<^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> ........Catt's Claws # 161 ... August 20 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 <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> Jennifer from Austin, TX, sent us a disturbing article about the murder of 24-year-old Kiersa Paul on one of that city's most popular jogging and funning places: the greenbelt near Campbell's Hole where sweaty Texans cool off in Barton creek. What was sooooo disburbing was the attitude of the newspaper and the men who were interviewed. It was just "another" woman getting killed story. There's nothing sensational about that. The reporter (male) didn't see anything wrong with the comments from one of Texas' wanna-be-macho men: A 30-year-old MALE systems analyst for Motorola Inc., is quoted in the American-Statesman article as saying: "If I were female, I wouldn't come down here unless I was with somebody else." He said he runs the trail at least twice a week. That's the spirit, boyz. Blame the victim for considering that as a human being she had just as much right to the air, the land, and her freedom as any set of gonads that jiggle when their owners jog ... tiny bubbles below the belt and above the ears. Where is the outrage? Where is the call from good men that men be reeducated from predators to human beings? Where is the rejection of violence? But as Susan Brownmiller said back in 1972 to the howls of the predatory sex when she tore the shroud of hypocrisy from EVERY man's complicity in men's violence against women: "Rape is nothing more or less than a conscious process of intimidation by which ALL men keep ALL women in a state of fear. Not all men are rapists but men as a group TOLERATE rape and perpetuate myths about rape that keep women subjugated." (-- Susan Brownmiller. _Against our Will: Men, Women & Rape_ (1975). I get notes all the time from men readers saying that they're the good guyz, why write to us. ARE YOU? My reply is the motto that was thrown into women's faces during the glory years of the feminist revolution: "If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem." . . . . . . . ^c^l^a^w^s^ . . . . . . . Has anyone except me wondered why the NATIONAL NOW officers are silent about the way the women are being cross-examined in the pre-court martial hearing of Sgt McKinney as they charge him with multiple acts of sexual harassment, abuse, and rape? The NOW national officers went ballistic when the *attorney* for President Clinton made a boo-boo and said that he would question Paula Jones about her sex life. NOW's national officers organized immediate demonstrations, slogans, etc. IMMEDIATE DEMONSTRATIONS against Clinton ... but remain strangely SILENT as a parade of women ARE actually being questioned unmercifully about their sex lives IN DIRECT BREACHING OF MILITARY LEGAL CODE. Makes one wonder what the motives of the National officers of NOW are. Is it protecting women's rights or trying to drag down the President of the United States who has done MORE for women's rights than all the national NOW officers have done in their combined lives? Is it because he "slighted" Patsy Ireland before he was inaugurated? He didn't genuflect or something? Or is it - as we "suspect" - a combination of the feelings of TWO of the officers ... Personal emotion and their own asses before the good of all women ... NOW that's devotion to the cause of self-interest, not women's rights. Fess up ladies ... . . . . . . . ^c^l^a^w^s^ . . . . . . . Amazing Christian nation this US of A is ... There are near riots and all sorts of demonstrations regarding the alleged sexual rape of a Haitian man at a police station in New York. A special task force has been set up! Wow, the criminal was "sexually tortured" by the handle of a plunger. Meanwhile, in a nearby community, several white men were absolved of rape of a RETARDED girl in which the boyz, unable to get it up anymore, rammed several nasty things into the girl's vagina, including a plastic baseball bat. The "judge" said it was consensual sex. No torture there with a gaggle of boyz doing their thing with a retarded girl and then ... Is there something wrong in this picture? If you can't figure out what, how about scrunching up your eyes and trying to figure out the double speak in the case of soccer players from the D.C. United who had a bad night on the playing field and then went out and created an "incident" which was RAPE - although neither the word nor the abuse of the woman was used in the report. The league spokesMAN - fasten your seatbelts - said they were very concerned over the charges BUT the presumption of innocence is a SACRED right... and so the accused rapists stay on the active players list ...OF COURSE, silly, that Diaz Arce is the league leading scorer has nada to do with it. Then there's Cordero in Boston that was kept on the Red Sox team after he beat his wife (we've written about that) EVEN THOUGH THE MANAGEMENT KNEW HE HAD A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE AGAINST HIS WIFE. And then we saw a tape of the Bette Midler show in Las Vegas ... she's a very talented entertainer but one of the filthiest mouths I have ever heard (and trust me, I've heard some of the best). When you have that kind of woman glorifying