Per's MANifesto May 1997

Per's MANifesto: An electronic newsletter of news and opinion on
man-bashing, anti-male stereotypes and other great moral principles.
May, 1997.
WELCOME, READERS, to an issue we'll call "Flinn Flam." It's about
getting off the hook by blaming men for your actions. The method has
been tried, tested, and approved by the U.S. Air Force. Read on:
MANifesto is now on the Web, at
http://shell.idt.net/~per2/manifest.htm

INDEX:
I. FLINN FLAM
II. BEING NICE TO THE BIGOTS
III. AN HONEST FEMINIST
IV. YOU MIGHT BE A MALE FEMINIST IF ...
V. SUSAN MCDOUGAL'S DELICATE EARS
VI. THIS WILL NEED MORE RESEARCH
VII. FREE PRESS? SURE, HELP YOURSELF
VIII. THE FORMER AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION
IX. THE SENATOR'S LEVEL PLAYING FIELD

==========
FLINN FLAM
Former Air Force lieutenant Kelly Flinn has shown the nation
the two steps to getting special treatment:
1) Claim you are unfairly targeted because you're a woman.
2) Blame your actions on men.
Flinn, the nation's first and only female B-52 pilot, had
faced prison time and a dishonorable discharge for sexual misconduct,
disobeying orders and making a false statement. Instead, after a
successful (and man-bashing) publicity campaign, she is getting an
extremely light sentence -- leaving the military with a general
discharge and no prison time.
Flinn claimed she was being persecuted for having a love
affair with a man she thought was separated from his wife. She claimed
that men in the service get away with similar flings. Flinn has been
conjugating the verbs "lay" and "lie," with interesting results.
At times, some factions of the news media seemed to function
almost as Flinn's public relations agent. In recapping the case, they
reprinted her claims as facts -- for example, stating as an
established fact that she didn't know her lover was married.
When the truth began to come out, it didn't seem to damage
Flinn popularity (especially with the news media.) It turned out that
Flinn knew darn well that the man she was sleeping with was married.
And in fact she had been given the opportunity to "get away" with her
hanky-panky if she'd just cease doing it. When her superiors learned
about her affairs, they didn't punish her. They merely ordered her to
stay away from Marc Zigo, the married man she was sleeping with. If
she had done so, she never would have been punished. (Flinn also had
sex with an enlisted man, an unmarried senior airman.)
But Flinn knowingly disobeyed that direct order, even moving
in with Zigo. Then she lied to her superiors to cover up her refusal
to follow orders.
That's when Flinn was charged -- not just because she
committed adultery. She was very successful in painting this as a
woman being unfairly punished for having sex when men, supposedly,
would be let off. But the affair was actually one of the lesser
charges against her. Adultery could have gotten her one year in
prison. But the charge of making a false statement could have gotten
her five years. And her other affair with Senior Airman Colin C.
Thompson violated the ban on fraternization: penalty two years.
Flinn piloted B-52 bombers equipped with nuclear weapons. This
is a position of extreme responsibility in which it is imperative that
the crew obey orders. Flinn had under her command the power to destroy
cities and launch nuclear war. Society has every right to expect that
people in that position will obey orders. When you are carrying a
cargo of death, obeying orders should not be an option.
But Flinn was very good at avoiding responsibility and passing
it on to men. In a letter to the Air Force pleading for special
treatment, she said she "fell deeply in love with a man who led me
down this path of self-destruction and career destruction" and said
she will suffer for it forever.
If her statement is true, then she certainly should have been
discharged. People who are so easily misled into dereliction of duty
should not be in positions of trust -- much less flying nuclear
weapons.
But we feel that Flinn's contention that a man "led me down
this path of self-destruction" is really a self-serving plea for
victimhood. She wants a man to take the rap for her actions -- a
civilian man at that. To escape responsibility for her own actions,
she plays the wide-eyed innocent being duped by the evil Svengali. Her
brother, Don Flinn Jr., played that game, too. "She's been abused in
her relationship. She's been abused in the system," he told a press
conference. Flinn's family got positively Victorian in her defense,
saying that her lover had "taken advantage of her." That's a quaint
old phrases used when a woman gets into bed and then wants to claim
purity.
But, as her lover, Marc Zigo wryly noted, "At no time was a
gun to Lieutenant Flinn's head."
As part of her training as the nation's first female B-52
pilot, Flinn got training in handling the news media, and she played
them like a harp. Flinn also had an advantage because the others in
the case were holding their comments for the trial, at which time it
would have been seen how much Flinn had lied.
But Flinn's tactic of blaming the man and crying victim
worked. When it seemed apparent she wouldn't go to trial, only then
