Per's MANifesto July 1998

Per's MANifesto: A newsletter of news and opinion on
man-bashing, anti-male stereotypes and other great moral principles.
July, 1998.
WELCOME, READERS, to an issue we'll call "Suffer The Little
Children." That certainly seems to be the motto of societies that
think children belong only with mothers and other women, even abusive
ones. The stories can be heartbreaking, but we have to look at them.
We have to see what is being done in the name of feminist "equality."

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INDEX:
I. SUFFER THE LITTLE CHILDREN
II. A LIMITLESS CHOICE TO HURT
III. SURPRISE, SURPRISE: YOU HAVE RIGHTS
IV. CRACKDOWN ON CRACK MOMS
V. RAPE: FUNNY NO MORE
VI. MODERN-DAY SLAVERS
VII. MUNCHAUSEN MUMBO JUMBO
VIII. SELECTIVE EQUALITY
IX. HUMOR: YOUR REAL MOTIVE

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SUFFER THE LITTLE CHILDREN
In 1992, Latrena D. Pixley got tied of hearing her 6-week-old
baby daughter cry. So she smothered the girl with a blanket and dumped
the body in a Washington, D.C., trash bin.
She was sentenced to just three years in prison.
Well, not really three years.
And not really prison.
Actually, she got to go to a halfway house. In fact, she only
had to go there on weekends.
A feminist once asked us why men make up most of the hardened
criminals. We think it's because they usually don't get weekends at a
halfway house for committing murder.
Pixley got out on probation and had a boy, Cornilous. In 1996,
when the boy was 4 months old, Pixley was sent to prison for
credit-card fraud and violating her probation. She asked Laura
Blankman, a police officer in Montgomery County, Maryland, to look
after the boy.
Blankman did. She even tried to adopt the boy.
But Pixley got out of prison and demanded custody. This, even
though she killed her previous child, and even though the boy has been
raised most of his life by Blankman.
Not only does she want custody, she just won it.
The Maryland Court of Special Appeals, a three-judge panel,
supported the earlier ruling of Montgomery Circuit Court Judge Michael
D. Mason to take the child away from Blankman's home and give him to
Pixley, who again lives in a halfway house. They said Mason made
"every effort to determine what was in Cornilous' best interest."
They decided that Pixley must have been "mentally ill" with
"post-partum depression" when she killed her daughter. Besides, they
said, Pixley has since gotten job training and therapy.
We're reminded again of that feminist who wanted to know why
men make up most of the hardened criminals. Maybe because when men
kill, their actions are labeled as crimes rather than mental illness.
They have no "post-partum depression" to fall back on, even though
they, too, might snap from the pressures of parenthood. And when they
do, they will get hard time in brutal prisons, not therapy and job
training.
Ralph Hall Jr., a lawyer for Pixley, says the woman "is a
vastly different person than she was in 1992 when there was the
unfortunate incident with her daughter."
Unfortunate incident? How is it that if a man shoves a woman,
it's called domestic violence, but if a woman kills a baby, it's an
"unfortunate incident"?
And why do news stories about "domestic violence" mention men
hitting women but never mention women like Latrena Pixley?
Cases like Pixley's are not rare by any means. There's Sharon
Alley, accused of cracking the skull of her daughter, 5-month-old
Brooke Alley.
The parents separated. Bobby Alley, the baby's father, was
given custody of the girl while Sharon Alley awaited trial on a charge
of felony child abuse.
But then Judge Susan Deatherage, a Juvenile and Domestic
Relations judge in Henry County, Virginia, decided to give Sharon
Alley custody again while she was awaiting trial. She did so even
though a social service worker recommended that the child and her
9-year-old brother remain with their father.
But custody won't be an issue anymore. On Mother's Day, Sharon
Alley fatally stabbed the girl through the heart.
Here is another victim of the blind policy that children
belong with the parent who has ovaries, no matter what. No matter if
that parent recently cracked the child's skull. No matter that there
is another loving parent whose only offense is being male.
And in Rochester, New York, Barbara Briggs beat her
malnourished 3-year-old grandson to death with a cutting board
because he was looking in the pantry for food. The boy weighed only 28
pounds at the time of his death, and bore cigaret burns and marks from
whippings.
Briggs was sentenced to 25 years in prison.
Suffer the little children to come unto them.

