Per's MANifesto January 1998

Per's MANifesto: A newsletter of news and opinion on
man-bashing, anti-male stereotypes and other great moral principles.
January, 1998.
WELCOME, READERS, to our first issue of a brand new year.
Per's MANifesto prides itself in supplying you with news you can use
to debunk feminism's eternal claims of victimhood and oppression, so
this issue we take a look at women's health. That's while we're
dubbing this issue "A FIT WITH FEMINISM."
First off, we'd like to offer you some wishes for 1998.
-- We wish that no child should ever have to go without a
father because of the irresponsibility of a man or the misandry of a
feminist.
-- We wish that the concept that it's wrong to discriminate on
the basis of gender will finally mean that it's wrong to discriminate
on the basis of gender.
-- We wish that sexist bigotry and hatred will no longer be
acceptable merely because it comes from feminists.
-- We wish that, with the family under siege and divorce and
fatherless families still at a too-high rate, our society will realize
that man-bashing is NOT a victimless crime.
As we look forward to the new year, we hope we can continue to
do our part in helping you to fight the all-too-popular anti-male
attitudes in our culture. We think some progress is being made.
Recently, we did some checking that showed that Per's MANifesto
Newsletter is within reach of joining the top thousand sites on the
entire web. That's not bad for an independent, privately funded web
site that doesn't have major corporate backing! Your loyalty and
word-of-mouth are what makes it happen. And we'd like to propel
MANifesto into the top thousand and better. You can help. Many readers
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Remember, you help yourself by helping to dispel the
shameless, anti-male myths being pumped out today.
Okay, enough of the shameless plug -- at least until next
year! Meantime, let's look at some of the myths and issues about
women's health. Let's have "A FIT WITH FEMINISM."

INDEX:
I. FITNESS STANDARDS, DOUBLE STANDARDS
II. SCARING WOMEN TO DEATH
III. CHAUVINIST PIGS, GUINEA PIGS
IV. HAPPY TUBBY ME?
V. HER BODY, HERSELFISHNESS
VI. MORE BATTERED LOGIC DEFENSE
VII. FEMINISTS ARE NOT YOUR ALLIES
VIII. TRUCKER FIRED FOR SAVING LIVES
IX. GLORIA ALLRED JOKES

