MANifesto: An electronic newsletter of news and opinion on gender issues.
July, 1996. Please feel free to copy, forward, repost, fax and otherwise
distribute MANifesto. If you excerpt any section, please excerpt it in its
entirety. MANifesto is copyright 1996 by Per.
WELCOME READERS, to our atonement for last issue's "War On
Women" theme. In that issue we discussed all those things that feminists
label a "War On Women" -- dastardly things such as disagreeing with a
feminist. To make up for it, we present a special "Protecting the
Womenfolk" issue. (If you know of any feminist who perceives criticism to
be a "verbal battering," please protect the poor dear by making sure she
does not read this issue -- or anything else that might challenge her
assumptions.)
INDEX:
NEWS AND OPINION
I. MORE MUGU TO-DO
II. PROTECTING THE WOMENFOLK, PART I
III. PROTECTING THE WOMENFOLK, PART II
IV. PROTECTING THE WOMENFOLK, PART III
V. PROTECTING THE WOMENFOLK, PART IV
VI. PROTECTING THE WOMENFOLK, PART V:
MY OWN RUSH TO JUDGMENT
VII. MEN ARE RINGLEADERS, WOMEN ARE DRUGGED
VIII. REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS FALSE
IX. FRIED GREEN HISTORY
X. TRUTH, SCHMUTH
XI. COSMOWATCH
HUMOR
POW PRESIDENT HARASSES HERSELF
IF HILLARY COMMITTED AN AXE MURDER
FEMINIST LIFEGUARDS
==========
MORE MUGU TO-DO
In the last issue of MANifesto, we told you about the sexual
harassment accusations being made by four women at the Navy's Air Test and
Evaluation Squadron 9 at Point Mugu, Calif. Investigators found no evidence
to back up the accusations. But one of the women was so enraged at being
questioned on her accusations that she broke the investigator's foot.
Now the latest to-do at Mugu: When being questioned on her story,
another one of the accusers began yelling, then raised her fist at the
investigator and had to be restrained. The woman, Debbie Clark, 22, has
been sent to the brig for 30 days for assault.
All of the accused men have been cleared. However, three of the four
accusers have been cited for rule infractions. The fourth woman has been
dismissed from service because of a personality disorder.
Some feminists seem to think that women are entitled to greater safety
protection than men, that women should be shielded from a variety of
indignities that men routinely endure -- and that due process and standards
of proof should be lowered to more easily convict men solely on a woman's
accusation. When a woman makes an accusation, she should be automatically
believed, so they say.
So, tongue in cheek and shoe on the other foot, we have to ask:
Are violence and threats the tools that feminists use when they feel
their matriarchal privileges are threatened?
Just asking.
==========
PROTECTING THE WOMENFOLK, PART I
Adrian Pilkington was 20 years old when he was stabbed and tossed off
a bridge in Frederick County, Maryland, on June 18.
Four teenagers are accused of killing him, says State's Attorney Scott
Rolle.
The motive, says Rolle: the teens believed Pilkington had shown
disrespect toward one of their female friends.
==========
PROTECTING THE WOMENFOLK, PART II
Paul "P.J." Jefferson, 19, was beaten to death by a mob of teens who
gathered at his house June 27 in Waldorf, Maryland. Motive: The attackers
were angry because they believed P.J.'s brother had called one of their
female friends a "heifer" and accused her of taking $40.
==========
PROTECTING THE WOMENFOLK, PART III
Captain Ernie Blanchard was the chief spokesman for the Coast Guard, a
dedicated serviceman who inspired others and won glowing praise and
admiration.
As a speaker, he had a gift for firing up an audience or a classroom.
But Ernie Blanchard's life was destroyed because of a speech have gave in
January of 1995 to Coast Guard Academy cadets in New London, Connecticut.
In it, he told suggestive jokes to a room of both men and women. One
example: He met a sailor who had given his fiancee a diamond broach with
several naval flag signals surrounding it. She thought that the flags meant
"I love you." but he took a closer look and realized they meant "permission
granted to lay alongside."
Some in the audience took offense.
When Blanchard was told of this, he immediately wrote a letter of
apology that was read to the entire company. This was an unusual step: a
superior officer and chief spokesman for the entire Coast Guard, humbling
himself before cadets. But Blanchard listened to the criticism and did his
best to make amends and educate others in how his behavior had been
unacceptable.