(Sources:)
("Md. Appeals Court Rules for Pixley: Panel Backs Judge's
Decision to Return Boy to Woman Who Killed Infant Daughter," By
Katherine Shaver, Washington Post, Friday, July 10, 1998; Page B01.)
("Custody ruling assailed after baby's stabbing death," by
David Reed, the Associated Press.)
==========

A LIMITLESS CHOICE TO HURT
In the best news we've heard in a while, the West Virginia
Supreme Court has upheld a $7.8 million verdict in favor of a man
whose child was put up for adoption without his consent.
Dr. John Kessel had dated Anne Conaty Selvaggi of Huntington,
West Virginia for several years. But they broke up shortly before she
realized she was pregnant. They reconciled and got engaged, but then
she was the one who broke off the engagement.
She then took off for California, where she gave birth to a
boy in 1991. She also got adoption lawyer David Keene Leavitt of
Beverly Hills to help her put the child up for adoption.
Dr. Kessel obtained a temporary restraining order from a West
Virginia court barring an attempt to adopt his son until he could
establish paternity. But the jury found that Selvaggi and her lawyer
knew about the restraining order and went ahead anyway. They ignored
the order and turned the boy over to a couple in Calgary, Canada,
where a court ruled that the adoption was final.
In December of 1995, a jury in Cabell County, West Virginia,
found lawyer Leavitt and Selvaggi's parents and brother guilty of
interfering with Kessel's parental rights and fraudulently concealing
the whereabouts of his son. Selvaggi herself was found guilty only of
fraudulent concealment. The jury ordered them to pay Kessel $1.97
million in compensatory damages and more than $5 million in punitive
damages.
The damage award is believed to be the first of its kind in
the United States.
Let's hope it's not the last.
We know what a great many feminists are going to say: that a
woman has the right to choose what to do with her body, that it's her
right to break off an engagement, that it's her right to be free of
caring for the child. Amid all these "rights," today's modern
feminists will not take up the matter of responsibilities, or even
plain, human decency. They will hide behind a never-ending parade of
"rights" in order to justify treating other people disgracefully.
And that includes treating people in ways that feminists
wouldn't stand for if men did it to women. If a father had done this,
two things would have happened. One, feminists organizations would
have raised a huge cry that this was "patriarchal oppression" or some
such (even if they deem it well within a woman's rights to do the
exact same thing.) And two, this case would have gotten a lot more
attention, in the news media, and in popular entertainment. Instead,
the case barely attracted any notice. The networks couldn't take a
break from their latest fictionalized "men bad, women good"
made-for-TV movies long enough to portray a real case like this one.
Selvaggi's actions have every appearance of trying to
deliberately hurt a former boyfriend, to plant a knife and twist it
just as hard as she could. Her flight to California, her defiance of
the court order, and her placing the boy with a couple in another
country look to us like nothing but an effort to deny him custody of
his own child out of sheer pettiness. If this whole plan of action was
not designed to inflict emotional distress on another human being,
then what was the purpose?
As for Ms. Selvaggi, she's defending herself on several
levels. Noting that she didn't have an abortion, she says: "I did the
right thing for my baby. ... I chose to spare that baby's life, to
give it life, give it a home, two parents that love the baby."
We wonder what the feminists would think of this. In several
cases where a single mother wanted to keep a child instead of letting
the child grow up in a home with two parents or with the father and
his parents all providing care, feminists always sided with the single
mother. Now all of the sudden, the most important standard is having
two parents. We wonder how feminists feel about this slam against
single parents.
And we note that Ms. Selvaggi said. "I chose to spare that
baby's life."
Tsk, tsk, Ms. Selvaggi. How could you save the baby's life
when feminists keep telling us a fetus has no life?

