<^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> ........Catt's Claws # 160 ... July 23, 1997......... ........ A Feminist Newsletter by Irene Stuber......... istuber@direclynx.net is solely responsible for its content Archives are found at http://www.imageworld.com/istuber.html <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> Like just about everyone else, I am - or would like to - enjoy the lazy, hazy daze of summer. And then something like this happens. The news media goes hyper over some soft-headed, brain-washed, pitiful woman who is carrying a "cross" across England while remaining almost totally quiet, shhhh - shhhhh - about a horrible murder by a MAN/father that almost puts the Susan Smith murders to shame. And you tell me with a straight face that our news isn't managed? That women's issues and crimes against women aren't suppressed? That we are perhaps the most censored nation in history that is not under the rule of a totalitarian government - just Republican publishers. The dumb English wife - who has been brainwashed by the evangelical and charismatic movement and is being financed on her cross bearing by the male-is-god-churches - is saying (and I quote - no way I could make up such offal): "...feminism has gone too far ...women should be more submissive to their husbands .... A woman can be a successful businesswoman but she should not be seeking fulfillment for herself...The virtuous wife does this selflessly for her family and for the glory of her husband and in loving submission to him." So let me tell you about a husband ... one whom your local newspapers and national TV news decided wasn't very important. (We had gotten several email asking us if we'd heard anything about it. A paragraph or even a one-second spot on the radio...anything. One woman said she heard one sentence and then nothing. "It's like the twilight zone.") Ann M. Winkler from Colorado send us a clipping and wrote ... "Several things bother me about this ... the article was on the third page of the newspaper not front page, not all over the place ... no moral judgments are being passed (as with Susan Smith): How can a man do this to his children." Yes, how can a father do this to his children? We had written about an Alabama man who killed his two small daughters for the insurance money at the *same time* that the Susan Smith murders occurred and the newspapers completely - COMPLETELY - ignored it. They were too busy crucifying a woman who had been constantly raped as a child and young adult by her Republican high official of a stepfather, then handed over to his friends for fun and games - then treated with contempt by her husband ... yet she wasn't allowed to plead extenuating circumstances. The religious buddies of her stepfather put a shrine up around the place where the Smith children died, making sure she would never have a chance to be fairly heard about what happened to her at their hands ... Oh yes, the stepfather has repented and said he's sorry. He's been forgiven and taken back into the fold ... along with the rest of the rapists. But to the incident that our FREE press is most recently ignoring: Kirk Billie, 28, was arrested and charged with murder after he jumped from a car and "let it roll into the water," with his two sons in the back seat of the car. The boys Keith, 3, and Kurt, 5, drowned in a murky, 40-foot-deep canal on the Miccosukee Indian Reservation in South Florida. Kirk was said to be obsessed with his wife and threatened her many, many times, saying, "You'll never see the kids again." She was able to save one child before Kirk stole the vehicle that contained the two other boys. One policeman explained, "He was mad at his wife." The boys died on June 27, 1997 ... no shrine has been placed on the banks of the canal where they died ... and have you heard anything about what's gonna happen to the father? The electric chair? Wanna bet. Betcha he's out in seven years IF he gets convicted ... probably spend a few months in the state mental facility. The one newspaper article said he "burst into tears every time he was asked about the children." Oh, so sorry... and after all, his wife was to blame because she wasn't obedient and submissive to him (see religious offal above). Almost like the husband who shot his unarmed wife to death outside a New Jersey courtroom and the judge said it was justified because "she nagged him." Land of the brave....home of the free ... . . . . . . . ^c^l^a^w^s^ . . . . . . . By the way, an average of 1,500 women are killed in the United States EVERY year by their nearest and dearest (husbands, boy friends, fathers, uncles...) How many of those deaths have been reported in YOUR newspapers? . . . . . . . ^c^l^a^w^s^ . . . . . . . Gail DeCamp writes: "I love the newsletter. Your information about wild carrot/queen anne's lace is wonderful. BUT please tell your readers the following: I presume that when you say "Queen Anne's Lace" you're referring to a tall plant with clusters of small white flowers. If I'm thinking of the same thing you're describing, then the hemlock plant also looks very much like it. (If you didn't know, hemlock is very poisonous.) The difference is that hemlock has purple streaks on the stem... Here's what I'd do to be safe: Provide your readers with the scientific name for Queen Anne's Lace and encourage them to positively identify the plant they're picking as that plant before they eat it, using guidebooks or local plant experts. Common names (like Wild Carrot or Queen Anne's Lace) can vary, but all over the world botanists can identify a specific plant with a specific scientific name." Well taken, Gail. A reader (I didn't get her permission to use her name so we'll pass on that for now) sent me a copy of _Herbal Abortion Handbook_ by Uni M. Tiamat which has some really great illustrations of the DAUCUS CAROTA flower, aka Queen Anne's Lace, including some information about how to tell it from hemlock (that stuff Socrates drank): St. Anne's Lace has HAIRY LEGS ... (honest, no puns) and its seeds are spikey while