For some people, it still was not enough.
Though Blanchard had apologized, his critics pushed for more. They got
the academy superintendent involved, and the admiral "instructed" Blanchard
personally about the matter. And Blanchard's jokes were revived again and
used in classes to give the cadets further instruction in sensitivity.
It still was not enough.
An 800-page report on the incident (with unnamed, unidentified women
hurling unanswered invective at Blanchard) reveals what some of them were
thinking. One said the Coast Guard should "make an example out of
Blanchard. Book �im." One woman who was not even at the dinner wrote: "No
one should come in from outside the academy and spread such a message of
hate."
But who was spreading hate? Was it Blanchard, by telling some
ill-advised jokes and then apologizing? Or his attackers? Their tactics
became increasingly sinister. Soon they were spreading false rumors that
Blanchard told racist jokes at the dinner. Black people who were there --
and who would have remembered -- recalled no such jokes. But Blanchard's
critics were not going to let truth get in the way.
And it still was not enough.
Commander Kathleen Donohoe, the Coast Guard's gender policy adviser,
visited the academy. She stayed up until 4 a.m. talking with female cadets
who had not been at the dinner, yet were still outraged. Donohoe took the
horror stories back to the bureaucracy in Washington. The matter was
urgent, because female cadets were threatening to take the story to the
local media, which had a reputation for being hostile toward the academy.
They would probably love a story like this -- another Tailhook scandal.
A rear admiral ordered an investigation. Blanchard was read his
Miranda rights.
His critics were getting what they wanted.
They were out for blood.
They got it.
Twelve days after Ernie Blanchard was read his rights, he put a
revolver in his mouth and pulled the trigger. "Blanchard, 46, career
military man, husband and father of a teenage son and daughter, a man with
no history of emotional problems, took his life certain that he was about to
be sacrificed by a Coast Guard determined to show it could never produce a
Tailhook." (The Washington Post, July 7, 1996, page F1.)
"This is about a death by political correctness," the Post says. "Whether
it was suicide by political correctness or homicide by political correctness
depends on your point of view."
But what seems certain to us that the people going after Ernie
Blanchard wanted to destroy him, in one way or another. To protect women
from dirty jokes, they would willingly destroy a man's career. One way or
another, they would destroy his life.
His life was less important to them than the sensitivities of women
who are supposed to be able to serve and protect our nation in the face of
more hostile actions than a few off-color jokes.
And after Blanchard's death, the investigating officer ruled that by
telling jokes to a roomful of people, Blanchard had committed willful sexual
harassment.
The decision was overturned. Too late to save Blanchard.
We have to question a movement that would be outraged over a man
making sexual jokes, yet have no trouble with making false accusations of
racism. We have to question a procedure that sets men up for minor offenses
and allows people to take out on him all their past political anger or
private disappointments.
Fourteen months after Blanchard's suicide, there was another death in
the ranks. Navy Admiral Jeremy M. "Mike" Boorda, chief of naval operations,
killed himself due to tremendous pressures on the Navy because of recent
scandals, including Tailhook. The news media had loved Tailhook. It had
sex in it. It featured sobbing women in need of protection, and reporters
eager to take down any claim they made. It was made-for-TV-movie fodder.
It was a great scandal. And even men who were never accused of wrongdoing
have had their careers destroyed simply because they were there at Tailhook.
(See next item.) These men have been cleared by the military justice
system, yet are still condemned in the court of political expediency.
Their innocence is not enough. There is no price too high to pay for
protecting the womenfolk.
==========
PROTECTING THE WOMENFOLK, PART IV
Cmdr. Robert E. Stumpf, a Navy pilot, has decided to retire and give
up on fighting trumped-up charges related to the Tailhook scandal.
Stumpf is a gifted pilot who once led the elite Blue Angels flying
team. But his career was shot down because he was at the 1991 Tailhook
Association convention in Las Vegas.
Stumpf's "crime" was being in a hotel suite where a strip-tease act
was performed. Testimony says that after Stumpf left the room, a stripper
performed oral sex on an aviator.
Stumpf and 132 other men were put on a secret list containing rumors
or unproven accusations of misconduct at Tailhook. This process is known as
"Tailhook certification."
Whenever a soldier with "Tailhook certification" is recommended for
promotion, the Senate Armed Forces Committee has been automatically
rejecting it. It doesn't matter if the men were cleared. Our public
servants don't want to do anything that could get them accused of being
"soft on Tailhook."
