Letters to the editor: Yenor’s ignorance, Yenor’s misogyny and Yenor’s hate speech

Yenor’s ignorance

I found Dr. Scott Yenor’s comments about women to be dehumanizing and thoroughly disgusting. That he is a professor in a modern American university makes it so much worse. I suppose free speech ties the university’s hands to deal with him, but his comments about women border on, if not enter into, hate speech.

That he would argue for not recruiting women into engineering, medicine or law is beyond belief, but maybe it’s just another lunge into the nutty extremism of the far right, a place Dr. Yenor certainly belongs. Idaho and its universities work to encourage STEM education and careers. I suppose he and his pals at the Idaho Freedom Foundation will be taking those programs on next in their ongoing efforts to return Idaho to the good old days of the 19th century. He apparently and mistakenly thinks that women entering these fields supplant young men, as though the need for graduates in science and technology is a zero sum game.

His comments about how the goals of young women should be limited to “homemaking” are so absurd that you must wonder if this is just someone pathetically seeking the spotlight. But since he is a university professor, his comments should be taken seriously and labeled for what they are: misogynistic, hateful, backward and ignorant.

Kathy Kustra, Boise

Yenor’s misogyny

I was outraged after reading the article about misogynist Scott Yenor, a political science professor at Boise State University. While he may have the right to make derogatory statements about women, those beliefs should preclude him from teaching at Boise State. His plan to discourage women from pursuing the fields of engineering, law, and medicine so they can stay home and become baby factories would deprive half of all Americans the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Let him give up his career and become the homemaker.

Slowly, but surely, sick men like Professor Yenor are trying to turn this country into one like the “The Handmaid’s Tale.” These men need to be rooted out of our education system. They are dangerous and un-American. Fire Professor Yenor now.

Carol A. Benz, Boise

Yenor’s hate speech

BSU is gravely mistaken. Hate speech is not free speech. Misogyny, an expression of unreasoned contempt for women, is hate speech. My youngest noted, “Our social studies teacher explained the right to free speech ends when it becomes the attempt to violate the rights of another.” An explanation so simple that a political science professor, and a university cowering behind a canned statement, might understand it. Countenance is condoning. The suggestion that half the population be denied the right to self-determination, based on dystopic yearning for an outmoded era, cannot be ignored. To state the obvious – there are young women in Dr. Yenor’s classroom, whose tuition fuels the university that employs him. There are women in the Idaho workforce, whose taxes flow in the general direction of his paycheck. What a source of embarrassment this must be to him; his salary is beholden in part to women engaged, at this very moment, in activities other than childbearing.

Misogyny is not a political ideology or social crusade, but a personal disorder that stems from a childhood gone wrong. I am using my free speech to respectfully suggest that those so plagued take their issues to a therapist, where they belong.

Jill Morga, Boise