==========
FITNESS STANDARDS, DOUBLE STANDARDS
The fitness standards for women in the military have long been
far below that of men. There is a blatant, two-tiered system in which
women are allowed to pass fitness tests with performance that would
get a man booted out. The standards have been lowered so that women
could meet them. And this has led to the objections from some men who
are penalized for performance that actually far exceeds the
performance of women.
You may have recently read about how the Army is going to
"toughen" or "raise" the physical standards for women. That claim was
presented in a number of news articles. It made it sound like women
were going to be held to tougher standards and required to perform
better on physical tests.
Well, that shows once again why you need Per's MANifesto to
give you the rest of the story. In fact, the Army is merely making it
a little harder for women to get perfect scores on physical tests. But
the *minimum* requirements are mostly staying the same. Of course it's
the *minimum* requirements that set the level at which you pass or
fail. And the minimums are not changing much. Women can still qualify
at the same, far-lower standards.
This fact is readily discernible just by glancing at a chart
that ran in USA Today on September 26. It shows the Army's current
fitness standards for men and for women, broken down by age group. It
also compares them to the proposed new standards.
The Army says that it is going to require women to do an equal
number of sit-ups as men. But that's the only area in which
requirements will be even remotely similar. In some areas, women will
still "pass" for performance that would cause a man to fail, and they
will receive "high" scores for a performance that would be mediocre or
even failing in a man.
For example:
To meet the minimum requirement for the 2-mile run, a man age
17-21 has to finish in 15 minutes, 54 seconds. To get a perfect score
of 100, he has to finish in 11:54.
To meet the minimum, a woman that age has to finish in only
18:54. For a perfect score, she only has to finish in 14:54.
In other words, her "perfect" score is only one minute less
than the bare *minimum* for men! The women getting elite scores are
performing at a level that would barely let a man squeak by.
Now consider all the women who are in the middle of the pack,
between the perfect time of 14:54 and the minimum of 18:54. They're
finishing in about 16:54. But at that speed, a man wouldn't even pass
the male minimum of 15:54. A middle-of-the-pack woman would *flunk*
the men's test!
Fitness standards also change by age -- they get lower as you
get older. Let's consider some of the blatant imbalances this sets up.
Under the current rules, a 36-year-old man has to run 2 miles
in 18 minutes to meet the minimum qualification. In other words, a
36-year-old man has to run faster than a 17-year-old woman less than
half his age.
But wait, it gets worse. A 41-year-old man is expected to
finish in 18:42. That's right, a 41-year-old man still has to complete
2 miles faster than a 17-year-old woman!
The chart shows that a lot of the minimum times for women are
staying the same. They're making it harder for women to get a perfect
*top* score. But they're not actually raising *minimum* standards
much. It's a sleight-of-hand. For example, there are no changes in the
women's minimum times for the 2-mile run in the 17-21 age group or the
22-26 age group. And women would actually get half a minute *more* to
finish in the 27-31 age group. They're actually *lowering* the
standards for women.
And in some cases, they're actually *raising* the minimum
standards for men.
The current standard for men age 42-46 is finishing 2 miles in
19:06. The proposed new standard makes it *tougher* for men, requiring
them to finish in 18:30. Meanwhile, the female minimum in the 17-21
age group stays the same: 18:54. So the proposed new fitness standards
would mean a 46-year-old man has to run 2 miles faster than a 17-year
old woman. And a 51-year-old man would get precisely 18 seconds more
to run 2 miles than a 17-year-old woman! Out on the training fields,
there will be grandfathers who are required to possess the speed of
teen-agers.
Anyone who has had to deal with affirmative action sees the
game being played here. Feminists can go on saying that "no
unqualified women" were hired/enlisted. It's just that the
qualifications for women are so much lower. And only by rigging up
double standards in favor of women can you escape the accusation of
discriminating against women. If you're not discriminating in favor of
women, you're a sexist.
Of course, once all the standards are biased in favor of
women, then we are on the road to "equality," in the brave new world
of feminism.
==========