in the filthiest kind of remarks about a woman's anatomy, when - ah - ah, let me just say, she's disgusting. And then there's the man in Egypt who was so angry at his daughter for eloping - and thus cutting off a potential "bride price" - that he cut off the head of Nora Marzouk Ahmed and paraded it through the town proclaiming, "Now, the family has regained its honor." Honor here being synonymous with a man's opinion. When I posted the complete story on Abigail's Rebels email list, I pointed out that such things are expected, allowed - yeah, even demanded in areas where the "god is male, male is god" male patriarchy holds sway. And I warned that such male supremacists movements in the United States, such as the Promise Keepers have the same goal: absolute possession and disposition of women and children. I saw film of several Promise Keepers rallies the other day. As one who was alive when Hitler held sway in Germany, the scenes are remarkably similar - tears and adoration of the speakers and their message: the male god is supreme and YOU are the supreme male god in your home... (You are an aryan, you are god.) But back to Egypt: Women are considered a cash crop in Egypt to be sold to the highest bidder. Women are killed or beaten regularly under the Muslin doctrine for not doing what their fathers, brothers, or husbands demand. By the way, such male supremacists was the also the Christian doctrine in the U.S. until the middle of the 19th century when women began to put a stop to it and if the religious right has any say, will be again. Authorities admit that if the father had not paraded his daughter's severed head through the streets, he probably would not have been charged with any crime. Such matters are usually covered up as "accidents." For example, only the week before a father doused his 19-year-old daughter with fuel and set her afire for marrying a man her father didn't approve of. Guess that's saving her from a fate worse than death ... except, it was a matter of the bridegroom not being able to pay the dowry price. What the murder was was a warning to *other* women that you'd best obey your loving, caring daddy, or you'll be BBQ. One writer who is exploring the horrors of "sullying of family honor" in Egypt said, "women to be bought and sold as the father sees fit." The same things are happening across Equatorial Africa, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, etc., etc., etc.... and next in your town, U.S.A., courtesy of the religious right and the Promise Keepers. Wonder how long it will be before the right-wing bigots start calling for female genital mutilation - the amputation of the clitoris as is done in Egypt of the cutting away of everything external between a woman's legs as is done in Equitorial Africa ... or haven't you heard the argument being put forth by them that such operations IN THE UNITED STATES come under religious freedom. . . . . . . . ^c^l^a^w^s^ . . . . . . . Please go out and get a cold glass of water before you read the following paragraph. My fingers are shaking. Seems that the Director of the National AIDS Trust as well as other leaders in the AIDS/HIV movement are OBJECTING to the prosecution, conviction and jailing of several AIDS/HIV positive men who KNOWINGLY infected women with the virus. Seems like "It gives the wrong signal to the public about people with HIV." No, gentlemen, it doesn't. They are criminals. It is murder by penis. People aren't stupid. They can tell the difference between responsible behavior and the CODDLING of HIV/AIDS positive men who do bad things. When you have AIDS or HIV and have unprotected or unwarned sex with someone, THAT IS MURDER, pure and simple. You should be killed so you can't do it to another innocent person - even in jail. Although a lot has to be laid at the feet of President Ronald Reagan and his ultra-right handlers regarding the early stages of the AIDS/HIV pandemic in the U.S., it has reached the point where a lot of the sin of the pandemic and the growing infection of women and their deaths has to be laid at the doorstep of male homosexual AIDS activists for hiding and protecting the millions of IRRESPONSIBLE HIV/AIDS men (and a few women) who should have been isolated in some way so that society is protected from them. And from what I can gather from various sources, young homosexual men and those who dote on them, are again having group sex, sex parties, rings, etc., without regard to the possibilities of AIDS infection ... in other words, no safe sex, no condoms. How far are we supposed to go with our compassion? AND AGAIN - maybe, just maybe someone out in media land might listen (and horrors, even the gay community will publicize it): LESBIANS - women homosexuals - along with nuns have the LOWEST rate of HIV/AIDS of any group of human beings in the world. It's gay MEN that have HIV/AIDS, not gay WOMEN. There is no - NO - proof that oral sex between women transmits AIDS/HIV. Remember how authorities were quick to say that Tyson couldn't transmit the AIDS virus through his saliva and biting? Or the victims blood? And yet women can infect each other ... Strange ... . . . . . . . ^c^l^a^w^s^ . . . . . . . Double standards ... Before we begin, let's put MY OPINION right in front: I believe SEX