<^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> ........Catt's Claws # 120 ... August 24, 1996......... ........ A Feminist Newsletter by Irene Stuber......... <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> I've really paced the floor over how to address something I consider a core error in the hearts of the leaders of today's feminist movement. I must question aloud the qualifications of leaders who over and over and over again, fail to pass the civility test. Were they raised by men in a foxhole giraffe hunting? These terribly self-important women don't know how to say "thank you." They don't know how to admit they might be wrong. And most of all they don't know how to admit they don't know everything. And they don't know how to admit to themselves that they are uneducated about the issues and the players because of political naivete. But most damning, they refuse to learn. Case in point, the end run of President Bill Clinton on the Republican Welfare bill that has left the Republicans spouting and huffing and puffing and us "Bill Watchers" laughing our silly little heads off like we did after every Arkansas legislative session when the naysayers said Clinton didn't know what he was doing. Remember last summer when I said to watch? Yeah, us "Bill Watchers" knew something was coming. How many times have I written that one needs to study Bill Clinton the governor as the blueprint for Bill Clinton the President. How many times has the national press and those inside the Washington Beltway ignored how he governed in Arkansas and tried to make him into a common politician of the Reagan-Bush-Nixon ilk. And remember last year when I said "you ain't seen nothing yet" when everyone seemed to count him out as a loser? I was almost alone in stating that Bill Clinton would be handily reelected as president - because, kiddies, I'm a Bill Watcher. I've seen it too often. I don't know HOW he does it, but he does it. OK - to the point of all this palaver. Clinton signed the Welfare Bill and the chicken littles of the feminist movement WITHOUT ONCE TALKING TO ADMINISTRATION TOP BRASS cried that the sky was falling and repeated the constant lie about Clinton's betrayals. and treated him like he was confetti. Hey, this is the man who broke the Republican Congress with veto after veto after veto. This is the man who destroyed the Radical Right steamroller. Instead of studying the bill and what Clinton was ALREADY doing (see Shalala's press conference as well as the administrations announcements) Patricia Ireland, President of the National Organization for Women shouted in a news conference: "This fall, we will be voting for the lesser of two evils....Many of us will hold our noses and vote for President Clinton, but others of us will not - we'll be discouraged voters who will simply stay home." Ms. Patricia, as in my fax to you, you don't speak for the majority of women in this country who can read and you don't speak for the majority of the members of NOW who are horrified at your statement. You who have presided and mayhap been responsible as the membership has dropped from a large membership down to 250,000 members and dying down to about 170,000 (according to figures given me by a NOW board member). And, dear lady, why didn't you acknowledge with a wry grin that Clinton outwitted y'all? What don't you say that Clinton's waivers and true intentions show he's REALLY thinking of the most helpless among us - just as he said he was. Remember, he's working to help people (not just marching and shouting the way you are). On top of that, another group with more than just a passing attachment to the Feminist Majority put out a release to "urge him to sign these orders." Wouldn't it have been better, as I did, to fax the President to THANK HIM for the changes? And how about thanking him for the new deadbeat dad rules, the sex offender list, the Clinic Defense Act, the Violence Against Women Act, the new regulations about continuing health insurance, the violence hotline, the children hotline, etc., etc., etc. Can't you just say "Thank You?" Couldn't y'all have just said, "You're our best hope. What can we do to help?" You never offered to help. You just complained. Patricia is up for election in 1997. We shall remember that she chose not to support a president of the United States who enacted more laws to benefit women and who appointed more women (and gays and lesbians and blacks and hispanics) to high federal positions that any other or the combined presidents in the history of the United States. I have been a member of NOW longer than Patricia Ireland. The actions of the small cadre around her that influence her is resulting in the death of honor in the feminist movement: the dream that women could forge a better world. I am reminded me of a sonnet by Edna St. Vincent Millay: "Here is a wound that will never heal...but of a love turned ashes and the breath gone out of beauty .... "That August should be levelled by a rain, "I can endure, and that the lifted dust "Of man should settle to the earth again; "But that a dream can die, will be a thrust "Between my ribs forever of hot pain." . . . . . . . ^c^c^ . . . . . . . Catt's Claws is being reposted in hundreds of locations but I think the strangest place was in rec.humor.funny. I guess they think I'm a comedian not a commando. :-) Then someone wrote: "You're an alien. Saw Catt's Claws mentioned in alt.mst3000, that's Mystery Science Theatre 3000, for the uninitiated). (I have been a Sci-Fi fan all of my extensive life, having read Asimov when he was a puppy, and Campbell, and Tipton and all those wondrous minds who explore, "What if..." . . . . . . . ^c^c^ . . . . . . . 