Per's MANifesto June 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: We supposed feminists could accuse Per's MANifesto
of being "afraid of commitment," at least as far as deadlines are
concerned. Yep, we're running a bit late getting the July issue to
you, but it's a good issue for all that. Sometimes we wish we were
feminists so we could blame it all on the patriarchy or something. At
any rate, our theme this month is "AND JUSTICE FOR SOME," which
refers, of course, to the feminist approach to justice. After you've
studied feminism for a while, you notice that feminism's has been
working to lower or abolish responsibilities for women while
increasing or creating new responsibilities for men. It is not a rule
of law, it is a rule of expediency, with feminism's moral principles
involving whatever seems to benefit them at the moment. That is why
the feminist approach always ends up as a matter of "Justice for
Some."

MANifesto is available on the web at
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INDEX:
I. JUSTICE FOR ME AND NOT FOR THEE
II. JUSTICE FOR LASSIES, NAE FOR LADDIES
III. SOME GOOD NUDES AND SOME BAD NUDES
IV. LIFE OR CHOICE?
V. NANNY NEWS
VI. FRED DEVER DEFENSE FUND
VII. JUSTICE DOWN THE TUBE
==========

JUSTICE FOR ME AND NOT FOR THEE
A few months ago there were several divorce cases in the news
involving women married to rich men. The women were seeking huge
divorce settlements under the argument that, as wives, they were
entitled to at least half of everything their husbands owned. Even if
the women had nothing to do with how their husbands made a fortune,
they still felt entitled. They were married, so everything is
fifty-fifty.
If you were within earshot of feminists at that time, you
remember how vehemently they argued in favor of those huge divorce
settlements, even for women who never lifted a finger during their
marriages. The arguments ran the gamut, usually involving the concept
that women contribute equally to the marital union. It was never quite
clear how an idle socialite who marries a man who had already made his
fortune really contributes to their wealth by ordering the servants
about. But the feminists were adamant: women share equally in
marriage.
But it's funny to notice how quickly feminists change their
(ahem) moral principles when the husband has debts or obligations
instead of assets. Just as you might expect, feminists who argue that
women married to rich men have everything to do with their husbands'
fortunes suddenly begin arguing that wives have nothing to do with
their husbands' misfortunes.
Case in point is the current legislative effort to exempt
women from collections by the Internal Revenue Service, the
tax-gathering and tax-enforcement agency of the United States. Under a
legal concept called "joint and several liability" the IRS can seek
back-taxes from one spouse if the other is unavailable. When a husband
and wife sign a joint tax return, they are both considered equally
responsible for the truth and accuracy of the return, and both are
held responsible for any debts and penalties that may occur.
Unless they are women. In which case they are what some folks
refer to as "innocent spouses." Special exemptions for "innocent
spouses" have already been included in a bill approved by the House of
Representatives. Now Congresswoman Nancy Johnson, a Connecticut
Republican, is offering an additional bill to increase the special
exemptions.
Feminists will protest that any such law will be "gender
neutral." We feel that the language might be gender neutral, but the
enforcement certainly will not be. The laws pushed through by
feminists generally have to be couched in gender-neutral language, but
feminists then take great pains to underscore that these laws are
intended to protect or exempt women. The classic example is the
"Violence Against Women Act." Feminists claim the language is gender
neutral. Then why the title?
In fact, in the hearings, the testimony and in the partisan
studies used to support the "Violence Against Women Act," feminists
portrayed women solely as the victims of violence, not the
perpetrators, and they portray men as the violent ones. Though women
commit a major share of domestic violence, feminists made sure that