The Senate actually approved Stumpf's promotion once, then put on the
political pressure to kill it after realizing they had forgotten about his
"Tailhook certification."
Stumpf, a highly qualified soldier who would risk his life to defend
his country, is leaving the service of a country that would not defend him.
His case is an ironic contrast to that of Kara Hultgreen, who became a
fighter pilot amid a lot of political pressure to put women in military
planes. Hultgreen crashed and died while attempting to land on an aircraft
carrier. The brass tried to blame mechanical problems, but confidential
reports leaked to the Internet and the news media showed that the cause was
pilot error. The political pressures that put her in the cockpit are also
keeping a qualified male out.
There is something seriously wrong when the military tries to shield a
woman's reputation from the consequences of her own actions while ruining a
man's reputation based on the actions of others.
The main role of the military is to protect the womenfolk -- and all
the rest of us, as well. If soldiers were in a position to save your
family, what would matter most to you --whether the soldiers are
well-trained and capable, or whether they had once been in a hotel room with
a stripper?
==========
PROTECTING THE WOMENFOLK, PART V:
MY OWN RUSH TO JUDGMENT
The item arrived in my e-mail. I set it aside with the rest of the
personal correspondence and spams until I was offline. Then, with a cup of
coffee in hand, I began reading a horror story.
Beginning with the innocuous title of "Read this account of a walk I
took," it described a man who took a walk near secluded woods, encountered a
young woman, and savagely attacked her. The sadistic, dehumanizing attack
was described in pornographic detail: anal rape, rape with a splintering
stick, savage beatings that excited the narrator sexually.
I read it at first hoping, and then praying, that the story was a
joke, that the narration would turn out to be a trick or rhetorical device,
and all the time wondering, "Why has this been sent to me?"
But the story wasn't a trick or a rhetorical device. It concludes
with the narrator wounding the woman with gunshots and leaving her to die
there slowly, in the woods, then walking away quite satisfied.
I felt degraded just for having read it. And I had a lingering sense
of guilt, wondering: "What in the world could I have ever said on the
Internet that would make him think I wanted to see his sick fantasies? What
did I do to encourage him?"
And it left me with a dilemma. I had always advocated free speech on
the Internet. But the person who wrote this was sick. I had to ask myself
two essential questions:
Was he a genuine danger to women?
By sending me this filth, had he committed an offense grievous enough
that his account ought to be sanctioned or terminated?
I checked the return address -- from an American Online account
belonging to someone I will refer to as Mr. H. Then I noticed he had not
sent it solely to me, but was working off a spamming list.
I wrote down the return address and spiked the story. I didn't want
to keep a copy.
Throughout the day, I contemplated what response I would have to make
to Mr. H. Regardless of whether I notified his postmaster at AOL, I would
have to message him and demand that he never send me anything again. But
what tone should I take? Should I try to reason with him that his fantasies
are not normal and then tell him that, for his own sake, he should seek
treatment? Or should I call him every degenerate name in the book and tell
him what I hoped would happen to him?
While thinking it over, I went online to do a little surfing, trying
to turn up any other trail of slime he might have left. I found a few
innocuous posts he had made, discussing his favorite songs from the music
group The Police.
But mention of him was cropping up in the net-abuse newsgroups and
elsewhere. Many others had received this message. To show just how twisted
the sender was, some who received it were in newsgroups for rape or abuse
victims.
And other people were pointing out something that should have been
obvious. The original message was forged.
It had not originated from America Online. Some hacker had forged a
post and made it look like it came from Mr. H's account.
In my emotional, visceral reaction to the story, I hadn't even taken a
good look at the header on the story. Anger and revulsion had rolled right
over the basic act of looking to see if it was really from his account.
Instead I rushed to judgment that this Mr. H. was indeed guilty, and
that something had to be done about him. And I had rushed to this judgment
while working on an issue of MANifesto with the theme of the excesses that
arise from the rush to "protect the womenfolk." I had absolutely no excuse.
But other people were having harsher reactions.
The story was being used to question First Amendment rights. One
poster said, "If free speech say's you can perpously hurt people, then screw
that!"
She added: "I also did not read the whole message I got. As soon as I
figured out what the subject matter was, I stopped reading."
But far more sinister are sentiments such as these, posted in the
newsgroup alt.religion.christian, in a thread called: "should slaughter
these people who send rape stories." It said.