did the other figures speak out publicly. They included Marc Zigo's
wife, Airman Gayla A. Zigo. In a letter to Air Force Secretary Sheila
Widnall, Gayla Zigo wrote: "On several occasions, I came home from
work and found her at my house with Marc. ... Lt. Flinn knew we were
married and not separated, but that did not stop her. I am tired of
Lt. Flinn acting as if she is the victim ... Lt. Flinn knew exactly
what she was doing and that it was wrong!"
Flinn was also not being truthful when she claimed that she
was being singled out as a woman for offenses that men get away with.
But Air Force officials note that right there on the same base with
Flinn, there have been other officers of the same rank who have gone
to prison for offenses like Flinn's.
And the Associated Press reported that Air Force figures show
that 60 men and seven women were prosecuted on adultery charges last
year. There were, in fact, far more men than women punished.
U.S. Rep. Sam Johnson, a Texas Republican and a decorated
fighter pilot, said Flinn's punishment was too lenient. Johnson is a
former military prosecutor who prosecuted many men on similar charges.
"I supported the secretary of the Air Force in her original decision
to court-martial. Today, I am disappointed in her decision to change
that," Johnson said. "It appears to me that (Widnall) has caved to
political pressure from the Senate."
That's interesting that the Senate actually had the backbone
to stand up and demand leniency in this case. In the past, the Senate
has completely caved in on the Navy's Tailhook scandal. Due to
political pressure, 133 men were put on a secret list containing
rumors and unproven accusations of misconduct at Tailhook. One notable
case involved Cmdr. Robert Stumpf, a Navy "top gun" fighter pilot.
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.
Each time a man who was on the list came up for promotion, the
promotion was denied. The man didn't have to be guilty of anything.
The congressional committees responsible for approving their
promotions were too terrified of being accused of being lenient on
Tailhook. So they trashed any man even vaguely accused, in order to
protect their own careers.
Supporters of Flinn argued that it was a waste to discharge
her after all the money the military had spent on training her. But
the military spent a lot of money training all the men blacklisted
because of Tailhook. Cmdr. Stumpf was driven out of the Navy because
of it. His case didn't receive one tenth the publicity of the crafty
and manipulative Flinn.
Instead of a court-martial and up to nine and a half years in
prison, she is "out like Flinn," getting a general discharge, a mild
form of discipline. Flinn must repay 20 percent of her Air Force
Academy education -- about $18,000. But the military trained her in
flying aircraft, and she's already gotten offers to fly for commercial
airlines -- meaning her $18,000 repayment will equal one or two
month's salary. Most people coming out of college can't pay their
student loans so easily. Plus, Flinn is generating talk of book deals
and movies. For a woman who claims to have destroyed and treated
unfairly, she's doing remarkably well.
Why should *you* care about Flinn's case?
Because it rewards and encourages man-bashing.
Flinn claimed she was being singled out as a woman and was
getting harsher treatment than men. The facts show that men have been
punished for such offenses, and far more severely than Flinn. But
Flinn appealed to an anti-male stereotype by claiming to be a victim
of sexist good-old-boys in the military. Flinn showed the nation that
when you are caught doing wrong, you can cry sexism and get away with
it.
And Flinn tried to blame a man for her own offenses. That's
man-bashing. And it worked.
Flinn's great success with man-bashing all but guarantees that
others will follow suit. What do they have to lose? Man-bashing paid
off for Flinn, without any downside. The message has gone out: when
caught red-handed, cry sexism, bash men, and get away with it. You can
expect man-bashing accusations like Flinn's to increase. That's a
major factor in this case that the news media have ignored.
Whether the Air Force's codes on sexual conduct need to be
reviewed is another matter. Some say they are antiquated. Others note
that military families face long separations and other strains unique
to military life. Adultery can hurt soldier's morale, and hence their
preparedness -- and because of that, the fallout from adultery is a
valid concern for the military. We can see both sides to these
arguments. But our interest is in Flinn's use of man-bashing to evade
responsibility. Now that Flinn has demonstrated how well man-bashing
pays off, what is to stop others from following suit?
So let's add a new word to the language: Flinn flam.
Flinn flam: (verb) to seek or attain special treatment by
claiming you are being treated unfairly; to blame men for your lack of
responsibility.
Flinn flam (adjective) denoting the act of blaming others for
your transgressions; denoting one who feels that anything less than
special treatment is unfair; or, in general, denoting a feminist.
==========