SCARING WOMEN TO DEATH
Do feminists really care about women's health? Or are they
just trying to make women scared and paranoid, and thus easy to
manipulate?
You be the judge -- consider feminism's track record on some
very important health issues: weight, cigarettes, and breast cancer.
Feminists have been trying to convince us that men, being the
brutes they are, have been causing women to starve themselves
literally to death. That, according to feminists, is because men
"objectify" women's bodies by demanding that women be slim. This, in
turn, leads to anorexia among women, and that leads to a new
"Holocaust" of anorexia victims, so the theory goes.
In "Revolution from Within," Gloria Steinem helped foster the
myth that "about 150,000 females die of anorexia each year" in the
United States alone. Naomi Wolf made the same claim in "The Beauty
Myth" and compared it to the Holocaust. Ann Landers quoted the figure
in a column in April 1992. It has become a staple of anti-male
propaganda -- those horrible men with their lustful demands that women
stay slim were driving hundreds of thousands of women and girls to the
grave! Men were "objectifying" women's bodies, with deadly results.
Problem is, the 150,000 figure was bogus -- absurdly so. In
"Who Stole Feminism," Christina Hoff Sommers showed that there were at
most 150,000 to 200,000 *cases* of anorexia in the United States --
cases, not deaths. The actual number of deaths among anorectics is
less than 100 each year, and these are usually the result of suicide,
not from dying of anorexia itself. It was not a case of the evil
patriarchy "objectifying" anorectics into a new Holocaust, despite the
best efforts of leading feminists to convince us so.
But we recently heard that some feminist groups are still
making the absurd 150,000-deaths claim, even after it has been soundly
debunked. Apparently they never met a man-bashing smear they didn't
like -- and they're not going to let truth get in the way of good
propaganda.
As we noted in the May 1997 issue of Per's MANifesto, Canadian
researchers say that anorexia and other eating disorders might occur
more often in women because they manufacture much less of an important
mood-regulating brain chemical called serotonin. And so far as we
know, that's not because the patriarchy has been cutting off women's
rations of serotonin. These eating disorders are most likely due to
neurochemical imbalances, not from men being evil.
But while feminists are trying to convince the world that
thinness is causing a new Holocaust among women, the leading cause of
death among women is still is directly related to weighing too much,
not too little.
The leading cause of death among women is still heart disease,
and it has been for a long time. Here are the major risk factors and
contributing risk factors for heart disease, according to The American
Heart Association, http://www.amhrt.org/newhome.html
Major Risk Factors
-- Cigarette/Tobacco Smoke
-- Blood Cholesterol
-- High Blood Pressure
-- Physical Inactivity
-- Heredity as a Risk Factor
Contributing Risk Factors
-- Diabetes Mellitus
-- Obesity
(Source: http://www.amhrt.org/Heart/Risk_FactorsH/Major/index.html)
These factors all put extra strain on the heart. Note that
obesity is a contributing factor. Women (and men) are more likely to
die of heart disease if they are overweight. It's weighing too much
that is killing women -- not weighing too little.
And as for feminism's notion that men are causing women to
starve themselves into thinness, the fact is that a higher percentage
of women than men are overweight. The American Heart Association (as
cited in The World Almanac and Book of Facts, 1996) gives the
percentage of men and women who are 20 percent overweight:
-- 32 percent of white males.
-- 33.5 percent of white females.
-- 31.5 percent of black males.
-- 49.6 percent of black females.
So, despite feminism's best efforts to paint an image of men
starving hordes of women into submission, more women than men are
overweight. If feminism was truly concerned with women's health, it
would address obesity rather than bashing men with bogus statistics
about anorexia.
As you'll note in the figures above, cigarette smoking also is
a major contributor to heart disease. Why are feminists so vocal about
anorexia and not cigarettes? Well, one reason is that for years, major
feminist organizations accepted large sums of money from tobacco
companies. You can call this money "contributions," if you wish. We
call it hush money. Tobacco companies saw women as an underdeveloped
market. So cigarette brands like Virginia Slims tried to appeal to
women's sense of liberation and emancipation with slogans like "You've
come a long way, baby." Virginia Slims even came out with a notorious
series of man-bashing advertisements designed to paint men as
chauvinist pigs and appeal to feminism's sense of victimhood. Virginia
Slims sponsored women's sporting events, including a tennis
tournament, and continued giving money to feminist organizations.
The result: feminists have raised all sorts of Cain about
crackpot theories like the anorexia "Holocaust," but they've been
remarkably silent about the effects of smoking and lung cancer on
women's health.
Feminism did seize on one cancer issue, though: breast cancer.
Because breast cancer occurs almost exclusively in women, this gave
feminists an excellent wedge issue. They could whip up all sorts of
anxiety and resentment and claim that women's health was somehow being
shortchanged or overlooked.
These campaigns have worked. Think of all the pink ribbons
you've seen, all the nightly-news reports and magazine articles.
Feminists have focused on breast cancer so much that most women have
an entirely distorted idea of the conditions that truly threaten their
health.
Recently, a group called The National Council on the Aging did
a study asking women what disease they fear most. They found that 61
percent said cancer, while only 9 percent said heart attack. They also
found that women believe breast cancer kills more women than lung
cancer or heart disease. But heart disease *is* the leading cause of
death among women, and more women die of lung cancer than of breast
cancer. The emphasis on breast cancer has caused women to be
misinformed about the most threatening dangers to their health.
(Source: "Myth and Misperceptions About Aging and Women's Health," a
study by The National Council on the Aging. The report is available
online through the "Press Room" section of their web site at
http://scooby.mrl.nyu.edu:8000/index.htm.)
So do feminists truly care about women's health, or are they
just trying to make women scared and paranoid, and thus easy to
manipulate?
We'll believe feminists have women's best interests at heart
when they stop the man-bashing and start addressing the real causes of
women's illnesses.
==========

