture to confirm
his relationship to God.  When they disappointed him, by rejecting his
invitations, he turned against them with vitriolic venom.  He was a coarse
and cruel person, not a pleasant man, and surely no inspiration to a sissy
like me.  Remember: my role model was and is Eulenspiegel, whom, although,
or perhaps because, he was baptized three times in one day, I have made an
honorary Jew, on the rationale that the second and third baptisms
washed off the effect of the first. When the goyim spew hate at us,
they're saying
"We hate you because we want to be like you, and can't make it."
When the feminists spew hate at me, they're saying:
"We hate you because we want to be like you, and can't make it."
That's why I conclude, to understand feminism you must understand
anti-semitism, and to understand anti-semitism you must understand
feminism. And eminently apposite to both anti-semitism and feminism
are the words of Jesus from the cross: Father, forgive them, for
they know not what they do.

> Why have I formulated my argument this way?  Because you wrote:

> > Is it not correct then to denominate feminism as
> > anti-masculinism? Accepting, for the purpose of argument, your
> > valuations, feminism - or anti-masculinism is beneficial to the
> > world order, but aryanism - or anti-semitism is deleterious to the
> > world order. Do I understand you correctly? If so, can you explain
> > to me why, if anti-semitism is bad, as we both agree, anti-masculinism
> > should be good?  Do not the anti-masculinists, (the feminists) degrade
> > men, (male chauvinists) in order to secure themselves and their clients,
> > in much the same manner that anti-semites degrade Jews in the process
> > of asserting their own superiority?

> > It is my intuition that to stigmatize and to degrade a class
> > of fellow human beings to buttress ones own power, be it a class
> > of Jews, blacks, or males, has unavoidable, deleterious consequences
> > to the community of us all.  What am I missing, what do I not
> > understand? Please enlighten me.

> Western society in recent centuries was male-dominated.
> It deprived women of many opportunities unnecessarily;
> e.g. women couldn't vote, couldn't study at many universities
> and other educational institutions, couldn't hold most jobs,
> were therefore very restricted in what income they could earn,
> what kinds of careers they could have, etc.
> When such limitations were questioned,
> they were defended with falsehoods;
> e.g. that undertaking study or work reserved for men
> would damage women's reproductive organs. 
> So Feminism has been an organized movement of opposition and persuasion

Your interpretation of history is eloquent, and it may indeed
be "true"; I have no personal experience (Erfahrung oder Erleben)
to corroborate or to controvert what you describe. My respectful
comment is, that you also have no personal experience of "Western
society in recent centuries," and the term "male-dominated",
is an ideologically inspired description with which you justify
your intent. As I understand history, when examined closely, it
all dissolves into myth.  The interpretation, the emphasis, which
one gives to a given history depends on ones own interest and motives.
Such bias of interpretation is very prominent in political propaganda.
A given set of circumstances is commonly used to "justify" competing
and conflicting political causes.

> Liberation movements often go overboard around the edges. 
> In trying to push back, overcome,
> outrun society's historical undervaluing of women as irrational,
> less intelligent than men, prone to hysteria, prosaic,
> less creative than men, unreliable, weak,
> unsuited to most professions, Feminists frequently overcompensated. 
> Accordingly Feminism incorporated notions
> about the inherent superiority of women, ethically, psychologically, etc.,
> the underlying badness and untrustworthiness of men,
> but these are just blind alleys,
> ultimately unnavigatable waterways branching from the main riverbed,
> which leads toward greater equality and equal opportunity for men and women.
> Analogous indefensible exaggerations and distortions occurred
> around the edges of the Civil Rights Movement, the French Revolution, etc. 
> You should not let this distract you from the fundamental point here:
> that women have the talent and desire to achieve
> at about the same level as men in most arenas,
> including many from which women were traditionally excluded.

You agree that the women's liberation movement,
like any other transaction, has its costs, has its price.
The economist would ask whether the benefits are worth the price.
Both the benefits and the costs of the women's liberation program
are matters of history (or of myth) beyond the scope of my experience;
and given the uncertainties of the evidence, the cost-benefit balance
is beyond my power to adjudicate.