(Source: "Court upholds award against mother who put child up
for adoption," by Jennifer Bundy, the Associated Press.)
==========

SURPRISE, SURPRISE: YOU HAVE RIGHTS
An appeals court in New Jersey has ruled that people cannot be
convicted without trial on hearsay evidence or an official's whim.
We can hear you saying: "Wait a minute. You mean the same New
Jersey that's in the USA? They just now thought of this? We thought
Americans had a thing for giving people trials before convicting
them."
Sure. But that was before feminists began warning of
"epidemics" of abuse sweeping the nation, and before women raised in
feminist ideology began seeking posts in governmental agencies. With
many social agencies today run by people who have what's politely
called an "activist" outlook, rights have become sort of an irritating
barrier to their plans.
Here's how New Jersey decided that people actually ought to be
given some of their rights back. In two different cases, it ruled that
people found guilty of child abuse by the state Division of Youth and
Family Services actually deserve an independent hearing before they
are denied jobs and labeled abusers. Prior to that, people who faced
blatant, barefaced lies about being abusers did have a means of
challenging or redressing sometimes ludicrous decisions by the
Division of Youth and Family Services (DYFS).
One case involved a female teacher who was accused by another
teacher in 1993 of inappropriate sexual behavior and physical contact
involving a student.
The school then notified both the country prosecutor and the
DYFS. The prosecutor closed the case without charging her. But that
wasn't good enough for the DYFS.
The DYFS ruled that the charges had been substantiated. Within
72 hours of receiving a report, the DYFS places the accused's name on
a central registry of child abusers. So shortly after someone makes an
as-yet unsubstantiated accusation, your name is already on the list
with real abusers and pedophiles. And good luck removing it.
AT DYFS insistence, the teacher then faced tenure charges.
After a hearing that lasted three days, an administrative law judge
dismissed every charge and said the accusing student's testimony was
unbelievable. Even then, the DYFS refused to change its ruling that
the charges had been substantiated. It also refused to remove the
woman's name from its list of "abusers."
This is quite typical of today's social welfare agencies,
which are staffed with far too many people who think that all the rest
of the world is in "denial" and that they themselves are the select
and honest few. They don't take "not guilty" for an answer -- no
matter how many times it's given. This is the same sort of vindictive
hysteria that gave us the McMartin preschool fiasco in California, the
"satanic cults" in the daycare centers, the Little Rascals case in
North Carolina, the Fells Acres case in Massachusetts, and other
miscarriages of justice.
But in New Jersey, the teacher persisted, filing a court
appeal seeking to have her name removed from the abusers' registry.
Previously, the accused could ask only for an informal hearing, and it
would be before the same agency -- the DYFS -- responsible for the
person's name being placed on the registry in the first place.
Can you say "kangaroo court"? Sure you can.
Thankfully, the appeals court found that those ridiculous
informal hearings before the DYFS just don't cut the mustard when
there are serious discrepancies concerning the facts.
"One need only look to the outcome of the tenure hearing to
observe the deficiencies in the DYFS procedure," the court found.
"Tested in a trial type hearing, (the teacher's) accusers were
revealed as liars and plotters."
The court also agreed with the teacher that her employment
rights were curtailed without due process when her name was placed on
the registry.
The state attorney general's office and the DYFS might appeal
the ruling. If they do, that puts the state's top law-enforcement
office and an agency that is above the law in the position of arguing
that the people should have fewer rights.
We hope the sane solution prevails.
In the second case, a mother was accused of abusing her son
and the DYFS decided the charges were substantiated. She asked for one
of those hearings with the DYFS, but it didn't change matters. Her
name was still placed on the "abusers" registry.
The court decided that she was denied a fundamentally fair way
to contest her case.
"It's an affirmation of the court's willingness to guarantee
that people accused of serious matters have a reasonable opportunity
to defend themselves," said Gregory Diebold of Hudson County Legal
Services after representing the mother. "You could have a neighbor,
who's having a dispute with you over where you put your back yard
steps, call DYFS anonymously and accuse you of abuse. The court is
saying you are entitled to a meaningful opportunity to defend
yourself."
Surprise, surprise. The tide is turning, and you now actually
have rights.
We hope there will be more rulings like these, once the public
and the legal system learn more about the "activist" agendas and
personal quirks of some of the people staffing these agencies.
One thing bothers us about these cases, though. In both, it
took a woman appealing the judgments for the state to decide the
accused had rights. We'd like to hope that it was merely a matter of
these women presenting good cases, and not that the court would have
been complacent about similar unfounded charges against men.
Ceil Zalkind, assistant director of the Association for
Children of New Jersey, said he's afraid the ruling could have a
negative effect on DYFS caseworkers.
Apparently, he fears that yanking these people back to reality
is a "negative effect."

