Organizers say the conference, scheduled for this coming Father's Day weekend, will focus on teen-age pregnancy, drug abuse and single-parent households.
Could this be a gathering of Conservatives? Have the folks at C.O.R.E. and the Freedom Journal decided to throw in with the guys and gals at the National Center for Men? Have they finally realized that fathers really are a necessary component of a healthy community and family life? Or are they going to resort to trite tirades against "deadbeats dads" and oppressive white males?
We shall see.
A recent class action suit against Mitsubishi Motor Manufacturing of America by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleges sexual harassment of as many as 300 women at its Illinois plant. It's one of the EEOC's biggest, highest profile cases.Details suggest at least some of the complaints against Mitsubishi are legitimate; what the hype and hoopla ignore, however, is how every day millions of women harass men at work.
Legal definitions of sexual harassment, as defined by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission:Most men will agree than an "attractive" woman who wears a tight sweater, a blouse with a plunging neckline, libido-arousing perfume, a short skirt, tight pants, or a Wonder Bra(TM), is engaging in "physical conduct of a sexual nature." And if most of us (men) do not welcome such conduct from our female coworkers (because we know we can get in trouble if we notice or respond to their behavior), and if it interferes with our work performance (because it's distracting), then far more women are guilty of sexually harassing us than the other way around.
- Quid pro quo:
- Making the submission of unwelcome sexual advances or other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature a term of (sic) condition, implicitly or explicitly, of an individual's employment.
- Basing employment decisions affecting the individual on his or her submission to or rejection of such conduct.
- Hostile environment:
- Making unwelcome sexual advances or other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature with the purpose of, or that creates the effect of, unreasonably interfering with an individual's work performance or creating and (sic) intimidating, hostile or offensive working environment.
It's not okay for men to harass women, nor is it okay for women to harass men. But before we get (more) carried away by all the fuss, we need to keep one thing very clearly in mind: pop-feminist dogma notwithstanding, most women and men like each other, are sexually attracted to one another, and whether it's in the workplace, the local pizza parlor, or at the neighborhood grocery store, they're going to indulge in a little flirtation, a wink here, a come thither look there, some romance or hanky panky in a few cases, and adults know how to deal with it without lapsing into Victorian swoons over a flash of cleavage or the leer that follows.
Assess the conduct at Mitsubishi and elsewhere, then judge wisely. Or judge foolishly, and watch the extreme precedents set to defend the delicate ladies' honor create a precedent equally extreme to defend the men's.
An African teen-ager who fears being subjected to ritual genital mutilation in her homeland pleaded Thursday for political asylum before the highest U.S. immigration board.Give it to her, I say. Genital mutilation is a barbaric practice and a violation of any who do not consent to it.
While we're at it, however, we should consider how, here in the United States, we routinely mutilate the genitals of millions of American baby boys, chopping off the most sensitive part of the male penis, the foreskin.
Oh, but that's different:
Female genital mutilation is a cultural practice thousands of years old that involves mutilation or removal of the clitoris to reduce sexual sensation. It is often inaccurately called "female circumcision." In fact, the male equivalent would be castration.Let's see, when you castrate a man, in the absence of modern medical facilities he is no longer capable of reproduction. A female victim of genital mutilation, however, can reproduce, albeit not without considerably more pain than is usual.
When the clitoris is removed, it reduces sexual sensation. When the foreskin is removed, it reduces sexual sensation.
No doubt about it, there's a big difference, all right.
Eleven years ago, sociologist Lenore Weitzman published "The Divorce Revolution," her groundbreaking study of California's no-fault divorce system. In it, she reported that women's households suffered a 73 percent drop in their standard of living in the first year after divorce, while men's households enjoyed a 42 percent rise.To the many fathers' rights organizations, this is old news. But don't read too much into this; whenever the bastion of their lies is about to come tumbling down around them, the feminatics always do one of two things: lie louder, or retreat to a lesser lie. Guess which Weitzman and her associates are doing:...
