<^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> ........Catt's Claws # 127 ... September 24, 1996......... ........ A Feminist Newsletter by Irene Stuber......... <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> Please - PLEASE contact the one or more of the following U.S. Senators IMMEDIATELY. They are claiming that they are NOT hearing from the pro-choice forces regarding the late term abortion ban that President Clinton vetoed and therefore are undecided if they will vote to uphold his veto in U.S. Senate action today or Thursday. Put aside the absolute LIES the Christian Coalition and the radical Republican Right has been saying about the procedure. It is not "elective." It is used only to save a woman's life or save her from a terrible, ripping birth of a badly misinformed and certainly doomed fetus, some with heads that are 12 to 18" in diameter. Use the Christian Coalition's own toll free number to call your U.S. Senators and the undecided dozen to express your feelings. Use 800-972-3524 or 800-962-3524 and simply ask for the Senator of your choice. Leave a message with his office and demand (nicely) that your vote be counted, giving your name and address and get the aide's name. Ask that the Senator acknowledge your opinion. There are signs that certain people in some of the Senator's offices are not recording the pro-Clinton vote. The twelve senators have not made statements and some are definitely hanging; they need to hear from you! The Christian Coalition has teams of people on the phones using names from various mailing lists as if those people were actually making the phone calls. Undecided senators: Bradley (D-NJ), Bryan (D-NV), Byrd (D-WV), Campbell (R-CO), Daschle (D-SD), Frahm (R-KS), Graham (D-FL), Kassebaum (R-KS), Leahy (D-VT), Lieberman (D-CT), Nunn (D-GA), and Specter (R-PA). Specter, Leahy, and Baucus appear to be key players. I doubt is Kassebaum can be moved, but dammit, somewhere down inside, she *is* a woman. If this veto is overridden, it will mark the entrance of the U.S. Congress into determing how your genitals are to be used. These men who don't want you looking at their tax forms but want the right to peer into your vaginas and up into your wombs to judge what is to be done with your bodies. To hell with medical prudence. These sanctimonious politicians are saying that they know better than doctors. Tax returns and wallets, hands off, but women's wombs are to be opened for public perusal by the radical Republican reactionary religious right, These bigots who see women as beasts of reproduction MUST be stopped here and now before it's YOUR womb they say must serve THEIR purposes. . . . . . . . ^c^c^ . . . . . . . My good email friend Varda Ullman Novick of California sent me a bunch of old newspaper and magazine clippings (for which I am ever-grateful). We excerpt from one of the articles from the New York Times of 12-07-1995: U. S. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor showed the women's all-star basketball team that would six months later win the 1996 Olympic gold medal into the Supreme Court courtroom and said, "I wanted to do this (show you the courtroom) because what you're doing is important." then looking over at Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, she said, "I can't tell you how happy I was when she got to the court. It makes a night and day difference to have women on the bench." Expressions of friendship and appreciation between women are *never* written about in the male dominated media so that O'Connor's words, so simple and yet so expressive made me realize that I hadn't written either O'Connor or Ginsberg in quite some time to thank them for what they have been doing in "making a night and day difference to have women on the bench." So I got out my pen and a couple of Georgia O'Keeffe cards and sent them off to our wonderful Justices O'Connor and Ginsberg. The address of the U.S. Supreme Court is 1414 22nd St. NW, Washington, DC 20037. Come on - let's return civility to feminism and again remember to say "Thank you." Mother was right, you know. Let's not keep following the bad manners of those ungrateful, rude wenches inside the beltway who can only criticize and never compliment political personages who do good for women. Even a plain, regular post card with just "thank you" will mean a lot. Enough of this constant criticism. If a parent acted like some of our so- called feminist leaders did, always carping and putting people down, they'd be accused of harassment and mistreatment of children. They would be the horror children have to live down to be complete human beings. That isn't the feminism this old lady worked on so hard ... if you don't want those people in your homes, why follow their leadership into hell and defeat? . . . . . . . ^c^c^ . . . . . . . The other night suffering from insomnia, I was surfing the web and found several men's and father's rights pages that quoted Catt's Claws extensively. WOW! Do they ever hate me! For what? For demanding that men $upport their children and that if they have children with more than one woman, married to them or not, ALL of his children should be $upported and recognized equally. Look guyz, either keep your pants zipped up or unzip your wallets. . . . . . . . ^c^c^ . . . . . . . OH SIGH! Dang Blast it! Just when I was getting comfortable with hating the New York Times for being such a unscrupulous paper in spearheading the fight again Hillary Rodham Clinton and the national health initiative because of its ties with the insurance industry, and just when hating Big Blue for its stupidity (it gave us Bill Gates) was the accepted way of like, and just when I was convinced