MANifesto: An electronic newsletter of news and opinion on gender
issues. January, 1996.
INDEX:
I. The Veggie-Penis Lawsuit
II. Jesus Christ: Potential Rapist
III. Chief Wins Harassment Suit
IV. Sexual Harassment at the Corp. for Public Broadcasting
V. Feminist Pay Grab Defeated
VI. Northern Exposure Actor Charged
VII. Male and Presumed Guilty
=======
I. THE VEGGIE-PENIS LAWSUIT
Newsgroups: alt.feminism,soc.men
Date: Thu, 28 Dec 1995 13:32:25
A woman is suing a nursing home in Peterborough, New Hampshire
over a prank on the day before April Fool's Day. Irene Palmer's
co-workers at Pheasant Wood Nursing Home got a police officer to
pretend to arrest her. She was handcuffed and taken outside, then
was told it was a joke.
She wants money. She says the nursing home should pay her $1.8
million.
Apparently she thinks she could put $1.8 million dollars to
better use than a nursing home.
She also filed an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
claiming sexual harassment because someone at the nursing home put
up a photograph showing Palmer holding a vegetable that resembles a
penis.
In her lawsuit, Palmer say the incidents caused her to lose sleep
and gain weight and made her nervous and depressed and unable to
concentrate.
If conditions are too rough for this woman in a nursing home,
perhaps she should switch careers -- to the military, for example.
Feminists keep telling us that this is the gender that can stand up
to the horrors of combat.
===============
II. JESUS CHRIST: POTENTIAL RAPIST
In a thread called "Feminist Logic," I posted the following, sure
that most people would understand the absurdity:
>
>: All men are potential rapists
>: Jesus Christ was a man
>: Therefore, Jesus Christ was a potential rapist.
>
But In article <4eg0jc$pvh@ra.isisnet.com> Hanah Chapman,
ae964@ccn.cs.dal.ca (Hanah Chapman), wrote:
>
>Yep. If Jesus Christ had a penis, he was capable of rape.
>
(Feminists used to be upset if anyone suggested that their abilities
and flaws were predetermined by their bodies. But now being male
automatically makes you capable of rape.)
>
=====================================
III. CHIEF WINS HARASSMENT SUIT
Newsgroups: soc.men
Date: Fri, 29 Dec 1995 11:49:46
San Francisco's police chief has won a federal sexual harassment
case in which the charges had an awful lot of political overtones.
Joanne Welsh accused Police Chief Anthony Ribera of kissing her,
making suggestive remarks, and giving her unwanted earrings.
Here's the latest advance in feminism: getting compensation for
receiving unwanted earrings.
But what this woman *really* wanted was nearly two million bucks.
However there was something fishy about her story from the start.
Welsh has a boyfriend who had been the city Supervisor. Chief Ribera
and the boyfriend had a big blowup in the office one day. The very
next day, Welsh is filing her charges.
She said the timing was coincidence.
Right.
But there were other suspicious factors as well.
Chief Ribera was an ally of Mayor Frank Jordan. But Jordan
lost his bid for re-election, and then opponents went after his
ally, Ribera.
Yes, it smells of politics. But remember, feminists tell us
that women never lie about these things.
After she lost, Welsh said "I think that women can pretty much
emphasize with me on how difficult it is to prove to someone what
happens behind closed doors.'"
Yes, it is pretty difficult to prove what happens behind
closed doors. But that goes both ways. It's difficult to prove your
innocent if there is absolutely no evidence to refute except her
word.
I can certainly empathize with a man who is hauled into court and
has to pay expensive legal fees to fight an unsupported and
unprovable accusation about "what happens behind closed doors."
The question is: when you have one person's word against
another's and the charges cannot be proven or verified, why do we
still haul men into court and make them go through this expensive
ordeal? Just because a woman says so?
================================
IV. SEXUAL HARASSMENT AT THE CORP. FOR PUBLIC BROADCASTING.
A member of the board for the Corporation for Public
Broadcasting is being accused of harassing an employee of the
corporation. (This is really a scandal because CPB distributes
federal money for the ultra-politically correct National Public
Radio and PBS. So here is a member of the ultra-PC group accused of
sexual harassment.)
Among the charges: that the board member sent the employee a
red nightshirt that said "I Only Sleep With the Best!" and checked
into the employee's marital status and made repeated unwelcome
advances during a party, repeatedly made unwelcome invitations to
dinner or drinks, and later kissed the employee on the mouth. When
these advances were rebuffed, the board member retaliated by trying
to get the employee fired.