CHAUVINIST PIGS, GUINEA PIGS
Maybe you've heard feminists gripe about how women were often
excluded from medical studies involving experimental drugs. It was
another example of a male-dominated field ignoring and harming women,
they say.
Actually, women were often excluded from such tests for three
reasons. First, men do not have monthly changes in hormonal cycles.
When you're testing drugs, you must eliminate all possible variables
so that you know that any difference you detect can be pinned to one
cause and only one cause. Changes in hormonal cycles muddied the
waters by making researchers unsure if the changes they were detecting
were due solely to the drugs they were testing, or whether it might
have been a combination of factors including hormonal changes. The
easiest way to eliminate those possible variables was to test drugs on
subjects who do not have menstrual periods -- namely, men.
Secondly, there was concern that an experimental drug might be
given to a woman who was pregnant but did not know it yet. Scientists
were concerned about the potential effects on the developing fetus.
The thalidomide catastrophe showed how even a seemingly innocuous drug
could lead to horrible birth deformities if taken while pregnant. The
way to get around this problem was to test drugs on people who don't
get pregnant -- namely, men.
And thirdly, there was the element of risk in any study
involving experimental drugs. They could harm the subject in
unforeseen ways. The solution to this was to test drugs only on people
society deemed expendable -- namely, men.
But feminists have a genius for seizing on any difference in
society's treatment of men and women and then declaring that women are
the victims. It doesn't matter if men were being treated like human
laboratory rats -- and suffering the consequences if the tests went
wrong. It was women who were the victims, feminists said.
Feminists demanded more medical tests on women. One result is
the massive, expensive, U.S.-government funded study on estrogen. The
$628 million government-financed Women's Health Initiative aims to
study whether taking estrogen or other hormones after menopause causes
breast cancer or prevents heart attacks and broken bones.
So finally feminists have a study in which women and only
women can serve as the guinea pigs. At last feminists have the chance
to show all those brave women stepping forward to put their bodies on
the line for the good of all.
And guess what? The study is in danger of flopping because not
enough women are volunteering.
Hmm. The patriarchy must have gotten to them somehow.
The Women's Health Initiative needs 164,500 volunteers
nationwide. But it's about 47,000 short.
Researchers say that what's keeping women away is that they're
concerned about the risks. "Many women are afraid of complications
from the hormones," according to an Associated Press story by Jon
Marcus.
Of course, risk is what all experimental drug tests are about.
And in this case, the subjects aren't even taking some exotic, bizarre
concoction from the corporate laboratory, but the same type of
hormones their bodies have already produced.
Now, because volunteerism is so low, this puts an additional
expense on taxpayers, who now have to fund a huge mass-mailing that's
aimed at flushing out a few more stalwarts to volunteer for the test.
Feminists have been complaining for a very long time that
women were supposedly shut out of such tests. We wonder what their
excuse is now that women are the only ones allowed.
---
(Note: if you wish to volunteer, you can call 1-800-54-WOMEN.)
==========

