I am being forced to change my email address. Hopefully, it isn't because of any anti-feminist backlash. My new email addresses istuber@imageworld.com or istuber@direclynx.net. The imageworld address is preferred. The archives situation is also in a turmoil but the URL will remain the same. The problems were caused by CSWNET.com pulling the plug on Imageworld WITHOUT NOTICE! Yes, we would appreciate any $ you can send our way to pay for the new archiving. With this change, the costs have gone UP. <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> ........Catt's Claws # 134 ... November 26, 1996......... ........ A Feminist Newsletter by Irene Stuber......... <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> Day by day we are finding out new, shocking, and murderous things that are being done to women by way of the "male is the norm" philosophy. Many medications that have been prescribed to women after being tested only on men are being shown - sometimes after YEARS OF USE - to be ineffectual, even harmful. And now the safety engineers who are killing women and children are going "tsk, tsk, don't blame me." The fact is that through their incompentency and narrow-mindedeness, they only considered the safety of MEN - usually the average MAN of 5'9" weighing 175 pounds as the minimum size when planning safety devinces. And so their carelessly designed air bags are killing women and children. The bags have MURDERED 15 smaller-to-average women (4"8" to 5'5") and at least 28 children. The all-male thought processes of the "medical and safety professions," never asked the obvious question: how is it going to affect women and children who are built differently and smaller? As I look down at my driver side air bag, I know that because of the length of my arms and legs ( I am 5'5+" tall), a minor traffic accident can throw that bag into my face at a volume that can kill me .... Yet the U.S. Government and the car manufacturers are not recalling the overly powerful bags that that can easily kill me (and most women who drive) although they recall cars for defective brakes, fuel tanks, etc. But of course, the defective brakes, fuel tanks, etc., can harm MEN while the defective air bags harm very, very few men - only women and children whom we all know, wink, wink, are expendable. SO - to women who drive and can't get away from the air bags ... If you have an adjustable steering wheel as I do, adjust it so that the center of the steering wheel (where the air bag is located) is aimed just below your breasts. (For men it should be aimed at their chests but the distance between women's head from their chests is 2 to 4 inches shorter than for the average man.) IF you don't have adjustable steering wheels, PRAY and then complain like hell to congress and to the dealer who sold you the car. Promise the dealer that if you or your family are injured in anyway by the overly powerful seat bags, the survivors will hold him financially responsible. Try to get your friendly attorney to write up such a form and personally deliver it to the head of the company where you bought your car and send a copy to the manufacturer of your car. Tell you what. If that nice car of mine explodes its air bags and kills or injures anyone, the manufacturer is going to get his ass sued. They KNOW the dangers TODAY - They KNEW the dangers months ago. And they now know I know. Have they sent out one notice? Have they said bring your car in so we can show you what to do to safeguard yourself and your family? Hell, no. We're only women. But if those air bags could possibly injure a guy'z testicles you wanna bet how fast those devices would be fixed? . . . . . . . ^c^c^ . . . . . . . And the next question is why are seat belts designed for men without breasts? How many women have been seriously injured when the seat belts cut into their soft flessh? . . . . . . . ^c^c^ . . . . . . . As an investigative reporter I was effective in getting some things changed because I did what most reporters never think to do: After I gathered my facts and before I wrote the story, I confronted the top man, forcing him to take responsibility for the situation by asking: "What are you going to do about it?" I then made his response the lead, not the accusations. When I heard about a land swindle, I got the facts and then I went to the bank president and asked him why he was letting it happen. He could have ridden out a scandal by saying he didn't know anything about it, but not when I tied the bell to him right at the beginning. With another land swindle (good old Florida and its "swamp" lands) I got a statement from the Florida Land commission chair and forced immediate action that resulted in the swindler returning all the money - either than or jail. And in yet another case that I investigated for six months almost always on my own time, I went directly to the State Attorney with a 16" high stack of xeroxes and led the series with his reaction - and actions - and saved $26 million for charities in Broward County, Florida. Had I done it the usual way, running the story then asking for reactions, very little would have been done as one politician would have been able to bounce their shurgging shoulders against the other. Anyone can investigate. To get action you MUST put those ultimately responsible on the line. Tom Jeret on the 20/20 expose about sexual harassment and rape in the armed services should have - instead of just dealing with papers and the women's