(Source: "Appeals court says accused abusers entitled to
due-process hearings," by Barbara Fitzgerald, The Associated Press.)

==========
CRACKDOWN ON CRACK MOMS
Charlie Condon, Attorney General of South Carolina, recently
told Congress that his state's crackdown on pregnant women who use
drugs has cut the number of babies born addicted to drugs.
"Our approach is not only highly effective, but infinitely
humane," Condon told a Senate committee. "It considers the welfare of
both the mother and the unborn child."
Under his state's system, women who use illegal drugs after
the 24th week of pregnancy can be arrested. But charges will be
dropped if they go through a treatment program. Those who refuse face
involuntary commitment to a treatment facility before jail.
His state is the only one with such a law, and it's been
targeted by those who think that women possess limitless rights to
damage children. The American Civil Liberties Union is once again
stupidly on the wrong side of the issue, trying to get the law
overturned. The ACLU supports our rights to be free of censorship, but
not our rights to be free of the damage caused by involuntary drug
use. Feminist groups, of course, condemn the policy, saying that
whatever a woman does with her body is her choice. It's another case
of feminists demanding limitless rights with zero responsibilities.
But in May, the Supreme Court let stand the state's ability to
prosecute pregnant drug users. Hopefully this might stiffen a few
spines in other states.
The feminists who prize their right to damage unborn children
have either never taken a look at these children once they're born, or
they just don't care.
Babies born addicted to cocaine suffer uncontrolled trembling,
headaches, stomach cramps. They can't tolerate light or even moderate
stimulation. They have a tough time bonding with a caregiver because
almost any stimulation is too much for them. Just touching them can
cause them physical and mental pain. Babies born after extensive
exposure to alcohol in the womb suffer a variety of intellectual and
emotional handicaps. Learning and behavior problems are common among
children who are born addicted.
If anything remotely like this was visited on women in our
society, feminists would be screaming that it's genocide.
And yet they defend doing it as their right.
==========

RAPE: FUNNY NO MORE
You might remember all the laughter and talk-show jokes that
accompanied the case of Mary Kay LeTourneau. She's the Washington
state school teacher who seduced a student of hers, a 13-year-old boy,
and got pregnant and delivered the child's child. Some people found
the situation absolutely hilarious and joked that the boy must be
enjoying himself. The fact that this was statutory rape didn't seem to
bother them. They never stopped to think what long-term effect it
could have on a child to have improper sex at a too-young age with a
person who is mentally unbalanced.
Maybe a case out of Hastings, Minnesota will help stop the
laughter.
It's uncomfortably similar to the LeTourneau case. Julie
Feil, 32, a former high school teacher, has pleaded guilty to criminal
sexual conduct with a 15-year-old student. She was sentenced to prison
and will be eligible for parole in a little over four years.
All the late-night comics who want to winking about how much
the boy must have enjoyed the experience should have been in the
courtroom. The boy's father testified on the terrible impact the
aftermath of this unwholesome affair has had on his son. The
once-carefree boy now is angry and depressed. The boy himself read a
statement telling Feil: "I do not love you. You are a sex offender."
He called her a monster.
Maybe it's too much to hope that this time there won't be so
many jokes.
=========

MODERN-DAY SLAVERS
Police in New York have bust up a ring of people who were
enslaving deaf Mexican aliens and forcing them to sell trinkets on the
streets and in the subways. The deaf people were kept locked up when
not working and sometimes beaten if they did not bring it at least
$100 a day.
As Assistant U.S. Attorney Leslie Cornfeld described it: "What
this case is about is an individual exploiting other individuals and
holding them as slaves for over five years."
So who were the men responsible for this horrible slavery
ring? And we know they must be men, because feminists keep telling us
that slavery should be blamed on men, particularly white, European
males.
Well, actually the Federal Bureau of Investigation has
identified the ringleader of this slavery operation, and she's a woman
-- Adriana Paoletti Lemus, age 30. She's been sentenced to 14 years in
prison and $1 million in restitution.
Is it a fluke that we find a woman involved? Well, ask her
mother, Delia Paoletti. She was also part of the ring, and has been
sentenced to five years in prison.
While in prison, they'll have plenty of time to read "Fried
Green Tomatoes" and all those other books and movies that assure us
that slavery is something done by those dirty, power-mad men.
==========