Weitzman, a professor of sociology and law at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., now acknowledges her figures were wrong.
Richard Peterson, a New York sociologist who reanalyzed Weitzman's data from computer and paper records archived a Radcliffe College's Murray Research Center, found a 27 percent declined in women's post-divorce standard of living and a 10 percent increase in men's -- still a serious gap, but not the catastrophic one that Weitzman saw.Yes, once again pop feminist pundits, with the help of the mainstream media, are ignoring that in divorce the woman usually gets the assets, while the man usually gets the liabilities. She gets the house, he gets the mortgage; she gets the health insurance, he gets the premiums; she gets the kids, he gets the support payments.
You can count on pop feminists to distort the truth, and The Seattle Times to report their truth.
Seems medical examiner Emmanuel Lacsina and his top aid, Jane Weber, maintained less than professional decorum, hosting parties featuring strippers and steamy hot tub shenanigans in the stinky city south of Seattle (Tacoma's pulp mill is notorious for it's cabbage patch aroma).
Not every member of their staff was amused, and some threatened to sue, claiming hostile environment sexual harassment. Did any of them complain at the time? Evidently not. Shouldn't we expect adults to stand up and draw the line when work associated behaviors cross the line?
Larry Finegold of Seattle, the attorney for the woman who won a sex-harassment settlement against (Washington state) Gov. Mike Lowry last year, said it's no defense to say a complaint wasn't made.The cultural arrogance of such a statement aside (with millions of immigrants in this country, representing hundreds of different views on what's appropriate and what's not, only an elitist snob would say there's just one proper way for adults to behave), the logic behind Finegold's remark is that, from speed limit signs to company policy handbooks, no laws, rules or regulations should be necessary because adults ought to know how to act."Why should you tell someone that they're acting inappropriately?" Finegold said. "If they're adults, they ought to know it."
Excuse me while I toss my cookies. This has to be one of the most asinine ... no, wait, what's really asinine is that The Seattle Times quoted him without ridicule. What's really asinine is that when Finegold spouted off, he spoke not only for himself and the morally effete feminatics, but for the snobs at the Times who view female sexuality as fine and male sexuality as vulgar, who look down on the working class and identify themselves with the graying, sagging, politically and economically powerful upper middle class former yuppies who want to ruin the Seattle economy by driving the blue collar merchants and manufacturing jobs out of town to make room for their baseball stadiums and plush downtown parks.
Forty years ago, Lacsina would have known his behavior was inappropriate because his paternalistic, patriarchal male associates would have told him it was inappropriate. He would have known, because the instant a whisper of his antics leaked, the wives of his colleagues would have picked up their telephones, dialed 1-900-GOSSIP, the wags at the Tacoma News Tribune would have made moral mincemeat out of him, and he would have ended up working as a plastic surgeon for the mob because no decent hospital would have wanted him on their staff.
But then, he probably would have known better, because back then, despite the millions of immigrants (and who but a vanishing few among us are not somehow descended from immigrants), American culture was homogenizing, and sexuality was anything but liberated.
Now, we have liberation and the two faces of feminism, each babbling a different message of what is right and wrong behavior for men. On the one side, a salacious harlequin who winks and says come join me in the Bare Bun Fun Run. On the other, a punctilious prude who sniffs at anything so vulgar as a penis.
From once clear standards, our society has descended into a morass of moral uncertainty where what you do is judged less by the act than by when, where and by whom the deed is done. Lacsina and Weber are louts, but given the hypocrisy of they who cast the stones, their behavior is understandable.
So by all means, let's castigate and punish them for their behavior; then, let's apply the same standards to everybody regardless of sex, gender, or any other factor. In Toward a Feminist Theory of the State, Catharine MacKinnon argues against such consistency, asserting that equal treatment isn't equality because the very fabric of human existence (our evolved psychology/sociology) oppresses women, something equal treatment ignores. But then, Hitler said something similar about the Jews, and MacKinnon isn't exactly known for her rationality.
