Sir, - Kevin Myers's recent attempt to defend Irishmen from a la carte feminism (March 13th) demands response especially as he deemed that the written word was one task women were capable of performing to some degree of aesthetic satisfaction. While Myers's rhetoric clearly displayed his conviction that artistic men are "not, within the male sex, the norm", his insistence that artistic women have been, in the past, non-existent was not proven.
Instead of fobbing off Germaine Greer, Myers ought to have read her history of women artists, The Obstacle Race, to discover all those painters and artisans he automatically precluded from the canon. Instead of feeling threatened by the "vileness" of the Girlie Show, he ought to have read a little closer those women authors he does concede to exist - Jane Austen's satire of the true fairer sex, lost to his own pride and prejudice; or Virginia Woolf's attack on male institutions and their banishing of the creative woman to a room of her own.
It also might be worth reflecting on what his "more" mentality (men are "more creative, more energetic, braver, stronger" ) has done to ensure that women remain outside the canon of "greatness"; This male "moreness" has created a hierarchy of genres, ensuring that female dominated ones (the still life, the sculpture of mother and child, the making of clothes and furniture, the diary or letter) fell victim to masterly aesthetics (history painting, political sculpture, the building of palaces, the heroics novel). Such censorship has led to the naive presumption that there have been no women "to be taken seriously".
Feminism has long outgrown its 1970s phase of blind gynocriticism, embracing all women creators because of their gender alone. The whole infrastructure determining what is and is not "high" art has to be reconsidered, and dissenting views contextualised. This re examination is one activity for which Americans do deserve praise.
They have recognised quilt making as an art form, for example. This is how the rulebook has changed. Let Mr Myers be assured that women are far more offended by such dismissive accounts of their race than by the use of the c-word. - Yours, etc.,
Courtauld Institute of Art, London.