CENTE DAILY TIMES

2-22-72

TO-THE-EDITOR

Tears for Plight of All Women

In regard to the recent scandal regarding Mr. Acanfora and the problem of the homosexual in the public schools, as a married woman and a female heterosexual, I would like to make a few observations.

I deplore, of course, as any civilized person should, the vicious treatment that has often been given the homosexual in past societies (whether homosexuality is immoral, whether a declared homosexual should have the right to teach in public schools involves another set of considerations).

But what interests me is why so many people are so suddenly sympathetic with this boy, people who at the same time are either completely indifferent to or contemptuous of the problems of the heterosexual female. There are a lot more of us around than male homosexuals, and the male homosexual, if he just keeps quiet, can exercise male privileges which have never been open to women.

Why should I weep bitter tears for this young man in the current school controversy in a school system with practically no female administrators or women in positions of real authority? Why should I care about his plight, living in a university town with practically no female professors, in a place where many talented and highly educated women are forced into lives of useless boredom, in a nation where women have no real political power or control over their lives?

I’ll shed no tears for Mr. Acanfora: I’ll save them for my own kind.

BARBARA RAPHAEL

State College