It repels ant attracts. It is dangerous and dangerously fashionable and endangered. It is much misused, and sometimes not innocently. The statement that women are oppressed is frequently met with the claim that men are oppressed too. We hear that oppressing is oppressive to those who oppress as well as those they oppress.
Some men cite as evidence of their oppression their much-advertised inability to cry.
It is tough, we are told, to be masculine. Once such usage has been put over on us, then if ever we deny that any person or group is oppressed, we seem to imply that we think they never suffer and have no feelings. For women, such accusation is particularly intimidating, since sensitivity is on eof the few virtues that has been assigned to us. If we are found insensitive, we may fear we have no redeeming traits at all and perhaps are not real women. But this is nonsense.