everyone got the message that the "Violence Against Women Act" was a
measure to protect women, not prosecute them, and to prosecute men,
not protect them. Sure they can say the language often seems gender
neutral. But then feminists and their supporters get to instruct our
legal and law-enforcement agencies in how they are supposed to apply
the "Violence Against Women Act." There is nothing "gender neutral"
about that training. By ignoring and denying violence by women
against men, they send the clear signal that this law is meant to
protect only women. And because they are often doing this in an
official capacity, acting as representatives of the government, they
convey the unmistakable message that the government is fully behind
this bias.
The same is happening with the "innocent spouses" laws. The
Congressional hearings have featured women claiming to be innocent
spouses. Men are significantly absent. If you plant the idea
throughout the legal system that "innocent spouse" means female, you
can make the language as supposedly neutral as you want and still be
assured of the desired, biased results.
The same happened with sexual harassment laws. Feminists can
claim that these were written in "gender neutral" language. But
feminists had so inculcated the idea that harassment was something men
do to women that the U.S. legal system was unsure until recently
whether the laws even protect men.
Courts repeatedly rejected the idea that Title VII of the
Civil Rights Act of 1964 offers men protection from same-sex
harassment. Finally a case, Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Services,
Inc., went to the Supreme Court, which decided unanimously in March
that men also are protected from harassment under this law. It took
the highest court in the land and a protracted legal struggle to
determine that a "gender neutral" law also protects men!
Such "gender-neutral" language is a smoke screen. Feminists
from the start made a determined effort to frame the issue in terms of
women-only victimhood -- from their biased studies to the popular
books and movies that offered only one view of the issue. It's no
wonder the legal system could not interpret a "gender neutral" law in
a gender neutral manner. After years of feminist rhetoric, press
releases, and made-for-TV movies, the legal system assumed the law was
intended to protect only women. This is just the type of bias
feminists are aiming for.
In fact, the bias showed itself quite starkly -- and perhaps
unintentionally -- in a recent Washington Post story on "innocent
spouses." The Post wrote: "Johnson's proposal would let spouses assign
'primary and secondary liability for collection' in tax disputes. That
would essentially direct the IRS to pursue a husband first ..."
Got that? "The husband first." The Post, like everyone at
these hearings, has already gotten the message that the "innocent
spouse" is the woman and the one you have to go after is the man.
In divorce, our system assumes that wives are entitled to half
of all assets while exempting them from responsibilities. The irony of
this current debate is that there might be both assets and bad debts
involved. The ex-wives can claim they are entitled to half the assets
while being exempt from the debts as "innocent spouses."
More and more, feminism is a movement to put women on the
pedestal in much the same manner as in the olden days. Women are
portrayed as innocent, nurturing, and virtuous. If her husband made a
fortune, it must be because she stood behind him through the lean
years. If the husband cheated on his taxes, the wife must have known
nothing about it -- and heaven forbid we think that she might have
urged him to do it. She is involved in everything good and nothing
evil. She is woman.
But the sly, cunning, calculated manner in which feminists go
about implanting this image speaks volumes on how they are anything
but nurturing and innocent.
Oh, and by the way -- NOW and several feminist organizations
recently announced they were considering the idea of reviving that
exemplar of gender-neutral language, the "Equal Rights Amendment."
-----
(Reference: "House moving to boost innocent spouse
protections," by Rob Wells, Associated Press, March 18, 1998.)