HAPPY TUBBY ME?
Speaking of feminist weight issues, let's talk about one of
the most sinister plots ever unleashed on females. Let's talk about
the unwholesome embodiment of all that is evil, a festering blight
that feeds up the greed, vanity, lust, and avarice lurking in the
darkest corners of the human soul.
Let's talk about Barbie.
You know how this plastic doll keeps getting under feminists
skin. They can't stand Barbie's rather unrealistic proportions, her
perpetual slimness, and her refusal to hold water even when dunked in
a bathtub. If Barbie were a real woman, they said, her measurements
would be 38-18-34. Feminists say this sets unrealistic goals for
girls, causing low self esteem, eating disorders, and abductions
aboard flying saucers.
Okay, we made up that flying saucer part. But feminists made
up the rest, and have been pushing that argument for years. They see
Barbie as part of the war on women, inflicted by a society (that is,
men) who are objectifying women.
So feminists were delighted back in 1991 when a Minneapolis
company called High Self-Esteem Toys (we're not kidding) started
selling Happy, the Happy To Be Me doll. Happy's measurements were a
more realistic if un-Baywatchian 36-27-38, and her feet were flat --
ready for sensible shoes and Birkenstocks, in contrast to Barbie's
permanently arch feet made only for high heels. The box that some
Happys came in declared that "She looks and moves like a real person."
(You can see a picture of Happy at
http://www.seanet.com/HTML/Users/matts/happy2be.htm, but the page
takes quite a long time to load.)
Feminists thought this will cure all sorts of self-esteem
problems for little girls. One feminist has an "empowerment" web page
cluttered with all sorts of feminist nostrums, including this plug for
Happy: "Great to give personally as a gift to daughter, granddaughter,
niece or family friend . Shows the child you support this image and
creates self-esteem." http://oscar.ctc.edu/~jhalsan/Empowerment.html
But we could have guessed Happy's fate. For one thing, it's
not very smart to give a doll a name that sounds like "Happy Tubby
Me." But we could also learn a lot by looking at the "action figures"
sold to boys -- the plastic figures depicting cartoon characters,
superheroes, Kung-Fu fighters and other macho characters. Barbie's
figure might be unrealistic, but boys' "action figures" have a
musculature that even a steady intravenous drip of steroids couldn't
create. These figures are selling fantasy -- whether it's Barbie
selling it to girls, or He-Man selling it to boys. And no one has
claimed that boys' self-esteem is harmed by the unrealistic
expectations raised by G.I. Joe. Or if those figures do create high
expectations, we expect boys to cope with it.
Of course someone could always come out with a boys'
equivalent of a Happy To Be Me figure -- an action figure with a
"reasonable" physique, and maybe even a kung-fu grip that operates a
little TV remote control (sold separately).
But we suspect that Couch Potato Joe wouldn't sell very well.
Meanwhile, for all you feminists who want to improve girls'
self esteem by buying a Happy doll, we have two words for you:
Yard sale.
That's about the only place you're going to find one. Despite
reams of free publicity, fanfare, and feminist support, the Happy
figure has gone out of business.
Little girls didn't want it.
Barbie, however, is still going strong.
http://www.barbie.com/
http://www.fau.edu/library/barblink.htm
==========

HER BODY, HERSELFISHNESS
Feminists have long claimed that they have the best interest
of children at heart. So it's interesting how often feminists come
rushing to the defense of a woman who has thrown her newborn into a
garbage can or taken drugs while pregnant.
Feminists say that it's none of our business if a woman takes
drugs while pregnant. It's her body, it's her choice, they say.
Except that her behavior has serious consequences, both for
the child who is harmed by her action and for the society where such
damaged children grow up to be troubled adults.
With that in mind, we'd like to note the case of a Wisconsin
woman who was forced into custody two years ago because she was using
cocaine while pregnant. The newspapers are not naming the woman --
supposedly to protect the identity of the child she later bore -- but
we believe we remember this case. In particular, we remember the
feminists who declared that putting this woman into custody to protect
her unborn child was a horrible act of oppression. It was a violation
of her rights. It would be far better, they seemed to think, that the
woman should be free to go on using cocaine while pregnant than to put
her into temporary custody -- far better that her innocent child
should be locked forever into a prison caused by birth defects than
that this woman should be locked up temporarily for violating our drug
laws.
We advocate compassionate treatment for such women, including
free drug treatment and counseling. We also advocate compassionate
treatment for her unborn child, including the right to be free of
birth defects.
We remember this case because this woman is in the news again.
She was just arrested in Waukesha, Wisconsin, for possessing
drug paraphernalia commonly used for smoking cocaine.
And she is pregnant again.
==========