California Governor Pete Wilson was a complete hypocritical nerd - it all changed. They all went Dodge on me ... Can't keep track of the villains anymore without a daily update ... On September 11, 1996. the New York Times ran two FULL pages on the case of Togo refugee Fauziya Kassindja's flight to the United States to avoid having her genitals cut off in keeping with the desires of her future husband and Togo/central African patriarchal tradition. It is a tremendous in-depth article by Celia W. Dugger which shows Fauziya's mother begging forgiveness of the family patriarchs for helping her daughter to escape (she is an outcast without money and dependent upon relatives for food when once she was a woman of means). We quote: "...after her husband's death, in accordance with patriarchal, Muslim-influenced Tchamba tradition, the family required Mrs. Kassindja to leave the home where she had raised her seven children. Her (dead) husband's only sibling, a widowed sister...them moved in and took (over)." The wealth Mrs. Kassindja helped her husband earn also went to HIS family as did the custody of her daughter Fauziya. The story also explores the fate of Fauziya's sister who helped her escape and how her husband has shunned her and taken a second wife. Ms. Dugger also explains in detail how and why Fauziya was held in prison by the American immigration service, etc. As a former award-winning investigative journalist, I bow in awe before Celia W. Dugger's article. Would that it could be made available to women everywhere. It doesn't belong with that stack of yesterday's newspapers. (Togo, by the way, is a thin sliver of a country just east of Ghana on the underside of that huge Africa "bulge" into the Atlantic.) AND BIG BLUE Regains its shiny reputation ... from Monica Abitol (voicing a sentiment I completely agree with): "I never thought I'd say this, I respect IBM." "IBM is extending health and other benefits to gay and lesbian domestic partners. It will be the largest U.S. company to do so and will cover dental, vision and health benefits, starting Jan. 1, 1997 to employees who sign affidavits that they are financially and emotionally interdependent with their domestic partners." To think, IBM is more Christian than the Christian Coalition. AND GOOD OLE PETE WILSON who turned on the gay and lesbians and women who voted him into office by signing an anti-gay measure right after his election and who then turned belly up when Dole and the radical republican right demanded no abortion rights in the Republican platform has turned around and done the following: I - Pete Wilson signed legislation that outlaws female genital mutilation in California, an act that was passed through the legislature through the efforts of Meserak "Mimi" Ramsey of San Jose, an immigrant from Ethiopia. Ms. Ramsey has fought for the banning of the female genital mutilation procedures in the United States after finding out that the horror had followed women into this country. The procedure consists of cutting away the clitoris and often all the flesh on the outside of the vagina as a way to control and suppress women's sex drives. (The skin that is left outside the vagina after all the flesh and organs are cut away is sewn together with only a straw diameter opening so that when the woman is married, her husbands cut them open with a knife to have intercourse.) Ramsey is founder of the organization Forward USA said the "evil custom" has made its way to California through immigrant communities and has become more prevalent than many have thought. She said ten cases were documented in San Jose in 1994-95 alone. II - Pete Wilson signed legislation that allows California to chemically castrate or physically castrate twice-convicted child molesters. A number of (male) attorneys are expected to challenge the law in court because it is "too cruel." Too cruel? Why you sanctimonious little crud pods ... too cruel to castrate a monster who rapes little children? What about the cruelty to the children? To innocent women? To some young boys? Where the holy hell are these men's minds? (Well, we know, but do they have to boast about it?) The sponsor of the legislation said that the repeat offense rates of those castrated in nations that use the practice has dropped from 100 percent to two percent. Yes, Mr. Lawyers-defending-the-right-of-rapists to rape, repeat offenders will ALWAYS commit their crime again and again and again unless stopped. The chemical castration consists of twice-weekly shots of Depo-Provera, a female contraceptive. It causes men's testicles to shrink TEMPORARILY. They return to size and potency when the drug is stopped. Norway, Switzerland, Denmark and Sweden surgically or chemically castrate sex offenders. Oh yes, the American Civil Liberties Union opposes the castrations. Seems like the ACLU is always around when men's rights are being "threatened" but are strangely silent or speaking out against those laws which will protect women. . . . . . . . ^c^c^ . . . . . . . HELP !!!! We have heard rumors but can't get confirmation that one or more hospitals in the Seattle area are allowing genital mutilation operation in their operating rooms because of the (religious) beliefs of some of the immigrants. What offal from the rear ends of male doctors! Underage girls are being mutilated. Were it underage boys, would it be allowed? And if you guyz don't know the difference between cutting off a piece of foreskin and the amputation of the *entire* penis AND (usually) the testicles which is what female genital mutilation is, then you'd better start wearing your lead-lined jock straps to bed at night. . . . . . . . ^c^c^ . . . . . . . The news media