SELECTIVE EQUALITY
Feminists in Italy have managed to institute another example
of selective equality. Selective equality is equality only for women,
and only when they want it.
Specifically, Italy's lower house approved a bill that will
let women join the armed forces.
Now, if you're going to say that it was gender discrimination
that women weren't allowed to join before, consider:
All Italian men must serve at least 10 months. This
involuntary servitude never seems to get labeled discrimination.
Also, women still are not required to serve -- not 10 months,
not 10 seconds. The bill calls only for voluntary service. Women can
join if they want, or they can skip it. The bill specifically gives
women choice -- a choice men still do not have.
In other words, women have rights, men have responsibilities.
==========

MUNCHAUSEN MUMBO JUMBO
A 31-year-old San Antonio mother has been arrested on charges
of injuring and endangered two of her sons. The arrest came while
Cynthia Martinez Lyda was already under suspicion in the deaths of two
other sons.
Officials are speculating that Ms. Lyda has a psychiatric
disorder known as Munchausen's syndrome by proxy, in which mothers or
other caregivers injure, poison, or otherwise harm children in order
to gain attention and sympathy. Some like to be seen as courageous
figures coping with grief, while others want sympathy.
She is accused of injuring one 8-month-old son four times
while he was in a hospital at Lackland Air Force Base, San Antonio,
Texas in late 1994. A hidden camera caught her placing gauze in his
gastric tube. That boy recovered, and was removed from her custody.
Officials cite a long history of unexplained injuries and
deaths of her children. Her attorney says her sons had some sort of
genetic disorder.
One curious thing about Munchausen's syndrome by proxy is that
it occurs almost exclusively in women.
Does that mean women are somehow more susceptible, more
vulnerable?
In our opinion, no. It means that when women commit evil acts
for personal gain, society decides they must be "sick." If this
disorder was seen mostly in men, it never would have been classified
as a "psychiatric disorder" in the first place. It would have been
simply call evil.
Ms. Lyda is being investigated for the deaths of a
25-month-old son and a 2-year-old foster son while she lived in Mesa,
Arizona. But Mesa Police Sgt. Earle Lloyd says it is unlikely she'll
ever be prosecuted because "they've come up with nothing that can
prove she harmed the child."

(Source: "Woman accused of endangering two sons," the
Associated Press.)
==========

HUMOR: YOUR REAL MOTIVE
Democratic Senator Patty Murray of Washington state seems to
be heading for a tough re-election battle against a Republican
challenger.
We'd just like to take a moment to direct some comments to Ms.
Murray's rival in this race. We think that for the sake of fairness
and sexual equality, you should give up any idea of running against
Murray. Why would you oppose the idea of a woman holding a Senate
seat? Sure, you're probably going to say that you want the job because
you think you can do it better. But that's just a smokescreen for your
real motive. Obviously, you just want to keep women down. Otherwise
you wouldn't object to a woman like Murray having the seat. You say
you just want to compete with her for the job, but the real reason is
that you want to send women back to the kitchen, barefoot and
pregnant. Sure, everyone knows that Murray is a lightweight and an
empty suit who lucked into the Senate seat in the first place. But
this isn't about her qualifications. The only reason you would claim
that you're more qualified for that job instead of her is that you
hate women.
Okay, now that we've written this out, we're going to look up
the name of Murray's challenger to mail these comments to.
Hmm ... Interesting ...
Murray's opponent is Representative Linda Smith.
Why gosh, that means that Senator Murray is running against
... a woman!
And if Murray wins, she's denying a woman a place in the
Senate!
We'd just like to take a moment to direct some comments to Ms.
Murray. We think that for the sake of fairness and sexual equality,
you should give up any idea of running against Smith ...

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