But rape is never justified, so what difference should it make if the victim was partying at an orgy and just happened to decide 19 men in one night was enough and mumbled no to guy number 20, making criminal what, moments before, was welcome.
No, after all, means no.
That's fine, make the rules whatever you want, just make them even handed. Some people are not supposed to be more equal in our society. If a law applies to one person, it should apply to every person regardless of their race, sex, or planet of origin. If a rape plaintiff's past -- immediate or ancient -- is deemed irrelevant to the defendant's defense, then the defendant's past should be irrelevant, too.
But in our society, some people are more equal than others, and a rape defendant's past is considered fair game:
MARYSVILLE - Police are looking for anyone with information about inappropriate sexual contacts between children and a former teacher's aide and camp counselor now jailed on charges of child rape and child molestation.Good for them! Personally, I think background investigations only make sense. Behaviors occur in many contexts -- social, historical, and emotional -- the defendant's past actions may be relevant and should be discovered. Just as a plaintiff's previous behaviors may be relevant and should be discovered.
But, say the feminatics, only rape victims are put under the microscope, and that's not right. They're wrong. People who allege theft are often investigated by insurance companies; in car accidents, the victim may also be cited for "contributory negligence"; indeed, one of the topics on the May 26, 1996, edition of 60 Minutes, was how airline companies get very personal in their attacks against plaintiffs in airplane crash lawsuits. They talk about the plaintiff's sex lives, how they grew up, how good they are at their jobs. An indictment, perhaps, of how inhumane the legal process can be, but also positive proof that the feminists arguments with regard to shielding the alleged victims' from background discovery are wrong.
In criminal and civil proceedings, plaintiffs are often investigated because the defendant has rights, and it's only fair to ascertain all relevant facts. And no matter how the pop feminists rage, the plaintiff's contributory behaviors are as relevant as the defendant's derivative behaviors.
What do women teach us by the kinds of choices they make, the types of men they work to attract?
Maybe it's not a very important question, maybe nobody cares, but maybe it is, maybe we should care, and maybe this is the question to ask Jacey Johnson, author of Cosmo's to catch a hunk: nine audacious rules of seduction guaranteed to land you your very own Brad Pitt!
According to Johnson, the rules are simple:
Some of this makes sense, but "be a bitch"? Puhleez! Be a bitch, attract a jerk.
- Be a bitch.
To secure more than the fifteen minutes he automatically lavishes on lucky members of the opposite sex, be beyond hard to get.- Stealing is legal.
...sometimes the best men are taken. So on occasion you have to heist one.- Go blonde.
Going blonde involves the same principle behind wearing reflectors when jogging at night: You're so much easier to see.- Show your chutzpah.
Invite him to a swell event for which you "just happen to have 'free' passes."- Don't assume he's the king of dating.
A night out with the gang, in fact, is the perfect approach for shy ones. The man who doesn't date because he's timid will probably find one-on-one time with any woman a tad overwhelming.- Work his ego.
Hunks are people, too. Which means they enjoy doing whatever it is they do well.- Go where few women have gone before.
Bank robbers rob banks because that's where the money is, right? Thus, looking for hunks in their natural habitat makes perfect sense.- Be prepared for emergencies.
It's tempting to go to the local diner on a Saturday morning wearing a dirty sweatshirt and hairdo courtesy of your pillow. But trust us; this is the morning you're guaranteed to run into a Troy Aikman look-alike.- Make him an offer he can't refuse.
Some wild abandon in the bedroom never hurt anyone. But please, a little restraint before the big moment, particularly when dealing with a studmuffin.
The kind of man who can be stolen is not the type to place a high priority on commitment.
If you need a reflector to get a man's attention, then don't be surprised when he dumps you for someone with enough brains not to need to resort to the deer-caught-in-the-headlight look.
