Sometimes a Cartoon Is Just a Cartoon

To the Editor:

To those who wrote to complain about the December 3 cartoon by Mark Litzler (“Cartoon of Female Scientists Was Sexist and Offensive,” Letters to the Editor, January 14), I would say, “Lighten up!”

I notice that neither of the two writers is a female scientist. When we saw the cartoon in our female-headed and all-female-staffed surgical research laboratory, we immediately burst out laughing, put it up on the bulletin board, and sent it to all the female scientists we know. Not one found it offensive. It is poking fun at a stereotype.

Now perhaps, if we were still in the very early days of an equal-rights struggle, it would be much less funny. But it is a measure of exactly how far women in the sciences have come that we can laugh at ourselves.

Rose Callahan
Surgery Research
William Beaumont Hospital
Southfield, Mich.