Yes, Raymond, in all shapes and sizes

In response to Raymond Ramcharitar’s “My beautiful feminists” (December 7), may I remind that feminists come in all shapes and sizes. In a cab travelling from Scarborough to Mason Hall last week, the occupants were: the male driver of middle age, a male high school student, a young man, an ageable fellow sporting a conscious T-shirt, and yours truly: female, young-at-heart and not from here. The radio was playing a fundamentalist Christian station with a male pastor citing examples of sinners. These were exclusively seductresses and harlots who, according to his Bible, would lead men into pits and dark wells. 

The high school boy and young man debarked from the cab. This left the ageable man the opportunity he needed to blast the radio pastor for his sexism. The driver instantly distanced himself, saying, “Pappy, I not responsible for that station. Me just have the radio playing.”  The ageable fellow was having none of that and shared the story of his wife having been lured from him by some fellow years ago. From the back seat I could not resist and contributed the observation that I was not knowledgeable in the Biblical sphere and so had listened attentively to the radio pastor. 

I, too, had been surprised that he ranted on to his listeners only about female sinners. Neither seducers nor confidence tricksters, not to mention lounge lizards, were mentioned. After some minutes of discussion the driver, the ageable man and I agreed that the Christian radio pastor didn’t like women, though we never employed the word “misogynist.”

Arlene Blade

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