"I dont know much about reading return paths, or tracing sources of
this vile trash... but this man should be slaughtered merely for writing
this story. I am enraged not just for receiving it in my email, but for a
weak government who cant even carry out the biblical command to execute
those who openly murder. Court trials and juries are for the innocently
accused and the not the guilty. If you have ever been raped, do not read
this... it is being posted to bring shame to those not severely enforcing
the law to rid these mentally ill people. The Bible never excuses mentally
ill people from crimes. Mentally ill people should be treated before they
commit crimes, not afterward, when they should be punished as all others."
When I read this, I remember the case of Eddie Polec, a Philadelphia
teen beaten to death when someone circulated a false story that Polec had
raped a young woman.
I remembered the case of a man named Kaare Sortland, discussed briefly
in "The Myth of Repressed Memory," by Dr. Elizabeth Loftus. Sortland and
his wife had been accused of child molestation. The accusations were based
on so-called "recovered memories," which are increasingly shown to be
unreliable, distorted and often false. Kaare and Judy Sortland were cleared
of the charges. But one night, someone gunned down Kaare Sortland outside
his home.
America Online users can post personal profiles to let other users
know more about them. Mr. H., whose account had been forged, had a profile
that gave his hometown. If his name is in the phone book, someone could
track him down and administer the type of vigilante justice being advocated
by some.
Maybe that's exactly what the person who forged Mr. H.'s account was
hoping for.
The forger also sent out several other stories -- one of them of the
"your mother has sex with dogs" variety. It looks like the forger was
trying to get people as furious as possible at Mr. H.
Some people have said that "Read this account of a walk I took"
appears to be one of the stories written by the notorious Jake Baker, who
stirred national controversy when he transmitted several violent rape
fantasies via the Internet. If that is true, then the forger didn't write
that story at all, but merely copied it and sent it out. But why?
If the intent was to stir up a blind fury against Mr. H., then this is
precisely the sort of material you would send out.
The material seems designed to tap into that automatic desire to
protect the womenfolk -- to shield them from violence, and even from insults
and sexual innuendo. It was the type of material that could whip up
extreme, vengeful, unthinking rage that results when it seems like the
womenfolk are not being protected.
Indeed, the discussions about this post often center on the harm the
stories could do to women, or on First Amendment issues. What seems to be
overlooked is the possibility that this forgery was designed to bring a
great deal of harm to a certain man.
And that raises and interesting legal question: if the forger's story
inspired someone to harm Mr. H., would the forger be held accountable?
I have no answers, only lessons from my own emotional rush to judgment
against Mr. H., who had posted nothing on the Internet more offensive than
his fondness for certain rock music.
As for who the forger could be, I don't know. But perhaps we should
look closely at the people who are calling loudest for the harshest
punishment against Mr. H. Maybe in their ranks their is someone who knows a
bit about where this story came from.
==========
MEN ARE RINGLEADERS, WOMEN ARE DRUGGED
If feminists want women to be given equal credit for the work they do
with men, why do they change there minds so suddenly when it comes to
violence?
For instance, in a discussion of female violence, a feminist recently
asked: "What woman can you present who shows the value system of Charles
Manson?"
Well, there's the murderous women in the Charles Manson Family. Had
she forgotten about them?
"No ... in fact, I used Charles Manson for that very reason. He was
the ring leader. They were the pawns. As I recall, those women were
drugged to induce them to commit the acts."
For the record: Manson Family members testified they were stone-cold
sober the night of the Sharon Tate killings, because they knew they couldn't
be high while carrying out their elaborate plan of murder and misdirection.
But more importantly, note the sexist language used here. The women
"were the pawns." And that "those women were drugged."
"Were drugged." Not "those women took drugs." Not "those women were
drug users." Instead, they "were drugged" and that means there had to be
someone who was drugging them.
And guess which sex that would have to be?
And if a woman commits violence, there has to be some other
explanation than that she committed violence: she must have been abused (the
Susan Smith defense) or drugged, or mentally ill. She must have been a
victim.
This habit of giving men all the credit runs contrary to feminist
rhetoric that women "share equally" in just about every other endeavor. In
fact, to give all the credit for this to Charles Manson or men would be
deemed absolutely sexist if Manson been the leader of a band dedicated to
music, religion or commerce instead of murder.