> You quoted me as follows (and then commented):

> > Society is more sensitive to women's suffering
> > and dismemberment than to men's.
> > Men are more easily considered expendable.

> I was under the impression, that feminism was premised
> on just the opposite assertion: That society was
> insensitive to women and systematically degraded them.
> Please explain.

> A common strategy used in Western male-dominated society
> to justify the restrictions on women was to assert
> that women needed special protection. 
> This is why they had to refrain from such arduous undertakings
> as a university education, almost all professions,
> holding public office, going out in public unescorted. 
> The last is a particularly interesting example. 
> Of course an unescorted woman could be overpowered and raped. 
> To the male power structure it was plausible
> that the proper solution is to keep women at home. 
> Feminists say the solution is to teach men to restrain their impulses
> and to severely punish those who don't. 

Try to avoid split infinitives,
such as "to severely punish".
Laws don't work and won't to the trick.
The solution to your problem
is suggested by the song of
die Maennerfriseuse in Die Freunde:

"Ein Netz fuer Maenner flechte ich,
ich fing sie stark und gross fuer mich,
dann sperrte ich sie bei mir ein,
und alle Maenner waeren mein."

"Wenn alle Maenner waeren mein,
so kaufte ich brav Whisky ein
dem welcher mir am liebsten waer,
dem gaeb ich gleich den Whisky her."

"Und liebte er mich zaertlich dann
waer ich sein Weib und er mein Mann
Den anderen schnitt ich klip und klap
Mit dieser Scher' die Haare ab."

> Then women can dare to be out in public like the men.

Absolutely.

> So you have identified a common pattern of traditional thought: 
> Women are weak and vulnerable.
> We value them and will protect them by wrapping them
> in cottonwool and keeping them in a box. 
> But life in a box is a drag.
> Women's vulnerability has been exaggerated.

Forgive me for discerning in your argument a skein of contradictions:
You agree that military service brutalizes its participants.
You favor mutilating women's souls, and perhaps their bodies,
to prove that they are equal to men. You argue that women's
military service will mitigate the horrors of war, because 
society is more sensitive to the dignity of women, where the
enlistment of women in the armed forces is evidence of just
the opposite. If society were more sensitive to the dignity
of women it would not permit their enlistment. Projecting your
arguments decrying the chaperonage of women, you would presumably
contend that society should pass laws making war less destructive
so that women could prove themselves equally resilient to the
destructiveness of war.

> We live in organized societies with norms of behavior,
> laws and law enforcement systems. 
> Let's use them to enhance life for women as well as men.

> You wrap up with:
> > Presumably, as a zoologist persuaded of the correctness
> > of Darwin's theory of natural selection, you interpret
> > the success of the human species in populating the globe
> > as validating its procreative dispositions. The fittest
> > have survived as consequence, in part, of the social
> > order governing the relations between the sexes. The
> > premise of feminism, if I understand correctly, is that
> > the relationship between the sexes is severely out of balance.
> > The mission of feminism is to redress that imbalance,
> > to make women equal to men, and to impose on women equally
> > the tasks presently assigned to men.  Relying in your
> > zoological expertise, what, if anything, do you expect
> > to be the effect of such equalization on the birth rate,
> > on population totals, and on the gene pool, assuming
> > feminism were triumphant and its achievements endured
> > for the next ten thousand years?

> Surely you will agree that, for the continued survival
> of humans and other species on earth,
> we now need to curb humans' outsized reproductive capabilities. 
> At this point, finding ways to keep women at home
> and underemployed so they can create more babies,
> is most counterproductive. 
> Thus to curb overpopulation, encourageing women
> to diversify their pursuits is helpful.

> As to the effect of natural selection on the human gene pool,
> if we wanted to reinstate that,
> we should begin by closing all the supermarkets
> so that people will again become hunter-gatherers,
> and all the Ophthalmologists, Optometrists and Opticians
> must be ordered to stop work immediately
> so that there will be maximal eye-sight-based competition
> at work in natural selection. 