MORE BATTERED LOGIC DEFENSE
More and more, the so-called "battered women's defense" is
being shown up as an effort to give violent or lawbreaking people a
"get out of jail free" card.
The latest fiasco involves Shannon Booker, who had won praise
and support as one of the "Framingham Eight." They were eight women in
a Massachusetts prison who wanted to get out of jail by using the
"battered-woman defense."
The defense consists of claiming that women are innocent when
they kill because abuse has rendered them no longer responsible for
their own actions. Proving the "abuse" is often an iffy thing. Of
course the person who might offer some contradicting testimony -- the
men they've killed -- are no longer alive and no longer able to defend
their names or offer their version of events.
The "battered women's defense" has made gains in the justice
system because it is pushed by a great many feminists who don't seem
to think that killing a man is all that great of an offense. And it's
been supported by all sorts of politicians and legal figures who think
that being voted out of a job by feminists WOULD be a great offense.
Shannon Booker is one of the killers for whom the "battered
woman's defense" worked. She was convicted of manslaughter in 1989
for killing her boyfriend, but she got out on parole in only five
years when then-Governor William F. Weld bowed to pressure and ordered
a review of her case based on her "battered woman's defense."
So what's she been up to?
Well, she's been twice accused on theft charges. Once she got
off with a warning -- even though she was on parole!
But a second case involving the theft of a stranger's wallet
resulted in her landing back in Framingham Prison with parole revoked.
A trial is set for Jan. 28.
So what's Shannon Booker going to claim this time?
Well, if the "battered woman's defense" worked last time, why
not give it another shot?
That's right. Shannon Booker is now claiming that she stole a
wallet because a boyfriend made her do it. It's his fault, she says.
She's the real victim.
Ms. Booker says she met a fellow at a support group for
substance abusers, and that he abused her and forced her into the
theft.
That's interesting, because when Ms. Booker was trying to get
out of prison the first time, one of the accomplishments cited in her
favor was that she was great at counseling women on how to recognize
and avoid abusive relationships.
Now her lawyer, Bernard Akram, has filed a motion to dismiss
the case, arguing that Ms. Booker suffers once again from "battered
women's syndrome" because she had fallen into an "abusive"
relationship. The motion claims that the man drove her to a store and
ordered her to go in and come out with money. In the legalistic
psychobabble common to these arguments, the motion claims that "The
defendant reasonably believed that there was no escape from serious
injury except through compliance with the demands of her batterer."
No escape? How about the back door? How about alerting the
store's security? How about telling a clerk or phoning the police?
One of the most amazing things about "battered women's
syndrome" is that the women who claim it seem remarkably "escape
impaired," deciding that the best and only solution is to kill
somebody -- or, in this case, to steal a stranger's wallet.
As far as legal authorities know, this is the first time that
a woman has claimed she stole a wallet from a person she never met
because of "battered women's syndrome." But with a little lack of
shame and an attitude that there's nothing to lose, this defense could
probably be used to evade responsibility for just about anything. Lady
Macbeth? Classic case of battered women's syndrome.
And what of the rest of the "Framingham Eight," the
men-killing women who said it was the men who made them violent?
Seven, including Booker, were released. Booker, as you know, is back
in prison. And another, Patricia Allen, was back in prison in July.
The charge? Assault with a deadly weapon.
Hmm. If the boyfriend is already dead, we wonder how he made
her do that?
==========