hemlock is smooth and the hemlock has purple streaks. The book contains fetal development information as well as detailed information about other herbs that have abortifacient properties as well as information about gathering and growing your own. Tiamat bends over backwards to warn and warn again about various herbal remedies ... use at your own risk, etc., etc. Which may bother some people BUT have you ever checked those tiny- print pamphlets that come with EVERY prescription? Warning you about the many, many bad things that MAY happen ... It's the same with herbal remedies. Remember, now matter how good, your doctor is, he is just PRACTICING. If he makes a mistake, OOOPS and hopefully he learns from the mistake. But you, on whom the mistake is made, is often DEAD. Medical medicines also react differently on different people. Women MUST start taking responsibility for their own bodies and not turn them over blindfolded to some guy in a white coat. Tiamat's work is more a pamphlet than a formal book but that doesn't take away from its content. To order: Sage-femme!, 3457 N. University, Suite 120, Peoria, IL 61604- 1322. cost is $16.95 plus $3 shipping. Any woman who is still able to get pregnant NEEDS such a book. . . . . . . . ^c^l^a^w^s^ . . . . . . . Please write your Senators, your congressional representative, the U.N., Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and President Bill Clinton to object to any aid to Afghanistan and call for an economic boycott similar to that being used against Iraq. PLEASE spread the word all over Internet and in your towns and cities. >>> STOP ALL U.S. and UN aid to Afghanistan until the Teleban stops their abuse of women. <<< Now they've even ordered women to stop making any noise with their shoes when they walk ... (creep on your bellies, woman!) The ruling nasties just sent the following information to foreign governments and the UN: "The regulations of our Islamic country are based on the non- employment of females in international or local offices, and issuing limits on women's rights to leave their houses is an Islamic obligation that must be observed by foreign and local institutions.... Women are not allowed to work in any field except the medical sector (they're short of male doctors because the guyz prefer to kill than cure). Aid agencies need to gain permission from the Department for Promoting Virtue and Preventing Vice to employ or assist women ... No Afghan woman can take a senior or acting senior position in foreign-run hospitals ... Women working in the medical sector should not sit in the seat next to the driver during transportation. No Afghan woman has the right to be transported in the same car as foreigners... We would appreciate it if assistance for both poor women and widows is channeled through their male relatives....Stylish dress and decoration of women in hospitals is forbidden. Women are duty-bound to behave with dignity, to walk calmly and refrain from hitting their shoes on the ground, which makes noises." The Taleban's policies - enforced by guns in the hands of young men and whips in the hands of bitter old men who are muslim priests - are aimed primarily at women. Women are to have no education, no leaving the house, wearing the small tents with only a small open weave area for seeing and breathing ... and NO birth control, NO abortion, no money, no going out in public to socialize or to organize ... they are to have NO RIGHTS WHATSOEVER - for the love of Allah... The Taleban and other Islamic followers, albeit in slightly different ways, are requiring the same kinds of things of their women in Iran and many parts of Asia and Africa. Just as the Christian right is doing in the U.S.: Ordering (and enforcing with violence) that women should be submissive and obedient to men. Male gods, god is males ... You gotta be pretty stupid not to see cause and effect. When the religious nuts come for YOU, who will defend you? The addresses are The Honorable Bill Clinton, The White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, DC 20500, Phone: 202-456-1414, Fax: 202- 456-2461; The Honorable Madeleine Albright, Secretary of State, 2201 C St. NW, Washington, DC 20520, Phone: 202-647-6575, Fax: 202-647-7120 And your congressional representative and senators ... MY GAWD, Gingrich, Bush, and the rest of the Republican went to war over a few oil fields ... why not defend women's lives? . . . . . . . ^c^l^a^w^s^ . . . . . . . Can you believe the Roman Catholic diocese of Dallas and a former Catholic priest have been ordered to pay more than $100 MILLION to 10 men and the family of an 11th for sexual abuse? How about the thousands of YOUNG GIRLS WHO ARE RAPED AND ABUSED BY PRIESTS. Oh, I forgot, that's NATURAL. . . . . . . . ^c^l^a^w^s^ . . . . . . . Diplomacy is saying "nice doggy" until you find a rock. . . . . . . . ^c^l^a^w^s^ . . . . . . . Try putting this Genie back into the bottle ... the scientists who cloned the first female ewe, Dolly, have now cloned Polly who carries HUMAN genes. This sort of thing means that hundreds or thousands of cloned sheep (or whatever) would be able to produce human blood or bones or livers for use in transplants and medical cures ... It is really no wonder that so many people want to run back into the Dark Ages and want men in black make all their decisions? They can't keep up with or assimilate the changes and progress being made by science. They are so scared. The old rules don't apply anymore. To face it, they might have to think for themselves! As we should have done a long, long time ago, we must learn to accept each individual as they are - not by their parentage or the color of their skin or the configuration of their genitalia or what holy book they follow. Or - and this is the most ridiculous of them all - whether they are legitimate. The word/world of tomorrow will revolve around sentient, not human. . . . . . . . ^c^l^a^w^s^ . . . . . . . Word is out that the following kind of story should NOT be featured in the news because it cause imitations ... giving women the wrong