with a minor by an adult is wrong, wrong, wrong. BUT, it seems that authorities see that gender is more of a problem than raping a child. In Los Angeles underage girls who are raped (statutory rape if not always forced rape) are encouraged to marry their rapists when they get pregnant. In the rest of the nation, the under age teenagers impregnated by adult men are condemned by the religious right as whores and their children are forced into lifelong poverty and shame. The men are almost never prosecuted. And then comes the (ugh) case in Seattle, Washington where a 35-year- old WOMAN teacher is being sentenced on child rape for seducing a 13-year- old boy and having his child. We would venture to say that YOUR town or city has had at LEAST one case of a 13-year-old girl being raped by an older man in the last year ... in the last month ... and nada is being done about it except to blame the girl. And who's leading the drive to condemn the girls who bear the children of older men? Hi - Rev. . . . . . . . ^c^l^a^w^s^ . . . . . . . Gentle reader - go take a break and then come back. You need a breather. This next one is not to be believed. In an Associated Press story from Mount Clemens, Michigan comes the story of how Jerry Belanger, 48, armed with a .357-caliber Magnum handgun, chased Mary Komajda, 36, up a flight of stairs at the Ford plant where they worked, cornered her in a small room and shot her six times. SIX TIMES! Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. He pleaded guilty to SECOND-DEGREE MURDER (he shot her SIX TIMES after chasing her with a gun in his hand and in anyone's book that is FIRST DEGREE CAPITAL MURDER!) Belanger can be back on the streets in 1999. But the judge said he deserved "SYMPATHY" because she was a stalker even though they had been lovers for a long time. We are quoting the AP story that quotes Macomb County Circuit Court Judge Mary Chrzanowski: "Never in 25 years have I seen such a relentless stalking of a man by a woman," Ms. Chrzanowski said. "I know that she relentlessly stalked you. Breaking into your house, constantly calling you, rifling through your garbage, making threats." Ladies, you just try to shoot a man who has been stalking you and you will spend all the days of your life behind bars... but not a man! Note also the above quote and put it together with my past remarks about AP being misogynistic. Read Judge Chrzanowski's remark again. Spot it? Yeah, AP calls her Ms., not JUDGE. Isn't that strange. Well put the Komajda murder in the same box with the guy in New Jersey who shot his UNARMED wife outside the courtroom and the judge dismissed the case because she "nagged him." Oh, by the way, the prosecutors will appeal Belanger's sentence. (Thanks to MichelePGM for the above story.) . . . . . . . ^c^l^a^w^s^ . . . . . . . And yet another case of justice denied ... A Mary Nevin, 32, suffering from multiple sclerosis and no longer able to speak has been refused a hearing against her sexually abusing care taker in a British nursing home. {{Oh, LAWDIE, LAWDIE, I know this is growing depressing, but I'm not making this stuff up ... these things are happening today, yesterday, everyday.}} The accused abuser had the charges dismissed against him by Judge Derek Stanley who said Miss Nevin was unable to give evidence in court or be cross-examined because she could not speak. Mary Nevin insists that she could have given evidence - albeit slowly - using the alphabet board which is the way she made the complaint to the police. The judge replied, "I am the trial judge and I am in a position to judge whether *this woman* would be competent to give evidence." Wonder if it was a man ... and it was a plunger ... But I digress ... Paul Davis, Miss Nevin's wonderful boyfriend for the past 12 years who has stood by her, is irate as is the crown's prosecutors and various groups such as the MS foundation. He said: "Mary is perfectly capable of making herself understood by pointing to the letters of an alphabet board. It may take a little longer than speaking directly but she can communicate effectively." He said the judge's refusal to give her a hearing left her in the position of having no protection from the law just because she could not give evidence in the normal spoken way. "It cannot be right that a disabled person has no access to justice," he said. (Excerpted from the Telegraph.) . . . . . . . ^c^l^a^w^s^ . . . . . . . "For many women, for many years, a crucial consideration in daily life has been male power; it has been a problem in numerous ways: it has had implications for virtually every aspect of women's existence. That we have not inherited a tradition in which male power is perceived as a problem, in which it is described, analyzed or criticized, is not because it has not been a fundamental issue to women, nor because they have not attempted to explain it, but because male power is not ordinarily a problem for men, and it is men who ordain what the real and significant issues of society are to be. --Spender, Dale. _Women Of Ideas and What Men Have Done to Them_. London: Pandora. 