Shades of Bob Packwood! In fact, you might remember that
during the Packwood hearings, women's advocates took out big ads
asking, "If your boss stuck his tongue in your mouth, would he still
have a job?"
But this CPB board member still has her job. Her name is
Martha Buchanan. The man she is accused of harassing is Fred
DeMarco. DeMarco said he found the woman "physically repulsive" as
she tried to force her attention on him. When he turned her down, he
found out that she was denigrating his work and telling other people
that he should be fired.
Nonetheless, DeMarco is taking it "like a man." He isn't
filing a lawsuit, even though lawyers for the CPB say he has one
heck of a case. No victimhood jackpot and lucrative book tour for
this man. No cover of Time and People. He just wanted to be able to
do his job.
The Washington Post reports on the case in its December 12th
edition. The Post observes: "This is a story about a Washington in
which fear of being sued can turn a bureaucracy inside out. It is
about a world in which decisions are driven by fear of public
exposure, embarrassment, political repercussions." It's nice of the
Post to finally realize that sexual harassment charges involve an
awful lot of politics. It just took a case in which a woman is
accused for the Post to make that connection.
As for the National Public Radio, this whole episode is rather
ironic, because NPR broke the Anita Hill story. Now the organization
that holds the purse strings for NPR has on its board a female
harasser who got off scot free. You have to wonder how it will
affect NPR's "crusading" coverage. Of course, NPR was never all that
hot for digging into how issues like this affect men in the first
place. Now they might be even less inclined to do so.
=====================
V. FEMINIST PAY GRAB DEFEATED
It is heartening to see that a judge recently overturned a
pay-grab scheme by women who work in school cafeterias in the
Everett, Mass., school district.
Fifty-five women filed suit claiming that they deserved to be
paid as much as the male custodians who work for the schools. They
said it was discrimination that they weren't paid as much.
Now if those women had applied for jobs as custodians and been
turned down, I'd say they have a good case. But they didn't. They
wanted to continue working in the cafeteria while getting paid as
much as the men who are custodians. They claimed it was a case of
"equal pay for equal work." But they weren't willing to do equal
work for equal pay.
The school district argued that the work was not equal. Their
lawyer said, "Serving pizza -- is that comparable substantially to
pushing a broom? I would argue, no, they don't bear any
resemblance." I think he has a darn good point. Maybe the cafeteria
workers have to clean dirty dishes, but the custodians have to clean
dirty toilets and urinals. And maybe the cafeteria workers have to
clean up spilled spaghetti now and then, but the custodians have to
clean up vomit, etc., now and then. In fact, if there is an
especially nasty mess in the kitchen, I bet those women call the
custodians to clean it up. These women just wanted to stay in a less
disgusting job while getting the same pay. If the work is just the
same and they want the extra pay, why don't they apply for custodial
work?
The sad part is that these women actually got a lower court to
award them a million dollars. But that pay-grab was overturned this
week on appeal. That's a victory for common sense.
===============================
VI. NORTHERN EXPOSURE ACTOR CHARGED
Actor Robert Nicholson, who plays the cook Sonny on "Northern
Exposure," was just charged with misdemeanor assault on a woman.
Does he deserve it? Here's the deal. Police said they got
conflicting accounts from Nicholson and the woman. She claimed that
he hit her after she ridiculed him and called him names. He says she
threw a drink on him and then came at him and broke his glasses and
he shoved her away and she hit her nose.
So whose at fault? It's impossible to say. There are no other
witnesses besides the two involved. But police charged him.
She has not been charged.
In fact, police aren't even releasing her name. So he gets
charged and has his name printed, while she is not charged, and her
identity is "protected."
For some reason, they call this the "justice" system.
============================
MALE AND PRESUMED GUILTY
Here are three sad and disturbing cases in which being
male equals being guilty.
First, there's the case of Cmdr. Robert Stumpf, a Navy "top
gun" fighter pilot, whose career is being ruined by the type of
tactics familiar to those who study McCarthyism.
Cmdr. Stumpf was at the infamous "Tailhook" convention in
1991. In the wake of all the political pressure that followed,
Stumpf and 132 other men were put on a secret list documenting
rumors or unproven accusations of misconduct at Tailhook. The
accusations against Stumpf boil down to his presence in a room where
a stripper performed. He was cleared of all other charges. But his
promotion has been derailed and his career ruined simply because his
name was on that list.