BEING NICE TO THE BIGOTS
Recently, a man writing on the Usenet committed about
man-bashing: "for my part, i think that the best thing to do when a
group i'm a part of is being criticized, is to work to dispel such a
myth: ie don't be a pig, treat women, or indeed everyone, with some
respect and courtesy, try to accommodate for other people when
necessary."
The problem with this approach is you don't have to do
anything bad to be targeted by bigots. For example, we have never
raped anyone, but that doesn't stop many feminists from saying "all
men are potential rapists." The stereotype does not depend on our
behavior -- it depends on the outlook of the person doing the
stereotyping.
And simply being a good little boy is not going to change the
people who hold such stereotypes. Bigots don't look for the good
examples. They look for the bad examples to confirm their prejudices.
The good examples get ignored or finessed away.
This man's approach -- "don't be a pig, treat women ... with
some respect ..." isn't going to do anything about the root causes of
bigotry, because the root causes of bigotry are in the bigot. You can
live your life as a saint and still many feminists will regard you as
a potential rapist or a member of the "patriarchy."
Many feminists have managed an amazing feat of manipulation:
as feminists grow increasingly and blatantly bigoted, some men feel
they have to bend over backward to prove they're nice guys. This is
rewarding bigotry. It only encourages feminists to become more
anti-male in their outlook, because they know they can manipulate some
men in trying even harder to please the feminists.
This fellow also said: "of course any group is bound to be
stereotypee at any one time. a woman who is stereotyping men is most
likely just angry or frustrated for a short amount of time. most
times she's more frustrated then serious."
But modern feminism, going back to the women's liberation
movement of the 1960s, has been preaching anti-male opinions for more
than a "short amount of time." These anti-male attitudes have
intensified and have been taken up by a second wave of feminists who,
if anything, are more anti-male than their women's-lib predecessors.
As for male sportscasters and others who have been punished
for allegedly making sexists comments -- no feminist stepped forward
to defend them on the grounds that the comments were sexist for "a
short amount of time." The fellow quoted here is preaching for
tolerance and acceptance of anti-male attitudes, while feminists are
hardly in the habit of advocating tolerance and acceptance -- or even
free speech -- for people who disagree with them.
The bottom line with any bigotry is that it's not going to
just go away if you're nice. Bigots see stereotypes instead of real
people, so how can we expect them to see the actions of real people?
There is only one way that a targeted group has ever gotten any
success in closing down bigotry -- and that is to demand that it stop.
Being nice doesn't do it. Being innocent of offense doesn't do it. The
only thing that works is to demand that the bigots cease practicing
bigotry.
It's time to do this with extremist feminism. Let's stop
being nice to the bigots.
==========

AN HONEST FEMINIST
Speaking of bigots, the following comments were posted on the
Usenet by a feminist on May 7. They are so instructive that they are
presented without further comment. (And yes, she's entirely serious.)

>So when I read a feminist assuring us how she really, really loves men, I
>know I've found another man-hater. If she loved men, she wouldn't be a
>feminist. 'Nuff said.
==========

YOU MIGHT BE A MALE FEMINIST IF ...
On Fri, 09 May 1997, in a Usenet thread called "Man Haters," a
fellow named Bob wrote:

> "I am male and view men who aren't bastards as exceptions. As
>a matter of fact I am a bastard, so I don't include myself in the
>exceptions."

You might be a male feminist if: you wholeheartedly embrace
anti-male stereotypes and male self-hatred.
==========