Nothing wrong with taking the initiative, but the Cosmo way as a rule is typical of the indirect "don't take responsibility" state of mind. Only cowards are always indirect.
Maintaining good grooming habits, even on Saturday mornings when you're feeling lazy, is a fine thing. But overdoing it is vain. Hairspray queens attract hairspray kings, and men who are too superficial to either see or appreciate a woman's inner beauty. Women who, deep down inside, are all surface, should definitely follow Cosmo's advice. Women with more to offer than expertly applied makeup and big hair can learn more about a man by letting him see them without makeup wearing their grubbies.
But then, lest there be any doubt just what the goldbricking Cosmo Girl wants, according to Katherine Alberg, she should "stroll around the Microsoft campus . There are way too many single men there, some with healthy stock options."
To Curt, Dave and all my other buddies at Microsoft, summer is upon us and the Cosmo girl is on the prowl. Just watch your wallet, remember Allen Wells, and think about what you really want in a woman. If you want a superficial, "I'm blonde by choice" hairspray queen, that Cosmo girl over by the fountain may be for you. Don't be shy! Just follow these nine "audacious" rules and you can't go wrong:
Or you can aspire to something better, which means it's time to set the record straight about "nice guys."
- Be an asshole. Women love it when you treat 'em like dirt.
- Stealing is legal. Women dig dangerous men.
- Go red. Women love red, especially when it's the color of your Lexus.
- Show you don't take no for an answer. Let her know who wears the pants.
- Don't assume she's shy. Be blunt, tell her how to please you.
- Put her down, then be the one to pull her up.
- Go where no decent man would. Stand tall in Ladies Lingerie as you leer at the patrons.
- Be prepared for emergencies. Always carry a condom. You never know when you're going to score.
- Make her an offer she can't refuse. Just make certain she's not an undercover cop, first.
Most people think of nice guys as wimps, snags, and timid. Guys like Clark Kent and the Crusher kid on Star Trek come to mind. Bumbling, socially inept, shy and arrogant.
Arrogant?
Yes, nice guys are arrogant, some would even say self-righteous, because we believe in love, fidelity, honesty, trust, commitment, and above all we're put off by the hypocrisy of so many women who say they want these things in a man, but really don't.
So, ladies, be a Cosmo girl if you want; just be clear what it is a Cosmo girl gets, be certain that's what you want, and when your Brad Pitt substitute dumps you, don't come crying to us complaining that "all men are pigs," because we're on to the game, and the thing about the Cosmo girl is, when the old one wears out, it's easy to get a new one.
"Why aren't there more women CEOs?" carps Lynn Povich, Editor-in-Chief of Working Woman magazine:
According to a new study by the research firm Catalyst, most of the CEOs surveyed think lack of management or line experience is the major obstacle; more than half of the executive women say it's still gender stereotypes and exclusion from the old-boys network.Gender stereotypes are why "the only two female CEOs in the Fortune 1000 are on that list because they own their companies"?
Right.
And gender stereotypes are why Bill Gates is CEO of Microsoft, Howard Schultz is CEO of Starbucks, and Paul Allen is CEO of Asymetrix -- because, like thousands of men ... and women! ... they founded their own damn companies.
To complain because a statistically small number of women are CEOs while ignoring how many men are top dog because it's their company falls into the "liars figure" category, as in "figures never lie, but..."
The judge didn't see it that way:
For this crime, U.S. District Court judge Joel Gehrke sentenced Marshall to a slap on the wrist -- literally. Gehrke ordered Marshall to roll up his sleeve and slapped his exposed wrist with three fingers.Harumphs Melissa Schorr, "There ought to be a law."
And we're sure (oh, sure we are) Ms. Schorr was equally indignant when Lorena got zip for wacking John W.'s johnson, too.
In nearly every race, a majority of women preferred the Democratic candidate regardless of gender.When Clinton wins in '96 (and if Dole is his strongest opponent,...), all Ireland has to do is con everybody into thinking it's her fault. That shouldn't be hard -- where femigogues are concerned, politicians and news reporters are known to be gullible.
