Alina Rastam's response to Eric Paulsen and S and G is lamentable rock throwing drivel to the gender equality cause, which the prevention of violence against women movement does not need.

Strong words, I realize, but Alina should really wake up and smell the coffee. Not all men are rapists, potentially or otherwise, and not all of us are egoistical morons either, no matter what the 'tone' of her letter might suggest.

If I sound upset, it is because Alina's view does nothing to further the cause of gender equality or the prevention of violence against women, and not because any point that has hit 'home'. The letter obfuscates rather than assists. Luckily for Alina, we can distinguish the importance of a cause from a bad argument marshaled in its support.

Paulsen urged that indulgence in exaggerations and irrational generalizations would do nothing to garner support for the aforementioned causes. His point, I believe, was not that men would be insulted in as much as that people in general are attracted to a sound and intuitively appealing argument.

If Alina wants support, then she should clearly explain why these causes are a matter of collective responsibility and why they are complex and disturbing.

Instead, she has resorted to more gender bashing by relying on some dubious view about the male ego. She shows no awareness of the kind of standards a suitable moral argument must meet.

Indeed there are many men and women who accept unsustainable beliefs about the role of women in society, especially in relation to men. Alina cites religious zealots and idiots as her targets. (Those who believe a woman can bring a rape upon her self) I fail to see how such defective views are peculiarly the cause of something male, let alone one's ego.

Instead, she could have argued more smoothly and arrestingly that there are certain criteria, perspicuous in the way we engage in moral reflection, which reject some views as not genuinely moral at all. These are beliefs premised upon prejudice, raw expressions of emotion or distaste, grounded in mistakes of fact or are merely the product of parroting, just to name four criteria.

The silly religious view can be rejected because the view on rape rests on a mistaken view of the psychology of rape. (Alternatively it may be said to rest on an unsound philosophical understanding of rape. It is often argued to be an act of dominance more than violence.)

She might have gained more ground by showing how personal and political values support discrimination or violence. People are more likely to be persuaded if one can show how the deeper principles that govern their decision-making cannot sustain outcomes that perpetuate inequality, if only they would reflect more clearly and rigorously.

It is another way of saying that what they already accept, perhaps at the level of conviction, is not properly expressed at the level of practical results or the values they think they espouse.

An even more insidious point is her insistence that supporters of these causes are justified in using 'extreme' measures to hammer home the seriousness of the aforementioned issues. Again her folly lies in rejecting standards of reasonableness in favour of intellectual bullying or guerilla style persuasion.

Certainly she is not the first to resort to shock tactics. Catherine MacKinnon's diatribe against pornography in her book Only Words is peppered with images of how men subjugate women in a primarily sexual manner.

Some feminists believe that unless women argue this way, they will be effectively silenced or not properly heard. The problem with this tact is that their arguments are too easily refuted because they are so obviously weak.

Shock tactics might work with two year olds when it comes to getting them to eat their veggies, but has little effect on ingrained values that need to unearthed and examined. As I noted, the causes Alina wishes to defend are important ones with complex roots that need to be addressed by arguments that are matching in quality.

Although my understanding of the movement which drives gender equality is admittedly minimal, some have argued that the very concepts we use to allocate rights and responsibilities are inherently male.

This is not intended to be a dubious metaphysical claim (clearly concepts cannot possess gender). Rather, they say that the way we think about rights and responsibility, in morality, politics and law - since we utilise shared concepts - tends to perpetuate the subservience of women.

The argument is complex and I am not sure that I understand it fully. The nerve of it seems to be that this subservience is supported because these concepts compel a woman to characterize her unique experiences in a way that is untrue by applying a typically male-outlook on the world.

This is a view which holds people to be independent rational beings defined by the moral choices they might make. Hence, laws are governed by principles which look at choice and reasonableness.

Where a woman is groped on a bus, we might call that an assault. However, she might feel humiliated, angry or used and none of this is deemed pertinent to the calculus of wrong-doing. By forcing her to relegate these important aspects of her experience, that is an insult generated by the insistence of a male point of view.

There might well be strong reasons to compel a re-inspection of our moral, political and legal concepts and I cannot pass judgment on the argument I sketched above. It is certainly true that there are many gaps in our legal system which leave women undefended.

However, I am not sure that the current concepts themselves are defective or whether it is more the case that the people who use them simply possess an impoverished understanding of morality, politics and law. I believe that each person is entitled to certain rights in virtue of their equal status as moral beings.

Gender, religious preference, sexual orientation, race or economic standing has no bearing, in principle, on their moral, political and legal entitlements.

It is unclear why this kind of liberal agenda cannot powerfully assist the movement for greater equality as a whole especially when a closer examination of our personal and political morality reveals it to be a commitment that we do accept, though improperly manifest.

To conclude, it is regrettable that this opportunity for enlightened public debate is sullied by the lowest common denominator of argument or non-argument as the case may be. We do not need the brand of argument Alina has to offer because that is unlikely to make any progress at all.

I have often been confronted with the mind-numbing claims that as a man I shall never understand the "female point of view". This is often used as a means of excusing intellectual tardiness on the basis that the need for reason is, somehow, peculiarly male.

If these causes are public causes and a matter of collective responsibility, I fail to see how 'extreme' measures and the jettisoning of a rational position places these pressing matters on platform that may be equally accessed. It just makes Alina's installment nothing more than 'Only Words'.