The reason: The Senate Armed Services Committee requires that
the Navy flag the dossiers of all of those 133 men who were accused
by unseen accusers. This special flagging is known as "Tailhook
certification." It applies even to the men, like Stumpf, who were
cleared of any wrongdoing.
But when they come up for promotion, the Senate committee
notes that they have "Tailhook certification" and automatically
rejects their promotion. This is what happened to Stumpf. The
Senate had actually approved his promotion, butt then the committee
belatedly realized it had overlooked his Tailhook certification. It
then applied pressure on the Navy Secretary and got Stumpf's
promotion withdrawn. Students of McCarthyism will recognize the
secret blacklists, the tactic of guilt by association, and the
reliance on unfounded accusations.
There are a couple of ironies about this case. First,
feminists insist that all men benefit because "men hold most of the
power." Well, here's the predominantly male Senate caving in to
political pressure and selling out an innocent man.
According to the Washington Post, (Jan. 7) Stumpf was a
former leader of the Blue Angels flying team and was in training to
command the eight squadrons of planes on the USS Enterprise bound
for duty in Bosnia. Instead, the Post says he is now doing "make
work" at the Naval Air Station in Virginia Beach.
Stumpf's case is an ironic contrast to that of Kara Hultgreen,
who became a fighter pilot amid a lot of political pressure to put
women in military planes. Hultgreen crashed and died while
attempting to land on an aircraft carrier. The brass tried to blame
mechanical problems, but confidential reports leaked to the Internet
and the news media showed that the cause was pilot error. So the
political pressures that put her in the cockpit are also keeping a
qualified male out.
===
Case two of "Male and Presumed Guilty" involves computer
consultant Louis Chatroop of Des Plaines, Illinois. Chatroop dated
a woman for a few months and loaned her $3,800. When they broke
up, he asked for repayment on the loan. When she refused, he filed
a lawsuit.
Next thing he knows, the woman has accused him of stalking.
And because of the new anti-stalking law, he was thrown into prison
and held without bail. This was done based solely on the woman's
accusation -- and even though she has changed and embellished her
story several times.
Chatroop has no criminal record. His ex-wife and another
girlfriend have told authorities that he is not violent or
obsessive, and that other girlfriend testified to his whereabouts
during the time of the supposed stalking. Doesn't matter. There
is not one bit of evidence to support the accuser's claim, and
several inconsistencies in her accusation, but Chatroop is held
without bond.
Chatroop is self-employed, and being incarcerated has ruined
his business. Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn notes (Oct. 5,
1995): "Chatroop ... said he has no clients left and almost no
money. To try to avoid bankruptcy as his lawyers prepare for a
still unscheduled trial, he has drained his retirement funds and
stopped paying child support for his three sons."
The concept of "women and children first" has carried over
into our justice system. The lives of men are now expendable for
the sake of protecting women -- even if there might not be any
danger to protect them from. We can't risk any harm befalling a
woman, and so we must toss out 800 years of common law and the
presumption of innocent when a man is accused.
==========================
And here's a horror story from the front lines of the War on
Rape, as detailed on the front page of the Dec. 20 Washington Post.
Christopher Prince is in a Virginia prison. The police say he is
innocent. The prosecutor wants him freed. The two girls who accused
him now say he is innocent. But Prince, 19, can't get out of prison.
It started Feb. 9, 1994, when a 13-year-old girl and her 12-year
old friend claimed that two men had broken into the older girl's
home and demanded to have sex with them. They claimed that they
somehow escaped untouched and notified neighbors. They picked Prince
out of a police lineup.
With no physical evidence, it was a case of their word against
his. But Prince, who has an IQ of 75, was told by his lawyer to
plead guilty to avoid a harsher sentence if convicted. He did and
was sentenced to 12 years, with six suspended, and has been in
prison for 15 months.
But his family hired a private detective to check the girl's
stories. The stories changed and then unraveled. Both girls now have
sign affidavits admitting that they lied. Polygraph tests indicate
that this time they a
re telling the truth. Even the mother of the younger girl says of
their story, "It never felt right to me, but no one seemed
interested in what I thought."
A judge recently reviewed the case and said Prince should be
freed, but he didn't have the authority to do it. Prince's best hope
is for early release is to get the governor to grant clemency, which
he has requested.
(Editor's note: After the Washington Post ran a front-page
article on Prince, the governor of Virginia signed the papers and
freed the innocent man. Prince got home in time for Christmas.)
=============================
MANifesto is a monthly newsletter containing news and opinion for
people interested in gender equality and gender stereotypes. If you
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