17 JANUARY 1976, Page 3

Non-event

Sir: N

19, ancy Mum, in her comprehensive review of c. as far as women were concerned, denies that the International women's year' was after all a non!vent, and proceeded to give a formidable array of all the events that it did bring about. So it was a bon3rtniclable non-event. I thought it was a nuisance, a re and a nonsense. And finally it was dunce-capped most appropriately by the Sex Discrimination Act — a Stupidly dangerous piece of legislation. This Act may ,w,ed cause a great deal of harm. It will tend to polarise the already existing antagonism between men and W.e.rnen: will tend to cause a kind of men v women Civil war. Of course, in sex itself (normal) there is the ultimate discrimination that will nullify, in a way, the '3A, because normally (or even perversely) a woman ,e_annot do a man's job in bed, and vice versa — which (11.as already given the permissively destroyed enlIghtened1) twentieth century a great deal of

queer-lesbian fret; but no amount of legislation can alter the natural law of sex discrimination. And it is from this natural law that other kinds of variation /discrimination necessarily follow; and are similarly inexpungeable. But the SDA will still cause a great deal of open and subversive animosity and trouble, and not the least between siblings in the home.

The almost hermetically sealed 'traditional' difference in the roles of man and woman was never arbitrarily laid down by some fascist dictatorship of mankind in the past — or, the f.d. that did lay it down was none other than natural evolution itself, which will hardly tremble at an idiot piece of feverish activity in the British Parliament of 1975. Nature Will, of course, correct for this SDA aberration, but in doing so she may knock things about a bit — after all it is well said that hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Thomas W. Gadd 171 Church Road, Flixton, Manchester