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Over 1500 CD and cassette recordings are described, including feminist, lesbian, and women's music, alternative, rock, women's spirituality, pagan, new age, drumming, world music, Celtic, Native American, African American, Latin American, Jewish, folk, blues, jazz, classical, and all other genres. The catalog also carries non-sexist children's music, men's music (non-sexist and gay), videos and songbooks. The Internet catalog also features over 1000 music samples and online ordering. Ladyslipper's mission also extends beyond their catalog. As a small independent label, Ladyslipper has issued albums by artists like Ubaka Hill, Libana, Casselberry-Dupree, Kay Gardner, Nuru, Lisa Thiel, Rhiannon and others, in order to further new musical and artistic directions for women. Treat yourself to an interactive multi-media experience which will enhance your knowledge about and appreciation for some very fabulous music at . The author of Catt's Claws was an early subscriber to Ladyslipper and has passed out their catalogs for years. It's GREAT! . . . . . . . ^c^c^ . . . . . . . Headed by U. S. Attorney Mary Jo White, the federal government is suing the New York City Police department for the repeated harassment of Sheryll L. Goff by male officers who showed explicit photos, made obscene comments, etc. The officers also blocked her radio transmissions. Just the usual kid-guyz stuff when the boyz use their wrong head. . . . . . . . ^c^c^ . . . . . . . In a poll taken last spring, 72 percent of Americans and 66 percent of Republicans didn't think the GOP platform should contain the support of a constitutional amendment to ban abortion. Catt's Claws made mention of the fact that when Dole started running for the nomination, he and right-wing wife Liddy transferred from a middle- of-the-road church they had attended for years to a blood and thunder ultra- right reactionary church. Stamp Dole bought and sold to the bigots on the right. FYI - Mrs. Dole hates the nickname LIDDY - and it is with D - d, not b. If you haven't read the Gail Sheehy article "Valley of the Doles" in _Vanity Fair_, you have missed one of the saddest presentations of lives wasted. Whenever I think of Liddy now, I think of the lonesome wail of a locomotive in the dark of the night, a creature crying for a friend. Sheehy writes: In public she dotes on him. He ignores her. . . . . . . . ^c^c^ . . . . . . . Heard about the charges that W. John Hathaway, Maine GOP candidate for the U.S. Senate, was alleged to have had sex with the 12-year-old baby sitter of his children ... any further word? Hathaway said she was 14 or 15 (BIG DEAL) and she is now in a school for troubled youths. Any word on the pianist who was so brutally beaten and raped in Central Park last spring? . . . . . . . ^c^c^ . . . . . . . Seems like men kill not only wives or girlfriends who want to leave violent relationship, but also kill when women report their sexual harassment at work. Instead of leaving the harassment problem to Sears officials (even after filing an informal complaint), Theresa Vince is said to have wanted to settle the unwelcome advances of her boss Russell Davis herself. Davis then shot Vince, 56, who was married with five children, before turning the gun on himself. Employees said Davis was obsessed with Vince. . . . . . . . ^c^c^ . . . . . . . LAWD oh mercy, it still goes on. No wonder they call it the hypocrites oath. "We've been doing research on substance abuse as though everybody was a man," said Joseph Califano, president of the Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse in a recent report. "But it's clear that women need different treatment." Califano served as President Carter's health chief. "We need a substance abuse treatment agenda for the American woman." "It is simply unacceptable for modern society to lack basic information about (women's) drug abuse and addiction," said Barry McCaffrey, President Clinton's top adviser on drug-control policy. Shockingly, the following didn't raise red flags in the minds of our hypocrites. Studies showed that 69 percent of women in alcohol treatment were sexually abused as children as compared with 12 percent of men. . . . . . . . ^c^c^ . . . . . . . Beginning in 1969, Harry Rosen of New York City had sex with his younger sister and half-sister, and for 25 years was a persistent, convicted sex offender but ole Harry was allowed to marry and produce children whom he sodomized. Breed and raise your own victims like hamsters. Judges are passing all sorts of judgments against women who abuse their children and are constantly trying to have them sterilized or at least incapable of having more children. Why not sex offender monsters? Yes, he married a kookie woman who may well be very retarded. But what of the judges and the lawmakers? What's their excuse? He was convicted of molesting his son and then let out of prison to breed more children to molest. Supposedly this time he's in for life, but with our prison system, Rosen, 43, will be out in enough time to molest more children. . . . . . . . ^c^c^ . . . . . . . Talk to your children about what to do in case ... A 13-year-old Arizona girl knew what to do when a strange man persistently rang the doorbell at 10:30 am when she was home alone. She grabbed the portable phone, dialed 911, ran into the bedroom and locked the door. The man broke into the house and was burglarizing it when the police arrived to arrest him. The