According to the feminist extremists, women are really good at this. Negotiation is an expression of the "feminine principle," so we're told. Women are the glue that holds society together. So, when people backlash against feminism, it must be a failure with men, because women are so good at finding the common ground and keeping the peace.
Enter Representative Patricia Schroeder:
There is a striking difference in the way women and men evaluate Schroeder's style and effectiveness. Women lawmakers who support progressive legislation see her as a genuine leader on their issues in Congress and a positive voice on the national scene. Male staffers on the Democratic side are critical of her for not playing the game better and for squandering her years of seniority by not working the system as well as she might have. Her refusal to compromise is cited as a failing. ... "The reason she is such a leader is that she is so committed," says (Representative Carolyn) Maloney. "Her unwillingness to compromise would be seen as a strength in a man."Uh-huh. "Death before Dishonor," and all that. If Representative Schroeder wants to be a blockhead, and if other femigogues want to see that as a characteristic of good leadership, that's their business. But they shouldn't be surprised when the folks whom they harm respond with something less than enthusiasm:
Now, she says, her job has become more like trench warfare than public service. In 1994, Schroeder was spat on for the first time, in an airport, a breakdown of civility that she attributes to the rise of talk radio and a steady diet of conservative, antifeminist rhetoric.That would explain the women who have tried to run me down with their cars, the many death threats women (and a few men) have left on my voice mail, and the occasional hostile email.
Face it, Pat, your and other feminist extremists' refusal to acknowledge that others have a point of view, that they have a right to their point of view, and that there is room for discussion and compromise, is behind the backlash.
But then, who am I to say -- I'm a man, after all, and women are never wrong.
What happened? Well you may ask, you who are a part of the problem, you who bear the guilt and responsibility for this grievous harm. White, black, male, female, you are all guilty, for, you see, my grand mother and her two brothers, born though they were in America of parents who were themselves born in America, were not born American citizens. No right to vote, no right to equal protection under the law, they didn't even rate as second class citizens, being non citizens.
Being Indian, Gramma and her brothers were young adults before they were granted the rights of citizenship, including the right to vote. And for that, I am forever oppressed. Just as women are forever oppressed by the fact there was a time when only upper-class white men could vote:
Today, women live in another time of stalemate and backlash. The next generation of historians may describe the 1980s and '90s as our "doldrums"By "we vote in nearly equally low numbers," she means that several million more women than men have voted in each of the general elections during the past 2 decades, and are responsible for voting more men than women into office.Women have used "the key" the suffragists saw as the tool to unlock many doors, but we don't have the full equality they imagined at Seneca Falls.
It took two generations before women voted in equal numbers to men. Now we vote in nearly equally low numbers. It has taken 75 years to win 8 percent of the Senate seats, 11 percent of the House seats, 20 percent of state-legislature slots. Women are becoming doctors and lawyers in full proportion -- but not politicians, not law-makers, policy-makers, world leaders.
By "women are becoming doctors and lawyers in full proportion," she means that not only do more women than men graduate from high school and college, but that they are responsible for choosing to leave most politics to men.
By "we don't have the full equality they imagined at Seneca Falls," she means that women still aren't subject to the military draft, are still awarded primary custody of children in the vast majority of cases, and still leave it to men to volunteer for most of the dangerous community services, like fire fighting.
Oh, and as for the oppression arising from the non-citizen status of Gramma and her brothers, I gotta tell ya, they were all proud to be Americans, never felt any continuing oppression from it, and the fact they were not born citizens never played a factor in our lives. But then, we weren't raised to be whiners and complainers. Unlike some white, upper middle class women we can name.