ideas. In 1993 when Lorena Babbit cut off her rapist-husband's penis, it got top press. Recently there was one article - no followup - about a California woman who cut off her live-in lover's penis, which as in John Wayne Babbit's case, was reattached in lengthy surgery. The California woman, 18, was treated for wounds since HE had beat her and then SHE was taken to jail. He was NOT arrested although he beat her in a drunken rage. Then there is a Louisiana woman who has been charged with aggravated battery and burglary after allegedly injuring her boyfriend by dragging him across the floor by the genitals. Police arrested 18-year-old Hannah Moten. They say she broke into the boyfriend's homes and found him in bed with another woman. Investigators say, in a fit of jealous rage, Moten lunged at the man, grabbing him, and pulling him across the floor by the testicles. The man is recovering after undergoing surgery to repair the damage. Who the hell PAYS for these operations, anyway? But I think the ultimate is the British woman who cut off her husband's penis for his infidelity and abuse ... she had a six children ... and flushed it down the toilet. No operation there. No, the ultimate may be the following that I first posted on Women of Achievement and Herstory back in 1993: "The following is an Associated Press release which appeared on the front page of the St. Petersburg, Florida Times Saturday, April 17, 1993 and sent to me by my good email friend Elvira Niles. It is datelined Jackson, Ms. In her own words the woman in her 50s who woke up to find a man sitting on her stomach demanding oral sex. She said: `I grabbed his penis with my right hand, and I twisted and pulled it all at the same time. And he hit me with his right hand, a hard blow beside the head, and when he hit me, I grabbed hold of his (scrotum) with my left and I was twisting it the opposite way. He started to yell and we fell to the floor, and he hit me a couple more licks, but they were light licks. He was weakening some then. Then he leaned over across me and bit me on my right shoulder. While he was biting me, I was still hanging on to him, and then I got his neck with my mouth and started biting it. Then I thought, `Well, he might have AIDS,' and I let go of his neck, stilling holding onto him.' He tried to get her to call police. (I) refused. He said, "Please, please, you're killing me." . . . I said, "Die, then." she testified. He said, "Woman, you got me suffering." I said, "Have you ever thought about how you were going to leave me suffering?" He was tussling and trying to hit and trying to get out of the way, and I don't know how we managed to get out of the bedroom into the hallway, she continued. "He was trying to get out, and I'm hanging onto him, and he was throwing me from one side of the hallway to the other. . . . I was afraid if I let him go he was going to kill me." She got him to her porch, where he fell down. That gave her time to go back into the house and get a pistol. She fired two shot as he ran away, but she missed. Sheriff's deputies found 29-year-old Dwight Coverson's name written inside a pair of pants he left in the woman's bedroom. They found Coverson at home, in bed, in severe pain." Ever wonder why women are NOT taught to defend themselves? Because men are so very vulnerable and so women are taught that they are invincible ... I was at one self-defense class in which the MALE instructor was showing women how to gouge the eyes out of rapists ... Most of the women were offended by the suggestion. The guy looked at them in disgust: "Ladies, the man is trying to RAPE you and will probably injure you so bad you will NEVER fully recover. And you worry about popping his eyes out or kicking him in the balls?" His words, not mine. . . . . . . . ^c^l^a^w^s^ . . . . . . . A Catt's Claws reminder: Remember, if one used the criteria used in France and other civilized countries instead of the false criteria of the (American) Centers for Disease Control, the rate of pregnancy-related-deaths in the United States would be 23.5 per 100,000 births (not 8 or 10 as the CDC says). This translates to 935 deaths of women in 1994 due to pregnancy - OR - 2.5 deaths of women due to pregnancy EVERY SINGLE day. Five women in the United States with its so-called great medical system die of pregnancy-related problems every two days! Over a ten-year period that comes to at least 9,350 women who have died of pregnancy-related problems. The figures are inexact because birth rates fluctuate. How women have been lied to in this country is beyond belief! Pregnancy IS dangerous. Five women die every two days from something we women have been taught is as easy as a man having an orgasm - giving birth. But what is even MORE damning is that nearly 25% of all deliveries (actually deliveries) result in serious complications for the mother. That means: in 1994 (the latest figures available from the CDC) covering 3,979,000 live births, almost ONE MILLION women suffered serious medical problems, many of which last a lifetime, because of birthing. WHY ??? ONE MILLION !!! Can you imagine ANYTHING that could happen to a man - including getting bald - that involved one million of them per year that wouldn't get millions upon Billions of dollars worth of research per HOUR? Our deepest thanks to now retired U.S.Representative Pat Schroeder (D-Colo) for commissioning the study that uncovered these terrible figures. Now, kiddies, do you think maybe someone in the feminist movement might get off their duff$ and start a fight for mother's lives? Or even publicizing these horrendous figures? . . . . . . . ^ 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 (antinausea) 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. . . . . . . . ^c^c^ . . . . . . . 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@direclynx.net 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 and archiving them. Copyright 1997, Irene Stuber. PO Box 6185, Hot Springs, AR 71902, email istuber@direclynx.net<<<< 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.