tragic stories - asked ON CAMERA the important peope from Congress and the leaders of the the armed services: "You knew about this, you got the reports, why didn't you do anything? And if you are claiming you didn't know about it, how come you were so incompetant?" But Jeret didn't - and the good ole boy network coverup was setup. Talking to Strom Thurmond the 93-year-old present chair of the U.S. Senate Armed Service Committee is pretty useless but some effort should have been made to interview him as well as his sidekick Sen. John Warner of Virginia who certainly - through all those years - KNEW about it and DID NOTHING as did the "much respected" Senator Sam Nunn who was chair of Thurmond's committee while the Congress was in Democratic hands. Other senators and members of the house armed services committee are also culpable and should be asked "What did they know and when did they know it?" (Sound familiar to you students of Watergate?) He should have called Gen. Colin Powell and asked him pointblank: "This happened on YOUR watch. You had to know about it, why didn't you do anything?" He should have called the present chief of staff along with the ranking members of the Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives and asked, "You knew about this why didn't you do anything?" And then, turn to the television camera and say directly to it: "President Truman said the buck stops in the Oval Office. "Mr. President, commander in chief of the armed forces, Mr. Bill Clinton, what are YOU going to do about it?" Instead, a lot of dust was raised that enabled the guilty to get the hell out of harm's way. Fortunately there are a number of retired women generals who aren't about to let everyone off the hook. BTW, have you ever wondered why there is no WOMEN veterans associations to take care of women's problems the way the American Legion and VFW take care of men's problems? All the veteran's associations are heading by males and women's problems are not recognized. Officers and gentlemen: if'n you didn'tnoticed while your subordinates were raping, harassing, and intimidating women, would you notice invaders running down the streets of New York City? Somehow, I no longer feel safe. No one can be that stupid. . . . . . . . ^c^c^ . . . . . . . One veteran MALE captain wrote CC and suggested that each commanding officers of each military post and naval vessel where the thousands of rapes occurred be publically asked "You knew about this. Why didn't you do anything?" Then HE said, they should be suspended them from duty and have the stars or bars or turkeys torn right off their shoulders in a public display on contempt. Of course we know that won't happen. To look at it another way, what is the culpability of U.S. Representative Patricia Schroeder, now retired, who was on the House Armed Service committee for many years. One might ask her also ... "Why didn't you do anything?" And her answer might cast the brightest light of all on the filth of macho behavior in the armed services, for she was as helpless as any of the rape victims in the men's club that is the U.S. Congress. For all her seniority and accomplishments, as a woman she was still an outsider who had to trade HIGH to get anything done. Look how many years it took before Congress would act on female genital mutilation! . . . . . . . ^c^c^ . . . . . . . Now that you know about the shocking, totally revolting story of rape and coverup, what are YOU, quiet and kind readers of Catt's Claws going to do about it? Send emails, faxes, letters, make phone calls to the White House and to the chairs of the Senate and the House Armed Forces committees and to your own congressional seat warmers. Ask: Mr. President and members of Congress, what are you going to do about the shame of sexual harassment and rape of women in the military? How are you going to punish the officers who allowed this to happen and to continue happening WITH their knowledge? They got reports and hundreds of complaints by women and did NOTHING! Demand that not a single military promotion or military retirement of ranking officers should be given until this scandal has been settled. (This tack did some good with Tailhook.) And you might also send messages to our seat-warming heads of the various feminist organizations and ask THEM if they might do something effective about this ... . . . . . . . ^c^c^ . . . . . . . Nunn, Gingrich, Lott, Warner, Powell, etc. What are you going to do about it? By the bye, almost everyone of these congressional MALE leaders have appeared on recent TV news discussion shows and not once were any of them put on the hotseat regarding the rapes of women in the military. Any sensible woman moderator on any of the panels would have asked: "What are you going to do to clean up the mess?" (And, yes, we know Cokie Roberts is on Sunday morning TV - and what a disappointment she has turned out to be. That third or fourth million in her own name on top of the many that her good, caring Democratic parents had, seems to have turned her into a nice Republican matron, albeit pro- choice. . . . . . . . ^c^c^ . . . . . . . The Army's top official, Army Secretary Togo D. West Jr., says there's a valid argument for assigning women to combat positions, but he'll leave that decision to the American people and Congress. "If you want the best Army, you choose the best people to do it, regardless of sex," West Jr. said on a TV talk show. Retiring Senator Sam Nunn who as chair of the