Suppose Manson had owned a business and several of his high-ranking
corporate officers were women. And let's say these women executed many of
the company's projects, gladly putting enormous effort into the venture and
coming up with innovations of their own. Then along comes a backlasher who
says that the women's efforts really don't count because a man was the
ringleader and the women would have accomplished nothing without his
direction. If someone said that to a feminist, she'd be madder'n a wet hen.
Or take the Persian Gulf war or the Panama invasion. In each case you
had male "ringleaders" and female troops obeying their orders. But feminists
(and the news media) keep telling us that women did an "equal share" in Iraq
and Panama.
So some feminists want to have it both ways. They want women given
full credit for any positive actions they perform. But if women do
something wrong, they want the a male "ringleader" to get the credit.
Views like these affect how our justice system works.
In Winnemucca, Nevada, a girl told her boyfriend to kill their newborn
son. They were equally culpable in wanting the child dead. And the young
man, Juan Lopez, was doing what the young woman, Dale Aaron Guilbert, asked
him to do.
But note the differences in their plea agreements.
He pleaded guilty to second-degree murder.
She was allowed to plead guilty to being an *accessory* and to child
endangerment causing death.
When a man orders a death, he is the ringleader and the one
responsible.
When a woman orders a death, she is an accessory.
==========
REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS FALSE
The famous case that raised the curtain on "recovered memories" may
now help ring down the curtain on this modern American witch hunt.
In 1989, Eileen Franklin accused her father in the long-unsolved
murder of an 8-year-old girl. Eileen Franklin told police that as a little
girl in 1969, she saw her father kill 8-year-old Susan Nason. But Franklin
said she had "repressed" the memory completely from her conscious mind. She
claimed that the memories came flooding back one day when, as an adult, she
looked into her own daughter's eyes.
Though there was no physical evidence to support her claim, jurors
convicted her father, George Franklin -- the first conviction based on
"recovered memories."
But now George Franklin is being released. And that signals hope that
the hysteria over "recovered memories" might be winding down.
This is not good news for those feminists who have long embraced the
pseudo-science and circular logic of "recovered memories."
Prosecutors now know that Eileen Franklin lied about many things,
including how her memories were "recovered." She had told other people that
the memories originally came back as part of a dream. Then she told her
brother the memories came back under hypnosis, then begged him to keep quiet
when she learned that hypnosis-enhanced memory was not admissible in court.
Some investigators count five different versions of how her memories
supposedly returned. But by trial time, she had settled on the story about
looking into her daughter's eyes.
Her mother initially believed her accusations. But it wasn't until
after the trial that her mother heard about all the accusations Eileen
Franklin made. Eileen claimed to have subconsciously relived the trauma of
witnessing a murder by pulling out her hair in the spot where the victim,
Susan Nason, had been bashed in the head with a rock. She claimed this left
a gaping bald spot through long periods of her childhood. Eileen's mother
was shocked to hear of this after the trial. She recalls no bald spot, and
none shows up in their numerous family photographs.
Eileen Franklin's accusations weren't the only thing odd about the
trial. Her testimony contained errors that had appeared in newspaper
articles of the murder. That suggests her memories were based on the what
she read, rather than what she saw.
But the trial judge barred the defense from presenting this evidence
because Eileen Franklin denied reading the papers!
And then the prosecution was allowed to tell jurors that she could
have gotten those details only from seeing the murder.
She said that when she accused her father of the murder, he remained
silent. The trial judge told jurors that George Franklin's silence in the
face of this accusation could be considered a "confession."
These actions contributed to a federal judge overturning the
conviction. And Eileen Franklin's credibility was not helped when she said
she suddenly remembered a second murder her father committed. DNA evidence
and records from a union meeting show he did not.
Also, her sister later testified that both she and Eileen had been
hypnotized by a therapist -- despite Eileen Franklin's testimony to the
contrary.
Feminists like to ask, "Why would she lie?" as if the inability to
supply a reason for lying indicates that a woman is telling the truth.
Who knows why Eileen Franklin would lie? Her father certainly was not
a nice man -- emotionally and perhaps physically abusive. So "recovering"
those memories gave her an avenue to make him pay for his offenses --
whatever they may or may not be.
The "why would she lie" slogan indicates perhaps an over-eagerness on
the part of many feminists to believe just about any accusation leveled at a
man.
That certainly seems to be the case with recovered memories.