==========
JUSTICE FOR LASSIES, NAE FOR LADDIES
Scotland serves as a prime example of the concept of "Justice
for Some." The Scottish Office home affairs minister, Henry McLeish,
is vowing to abolish the jailing of any woman under 18 by the year
2000. Apparently, the jailing of boys will continue to be considered
just fine.
Mr. McLeish says: "I stand by this Government's radical
policies to ... end the imprisonment of young women, and to take a
radical new approach to the punishment of women offenders."
The imprisonment of young men, of course, will go on as usual.
Perhaps this is Mr. McLeish's rather Darwinian method of reducing
competition when the ladies are about.
This sexist policy is receiving wide support. The Scotsman
newspaper said in an editorial: "When Henry McLeish outlined his plans
to ensure that no woman under the age of 18 should be imprisoned in
Scotland, he was not mouthing pious platitudes. He was showing a rare
example of enlightened thinking."
"Enlightened thinking" apparently does not extend to the
humane treatment of boys, who will continue to be shuttled off to hard
time that only turns out hardened offenders.
Some people will argue that males need firmer, harsher
punishment. So they inflict the harshest possible punishment on boys,
while sending young women to treatment programs or probation officers.
Then, when men turn violent under the harshest conditions, they blame
the men and cite it as evidence they were right in treating boys
harshly. They never seem to stop and reflect that maybe their tendency
to brutalize boys is somehow connected with the behavior of men.
The move to give lighter treatment to females while keeping
harsher treatment of males is being sparked in part by the recent case
of a drug peddler who was sent to prison for trying to sell drugs to
children. You might ask, isn't that the usual treatment for drug
sellers? Sure, but in this case the drug seller is female and
pregnant. So the same offense is not deemed as worthy of punishment as
it would be if the drugs were sold by a male. Apparently that means
the damage done by selling drugs to children isn't as severe when the
pusher is pregnant. (Such logic makes you wonder just who is doing the
drugs.)
The case involves Angela Harkins, a 17-year-old bakery worker
who tried to sell five tablets of ecstasy and 10 wraps of amphetamine
at the Tunnel disco in Glasgow. At least two of the patrons she was
trying to sell drugs to were as young as 14.
However, it turned out that her supplier had not given her the
real article. She thought she was selling drugs, but the substance
turned out to be cold medicine.
The sentencing guidelines called for prison, but the public
outcry has been severe, especially following the suicides of several
young women in prison. The proposed solution is to just stop jailing
young women. The suicides or rapes of young men in prison never seem
to lead to a similar concern for their well-being.
One thing notable about this case is the effort to minimize
her motives for selling drugs. Harkins' lawyer kept referring to her
as "this silly young girl" and "a silly wee girl." If he had said this
about the same woman while she was, say, running for public office, he
probably would have been blasted by feminists for stereotyping females
as mentally inferior. But when you're trying to get a female off the
hook for her own behavior, you can always portray her as mentally
inferior and no feminists object. In fact, they might even join you.
The Scotsman also joined in this chorus, saying of Harkins:
"This 17-year-old girl committed a crime which owed more to
foolishness than to evil intent." We're not sure how The Scotsman
developed mind-reading powers to determine another person's intent.
Perhaps the ability to read minds is not as important as the ability
to notice gender. If the gender is female, the intent is not evil.
If this case had involved a boy instead of a pregnant girl, we
can imagine how words like "silly" and "foolishness" would have been
replaced by words like "scum" and "predator." And the suicides of men
in prison would be chalked up to them getting "what they deserved."
-----
(Source: "Outcry as pregnant teenager is jailed: McLeish urged
to intervene as first-time offender sent to Cornton Vale," by Jenny
Booth and Graeme Stewart, The Scotsman
http://www.scotsman.com/index.html)
==========

SOME GOOD NUDES AND SOME BAD NUDES
At Long Trail School in Dorset, Vermont, 18-year-old Kate
Logan decided to do something different at her graduation ceremony.
She didn't just toss her mortarboard. She tossed off all her clothes.
Logan stepped to the front of the graduation podium on June 13
and started to give a speech. She then took off her cap and shed her
gown, standing naked before the stunned audience of 200. She spoke of
"feeling the limitless directions, to open myself completely, to
express myself fully as a confident individual -- for it is only then,
which I am open and free, that truth and wisdom will reveal
themselves."
Well, Katie, the truth is, most folks keep their knickers on
at graduation. And if you see what most folks look like undressed, you
understand the wisdom of doing so.
We mention Logan's stunt primarily so we can bring up an
incident in Seattle only one week later. Two bicyclists were arrested
for pedalling along nude during a summer solstice parade. It seems
that "streaking" on bicycles has become a regular part of this event
in recent years.
Both bicyclists charged are men.
No charges were ever filed against Kate Logan.
==========

