Dear Editor,

In response to Craig Watkins’s February 10, 2017 editorial in The Crier, I offer two quotes, the first from Mr. Watkins and the second from President Trump.

“The protesters have the constitutional right to be heard, but as long as insane people have the same right[,] the reasonable voices will have that much more opposition.”

“I moved on her like a bitch, but I couldn’t get there, and she was married. Then all of a sudden I see her, she’s now got the big phony tits and everything . . . I’m automatically attracted to beautiful [women]—I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything . . . Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.”

Mr. Watkins posits that Harriet Tubman, his “favorite feminist,” “liberated slaves, lead [sic] armed assaults against the Confederacy, stood up for women’s suffrage, and generally raised hell for all the right reasons.”

I applaud Mr. Watkins’ respect for all Americans’ “right to free speech and organization,” and I agree that Harriet Tubman was a great American woman. I disagree, however, that the women protesting against the election of a man who would speak about women in this way are “a bunch of Hollywood has-beens” who “preach about how great vaginas are or [about] blowing up the White House.” I ask Mr. Watkins to consider whether or not this sentence reflects truth or—as I see it—hyperbole that insultingly twists the symbolism of the pink hats to fit his thesis.

I would also ask him to clarify this sentence: “The problem with pushing pussy around is not because it breaks the social expectancy of women being proper, but that the target audience was lawmakers.” Do we have a “social expectancy” that a person we elect as president, or in fact all “lawmakers,” be “proper”? I realize that Trump spoke these infamous words long before November 2016, but the men I know and respect would never utter such a sentence, in a locker room or anywhere else.

I also encourage Mr. Watkins to offer a specific response to the quote above from Donald Trump and to ask some of his female classmates what they think of it, both those who voted for Trump and those who did not.

Finally, I would ask him to consider the “insanity” he claims for the women protesters. Words have exact meanings. Was each and every one of them insane? What constitutes a “reasonable voice”? Does the quality of Mr. Watkins’ rhetoric perhaps mirror what he claims to dislike about theirs?

In peace and hope,
Professor Ann Holbrook
English Department