"Recovered Memory Therapy," the arcane, convoluted pseudo-science that is
used to retrieve these memories, has the full backing of many prominent
feminists. Gloria Steinem has been a tireless champion of spreading the
recovered memory gospel. As such, she has helped promote a socio-political
"recovered memory" movement that has certainly put innocent people behind
bars.
The problem with "Recovered Memory Therapy" is that it can recover
just about any "memory" that a determined therapist goes fishing for.
Therapists who believe in past lives often wind up leading their patients to
memories of previous (or even future) lives. Those who believe in alien
abductions can recover memories of being kidnaped aboard a flying saucer.
Those who believe in Satanic cults tend to find that nearly everyone has
been abused by a Satanic cult.
With recovered memories, the question should no longer be, "why would
she lie?" The question for feminists today is, "how many innocent lives
will you sacrifice before you stop believing?"
==========
FRIED GREEN HISTORY
You've read the novels, seen the movies, watched the TV shows. So you
know that white women have been the closest ally of minorities. You know
that white women were just as powerless as slaves, that they were victims
and chattel, and that whenever they could, they took a stand against the
oppressive white male.
At least, that's how it's told in the novels, movies and TV shows.
However, history has a habit of contradicting herstory, and historical
documents have a way of showing that feminist fiction is -- well, fiction.
Take, for example, black slavery in the antebellum South.
We've heard the feminist take on this: white women were powerless to
stop it, because they were no more than slaves themselves. And women's
plight as helpless chattel has made them staunch allies and protectors of
minorities everywhere. So the feminists say.
But researchers have gone to a better source: the actual white women
of the Confederacy. They have examined diaries and letters by the female
relatives who were put in charge of the plantations when the men were away
at war. These records show a remarkable lack of concern for the slaves they
oversaw. No "Fried Green Tomato" solidarity here. The contemporary fiction
of white women standing against the oppressor evaporates when exposed to
reality.
For more detail, read "Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding
South in the American Civil War," by Drew Gilpin Faust (University of North
Carolina Press, $29.95).
Here are excerpts from a review of her book in the May 9th New York
Review of Books: "As Faust sees it, the old myths that Southern women were
deeply submissive and carried on bravely and silently have also begun to
fade."
When these women were forced into the job of overseeing the plantation
while the men were away, "they had to learn fast," and running the
plantation was more important to them than the well-being of their slaves.
Women were now in a position of authority over the male overseers who still
remained. But rather than softening the harsh treatment that overseers
meted out to slaves, "some matrons adopted draconian measures." Having
gained a position of power, they simply had men carry out their brutal
orders.
If there was any softening in the treatment of slaves, Faust says, it
was due more to the approach of Union armies, which made slave escapes and
revolts more of a risk to these women. They treated their slaves better,
not out of compassion, but to get cooperation.
These women were not so kind to anyone they considered beneath their
caste. "Just as the reader is about to sympathize with a particular
plantation mistress, whose distress Faust vividly describes, she furnishes
instances of her cruelty, indifference, or snobbery. Plantation mistresses
seldom thought kindly of women considered less fortunate in breeding or
wealth than themselves. Their sometimes savage reactions toward women they
disliked remind us once again how in human affairs drastically altered
conditions can often fail to turn hearts from pride to penitence, from
contempt to commiseration."
Those who claim that women are peacemakers, or that historically they
had little power of influence, won't like what Faust has to say: "Faust
begins her account by pointing out that once a consensus for secession had
been reached, Southern women of the upper classes quickly added their voices
to the clamor -- particularly in the Deep South. Idle young men could
expect to find a petticoat placed in their living quarters with a note
attached ordering them to volunteer at once or be stigmatized. The power of
public mockery by women drove many young men to the recruiting office. Some
women displayed a frightening ferocity for war ..."
Many Confederate women embraced an ideal of masculine honor and
instilled it -- or forced it on -- their sons and brothers. They felt that
a man's life was worth less than his honor. One Mississippi senator
questioned some veterans on why they had fought so hard for a cause they
knew was lost. "We were afraid to stop. ... Afraid of the women at home.
They would have been ashamed of us."
The book also won't be pleasant reading for those who insist that
women steadfastly strove for freedom only to be held back by oppressive
males. These women had gained unprecedented amounts of power and
responsibility while the men were away, and longed to give it back. "The
traditional denial of full citizenship was bearable for women; much harder
to endure were the disappearance of necessities, the flight or
intractability of slaves, and, above all, the absence of their male
protectors, many of them never to come back at all."