FEMINISTS ARE NOT YOUR ALLIES
Recently we encountered a familiar situation -- seeing a man
ardently defend a supposedly "moderate" feminist. The man wanted the
"moderate" feminist to be treated with kid gloves. He wanted to
encourage every little baby step the feminist might take toward
recognizing that men in general are not the hellspawn of Satan and so
on.
Fellows like this seem to be under the impression that by not
challenging the feminist's worst anti-male beliefs, they were somehow
being nice guys. This, they seemed to think, would in turn encourage
the feminist to see men as swell fellows and not evil patriarchs.
We doubt it.
If you let someone treat you like a doormat, the primary
lesson that person learns is that you don't mind being treated like a
doormat.
And if you hold your tongue while "moderate" feminists trot
out the same old anti-male stereotypes and disinformation, the
moderate feminists will learn that it is acceptable to bash men. And
that nice guys let them do it.
We don't think that being a nice guy means you have to go
along with the demonization of the male half of the human race.
And we don't think that feminists will evolve out of their
anti-male bigotry if all we do is give them a safe and nurturing
environment for them to spread their anti-male bigotry.
We try to understand where men like that are coming from.
Maybe they are just so shell-shocked over today's ubiquitous
man-bashing that when they see a "moderate" feminist, they are so
grateful and relieved they can hardly speak.
But scratch the surface of any "moderate" feminist's views and
you're bound to find anti-male beliefs -- disinformation about the
"glass ceiling," anorexia, the "patriarchy," domestic violence, the
"rule of thumb," and other myths fostered by anti-male propagandists.
In addition, many "moderate" feminists support affirmative action and
other forms of anti-male discrimination. We don't think anyone bigoted
enough to advocate discrimination is a "moderate." And if she's
targeting us for her discriminatory exercises in "equality," she's no
better than any Jim Crow yahoo. That's not moderateness. That's
bigotry.
So we urge all men and women to stop thinking they can coddle
a "moderate" feminist out of her anti-male attitudes. Attitudes like
that never go away until society *demands* that they go away. You
don't have to get ugly about it. But you do have to get firm.
And please drop the idea that feminists can somehow become
your allies if you're simply nice enough to them. Feminists are not
your allies. Even if you make them realize that *you* are a human
being, they still view the world through a warped gender prism that
affects the policies they advocate and the propaganda they spread.
Even if you get a feminist to think that *you* are a nice guy, they'll
still cling to stereotypes about the patriarchy, still preach about
their victimhood, and they'll still advocate solutions and opinions
that are decidedly anti-male.
For example: We recently read some comments from a supposed
moderate feminist who said: "I care about equal rights, but in my view
women still have fewer rights than men, so I care about theirs
somewhat more. While many women are still being literally bashed by
abusive partners, I find it hard to get too worked up about some
figurative male-bashing ..."
So to unpack her statements: "I care about equal rights, but I
hold my rights equaller." This feminist could not, of course, name one
single right that men have that women do not have. Women have all the
same guaranteed rights as men, plus such de facto rights as the
greater right to child custody, greater protection from harassment,
longer lifespans, and so on. Her claim that she cared about equal
rights was blatantly transparent. She was far more interested in her
rights than in equal rights. If men have that attitude, they're called
sexists.
Then there's the next part of her statement: "While many women
are still being literally bashed by abusive partners, I find it hard
to get too worked up about some figurative male-bashing ..." A
feminist like this will *always* find some reason not to object to
anti-male hatred. There will always be an unfortunate woman in Kuala
Lumpur or Vladivostok whose plight demands immediate sisterly
solidarity. A feminist like this will always claim to oppose anti-male
hatred and anti-male violence -- and she'll never run out of excuses
for condoning or ignoring them when they happen. What if you said to a
feminist like this one: "While many men are still dying in on-the-job
accidents, I find it hard to get too worked up over sexual harassment
or the alleged 'glass ceiling.' "? You can bet that feminist would
excoriate you for not caring enough about the plight of women.
Or you could point to the objective studies showing that women
commit a huge amount of the domestic violence and child abuse that
goes on today. And you could say "With so many victims of violence by
women, I find it hard to get worked up over violence against women."
You can bet she wouldn't accept that.
She will never grasp the concept that the best way to embrace
equal rights is to embrace *equal* rights. There will always be a
reason why it's more important to protect the rights and safety of her
group -- even at the expense of yours.
==========

TRUCKER FIRED FOR SAVING LIVES
What's a man's life worth these days?
Evidently less than a load of merchandize.
On January 3rd, trucker Rick Bloom was coming out of a tunnel
on rain-slicked Interstate 5 south of Palmdale, California, when he
suddenly saw a tangled wreck up ahead. There were fourteen other
tractor-trailers piled up in a massive wreck.
In one of those trucks was John Hunt, whose rig had already
been hit by two other trucks. When he saw Bloom's rig bearing down on
him, "I'm thinking, 'We're dead.' "
With only seconds to react, Bloom deliberately jackknifed his
own truck. It brought him to a stop before the plowed into Hunt or any
of the other wrecks. California Highway Patrol officers said Bloom
prevented a head-on crash.
Bloom was hailed as a hero.
Then he was fired.
His supervisor at Conway Truck Loading Services called him up
and told him he was being sacked for damaging the load he was hauling.
"They never asked me what happened. They called me at 7:30 in the
morning and told me I was fired for failing to maintain control."
"He was terminated because he failed to control his vehicle,"
Howard Jasper, Bloom's supervisor, told the Daily News of Los Angeles.
Conway is headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas.
Bloom says "I would still do the same thing because both
myself and Hunt would probably have been killed if I didn't jackknife
the trailer."
==========

GLORIA ALLRED JOKES
Didja hear that feminist lawyer Gloria Allred is suing to have
seatbelts removed from cars?
She heard that they hold women back.

Oh, and didja hear that Ms. Allred is suing the people who put
up telephone poles?
Yeah, she heard they use guy wires.

=============================
THE FINE PRINT
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