Recently, both the quantity and the quality of the human sperm population have come into question. Although a decline in the sperm count has been noted before, in one part of the world or another -- and generally dismissed -- several new studies report a high proportion of damaged or misshapen sperm and depressed sperm counts in many countries. The apparent drop in the sperm count is so sudden and steep that it has caused some scientists to wonder whether the human species is approaching a fertility crisis.What could be causing this flagging potency? Possible culprits range from common antibiotics, recreational drugs, X rays, synthetic chemicals, industrial pollutants, the consumption of meat, fat, and alcohol, stress and urban living. One thing that does not seem to have considered, however, is pop feminism's unremitting attack on masculinity. As silly and simplistic as that explanation may be, ironically, there is some evidence to support it:
John MacLeod, in his many studies of semen among various populations, found one group with "phenomenally high" sperm counts: long-term prisoners.In some intuitive sense, Lawrence Wright, author of the New Yorker article, seems to understand this: "It is as if manhood itself were waging a losing campaign against forces as yet unknown but frighteningly overwhelming."
Do you think so?
A large-scale study of day care concludes that pacing children in the care of someone other than their mothers does not, by itself, damage the emotional attachment between mother and child.So, there's no reason why fathers can't be awarded primary custody of the kids, eh?
Despite that most people didn't smoke marijuana, and that most looked down on it's use, hemp cultivation and use of hemp fibers were thriving industries. If some people smoked marijuana, that was their problem. But when Dupont was preparing to bring Nylon to market, the last thing they needed was competition from the well-established use of Hemp fibers. Our government made the cultivation and use of hemp illegal, Dupont successfully launched Nylon, and the rest is history.
More recently, when Lily was preparing to bring Prozac to market, the last thing they needed was competition from the well-established use of L-tryptophan as an over-the-counter nutritional supplement that accomplishes much the same thing as Prozac, but at a fraction of the cost and without turning some users into homicidal maniacs. So, after years of safe production and use, a bad batch that made close to 100 people sick and tragically killed a few others suddenly appeared, and the FDA banned it just in time to clear the way for Prozac.
The golden rule rules -- whoever has the gold makes the rules. The question we need to ask is, who will grow rich from making a thing illegal, or keeping a thing illegal? Who has a financial interest in keeping same-sex marriages illegal?
The easy answer is, mainstream vanilla society. Only problem with that is, mainstream vanilla Americans are generally pretty tolerant. Even if most of us personally oppose same-sex marriages (in the same way that most of our grandparents passively opposed smoking marijuana), one survey after another indicates most of us are pretty much libertarian in our attitudes. So if it's not most of us who are actively opposed to same-sex marriages, then who is?
Listen to Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who wrote a scathing dissent to a recent Supreme Court ruling upholding the civil rights of gays and lesbians. A cabal of "elitists" on the court, according to Scalia, joined to blunt the movement of "seemingly tolerant Coloradans to preserve traditional sexual mores."The "traditional family" argument has bothered me ever since Camille Paglia pointed out that the extended family, and not the nuclear family, is the traditional form. In this respect, polygamous families -- those in which 3 or more adults are all "married" -- are closer to tradition than the nuclear family is.Listen to morals czar Bill Bennett, who opposes same-sex marriages. "Allowing same-sex marriages would do significant, long-term social damage.... The function of marriage is not elastic; the institution is already fragile enough."
And the argument posed by conservative pundits like Bennett and, one of my heroes, George Gilder, that the nuclear family is essential to the health and vitality of modern society seems less compelling when cast in the context of humanity's expansion into space, where large regimented industrial fiefdoms seem less likely than relatively small space faring villages.
Which brings us back to the question of who is really behind opposition to same-sex marriages. Who stands to benefit most by it?
Tucker thinks it stems from a need to find scapegoats to blame for the breakdown of the nuclear family, and points out that "gays and lesbians have had precious little to do with the breakdown in marriage."
The development of effective contraceptives has allowed women to become sexually active without bearing children. The shift from an economy requiring brute strength to one requiring brain power has allowed educated women to support themselves adequately outside marriage. And men struggle with what being a husband and father means.Well, a lot of men are struggling more with how to reconcile many women's demands for rights without corresponding responsibilities, but again we run into the libertarian attitudes of most folks.