Many women, at the outset of the war, had told their men to come back
covered in glory or else in a coffin. "After Appomattox they mainly wanted
their shattered, unhappy men to reoccupy their place in parlor and bed,
resume patriarchal obligations, and relieve them of the burdens they had
taken up."
"Confederate women fled from the responsibility of empowerment into the
reassuring safety of tradition's protective shelter."
If this dose of reality is too much for you, you are invited to
retreat to the nearest feminist novel or movie to restore your cherished
image of the past.
==========
TRUTH, SCHMUTH
Have you ever wondered why some feminists can embrace the most
absurd claims, the wildest conspiracy theories, or the most dubious
statistics? Well, it seems that at least to some feminists, truth is a minor
consideration, even an irritant. Note these recent items from a feminist
newsgroup:
"As a new reader of Ms. Stuber's commentary magazine entitled "Catt's
Claws" I have something to say to her detractors, if her writing bothers
you, DON'T read it! Honestly, Ms. Stuber's accuracy on her stated "facts"
didn't interest me in the least, it was her loud, lucid, witty, no B.S voice
on woman's issues that I found thought provoking and compelling. What a
nice change from the standard, mainsteam, women's magazine. My personal
thought that Ms. Stuber's views can go slightly overboard on certain topics
is just simply that, an opinion. How I wish I had an opinion! As of late,
my mind has felt an akinship to vanilla pudding, easy, light, universally
acceptable, and yet totally bland and dull! I am glad that we feminist have
an opinionated speaker in the forum, it helps us all by creating new,
expanding dialogue to be shared and disputed amoungst ourselves. Till next
time...."
(Source: the soc.feminism newsgroup. Subject: Re: Catt's Claws bad for
feminism? Date:Thu, 11 Jul 1996 02:05:33 GMT)
And more comments in a similar vein, from another feminist:
" [...] The problem with the women's movement is that it has become too
divisive; this will never lead to anything except many less effective
splinter groups that will significantly weaken any chance to be heard.
"I understand that sometimes it seems as if some feminists get a little
exaggerant or they want to read sexism into everything, but, as supporters
of this movement, we all need to ask ourselves if our first tendancy to
dismiss everything but the obvious isn't more detrimental. The truth is that
there are still many cases of implicit sexism in our society today and by
scrutinizing the issues, we allow ourselves the opportunity to figure out
where the problems still exist.
" For the women's movement to ever gain any power, we are all going to
have to sacrifice some of our beliefs. [...] When it comes to protecting
any historically oppressed group, no matter how far they have apparently
come, cohesion is imperative. I am willing to shelve some of my beliefs, no
matter how wonderful I think they might be, in order to support the feminist
cause ...
"Peace."
(Source: the soc.feminism newsgroup. Subject: Re: Catt's Claws bad for
feminism? Date:Mon, 8 Jul 1996 04:03:18 GMT)
==========
COSMOWATCH
(A regular feature -- unless it isn't -- depending on how long me and the
Cosmo Girl last.)
Here's a look at some of the wisdom from the August 1996 issue of
Cosmopolitan magazine:
Articles:
Men Can Be Sex Objects Too!
Who Says You Have to Have Just One Lover?
The Medea Syndrome: Women Who Murder Their Young (Are They
Sick? Evil? Both?)
On Company Time: How Much Can You Do For YOU?
Just When You thought You Knew All There Was To Know About
Orgasm
Cartoons:
In one cartoon, a woman is disappointed that her date's home is not as
rich as she'd been led to believe. In another, a woman at her apartment
door smiles sweetly as she says to her date, "It's been a wonderful evening,
so don't spoil it by asking to see me again."
==========
HUMOR:
==========
POW PRESIDENT HARASSES HERSELF
Colleen Hyphenated-Lastname, president of the Propaganda Organization
for Women, is demanding that federal authorities bring sexual harassment
charges against Colleen Hyphenated-Lastname.
"I was chuckling over some of my favorite books of feminist humor,"
Hyphenated-Lastname says, "when I realized that some of the jokes were
sexual in nature. I hadn't planned on reading anything sexual in nature.
In fact, it was all very unwelcome. Then I realized that by reading these
unwelcome jokes, I was sexual harassing myself."
