!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.! ! ! ! Catt's Claws ... A Feminist Newsletter #57 ... August 13, 1995 ! ! ! !.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.! The recent outpouring against me by those with fun house mirrors for minds has been amusing; it has to be intended as slapstick humor - they have such a low regard for reality. 1.) They keep making me an official of NOW. I am not. I used to be a small state president, but am no longer. Guys, if you don't understand the difference, just remember, once upon time YOU were a virgin ... (well, maybe that's not a good analogy since so many obviously ...) 2.) They are also repeatedly misquoting a remark made in Catt's Claws that the last time I saw it on Soc.Feminism I didn't recognize it. 3. Not being content with misquoting, they are now totally fabricating quotes and attributing them to me - again seen on Soc.Feminism. But I am told that the "best" attacks on me are on Alt.Feminism (the unmoderated usenet that draws those whose words and opinions are not tolerated on moderated boards...A cess pool of ideological claptrap, usually written by "men" hiding behind aliases and false sex identities. Of course false identities. I pulled the mask off of one of the men who signs his name as a woman and his howls matched those of the hounds of hell. A Ph.D candidate, HE DIDN'T WANT HIS *MOTHER* TO KNOW THE CRAP he was writing. (that was on the Femjur list) ... It's a treat, so if you want to take a walk *through* the fun-house mirrors, go look and don't forget such nets as the fundy religious ones ... I had no idea I was so important ! But the latest ploy appears to be claiming that a item from Catt's Claws can't be true and the proof being that it didn't appear in that man's newspaper... Well, sir, the item about an Alabama man who killed his 14-month- old twin daughters for insurance and to avoid paying child support was a ONE PARAGRAPH story in the Boston *Globe.* It did NOT appear in most papers. Was it in YOUR newspaper? Guys, read my lips: that kind of censorship is the point of a great deal of the items in Catt's Claws. Women's news and news of interest to women that has been censored out of newspapers, magazines, etc. Look at the faces of your national news shows... look in the board rooms of your newspapers and TV stations ... Ladies and gentlemen, I do not believe in censorship of any kind because who censors the censors? What I do believe in is the OFF button of my TV and the DELETE key of my computer. I have NOT read most of the crap that has been thrown at me recently. Nor will I. You guys are talking to each other. Your rhetoric reminds me of the games teen-age boys play in locker rooms or behind the barn: who's the bigger? Bigger than what? Or bigger what? ....................... * ........................ "Martyrdom, sacrificing for a cause, euthanasia, or heroic suicide that the media are so keen about -- all these suggest daily that death, under certain circumstances, may be preferable to life. "Abortion always has been and continues to be another way of choosing death over life. Aborting a fetus that is not welcome is simply a shift of emphasis, FOR CHRISTIANITY HAS ALWAYS BEEN A RELIGION OF SACRIFICE: (only) IT HAS SACRIFICED THE MOTHER RATHER THAN THE CHILD." -- The Sacrament of Abortion, p 50 According to the anti-freedom-for-women, a woman who is raped and impregnated MUST die rather than abort the rapist's sperm result: the sacrifice of the woman to a man's crime. ....................... * ........................ "I think women's votes will be the key to the '96 elections," said Harriett Woods, outgoing president of the National Women's Political Caucus, which met last week in Tennessee to mark the state's pivotal vote 75 years ago to ratify women's right to vote. The stealth religious right reporters are trying to make out that it was women going Republican than turned the 1994 vote ... ain't so. While the GOP's share of women's votes was 47 percent, the fact is that MOST women passed the election by. (We'll get into that in a near future CC with facts.) "Women know they need economic empowerment for true liberation," said Ann Stone, chairman of Republicans for Choice, an abortion-rights advocacy group. "They voted on economic issues." ....................... * ........................ President Bill Clinton has created an office to counter violence against women and named former Iowa Attorney General Bonnie Campbell to head it. He has given new authority to Betsy Myers, sister of former press secretary Dee Dee Myers, who is a deputy assistant and director for women's initiatives and outreach. Under Clinton's urging, the Democratic-led Congress of 1994 passed the Violence Against Women act and has appointed more women to federal posts than almost ALL of his predecessors. Clinton also favors retaining affirmative action protection for women and minorities while the Republicans favor its abolishment and the return to white men hiring white men. ....................... * ........................ A recent article in *Vanity Fair* indicates there's trouble a'brewing in the happy family values land of Newt Gingrich. The Newt had several affairs during his first marriage (an older wife he dumped when she was in the hospital with uterine cancer from which she unexpectedly recovered) and several people close to the Newt claim his ways haven't changed. One woman, Anne Hollander, was quoted in the *Vanity Fair* article by Gail Sheehy as saying she had an affair with Gingrich during his first marriage. "We had oral sex. He prefers that modus operandi because then he can say, 'I never slept with her," she said. ....................... * ........................ Have we all dropped through the hole into never-never land and didn't notice? Randall Terry, founder of Operation Rescue (a failed used car salesman who hates women because he did not get the adoration he felt was his due because he was sole male in a women family) plans to launch his own political party to compete in the 1996 presidential election. The move is seen as another method to blackmail any once-moderate Republicans because other religious supremacists are doing the same thing. Sen. Bob Dole has stood on his hind legs and barked "Me, me," to every hate group going. ....................... * ........................ The State of South Carolina is expected to spend almost seven MILLION dollars in its continuing legal efforts to keep The Citadel an all-male school on tax dollars collected from women as well as men although Shannon Faulkner has enrolled in the Corps of Cadets by court order. (She has been attending classes but sleeping outside The Citadel since spring.) The two MOST conservative judges on the U.S. Supreme Court refused to intervene. Even Antony Scalia who NEVER votes in favor of anything having to do with women's rights refused, Because of the leadership on high in the state government and the officers and gentlemen in the administration of The Citadel, Faulkner is being guarded by U.S. Marshalls on Citadel grounds... Can you imagine leaving the defense of this country to such men who would harm one women? These are officers and gentlemen of the South? The state is creating a $10 million women's leadership program at private Converse College in Spartanburg, but it has not been approved by the court. The $10 million is only a fraction of what is spent on The Citadel. Shannon will NOT have her head shaved. The administration said the shaving of the heads of first year cadets was to abolish differences and that Faulkner was too different for it to make any difference. Are transparent trousers the new uniform of the day? ....................... * ........................ Roberta Cooper Ramo of Albuquerque who couldn't find work as an attorney in the South when she first graduated from law school has taken the gavel as the American Bar Association's first female president. She said it was "a moment not really about me but about women and history and American lawyers." She said her grandmother, a Wyoming suffragist, got dressed up one day to see President Theodore Roosevelt when he visited her town. "My grandfather said 'it's just for men,' and she said 'not any more,"' Ramo recalled. She favors affirmative action and will head the ABA towards strong actions to help eliminate domestic violence. ....................... * ........................ That story about Romo's grandmother reminds me of the dedication ceremonies for the Statue of Liberty. Women were barred from ALL the ceremonies for the lady. One group of women, however, chartered a boat and sailed out into the bay to challenge the ruling. Lady Liberty without liberty for ladies... ....................... * ........................ To avoid paying child support, 47-year old Jeffrey Nichols moved to Florida and later to Vermont and hid his assets by putting money in an offshore bank account in the British Virgin Islands. He also placed expensive real estate and other income in his new wife's name. He even denied he fathered the children, who were born during the 17-year marriage to his first wife according to federal documents. Nichols' second wife, before her death from cancer helped bring about Nichols' downfall by filing divorce papers which said Nichols had an annual income of more than $400,000 and was evading paying child support with various financial schemes. The FBI got into it under the Child Support Recovery Act which makes it a federal crime to cross state borders to evade child support orders according to U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White in Manhattan. (CC-->> Why wasn't THAT law around when my ex-husband ran out on his three children???) "Frequently, the parent selfishly lives very well in another state in cavalier indifference to court orders and his own children, who are both physically and financially abandoned," the prosecutor said in a statement. "This prosecution demonstrates that such criminal conduct will not be tolerated." If convicted, Nichols faces a maximum sentence of six months in prison and a $5,000 fine, besides the mandatory restitution of the half- million dollars owed in child support. (Well, mine is only about $60,000 PLUS 25 years of interest ... anyone know Joseph Francis Stuber?) ....................... * ........................ Call the NOW office in the Brookline, Massachusetts area to counter the so-called Operation Rescue Prayer vigil set for this fall. Strange isn't it that OP hypocrites pray for fetuses but ignore the terrible physical and sexual abuse that occurs to real, living infants and children. ....................... * ........................ From Jodie Zoeller, North Dallas Area NOW President: "To Those in the Dallas/Plano area: the Women's Southwest Federal Credit Union (hours M-F 11am-6pm and Sat 10am-2pm), phone 214-368-4466. The deposits in WSFCU are used to make loans to women. They have savings accts, CDs, IRAs available. Membership available to members of their many common bond groups (that's how credit unions operate under federal charter). They ...just celebrated their 20th anniversary in 1994. All DFW area NOW chapters are in the common bond group so any of our members can open accounts / borrow from this WOMEN'S credit union. "I'm a relatively young feminist (age 34) so I didn't experience credit discrimination but my first car loan was rejected by a major Texas bank because I refused to get my Dad to co-sign (I was 25 and had a good post- college job)... So I think it is important to support the relatively FEW women's banks and credit unions that exist." ....................... * ........................ From: Anita "My question is about reading material I need to get a hold of in order to combat stupid comments from men regarding how easy it is to have babies. It seems lately, when I get into a discussion about the latest "Drive Through Baby Deliveries" our health care facilities are providing us with, men always site how easy/natural it is to have a baby. Then I get the old crap about how Native American women had their babies in the fields and just got up and either kept working or picked up their tepees and went on the road. I can't tell you how furious I get when I hear this foolishness. This stereotype of the Native American women, indigenous women in general or any women for that matter flies in the face of the 500,000 women a year which die in childbirth all over the globe every year. When I cite this alarming statistic as part of my argument, it goes over their heads. "Again, my question is, I need to learn the truth about the Native American women's child birth experience, devoid of the western movie stereotype. Do you know where I can go to get better informed? What books, what articles, what organizations can tell me the truth about being a women in the various Native American nations." CC-->> There are any number of knowledgeable people who can guide us to answer Anita's questions - How about sending us your information? Every since MEN began writing social histories and making movies, birthing by indigenous women has been shown as if they are animals in the fields ... and any veterinarian or breeder of animals knows a lot of female animals die from birthing complications, but that's not portrayed. Hell, they portray women recovering faster from child birth than men from an orgasm. Some facts would be welcome... ................................................. To receive Catt's Claws by email, write and in the body of the note No name, nothing else. ....................... * ........................ 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 irenestuber@delphi.com for inclusion in the Catt's Claws feminist newsletter which will be emailed three times a week: Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. (Not regular this summer.) This is NOT an interactive discussion net but an exchange of information and 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. Irene Stuber. PO Box 6185, Hot Springs, AR 71902.<<<<