LIFE OR CHOICE?
An Oregon woman who gave birth to a stillborn baby is suing
two male doctors for $160 million in Multnomah Circuit Court, saying
they missed the fact that she was pregnant. Karien Richmond, who is
18, is claiming malpractice, wrongful death and reckless infliction of
emotional distress. The doctors say she told them nothing that would
indicate pregnancy, and as a 180-pound teenager, her appearance did
not differ from previous visits.
The wrongful death aspect of this suit is interesting. All
along we've heard feminists tell us that a fetus is not a life, it's a
choice. If it's not a life, how can you sue for wrongful death?
The answer lies in the "her body, her choice" mantra of
feminists. If this young woman had sought to have a partial birth
abortion, the fetus is part of her body. If the blame is shifted to
two male doctors, the exact same fetus becomes a life.
If the woman wishes to terminate that fetus, it's a right. If
she wants to sue someone else for bringing about a similar result,
it's a life.
Put another way: the woman has rights, the men have
responsibilities.
We have enormous sympathy for this young woman. It sounds like
a horrible ordeal. But let's not let horrible experience create
horrible case law.
Don't get us wrong. We know that doctors have to be held to
high standards, and missing a pregnancy would be serious, if it
happened. But that's a separate issue from how the nature of a fetus
should change so quickly and disturbingly, depending on the gender of
the person being held responsible for it. Here again is "Justice For
Some." Justice for her is a right to terminate the fetus. Justice for
men is punishment if they allegedly and accidentally contribute to a
similar outcome.
We wonder if she will win this suit. Remember, she's asking
for $160 million. If she gets that, the money has to come from
somewhere. And that means higher insurance and medical costs for the
rest of us.
The irony is that any woman who won a suit like this could use
that money to have an endless string of abortions, and it would never
be considered a life.
==========

NANNY NEWS
Louise Woodward is the British woman who came to the United
States to work as a nanny and became an international heroine by
killing a baby boy. People the world over, and especially in her
native Britain, could not believe a female was capable of violence in
the home. But even as she arrives in Britain scot-free, additional
evidence of her guilt is emerging.
People who were eager to engage in denial about female
violence went looking for the tiniest, weakest hooks of speculation on
which to hang their unconvincing arguments in favor of her innocence.
Her legal defense team concocted a theory that the boy she killed,
eight-month-old Matthew Eappen, actually died of an earlier injury
that was probably inflicted by his parents. In doing so, Woodward
inflicted a double wound on the parents -- not just killing their
child, but trying to pin on them the blame that was solely hers.
Woodward got out of prison on a wrist-slap sentence and is now
back in England. The tepid response to her there might indicate that
many of her adoring fans are getting over their denial and realizing
that they have been cheering, praying, and weeping for a woman with
blood on her hands.
Woodward's contention was that Matthew died of a head injury
that occurred several weeks prior to his death, and that this injury
somehow failed to produce any symptoms for several weeks, and that it
mysteriously started to re-bleed just when she was alone with the boy.
But the June 18 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine examined
similar infant deaths and found no evidence that a head wound can lay
dormant like this for several weeks in a lucid child and then spring
up all at once and kill.
Four University of Pennsylvania researchers wrote that, when
children have severe head injuries, "there is no evidence of a
prolonged interval of lucidity between the injury and the onset of
symptoms. ... Thus an alert, well-appearing child has not already
sustained a devastating acute injury that will become clinically
obvious hours to days later." An Associated Press report notes that
the Woodward case was not mentioned in the study, though it helped
intensify the debate over shaken and abused babies.
The Woodward case was another example of "Justice for Some."
It underscores the unwritten rule that people who are killed by women
are second-class citizens, that they and their loved ones are not
deserving of full justice because the crime is either disbelieved or
is not seen as being as "bad." When we hide behind our illusions of
female purity, we forget the reality. And in the Woodward case, the
reality is this: eight-month-old Matthew Eappen was slammed down so
hard the force was the same as if he had been thrown from a second
story window.
What it also means is that when women commit abuse, you are
going to face so much sympathy for the abuser and so much denial of
the crime that you'd better have iron-clad proof. It helps if you get
it on tape, so that the people who say that women are never violent
will be shaken out of their illusions. That happened recently in
Morristown, New Jersey, when a nanny was suspected of abusing a
five-month-old baby girl in her care. The parents had noticed
unexplained bruises on the girl, so they hired a firm called
"Babywatch," which installed a camera disguised as part of an air
filtration system in the family room.
The camera caught Siobhan Diaz of Randolph, New Jersey,
repeatedly abusing the girl: striking her in the head with the palm of
her hand, twisting the child's knee, stuffing a blanket into the
baby's mouth, and yelling profanities.
At her trial, Diaz cried a bit and said: "I say I'm sorry to
everyone involved. I never intended to hurt anyone."
Hint: If you don't intend to hurt people, don't beat them.
Diaz was sentenced to four years in prison for child
endangerment.
Sometimes there is justice.
==========

