No means whatever women want it to mean?
Ms. magazine, November/December 1994 - We can always rely on the feminatics at Ms. to entertain. Recent examples include their instigation of the blatantly biased "Take Our Daughters to Work" day, and their delightful failure to support lusty Paula Jones' ludicrous attack on the President.
Once more into the breach, my friends ... they're doing it again.
"It is not in the interests of many men or many institutions that women demand a nonexploitative sexual autonomy -- the right to say and mean both no and yes on your own terms," writes Lisa Maria Hogeland, assistant professor of English and women's studies at the University of Cincinnati.
In other words, "no" means whatever a woman wants it to mean? Situational linguistics -- words mean whatever I want them to mean at the time -- or sexual fraud? (More on that in a minute.)
Death for him, 10 years for her?
Rocky Mountain News, January 5, 1995 - Jesse DeWayne Jacobs and Bobbie Jean Hogan were both convicted of killing Etta Ann Urdiales. Both were found guilty in separate trials by different juries.
What makes this remarkable is that the court sentenced Ms. Hogan to 10 years in prison, but sentenced Mr. Jacobs to death.
Why aren't the New Rage women demanding equal justice? Don't women deserve their full measure?
Squirming in the mirror?
The Boston Sunday Globe, January 15, 1995 - Ellen Goodman is squirming. Again. Every time the mirror of "reverse" discrimination -- that ubiquitous term for discrimination against (usually white) males -- is held up for public reflection, Goodman and her androphobic accomplices get the jitters.
This time, it's Disclosure.
"Have you seen 'Disclosure,'?" she asks. "When it opened, I was appalled that the first big movie on sexual harassment would be about a man as victim."
What's the matter, Ellen? Is justice supposed to be for women only? Or is it that you don't you like "man bites dog" stories?
Indecent dads?
Mount Clemens, Mich. (AP), January 18, 1995 -- Judge Lido Bucci believes all fathers should go to jail. On Friday the 13th, Bucci sentenced a man who posed nude with his naked 5-year-old daughter in photos taken by her mother to a year in jail.
"Regardless of what you intended, you exposed a 5-year-old girl to an adult male's naked body,'' Bucci said.
What kind of precedent will this set? How many other fathers will be found guilty? Millions? And if all the men are in prison, who will pay for it? Women?
Sexual fraud?
Chicago Tribune, January 22, 1995 - The tease. We know her. The woman who leads men on with "come thither eyes" and coy flirtations.
Countless millions of men have succumbed to her charms, showering her with gifts, wining and dining her in expectation of a night to remember, only to end up standing cold and alone at her front door wondering if all the fuss was worth it for a goodnight kiss.
Well, fret no more, men, the feminist lawyers are on your side!
Yes, it's true. Recently, at a conference on gender bias and the law, Jane Larson, associate professor at Northwestern University School of Law, said that it's time to get tough on sexual fraud.
"The law is one of the most important tools of social change," she said.
Of course, she wasn't thinking of men when she said that. According to Tribune staff reporter Barbara Brotman, Larson wants to ignore fluttering eyebrows and come-thither eyes to go after the relatively few Don Juans: "Larson has proposed the creation of a 'sexual fraud' personal injury lawsuit, through which women who had entered sexual relationships under false pretenses could sue their partners for any resulting injuries."
Well, if her proposal ends up benefiting men -- as so many pop-feminist legal shenanigans do -- I think we can forgive Ms. Larson her bias.
And the same goes for Linda Hirshman, law professor at Chicago-Kent College of Law and director of its Women's Legal Studies Institute, who, at the same conference, said "Crimes of passion might be categorized as first degree murder because they are [examples of] a larger, stronger, less vulnerable person taking advantage of a smaller, weaker, more vulnerable person."
Given the mounting evidence that many cases of crib death -- or SIDS -- are really enraged young mothers plying pillow to muffle baby boys' cries, this seems like a good idea. And let's not forget the battered woman syndrome and PMS defenses -- what will happen to these female "crimes of passion" under Professor Hirshman's proposal?
It may take a while for them to figure it out, but the feminist law professors are definitely on our side.
More isn't enough?
San Francisco Examiner, January 22, 1995 - Race matters, according to columnist Julianne Malveaux.
"Those who want to dismantle affirmative action argue that these are the 1990s, not the 1960s, and that race does not matter as much as it once did. But it matters more now than ever, so much so that college-educated African Americans earn just 70 percent of what their white counterparts earn."
In a related story from the October 31, 1994, New York Times, Sam Roberts writes that "black college-educated women have made such financial strides since 1980 that many now earn as much or more than white women with similar education and similar work experience."
Personal idiocy?
Boston Globe, January 27, 1995 - In a parody of the Family Responsibility Act, columnist Katha Pollitt casts women as a nation of deadbeat dads, and makes several recommendations for how to make men pay for irresponsibly impregnating all those millions of unwilling women who (never mind Roe v. Wade), as victims of our male-dominated, women-oppressing patriarchal society, have no choice in the matter.
In a related item from the April 4, 1994, Toronto Star, Janice Turner reports that many women are now opting for the "joys and responsibilities" of being single mothers.
According to the Vanier Institute of the Family in Ottawa, "Many unmarried women are having babies deliberately, because they want to and feel they can handle the joys and responsibilities of parenthood on their own."
Turner noted that many people still assume that "children born to never-married women are accidents."
"It is best for children, not to have the negative influence of a man in their daily lives," one single mother explained.
Said another, "If I were on welfare I couldn't survive, but thanks to having daughter Zoe, I get mother's allowance, which is substantially more money."
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