is all aflutter about Ellen DeGeneres' proposed coming out of the closet this season on her hit TV show. Who is so blind as to think she's ever been in a closet? The same highly intelligent pundits and critics who analyzed her show and then point to a throw away remark about "no husband on this show" as the indicator of a change in direction for the show missed completely - whiz, bang, right by their little pointed heads - the opening of that same show when Ellen enters her bathroom in the morning, shudders at her reflection in the mirror and starts singing "I'm so pretty, oh, so pretty," (to lots of audience belly-laughs) only to interrupt the song with a well timed "heh" (when the faucet didn't work). If you don't see the humor and the billboard in that routine, go look up the lyrics. Needless to say, the producers of Ellen and that includes the Disney Corp., are under attack from the religious right who wants to dictate what everyone else does with their love. Has any woman in a TV series had an abortion? Other than Chief Inspector Tennison and that is produced in Britain. . . . . . . . ^c^c^ . . . . . . . OK - I haven't given you any real zingers lately, so sit down for this one. You're out of practice - although I have to admit, the following even left me speechless - well, ROTFLMAO: In a copyright story by Reuters, it was announced that plastic replacement testicles for neutered dogs are selling briskly in the United States and Canada and the manufacturer plans to market it -- called Neuticles -- in Britain. Since they were launched in March, Neuticles have been implanted in 817 American dogs, at the rate of 6 to 10 implants per day. Jelly bean-shaped Neuticles come in five sizes -- suitable for dogs from Chihuahuas to Great Danes -- and range in price from $28 for an extra-small pair to $32 for large. They are implanted into the scrotum in a two-minute procedure immediately following removal of the natural testicles. Implants for cats are under development. "I love Neuticles" bumper stickers are available. . . . . . . . ^c^c^ . . . . . . . Elsa F. Kramer writes: "CNN newsreader Pam Mason got off a good one Monday ... The final piece she read before a commercial break was a story about a beauty pageant contestant who would be dancing on stage during this weekend's event wearing two pairs of shoes. `That's right -- in addition to her tap shoes she'll be wearing another pair of shoes under her costume, a pair of ballet shoes tattooed on her back. She's the first such contestant to admit to having a tattoo,' Mason read from the prepared script. "Then snapping the paper away from her scripts, she added, `Now, isn't THAT important?!' and shook her head. And then the screen cut immediately to a commercial." . . . . . . . ^c^c^ . . . . . . . Jane Turnbull writes: "Sorry to be pedantic but Winnie was Nelson's 2nd wife- he divorced the first for her." Which just goes to show you that my mother was right when she warned me that any man who would cheat on his wife for you will in time cheat on you. A cheat is a cheat. . . . . . . . ^c^c^ . . . . . . . From: "Soikyl:" I read and enjoy your Cat's Claw....however, while reading it I see you made a mistake. Robert Acremant fomented his hate for lesbians in his home town of Visalia, California. I live in Visalia and read the "Opinion" page in the Visalia Times Delta where, as we speak, they are gay bashing. We have many "fundies" here. Keep up the good work." Unfortunately, the Christian Coalition and the other Religious Right groups whether they be Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Muslims, or just plain nasty are trying to make bigotry and hate family values. So sad. . . . . . . . ^c^c^ . . . . . . . John M. Riddle writes, "Low doses of ferujol, a substance that occurs in the genus _Ferula_, to which silphium (a now believed extinct plant that was known to induce menstruation in ancient Greece) has been nearly 100 percent successful in preventing pregnancy in female rats up to three days after coitus." CC-->> The gestation period of a rat is brief compared to that of a human. And no one, to our knowledge, has looked for a modern-day silphium plant, although the seeds of the common weed Queen Anne's Lace have been used as an effective folk remedy for unwanted pregnancies for the millennia - a teaspoon after sex to keep you regular according to folklore in Europe and the U.S. <--cc Riddle reported that a number of chemical tests from 1976 to 1986 showed that Queen Ann's Lace seeds were effective as postcoital antifertility agents. (Why weren't we told????) Pennyroyal is also a very effective birth-control agent but it is TOXIC and must be taken in precise amounts in tea. It evidentally contains pulegone that terminates pregnancies in humans and animals. We may be taken to task for writing about things that MIGHT be toxic, but how ridiculous can you get? (Do you have *any* idea of the folk remedies used by men to induce erection?) Listen up: we believe women have common sense even though men are constantly trying to convince us that ignorance about our bodies is for our own good and that's bullcrap, pure and simple. To read more about ancient anti-fertility methods, get John M. Riddle's _Contraception and Abortion from the Ancient World to Renaissance_, and _The control of Late Ancient and Medieval Population_ by Josiah C. Russell. We recommend women buying copies of the books to be put away for the just-in-case future. The religious right is gearing up for another fight for the Presidency, the Congress and full control of the U.S. Supreme Court in 2001. ....................... * ........................ 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.