Who's got the gold? Who stands to lose the most money if same-sex marriages are legalized and more than a million people suddenly become eligible for "spousal benefits" under company health plans. And who has enough money to pay for high powered lobbyists to oppose it?
Seems likely that gay and lesbian organizations who focus on conservative and men's organizations are ignoring their real and most powerful opposition.
What, I wonder, will they make of this:
From 1980 to 1993, total male arrests for violent crime went up 42 percent. But female arrests for violence grew at more than twice that rate, 93 percent, albeit from a lower base. The number of women apprehended for assault nearly tripled, jumping from 94,384 to 241,988. And the number of women hauled in for carrying weapons or for vandalism went up by 55 percent, more than double the increase for men (23 percent). Female offenses against family and children more than tripled.Some femigogues have argued that this is only right, that women are only making up for the buhzillion years all us guys have oppressed all women who ever lived or ever will live. And anyway, women's violence is insignificant compared to men -- they have a long way to go to catch up with men.
Okay, so why is it that when most of the new cases of HIV are women, even though the vast majority of existing cases are men, it's still a women's issue and the lioness's share of funding for medical research should go to study women and HIV?
Why is it that even though about 80 percent of the homeless are men, because the number of homeless women is growing relatively faster, homelessness is a women's issue and most of the funding to help the homeless should target women?
To be consistent,... oh, but then, the only thing feminatics have ever been consistent about is in their shrill condemnation of men and effusive praise for women. Fairness has no place in their paradigm.
During the course of the divorce proceedings, the plaintiff was making the usual allegations about how her husband beat and abused her, the goldfish and all the children in the next state, when an associate with the law firm representing the plaintiff got the bright idea to file under VAWA:
One day, an associate with the firm, Deborah S. Chang, took an emergency call from the woman while Schoonmaker was away. Chang learned about the allegations of violence in the marriage, and began to wonder, "There has to be something that can be done," she recalls.Now here's an odd thing -- it all depends on the defendant's state of mind:Chang researched state and federal law and came across VAWA. "I had to read it three times before I believed it," she says.
"The power in that statute is incredible," Chang says. It places violence against women on the same plane as civil rights and sends an important message: "This kind of conduct is illegal. It is not to be condoned,' " Chang says.
The committee report makes clear that a woman cannot sue under the act simply because she is a woman and the victim of a crime. She must prove that the attack was motivated by anti-woman animus. Epithets would be one form of proof, as would a defendant's history of violence against women or circumstantial evidence, such as if someone separated women from men and shot only women.As the wording in VAWA is gender-neutral, that means that men are covered under the law, too. With that in mind, we might wonder how long it will be before some man files a grievance against Lifetime TV, otherwise known as the "man-hating channel."
Pimps keep their hookers socially isolated, limiting their contact to the other girls (known as wives-in-law or stable sisters). The youngest, prettiest hooker faces a nightly quota as high as $1000.The stories include accounts of rape, drug addiction, infections, diseases and abuse, and, according to Norma Hotaling, a former heroin-addicted prostitute, the johns are to blame:
"Your involvement in this perpetuates it," she tells them. "If you weren't there, we wouldn't have pimps preying on young girls who are vulnerable to anyone who shows them some attention."Tobacco company executives should take note: blame consumers. "If you weren't out there buying from our competitors, we wouldn't have to lace our cigarettes with extra nicotine."
I don't much care for prostitution, but everything described in the article stems either from the always potentially exploitative relationship of employer and employee, or from laws making prostitution illegal. Decriminalize it, regulate it, and the conditions that create most of the hazards will cease to exist.
Oh, but we can't do that! As every pop-feminist knows, male sexuality is evil. Decriminalizing prostitution would be like admitting there's nothing wrong with men who want to have sex with women, and that would almost be like acknowledging men are people, too. Can't have that!