With the new Wonder Woman movie set to release June 2 nationwide, some theaters have planned to show the major blockbuster to select audiences made up solely of women (and people who identify as women). This doesn’t mean there won’t be all-inclusive screenings, too, but cities like Austin want to celebrate women. However, the idea of women-only screenings has drawn negative feedback online. For one man, expressing a grumpy opinion on social media just wasn’t enough.
According toEntertainment Weekly, Mayor Steve Adler of Austin, Texas, responded personally to an email about a women-only screening at Austin’s Alamo Drafthouse sent to his official website. The man who wrote the email planned on boycotting the city and “caus[ing] damage to [Austin’s] image” because he was angry about the screenings.
In a terribly written rant, the man claimed, “The theater that pandered to the sexism typical of women will, I hope, regret it’s decision.” (Notice the grammatical mistake?) He also falsely accused women of “pretend[ing]…to not know that only men serve in combat because they are content to have an easier ride” and “gladly accept[ing] gold medals at the Olympics for coming in 10th and competing only against the second class of athletes.” He added, "Name something invented by a woman!"
Ultimately, the man threatened that he would “never visit Austin again and will welcome it’s [sic] [deterioration]” if the city doesn’t agree to hold a men-only event. (There’s that grammatical mistake again!)
Mayor Adler responded with an incredibly witty reply: “I am writing to alert you that your email account has been hacked by an unfortunate and unusually hostile individual. Please remedy your account’s security right away, lest this person’s uninformed and sexist rantings give you a bad name. After all, we men have to look out for each other!”
He continued, “Can you imagine if someone thought that you didn’t know women could serve in our combat units now without exclusion? What if someone thought you didn’t know that women invented medical syringes, life rafts, fire escapes, central and solar heating, a war-time communications system for radio-controlling torpedoes that laid the technological foundations for everything from Wi-Fi to GPS, and beer? And I hesitate to imagine how embarrassed you’d be if someone thought you were upset that a private business was realizing a business opportunity by reserving one screening this weekend for women to see a superhero movie.”
As a final punch to the gut, Adler pointed out the man’s misogynistic views as “an embarrassment to modernity, decency, and common sense.” We couldn’t agree more, sir.