What does it take to get a letter published in The Sydney Morning Herald?

Number one rule, be a bloke.

Number two rule: don’t be a young feminist having a cheeky go at Paul Sheehan.

Sheehan, veteran columnist in The SMH, wrote a piece yesterday (entitled Feminism’s failure to lend a hand) saying women are their own worst enemies, a groundbreaking claim. So, like all cheerful young feminists, we thought a quick (and reasonably short) letter, might have the good fortune to be printed.

We didn’t dump on Sheehan — although we could have — nor did we resort to abuse. We even made a few jokes.

And we rang the letters editor Mike Ticher to see 1) whether he had the letter and 2) whether he would print it.

The answer wasn’t at all straightforward — although he did say that “at this stage, I’m leaning against publishing it”. OK, so it might have been a little ideological — but then, every conservative doctor’s letter gets printed, so what’s wrong with the letter of a couple of pinko feminists?

We wondered what was the magic ingredient needed to get a letter printed so we thought we would look at Ticher’s record when it comes to women and letters.

Now, we don’t know who writes letters. We’d love to see how many women and how many men actually send material to the letters pages. But we do know this  (taking a cue from Crikey’s Spinning the Media series).

Last week, Monday to Friday, the Herald published many, many, many more letters from men than from women. Here’s a rough guide:

— Monday March 22:  Men 15, women 10

— Tuesday March 23: Men 19; two women and two people whose first names couldn’t be easily classified

— Wednesday March 24: Men 18, women four and two people called Kelly and Chris

— Thursday March 25:  Men 20, women five and three people called Mohana, Shane and Sandy

— Friday March 26:  Men 19, women seven and three whose first names couldn’t be easily classified.

We wondered whether Ticher decided not to publish our letter because it promoted the first feminist conference in Sydney in 10 years — but we know better, because the Herald often publishes material based on publicity material, some of which we want to read. But he didn’t say that was the problem — and we could easily have removed some of that material if that was the issue.

So we thought we’d let you read it:

“We’re on it, Paul.

In two weeks, 400 feminists are going to argue to the death about what feminism means at the F Conference. Please come along — it can only make us stronger. Plus, your ticket’s on us.

The answer will be as complicated as ever — even if you don’t come.

When you argue that women are feminism’s worst enemy, you make the same case hundreds of opinionated men and women  have done before you — but you don’t tell us anything new.

Yes Paul, there are thousands of women who — much like men — participate in their own day-to-day oppression just like those magazine workers you malign. But they operate in organisations where s-xism makes money and that’s the  gap in your article. Why aren’t you asking:  “Who benefits?”

Paul, you argue that feminism stereotypes women yet your article is punctuated with the oldest stereotype in the book, that of the oppressed third world woman in need of “saving” by western feminists. You are the one who uses a wellworn stereotype to avoid accounting for the very different lives women lead, the history of colonisation by the west and the way that sometimes being saved has more in common with being colonised than it does with being liberated.

There’s no such thing as a single “feminism”, just as there is no single thesis for all you blokes (Tony hasn’t persuaded you to get down to the gym, has he?). The ten million women in Australia are never going to have exactly the same ideas about what constitutes personal freedom. Race, class, ethnicity, ability and a host of other factors play into this.

Debate is healthy when men do it. Surely it’s a sign that feminism is healthy too.

Gabe Kavanagh and Rosa Campbell

Convenors of the F Collective.

So what did Letters Mike publish today? Yep, 13 letters about Tony Abbott’s iron-man event — and again, most of today’s letters were by men.