Letter to Al Franken from a group of women opposed to his jokes about sex with robots, of course meaning women.
Dear Mr. Franken,

We proudly write this letter to you as women who are actively involved and engaged in our communities. We represent businesses, community organizations, and both the public and the private sector.

Some of us are mothers, some of us are wives, and some of us are sisters and aunts. But all of us are women who care passionately about the way women are perceived and treated in society.

Today, the Speaker of the Minnesota House of Representatives is a woman. The Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives is a woman. The Lt. Governor of our state is a woman. And one of the three leading candidates to be President of the United States, Senator Hillary Clinton, is a woman.

In many countries across the world, women and girls are treated as second class citizens. In some nations, girls are mutilated to prevent them from having their own identity. In some nations, women are stoned to death for minor crimes, and in other countries, the birth of a girl in a family is treated with disdain and disappointment.

The perceptions of girls and women and how they are treated and respected and valued in society, is of great concern to us all. Each and every one of us, in our own way, has had to fight against stereotypes of women. Each and every one of us, in our own way, has tried to empower and provide girls and young women with positive role models.

As an individual who seeks to hold one of the highest offices of our nation, your words matter and make a difference. Your 30-plus years as an entertainer, several of them as a political satirist, do influence opinions and perceptions.

Therefore, our concerns about a column you wrote in January of 2000 for Playboy magazine are about your characterization and objectification of women.

The words and descriptions you write about are beyond vulgar. They demean and degrade women as thoroughly and disrespectfully as any article we have ever seen, and we are horrified to believe that someone running for the U.S. Senate could have written them.

This column shows flagrant disregard for women, and an extreme objectification of women as sex objects for your pleasure. While you may attempt to defend your writing as satire, we hardly find anything defensible about your finding humor in your desire to have sex with women or robots that look like women simply to give yourself a good time.

This column is at its worst, an extreme example of the kind of disrespect for the role of women in society that all of us have fought our entire lives. At best, it is the disrespectful writings of a nearly 50-year old man who seems to think that women's bodies are the domain of a man who just wants to have a good time.

Today, girls and young women struggle with perceptions of themselves and popular cultural expectations of how they should look, behave, talk and dress. Rampant anorexia and bulimia brought on by the idea that there is the "perfect" body or the "perfect" personality causes loss of life and despair across our country each and every day.

Women are not weak and powerless, and today, a group of strong, proud and powerful women are making our voices heard. All of us are strong, united Minnesota women who demand an apology for your words and your writings. Do not dismiss our concerns as Republican women as a partisan attack. For if you do, you once again simply underscore the fact that you do not "get it."

We believe there is a pattern in your writings and words that seem to suggest you believe you can continue to represent women as playthings and objects and then scurry behind the defense that it is simply "comedy" or "satire".

All of us enjoy a joke as much as the next person. But portraying women as robots who exist to simply to cater to your needs is not funny.

As someone who wishes to serve in the United States Senate, you have a heavier obligation to be held accountable for the words and ideas you have put forward - whether they were written when you were 40 or 50 or 55. Your writings are not those of a young, inexperienced comedian trying to make it big. They are the writings of a middle-aged man who has made millions of dollars and is secure in his life and future.

Please provide some of that same opportunity to thousands of Minnesota girls and young women and denounce this article and apologize immediately.

Sincerely,

Alfranken has yet to reply.