girl had purchased the portable phone for her mother for mother's day! . . . . . . . ^c^c^ . . . . . . . Remember star Nebraska running back Lawrence Phillips who assaulted Kat McEwen VERY publicly and then the Nebraska football people tried to deny it? Well he was suspended for six games (but got in on all the goodies at the end of the season). Now he has signed a $6.5 million pro contract. Yeah, go out on the field and rout for a batterer. What happened to his victim? She was notified that her athletic scholarship would not be renewed. The decision was reversed in face of howls. Let's see what happens this season. McEwen at one point had to flee the state because of threats against her life by jock-sniffing, jock-strap supporters. . . . . . . . ^c^c^ . . . . . . . We mentioned in a recent Catt's Claws about the need for new laws to cover the new ways men have of hurting women and children: infecting them with AIDS/HIV. Well, Willie Doneal Robinson, 41, will be eligible for parole in 10 years even though he got a life sentence for raping a 4-year-old girl in 1992. Robinson infected her with gonorrhea and she later tested HIV positive. However, prosecutors aren't asking for the death sentence because they can't prove Willie knew he was carrying the virus when he raped the child. His attorney, in protesting the sentence, said, "Mr. Robinson is sort of the wretched of the Earth. Those are the ones who always get it." Could be the sleaze-bag attorney sees lots of $$ from the state for constantly appealing the rapist's sentence? Robinson RAPED A CHILD! His attorney didn't mention the poor, wretched 4-year-old girl who had everything taken from her? Who'll believe Robinson wouldn't do the same thing if he got back on the street? Robinson's first trial in January, 1995, ended in a hung jury. Fortunately authorities videotaped the girl's testimony. Yes, she died of AIDS related illness before her rapist-murderer's second trial. . . . . . . . ^c^c^ . . . . . . . Alison Halford, the highest ranking woman officer in Britain as the former Chief Constable of Merseyside in England, is claiming her human rights were violated when her telephones were tapped during an investigation of her charges of sex discrimination. The case has been turned over to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. (Wonder how many women are on *that* tribunal.) . . . . . . . ^c^c^ . . . . . . . There has been virtually no way you could be sure that the employees at the nursing home where you entrust your relatives are not sex offenders. In Britain, because of recent rapes, etc., they are barring sex offenders from working in the nursing profession. Now the orders by President Bill Clinton will change that - if the administration of various nursing homes and hospitals, etc., use the list. At 21 Gary Kleypas beat a neighbor in Missouri leaving the elderly woman to suffocate in her own blood. He was out of prison at 36 and moved to Kansas and enrolled in a nursing college and there was NO WAY anyone could know he was a convicted murderer by checking the records. Good old state's rights, you know. He would have graduated, too, if he hadn't killed a 20-year-old-student nurse he was going to school with. The ACLU appears to oppose any lifting of convicted felons' nursing licenses for felony convictions. Well, OK, but we do believe a patient or the guardians of patients should know who they have over them with the power or life or death. . . . . . . . ^c^c^ . . . . . . . Candace Gingrich said her mother asked her to "be nice to your brother." She replied, "I'll be nice to my brother and the GOP when they start being nice to immigrants .. the poor ... people with HIV and AIDS ... people of color ... and women." Candace, the half-sister of Newt Gingrich is openly lesbian. . . . . . . . ^c^c^ . . . . . . . The correct FDA approved dosage for the morning after abortifacient is: 2 Wyeth's Ovral or 4 tablets of Wyeth's Nordette, Lo/Ovral or Triphasil or Berlex Laboratories Levlen or Tri-Levlen and then take the same, second dosage exactly 12 hours later. Nausea occurs in some cases. Vomiting, which is RARE, will prevent it from working so take an antiemetic (anti-nausea) medication such as Dramamine with the pills. This method must be used within 24-72 hours of the intercourse. Later than that a more complex method is necessary. The Emergency Contraception (EC or Morning After Pill). Their number is 1-800-584-9911. They are available 7 days a week, 24 hours a day, and will refer you to the nearest place to get EC. EC has a website (http://opr.princeton.edu/ec/ec.html. EC hotline has information about emergency contraception and have a directory of more that 1800 clinicians willing to prescribe emergency contraceptives. ....................... * ........................ Women's rights are young and tender and we must protect them from the plagues of holy hypocrisy and newts. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- >>> Send your ideas, comments, and news to istuber@cswnet.com for inclusion in the Catt's Claws feminist newsletter which will be emailed up to three times a week. This is NOT an interactive discussion net but an exchange of information. Catt's Claws is NOT sponsored by any organization. We are accepting *limited* donations (only what can be spared) to help offset the online costs of posting Catt's Claws. Copyright 1996, Irene Stuber. PO Box 6185, Hot Springs, AR 71902.<<<< To receive Catt's Claws by email, write and in the body of the note We thank Jennifer Gagliardi for handling the madding subscription list through her listserv.