> In fact in modern, organized society with social safety nets,
> contraceptives, physicians, dentists and pharmacies,
> natural selection is almost inoperative in the human population. 

If natural selection is a law of nature, as you believe, then
natural selection will never become "inoperative", but the
extravagances of moral sentiment, such as diverting scarce
resources to the propagation of a diseased subspecies such
as insulin dependent diabetics, will in the extreme, lead
ultimately to the extinction of the race. Technology will
not exempt humankind from the laws of nature, but will make
us subservient to these laws, sooner rather than later.
Hiroshima can happen here, anywhere and everywhere.

> You might not know that in one of the prayers
> an orthodox Jew recites each day,
> he gives thanks to God that he was not born a woman. 
> How do you feel about that? 

Suggests to me the spiritual and intellectual
limitations of orthodoxy.

> Given a choice as to your gender at birth,
> would you have had a strong preference?

I have a strong preference for leaving the choice
to God, who knows best.

> Personally I think that earlier in human history
> the responsibilities and privileges of human life
> might have often been equitably divided between men and women. 
> Childbirth and childrearing were huge undertakings then,
> since women were pregnant year after year. 
> And hunting and warfare, done primarily by men, was arduous,
> terrifying and dangerous.  Things are different now. 
> Only a small segment of women's lifetimes are occupied
> with reproduction and child-rearing. 
> Most men need not go to war or hunt or anything like that. 
> And our work and survival no longer depend so much on physical strength. 
> The qualities needed to accomplish in modern society
> seem fairly evenly distributed between men and women,
> though the final answer as to details in this is not in. 

> A topic I leave with you for another day: 
> I gather that Martin Luther was a rabid anti-semite. 
> Why? 

Of course, I don't really know. There's a lot of information
out on the Internet. My interpretation, that he turned against
the Jews from spiritual envy is my own. More conventional are
theories to the effect that he was chagrined by not persuading
them to sign up with his new religion, that his anti-semitism
was an effort to curry favor with the public and or with the
princelings on whose protection he was dependent. In many
perspectives I see him as a conventional, crude and vulgar person.
He was insensitive not only to the plight of the Jews, but also
to the plight of the poor and downtrodden who revolted in the
Peasants' War.

> How did that fit in to his values?r

I'm not sure what values he in fact did profess, except for religious
fervor, - which I don't share. I'm not a Luther scholar and therefore
consider myself unable to do him justice.

> Was there a time when Martin Luther was an inspiration to you? 

No. I consider inspiration by individuals to be a species of
idolatry in which Jews such as myself are not permitted to indulge.

> Is he still? 
> How do you feel about his anti-semitism?

A dramatic example of pseudo-historical, mythical thinking.
The "facts" with which Luther justified his antisemitism to
himself historical fictions and fantasies, quite analogous
to the fictions and fantasies with which contemporary zealots
justify their ideas and their actions. To the best of my
knowledge, Luther never performed any act that injured any
one of us. He just talked, but of course, the talk was bad
enough.

My interpretation of Luther's cultural significance is 
independent of his anti-semitism, independent indeed of
Luther's own understanding of himself. Here's my take of
the situation: The New Testament, especially the Gospel
of St. John, demonstrates a profound influence of Platonism
on Hebrew theology, which, from the time of the Ten Commandments
had always been highly literate. The Christian Platonism
focussed specifically on the logos, the word, the Word of 
God. With the invention of the printing press, texts, books,
Bibles became accessible to the population to a degree as never
before. Luther's insistence on the text, on the "Word of God"
was the lever with which he disrupted the hegemony of the
Roman Catholic clergy. It made the individual clergyman and even
the individual parishioner independent of the political 
ecclesistical hierarchy. This new, or newly emphasized 
independence of the individual's intellect from that of
the society which nourished him, had wide-ranging cultural,
artistic and scientific consequences, of which Luther,
imprisoned in his fortress of orthodoxy, defending himself
against infidels and devils - and Jews - could never have 
dreamed.

Till