Dear Jeremy

Today I fell out of love with you.

You see, I am a lover of words, of literature . From Tolstoy to Bolano, from Rushdie to Hitchens, I love language and the thoughts and emotions they provoke in me. Yes, me, a "gorgeous" sex kitten who has a Doctorate from some dodgy Institute in San Francisco, is actually an intellectual slut.

I was always in admiration of your words, they entertained me, I thought you were smart with words. Until those words were used on me. I thought back on your many words I have read and realized you use your talent with words to insult others. Some call it satire. I see it now as acerbic wit I became just another victim of your words. I fell out of love.

What created the most distress in me was not the insult to my education, the questioning of my qualifications (by the way, do let the WHO and all the other international bodies for whom I work know I'm under qualified or else bother to read edited version of my lengthy CV http://www.dreve.co.za/about/)

Rather it was personally facing Homophobia. Through your false accusation of me being "gay" (surely you of all people who are familiar with being a public figure would be sensitive to how greedy the public are for any tidbit of sexual information they can get on me?!) I was faced with a double edged sword: I felt an immediate need to defend my heterosexuality followed by an alarming feeling of shame that in doing so, I was discriminating against non-heterosexual people. I was distancing myself from gay people.

I too was being as prejudicial as you - and your mate Stephen Mulholland to whom you offer a weak defense for an abominable article akin to hate speech. I wept with empathy for non-heterosexual people who daily face this discrimination. I had one day of fending off gasps of "Is Marlene gay?" I cannot imagine a lifetime of this.

Perhaps you will be disappointed that I have fallen out of love with you. This is a healthy reason to be disappointed in me. A way better reason for disappointment than were I gay.

I look forward to forming a new relationship with you, a relationship in which you stand by my side as a sexual rights defender, using your words, wisdom and wit to overcome harmful life -threatening prejudice and discrimination against non-hetero normative people.

Marlene Wasserman, Founder of the DR EVE brand

January 23 2013

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