SUSAN MCDOUGAL'S DELICATE EARS
A few news items on all those privileges males have in
society:
Lawyers claim that Paul Prioli owed $144,700 alimony. So they
had him arrested.
The scene for the arrest was sort of unusual. They got the man
as he was leaving his father's funeral in Barnstable, Massachusetts.
Remember, no time is a bad time to hit men for money.
And remember how feminists are always telling us that women
are more sensitive and nurturing than men? Let's take a look at Jenise
Gordon, a science teacher in Milan, Tennessee.
Gordon recently put on a puppet show for her class.
Now it happens that in her class is a boy named Justin
Galloway. Justin, 14, is a mentally and physically disabled student.
His disabilities sometimes cause him to slur his words or to twitch.
Well, the kindly Ms. Gordon got up in front of class and had her
puppet imitate all of Justin's disabilities. To make sure everyone got
the point, she called the puppet Justin Galloway. After the class,
other students began calling Justin "Puppet Boy."
When his parents protested this treatment, they got an
up-close demonstration of sensitive, nurturing behavior. Ms. Gordon is
the coach of the girls' basketball team. Justin began getting threats
from other students, including members of the girls' team. One called
him up and told him to "watch his back."
Maybe that ought to be a new theme for all of these
commercials that make girls/womens sports look like a mystical,
religious experience. "If you let me play, I will threaten disabled
students."
Per's MANifesto is proud to bring you news items like this,
which just *somehow* manage to get missed by the national news media.
If a male teacher had used a puppet to comment on a girl's body, you
can be you would have seen it on the front pages. But Ms. Gordon's
sadistic little puppet show gets buried in the back pages.
But now on to a story that got national attention because of
its link to the Whitewater scandal. Susan McDougal's lawyers have been
protesting her treatment while being held in prison on contempt
charges. One of their complaints is that she has heard male prisoners
being gang-raped on the floors above.
"It is doubtful that any convicted criminal in the U.S. is
treated more harshly than Susan McDougal is and has been treated," her
lawyers said.
We don't know about that. We kind of think that the men being
*gang raped* might be getting treated more harshly.
==========

THIS WILL NEED MORE RESEARCH
Canadian researchers say that women might suffer from certain
kinds of psychological problems like depression and eating disorders
because they manufacture much less of an important mood-regulating
brain chemical called serotonin.
That's interesting. After all these years of feminists blaming
men for causing women's eating disorders, it looks like the culprit
might not be men after all.
We know how much this will disappoint many feminists who want
to blame women's eating disorders on men. Gloria Steinem, in
"Revolution from Within," claimed that "about 150,000 females die of
anorexia each year" in the United States alone. (Turns out that
Steinem was wildly wrong -- there are about 150,000 anorexia *cases,*
not deaths, each year. Deaths are very rare and usually due to
suicide.)
We know how disappointing it must be to some feminists to
learn that eating disorders might not be the fault of men
"objectifying" women's bodies. And that the cause might actually lie
in the women themselves. We know how much this upsets the feminist
order of the universe. So we're willing to help them salvage their
"it's always a man's fault" argument.
Hmm: How about this. "Women are socialized to manufacture less
serotonin. (There are no innate differences between men and women, so
socialization explains everything.) Feminist research shows that
parental encouragement reinforces boys when they manufacture
serotonin. Obviously we're going to need to establish a massive new
bureaucracy to teach girls the self esteem needed to raise their
serotonin levels."
There you go feminists -- that's a start on your research,
free of charge. Just remember to put Per's MANifesto in your
bibliography when you publish your "research."
==========

FREE PRESS? SURE, HELP YOURSELF
For the sixth time since November, thousands of copies of The
Daily Californian newspaper have been stolen from the rack on the
University of California at Berkely campus.
Somebody doesn't want readers to see The Daily Californian.
And they don't want the paper to be able to speak freely.
Why? The editors believe it's because the paper supports
Proposition 209, which would do away with the racial and sexual
discrimination known as affirmative action. The pro-discrimination
forces are apparently upset that anyone has the freedom to disagree.
The most recent efforts to censor the paper via theft occurred
after it ran an editorial calling anti-209 forces hypocritical and
immature.
Obviously with the paper thefts, the label of immature is
right on target. But we're not sure it's accurate to call these people
hypocritical. If they never supported free speech and equal rights,
they're not being hypocritical.
==========