"It was not my intention to sexually harass myself," she says. "But
intentions do not matter. The important thing is whether I *felt* harassed.
And I did. By reading those jokes, I obviously was being subjected to a
hostile reading environment."
"Because of this, I am now suing my own insurance company for
emotional distress and punitive damages."
"But we're not after the money," she said. "We're after the
publicity."
Hyphenated-Lastname is sure that her suit will be taken seriously.
"After all, why would I lie?"
"POW believes that women can be sexually harassed even by underlings
and subordinates. We have numerous cases of women professors being sexually
harassed by males students who make lewd comments. So if you can be
sexually harassed by an underling, why can't you be sexually harassed by
yourself? It is entirely up to the victim to decide whether she felt
harassed."
Meanwhile, Hyphenated-Lastname is seeking the help of the same experts
who have helped President Clinton fight sexual harassment charges. "What I
am told," she said, "is that because the harassment was done by someone we
like, it doesn't count."
Hyphenated-Lastname also has hired an attorney to fight her own sexual
harassment charges. "But we haven't seen the lawsuit yet, so we can't
comment."
"The suit was filed in Walla Walla," said her attorney. "When we get
a copy of it, we will have a tete-a-tete vis-a-vis Hyphenated-Lastname vs.
Hyphenated-Lastname."
However, her attorney said: "Obviously, if she was harassed, then she
was the victim, and she's not responsible for her actions in harassing
herself."
"It's called the Battered Logic defense."
==========
POW REACTS TO HILLARY COMMITTING AN AXE MURDER
(What would the reaction be if Hillary Clinton committed an axe murder?
Here's our version of the likely New York Times editorial, as written by
Colleen Hyphenated-Lastname, president of the Propaganda Organization for
Women.)
We were as dismayed as anyone to see the videotape of First Lady Hillary
Rodham Clinton hacking several orphan children to bits with an axe.
But before we rush to any conclusions, we would like to remind readers
that this is an election year. Opponents have used the incident to attack
Ms. Clinton, hammering away at her with an eye on the poll results.
We support a full investigation of the matter. If authorities find that
Ms. Clinton exceeded her authority in chopping these infants to bits, then
we will be the first to condemn her. But we believe the White House
deserves a fair hearing on its contention that the axe was being used for
official purposes only.
Hillary Clinton and the White House have not been forthcoming about all
the details of the axe murders. This is probably due to Ms. Clinton's
background as a lawyer, where she learned to never give up more information
than she had to. Those who wish to attribute a more sinister motive to Ms.
Clinton probably are just digging around for dirt.
With all the politics involved, it is difficult to sort out how much of
the objection to axing infants is genuine, and how much of it is mere
partisan mudslinging. Hillary has broken the traditional mold of quiet,
unobtrusive first ladies, and she is paying a heavy price for her
brave stand. Some of those who are screaming about the axe murders are
simply people who do not like to see strong women step outside their
traditional roles. To them, it would be fine if Hillary spent her life
doing nothing but caring for children, and they are outraged that she dared
to do anything different. Though we do not support axe murders per se, we
do applaud the first lady for having the courage to defy traditional
limitations that society has placed on women.
And to her critics, we would like to say: who has done more for children
than Hillary? She has steadfastly defended children against the onslaught
of "reformers" who are waging a war on children. It is remarkable how
quickly those people start caring about our children merely because the
first lady was seen killing a few of them.
==========
FEMINIST LIFEGUARDS
I recently went to the beach where all the lifeguards were feminists.
As soon as I got out a bit from shore, I was hit with a terrible cramp in my
leg and I couldn't swim. I called out to the lifeguards, "Help, I am
drowning!" The first lifeguard said to the other, "Women are at a
disadvantage in virtually every situation, so if you have a man and a woman
who are both drowning, the women is the one hardest hit." The other feminist
lifeguard nodded, and they discussed this a bit.
I struggled back up to the surface, spitting out salt water, and cried
out, "I am going to die!"
The second lifeguard said to the first, "Everyone is going to die
sooner or later, but the real crisis is in women's health care." The first
lifeguard nodded and cited a few studies that proved this was just so.
Then I knew I was about to go under for the dreaded third time. With
my last breath I called out, "Ladies, I'm going down!"
So they jumped in, hauled me out, and sued me for sexual harassment.
=============================
MANifesto is a monthly newsletter containing news and opinion for people
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=============================