SIR – Below is a reply I have written to Mr [James] Connell’s Fair Point column ‘Let men be men for all our faults’ (Worcester News, September 10). I disagree with most of what he says, so my letter satirises his opinions, while simultaneously addressing the more serious problems that opinions like his hold on the rest of society.

It is not often that I come across opinion pieces as insightful as yours, Mr Connell, so thank you for alerting me to this grand conspiracy that casts a shadow over society.

I can’t imagine how difficult it must be, particularly for you, a white, heterosexual (I assume), male, to suddenly feel threatened by other men breaking the social norms, which you so eloquently and nobly prescribe to the rest of society.

You could not be more right to state how “wrong” it is for “men to look every bit as manicured as their wife or girlfriend”.

It must feel very threatening and degrading to be forced to look at and to be around these men, who do not dress or behave the way that you demand.

Perhaps you would find a more suitable social climate in Kim-Jong-un’s North Korea or maybe even Stalin’s USSR.

Moreover, this era that you call “emasculation” is clearly oppressive to men like yourself.

Being called out on making out-dated and sexist comments must be truly awful for you. I cannot imagine nor recall any time in human history in which an individual has suffered such acute and flagrant oppression.

As you quite rightly say, men are “designed to be dangerous, aggressive risktakers’. You also say “reserve the right… to get in drunken macho scrapes”.

The definition and celebration of this type of masculinity has never caused any harm to anybody.

Definitely not to the countless rape victims, nor those who suffer at the hands of violent crime and certainly not to the two women a week in the UK who are murdered by their current or ex-partner. Thank you again for your insightful article.

JENNIFER McCONNEL

Worcester