THE FORMER AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION
One of the saddest and most shocking downfalls in the area of
civil liberties is the gradual slide of the group known as the
American Civil Liberties Union. The group once stood for the principle
that everyone had the same rights, and that those rights could not be
taken away from a group or individual simply because society
disapproved of them.
However, the ACLU went through a phase in which it decided to
recruit feminists and other far-left activists. The result is that in
many ACLU chapters, the belief is that some rights are equaller than
others. Where the old ACLU believed that everyone had the same rights,
many new ACLU chapters believe that your rights depend on the group
you belong to. If you're a feminist, you have a right to be free of
hearing views that might cause you distress. Hence, other people do
not have an equal right to express their views if you don't like them.
The new ACLU has come out in favor of racial and sexual
discrimination known as affirmative action. It now believes that your
right to be protected from discrimination depends on what group you
belong to. You have to keep these facts in mind when the ACLU asks for
your help. Why should you support a group that advocates
discrimination and an erosion of rights?
Equally sad is the new ACLU's support for the procedure known
as "partial birth abortion."
In this procedure, a fetus -- often one that could live
outside the womb -- is pulled from the womb feet first, with only the
head still inside the birth canal. Then the doctor pierces the skull
with scissors, drains the skull, and collapses it. Doing the same
thing with the skull outside the birth canal might be considered
murder.
The American Medical Association, at its recent convention in
Chicago, said there is absolutely no time in which a partial birth
abortion is necessary, and the group supported the proposed ban on the
procedure. Initially, the AMA had been uncommitted on the ban. But
then lawmakers changed the bill to give more assurances that doctors
wouldn't be prosecuted for doing the procedure. With those changes
made, the AMA came out in support of the ban.
Unfortunately, the ACLU has aligned itself with those who want
to keep this grotesque procedure as a "choice." The so-called
"Reproductive Freedom Project" of the ACLU is trying to get members to
support partial birth abortions. Per's MANifesto has obtained a copy
of the mailing that the Reproductive Freedom Project sent out. It
includes a postcard (with the Statue of Liberty) for people to send to
politicians. (It bears the logo "liberty = choice.") It also includes
a "model letter" for people to fire off to the right targets, and
several other items that try to defend partial birth abortions.
Also included is a reprint of a New York Times op-ed piece by
a woman who says she needed to do a partial birth abortion on a badly
deformed fetus. Such emotionally wrenching stories are used as a cover
for the fact that many partial birth abortions are done not on
deformed fetuses but as a matter of convenience for women who waited
too long.
Trying to defuse the idea that the procedure is "too gruesome
and barbaric to defend," the RFP blithely states that "Many medical
procedures -- open heart surgery or amputation, for example -- may
seem gruesome to lay people." What the RFP doesn't note is that such
procedures are done to heal, preserve and extend life, not terminate
it. When a group starts playing so fast and loose with our emotions
and the facts, you have to wonder how honest they're being with you.
The RFP also coyly says that "advocates of choice have found
themselves enmeshed in controversy over how they presented facts and
arguments about the ... procedure to legislators and the public."
Well, it looks like the ACLU is exercising its right to speak in
euphemisms. Actually, the controversy is that a major supporter of
partial birth abortions admitted that he "lied through my teeth" when
claiming the procedure is rarely done.
The RFP says that "whatever some individuals may have said,
the movement has been truthful about this procedure." Clever. Once you
admit to lying, you are no longer part of the "movement," even if you
are a major player in it. So the "movement" can arbitrarily exclude
any "individual" and pick and chose who they want to call the
"movement."
Most Americans support the ban on partial birth abortions. No
matter how people feel about abortion, most agree that sucking the
brains out of a nearly developed child and collapsing his or her skull
is not a defensible "choice." Convenience is not reason enough to
defend this procedure. It is another sad sign of the fall of the
once-worthy ACLU that it could support this horrible procedure.
==========

THE SENATOR'S LEVEL PLAYING FIELD
We all know how liberal Democrats demand a "level playing
field" to assure fairness and equality in our society.
The latest to benefit from such a leveling is Massachusetts
Democratic Senator John "Kerry, Not Kennedy, Dammit" Kerry, and his
wealthy wife.
Kerry is married to Teresa Heinz, heiress to the vast Heinz
fortune. When you're worth about $800 million, then obviously laws are
for the little people -- including parking laws. Heinz has been caught
parking in front of a fire hydrant by the luxurious Boston home she
shares with Senator Kerry. Recently a newspaper caught her car -- with
it's license plate "HZ57" for "Heinz 57" -- parked that way.
So what did Kerry and Heinz do? Order sensitivity training?
Wring their hands in guilt? Do community service? No, those are the
programs that liberal Democrats demand for the lesser folk.
Instead, Kerry and Heinz had the fire hydrant removed.
They had it moved around the corner, so they won't be bothered
with such details anymore.
"I've lived on Beacon Hill for 47 years and never have I known
somebody to get a hydrant moved at their will," Peter Thomson,
president of the Beacon Hill Civic Association, told the Associated
Press. "You know why they did it: Because they jump through hoops when
a high-power politician calls up for it."
What -- a liberal Democrat exercising aristocratic privilege?
How can that possibly be? We know liberals are dedicated to a level
playing field.
In fact, if you look at the spot where the fire hydrant once
was, it looks pretty darn level, all right.

=============================
THE FINE PRINT
MANifesto is a monthly newsletter containing news and opinion for
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(MANifesto is copyright 1997 by Per. Please feel free to copy,
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==========
-----
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