1982. . . . . . . . ^c^l^a^w^s^ . . . . . . . Oh my GAWD - I'd have never guessed... a lengthy (and expensive) investigation by the Army Inspector General shows that there is widespread evidence of sexual discrimination by male COMMANDERS against women troops... No wonder the army has to sound off: left, right, left, right ... they're so stupid they can't figure out what comes after left... or before right. . . . . . . . ^c^l^a^w^s^ . . . . . . . So far, 17 criminal and 14 civil cases have been prosecuted or are pending under President Clinton's violence against clinics act (FACE) according to U.S. Department of Justice statistics. Among them, Richard Thomas Andrews charged with the 1992 and 1994 California torchings of the Feminist Women's Health Center in Redding and Chico's Planned Parenthood clinic in 1994. According to an article in the Sacramento Bee, statistics compiled by the National Abortion Federation, a professional association of abortion providers, prove that Clinton's initiative, FACE, has cut back clinic violence. Bombings, arsons and death threats, etc., went from a high of 437 in 1993, the year before FACE, to 111 in 1996. . . . . . . . ^c^l^a^w^s^ . . . . . . . Ah judges ... they continued to sidestep a no-brainer until finally (can you believe?) the Massachusetts state legislature stepped in to give children the right to refuse to visit an imprisoned father who killed their mother IN FRONT OF THEM. Known as Lizzie's Law, it allows Lizzie Thompson to stay away from her imprisoned father who DEMANDED she be FORCED to visit him in jail and take his telephone calls. A loving father ... He slaughtered his wife in front of the child when she was just a toddler. She calls him "a bad man." Thank GAWD someone has some good sense ... the bill's sponsors say other states are asking for copies of the law to enact in their state. . . . . . . . ^c^l^a^w^s^ . . . . . . . I spoke today to a legislator who has discontinued his email account. The reason was that there was just too much mail - "You'd be amazed at how much stuff comes in and the range of the content. "We just don't have time to go through it all. And the worse part is that when someone sends an email, they think they have contacted their legislator." I agree. Even I don't have time to go through the hundreds of emails I get every day. I pick and choose and hope that I haven't offended too many people. And I'm not a legislator who can dispense favors. So again, let me point out the truism regarding email: Email don't cut it, kiddies. Email is friendly exchange of information. Those of you who object to spamming which usually consists of one or two messages a week (or even a day) - just think of what it would be with HUNDREDS of messages EACH and EVERY day. Use snail mail or telegrams or phone calls. Faxes are too easy to chain the way email is. In fact, with modern technology, about the only thing that counts is personal knowing, or face-to-face communications. So we say again to you: GET INVOLVED IN THE POLITICAL PROCESS. YOU write the political contributions checks to the political candidates so they listen to YOU, a woman, not your husband, the man. Only YOU can change things by getting involved in politics. Women's organizations don't count for anything anymore unless they are directly involved in the political process as are the conservative women's organizations which are used by the right-wing men as battering rams. Feminist organizations, on the whole, are "playing sweep the floor and wipe the benches," just busy-busy taking care of the droppings of the big boyz and NOT doing anything constructive themselves. If you REALLY want to change things, you are wasting your time and efforts by being the cleaning lady for the gaffs of male politicians which is exactly what our feminist organizations have become. You can change the laws and society ONLY IF you get involved with EFFECTIVE organizations. If you can't pick up the phone right now and talk on a first name basis with at least one politician in office today, don't bitch at me for what's going on it the world. You're not doing what is necessary to change it. This non-partisan shit is just that - a way to gag women and give them make-busy work in girls' organizations to keep them out of the boyz hair. Anybody remember the big push a couple of years back with the spending of bushels of NOW money to organize a non-partisan women's political party. The boyz laughed themselves silly. . . . . . . . ^c^l^a^w^s^ . . . . . . . A New female HIV preventative finally puts women in control. See the March, 1997 column by J. B. Dixson in the Detroit News that explains it: http://detnews.com/1997/accent/9703/23/03220009.htm . . . . . . . ^c^l^a^w^s^ . . . . . . . One in eight women in our country will develop breast cancer during her lifetime, compared to one in 20 a generation ago. And 46,000 American women will die of breast cancer this year. Time for your monthly breast exam - remember, the breast you examine is the one you want to keep. (Wonder how much cancer research money is being spent on the theory that cancer is caused by a "germ." Ulcers were treated medically as a stress- related situation until an Australian researcher proved it was a virus (and the medical people resisted the theory.) . . . . . . . ^c^l^a^w^s^ . . . . . . . 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 as we get to it. 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<<<<