Senate Armed Forces committee spearheaded the attack on President Clinton's efforts to remove ALL bans against homosexuals in the military stayed true to his machismo patriarchal thinking and said he unequivocally opposes women in combat. (He also did nothing about the women being raped in the services.) Retired Maj. Lillian Pfluke, one of the first woman to graduate from West Point said real progress won't come until the Army changes its male-dominated culture, suggesting that much of the sexual harassment now extant in the military "would be eradicated" if women were assigned to "direct ground combat positions. The Army's in the rather ludicrous position right now of choosing less qualified men over more qualified women." Dahlin' - men have been doing that in business and politics for a long, long time. . . . . . . . ^c^c^ . . . . . . . PLEASE - if you know any women who were in the Armed Services, PLEASE urge them to step forward and tell what they know about the sexual harassment that we women KNOW is so prevalent. Yes, we KNOW. Why? Because women face the same treatment day in and day out from bosses, teachers, and cads in three-piece suits or jeans and big bellies who think they have the power or the camouflage to get away with it. The army ain't no different when the men in charge wink their eyes. . . . . . . . ^c^c^ . . . . . . . The New York Times is so full of itself that sometimes it is difficult to read it. To big drumrolls it "accepted" Ms. some years back and since then has nicely backtracked so women today are referred to by their virginity or marital status, something it doesn't do for men: Miss, or Mrs., and sometimes Ms. if the woman INSISTS on it. And YET, it recently referred to a male artist as "HER" and "SHE" because he had some plastic surgery and got some hormone shots. That, gentlemen, does not make a woman. A woman is the product of hormonal infusings starting as the fetus develops its female brain patterns. Then add a myriad of other physical conditions included menses. But MOST of all, a woman in our society is one who has been treated as a female all of her life, who has had to live in constant danger and under strict warnings with constraints on her movements because of rape, who has had to make do with lower pay, has been discriminated against in a thousand overt and subtle ways. She is a shell shocked survivor. A woman is not created on an operating table by doctors. But let me hasten to say that I have seen many a person who defies classification as either male or female. But in our patriarchal society (women tend to accept diversity in all forms more than men), it is necessary for a person to be limited to M or F. Why? Because the patriarchal system is based on simplicity, basic rules that any moron can follow. There's only M over F, dummy. So what if there's FM or MF. Ignore it. Or FFM or MMF ... The numbers of transgendered people are significant. Most, if not all, tribal and or matriarchal societies recognize differences in sexual makeup. It is only when a certain class (macho men) take over the leadership by brute force that the natural diversity within the mammalian "genre" is disregarded. The simplicity thinking of the patriarchy decrees everything must be black and white, right or wrong, yes or no: just like me. There is no place for maybes in a dictatorship. . . . . . . . ^c^c^ . . . . . . . BTW, the New York Times also insists on using a term like congressMEN when referring to the briefing of ALL female Congressional Representatives on the sexual harassment/rape scandal. It also uses chairMAN to refer to a woman who chairs a committee when everyone who thinks knows it is CHAIR (sans sex). Again, j'accuse the so-called women academics of this nation who maintain silence in the face of the American-English language changes brought on by the politics of sex and newspapers editors' prejudices. When a rule of grammar states that the masculine gender must be used if there is a CHANCE of one male in the gathering of 10,000 women - something is very, very wrong. Why can't we at least go back to the English before anti-woman political intervention of the mid 19th century and start using the sex-neutral they or them instead of the legislated-by-politicians he or him??? Aren't there enough women tenured English professors yet? Or have all of them bought into the god is male, male is god brainwashing, or as Dorothy Uhnak wrote in her novel _False Witness_ some years back: "I am of the generation of women who were raised not to trust `girls'; not to confide in them too much, not to put too much faith in their intelligence, reliability, integrity; to remember at all times that they are always and forever potential rivals for ... rare place(s) in the man's world. "If I insisted on revealing my intelligence, it should be only to a secure and influential man in a position to realize that (she's) all right; *she thinks like a man.* "This is what I will forever hold against men in general: that they have carefully selected out and inoculated intelligent women with a sense of specialness: you're not like the other girls. Damn, for a woman, you sure are bright as hell." . . . . . . . ^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. ....................... * ........................ 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@imageworld.com or 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 and archiving 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.