Sexist Attitude? Some May Be Reading Between Lines

Every writer strives to avoid ambiguity, but he expects his readers to assist him by careful reading.

I am always writing some reader to explain that I didn’t mean what he thought I meant, nor did I say what he thought I said. It isn’t always my fault.

Recently I quoted a Mexicali schoolteacher who was trying to correct our misconceptions about Mexican culture. “We do have a grand celebration on 5 de mayo . . . but everybody goes to work (at least those who are not sleeping under a cactus with the sombrero on their face). . . .”

A reader wrote to castigate me for “inserting” that cliche about “sleeping under a cactus.” Evidently he does not understand punctuation. That phrase was clearly the schoolteacher’s and was enclosed by quotation marks. It was obviously ironic.

The reader also ignored my own disclaimer: “No one works harder than our immigrants from the south.”

I have also received a flurry (not quite a storm) of complaints over a suggestion I made in a column about saving the environment.

First, Maurine Reedy Ruzek said I “blew the whole thing” with this paragraph: “There is not much we can do to curb overpopulation, which several readers have identified as the Earth’s main curse.”

Ruzek was incensed that I would say “there is not much we can do.” She ignored the obvious: The we in that sentence referred to my wife and me, not the populace in general, since I had just noted that the question over disposable diapers was immaterial to us, for obvious reasons. (Of course, I suppose there is something one can do about overpopulation besides not contributing to it.)

To avoid coming home from the supermarket with paper or plastic bags, both of which add to the environmental glut, two or three readers suggested that my wife carry a cloth bag with her when she shops, and another suggested she carry a plastic bag in her purse, reusing it over and over.

Then, overwhelmed by dire warnings about the evil wages of overpopulation, I suggested that “Perhaps young women, instead of carrying plastic bags in their purses, ought to carry something else.”

By “something else,” obviously, I meant condoms. That is a word I had not previously used in this space. When I joined The Times we couldn’t even use the word rape , and we couldn’t even suggest that condoms existed. Now, of course, the condom is out of the closet. In the shadow of overpopulation, its time has come.

However, I was not pilloried for bad taste but for sexism in suggesting that women carry condoms. Ruzek fired one final shot: “Besides, Jack Smith, how come you said maybe women should carry ‘something else’ in their purse? How about men?”

Jeanne S. Dawes recalls that she was a farm girl who was taught that if a girl got herself pregnant it was her fault; the man got off scot-free, “whistling lightheartedly” through life.

“For every pregnant female there is a contributing male. True? True. Then tell it like it is and no more warnings for ‘young women.’ ”

“Valiantly,” writes Mariko M. Yamada of San Diego, “Smith advances the facts of overpopulation as the real issue of saving our planet, surmising that ‘perhaps young women, instead of carrying plastic bags in their purses, ought to carry something else.’ I’m guessing he means something to help make sexist columnists an endangered species?”

“At last count,” writes Kathleen Maher of Monrovia, “it takes a woman nine months to produce a child. In a nine-month period, a male can impregnate countless females. Taking that into consideration, who should keep what where? Isn’t it time the male of the species took some responsibility for his actions?”

Yes, it is time the male took some responsibility for his actions. But experience shows that most or many males don’t. Since it’s the woman who pays, is it sexist to suggest that, instead of depending on the untrustworthy male, she take a simple precaution to protect herself from unwanted pregnancy? If the male refuses to take the hint, she can just say no.

Several readers ask why my wife should do our shopping. “While I am impressed by your concern for the environment,” writes Milissa Jacobs of Beverly Hills, “I am less impressed (honestly, I am offended) by your sexist attitudes.

“In this day and age ‘young women’ and young men, middle-aged women and middle-aged men, old women and old men--all do the marketing! . . . Maybe the next time the cupboard is bare you and Mrs. Smith can go to the market together with your canvas bags!”

You may not believe this, but I think my wife likes to shop, just as she likes to wash and iron clothes. It’s probably something in her genes.