FRED DEVER DEFENSE FUND
We just learned the address for sending donations to the Fred
Dever defense fund. (See the April 1998 issue of MANifesto for details
on his case, http://idt.net/~per2/0498mani.htm)
Send donations to
Fred Dever Sr.
4466 Forest Trail
Cincinnati, OH 45244-1524
==========

JUSTICE DOWN THE TUBE
In the United Kingdom, London Underground train driver Susan
Edwards won a landmark case on "gender bias" because she is a single
mother. She said she was forced to quit because her new shift made it
impossible for her to care for her son.
So you might be saying that it's a good thing that she won the
case, that we should make it easier for working parents.
But this case was not decided on the basis of what's good or
fair for working parents. Parents come in two flavors -- male and
female. This decision was decided based on what was good for mothers
only. As the BBC News reported: "Three appeal judges unanimously ruled
that the new shift system amounted to sexual discrimination because
it had a far greater impact on women employees than their male
colleagues."
We wonder how the judges came up with the idea that it's
easier to hold a job and be a single father. First you take all the
social services and cultural support for women. Then add the general
disrespect and contempt directed toward dads these days. On top of
that, add the fact that courts are heavily biased in favor of awarding
custody to women in the first place. Then you rule that anything that
interferes with this overwhelming bias in favor of women constitutes
gender discrimination! And you write a ruling that reinforces women's
greater rights.
This case could have been decided in gender neutral terms. The
judges could have decided that *all* parents deserve support and a
chance to raise kids.
Instead, the court once again reinforced the status of fathers
as second-class parents.
-----
(Source: "Mother wins landmark case," BBC News.
Thursday, May 21, 1998 Published at 13:00 GMT 14:00 UK )

And in other news, fashion model Kathleen McManamon, 27, is
strolling down the runway of freedom after a slap on the wrist for
harassing and threatening her former boyfriend. McManamon was angry
that Roger Wilson dumped her and began dating "Showgirls" actress
Elizabeth Berkley.
In pleading guilty to harassment, McManamon admitted that over
a period of half a year, from Sept. 3, 1997, and Feb. 5, 1998, she
telephoned Wilson to "harass, annoy and alarm" him.
According to the Associated Press: "Manhattan Criminal Court
Judge Arlene Goldberg sentenced McManamon to a conditional discharge,
ordered her to repay $630 for car services she billed to Wilson's
account, and had her sign an order of protection." McManamon actions
were classified as a "violation," which is less serious than a
misdemeanor. In other words, her offense is considered less than
minor.
McManamon was arrested in January after Wilson reported that
she told him: "I know where you live! I know what you look like! You
stole my man away from me! I'm going to kill you both."
-----
Meanwhile: How many children have to die before action is
taken? In Trotwood, Ohio, a suburb of Dayton, the answer is four and
counting.
Four children have died in less than seven months in the house
of Regina Moreland. In June, her grandson, 2-year-old Kelab K.
Moreland, died while visiting her. He had been in excellent health
before the visit.
Two granddaughters and a great-niece of Moreland have died
since November after staying with her or visiting her at her previous
residence.
The Montgomery County coroner ruled those three deaths
homicides, but no charges have been filed against anyone.
These are not the only deaths. Moreland's husband, Phillip,
committed suicide in March.
=============================
THE FINE PRINT
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---
Can a woman sexually harass herself? Do plane crashes hit women
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The POW Page, home of Colleen Hyphenated-Lastname and the
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