|
Carey Roberts probes and lampoons political
correctness. His work has been published frequently
in the Washington Times, Townhall.com,
LewRockwell.com, ifeminists.net, Intellectual
Conservative, and elsewhere. He is a staff reporter
for the New Media Network. You can contact him at
E-Mail.
Dems Ignore White Men at
their Peril
Representing 38% of all voters, white men
represent the second largest block in the American
electorate, after white females. It is these 97
million white males to whom the Republican Party
owes it electoral success in five out of the last
seven presidential campaigns.
The reason is simple: White males have abandoned
the Democratic Party in droves. While the liberal
media consistently depict the gender gap as a
Republican liability, in fact, the gap has long
worked to the advantage of the G.O.P. This media
misportrayal is the subject of David Paul
Kuhn’s recent book, The Neglected Voter: White
Men and the Democratic Dilemma.
For years, the Democratic Party was stitched
together by an unlikely amalgam of Catholics,
blue-collar workers, and southerners. But in 1968
the Party imposed racial and sex quotas on its
national convention delegations. It took only four
years for the new-found coalition of feminists,
Blacks, and ideological radicals to displace the
union bosses and party hacks.
In the 1972 election the Dems pinned their
presidential hopes on anti-war candidate George
McGovern. But he was soon caricatured as the
“candidate of the three As: acid, abortion,
and amnesty.” Needless to say, Richard Nixon
won in a historic landslide.
In 1976 Jimmy Carter campaigned on the basis of
his military experience, religious faith, and
business acumen. But on Inauguration Day the
newly-elected Leader of the Free World nearly
groveled in front of his audience: “your
strength can compensate for my weakness, and your
wisdom can help to minimize my mistakes.”
Seen as timid and ineffective, he was routed
from office four years later by the ebullient
Ronald Reagan, the former cowboy actor.
In 1984 the Democrats fielded Walter Mondale and
Geraldine Ferraro. By then working-class men viewed
the Dems as effete mother hens. No surprise, Reagan
won 525 electoral votes to Mondale’s 13.
The most hilarious moment of the 1988 campaign
belonged to Michael Dukakis – that’s the
day he donned a combat helmet and popped his head
from the turret of an M-1 battle tank. And when a
debate question failed to evoke even a hint of
outrage about his wife Kitty being raped, his
defeat was assured.
These Democratic candidates failed to exemplify
the virtues of chivalry, strength, and grit. But it
was president Bill Clinton who, embracing the
radical feminist agenda, openly stiffed the male
electorate.
During the first two years of his hen-pecked
presidency, Bill handed over domestic policy to
wife Hillary. In short order she installed Donna
Shalala at Health and Human Services, Norma Cantu
at the Department of Education, and Janet Reno at
Justice. Soon thousands of poor fathers were being
jailed for non-payment of child support, college
men found their athletic teams disbanded, and the
Violence Against Women Act was signed into law.
And while middle-class White Men were struggling
to cope by stagflation and the extinction of
millions of blue-collar jobs, the liberal-left
lampooned them as hopelessly out of step with the
gender liberation crusade.
No surprise that in the 1994 elections the
“angry white male” came out of the
woodwork and handed control of both houses of
Congress to the Republicans. Steven Stark would
later write in the Atlantic that “Bill
Clinton’s Administration has, fairly or not,
come to symbolize an attack on men and masculinity
as ‘problems’ to be overcome.”
When New Age Sensitive Guy Al Gore launched his
campaign, it didn’t help that he had to hire
feminist Naomi Wolf to advise him how to become a
“Beta male.” After Gore came out against
gun ownership, George Bush won the white male vote
by an astonishing 27% margin.
Author Kuhn reveals the outcome of elections
hinges on whether the candidate projects an inward
strength of character, conveys a rugged sense of
self-sufficiency, and is strong on national
security. With the Democrats widely viewed as the
“mommy party,” the Republicans have a
decided edge in this department.
And referring to an antipathy that modern
liberals still refuse to acknowledge, Kuhn notes,
“For some 40 years, phases like ‘the
Man,’ ‘male chauvinist pig,’
‘white male privilege,’ ‘dead white
males,’ ‘angry white male,’ and the
actions behind them have led to an entire
vocabulary of blaming white men for the
nation’s worst ills.”
Sizing up the current crop of Democratic
candidates, Kuhn sees little hope. “The irony
of the 2008 election is that Democrats have
candidates who can win, but the party remains stuck
in its passions rather than its pragmatism,”
Kuhn concedes.
So as the 2008 presidential campaign comes into
focus, will the Democrats stage an abrupt
about-face and embrace the lessons of the past? Or
will the Republicans continue to dominate in
presidential politics?
The Disgrace of
CNN’s Nancy Grace
At the recent Democratic debate in Las Vegas,
CNN’s Wolf Blitzer lobbed softball questions
at Hillary Clinton. Then he allowed the audience to
boo Hillary’s opponents – a callous
breach of debate etiquette. And when it came time
for the audience to grill the candidates, Blitzer
deceptively introduced the questioners as
“ordinary people, undecided voters.”
Those voters included a former staffer for
Democrat senator Harry Reid, a former director of
the Arkansas Democratic Party, an official in a
local union, and the president of the Islamic
Society of Nevada. [directorblue.blogspot.com/2007/11/cnn-plants-questions-to-protect-hillary.html
 ]
Yes, ordinary and undecided folks, every one of
them.
But Wolf Blitzer isn’t the only CNN
commentator to make a mockery of journalistic
integrity.
When special prosecutor Nancy Grace won 100
felony cases in a row, she was riding the
fast-track to legal notoriety. But in 1997 the
Supreme Court of Georgia charged her with
“inexcusable” actions that
“demonstrated her disregard of the notions of
due process and fairness.” And eight years
later her career came off the rails when the 11th
Circuit Court of Appeals concluded Grace had
“played fast and loose” with ethical
canons.
So Grace left Georgia and signed on as a
commentator for Court TV. In 2006 Nancy again
boarded the fast train when she struck a deal with
CNN to anchor her own Nancy Grace Program.
Then along came a woman named Crystal Mangum --
drug abuser, exotic dancer, and serial rape
accuser.
Shortly after the alleged March 14 assault, wild
stories began to circulate about what had
transpired at 610 North Buchanan. Within days Nancy
Grace was claiming -- falsely – that the
players had refused to provide DNA samples. She
theorized, “If there had been evidence,
I’m sure it was flushed down the commode or
gotten rid of, innocently or not.”
Just for good measure, Grace added this remark
for her vigilante-justice viewers: “What if
this girl was your girl? You know, I’d burn
the place down, for Pete’s sake!”
Taking her cue from the Queen in Alice in
Wonderland (“Sentence first – verdict
afterwards!”), Grace then invited a series of
guests who would take orgiastic delight in the
demonization of three young lacrosse players.
On April 5, Grace invited Duke faculty member
Houston Baker. The hate-filled professor made the
over-the-top accusation that the players had
“used racial slurs [and had] been
given special privileges so that they could make up
courses in the summer and that they showed up at
these courses drunk and indifferent.”
Five days later the defense team announced the
DNA did not match any of the lacrosse players. That
seemingly took the wind out of Nifong’s
earlier promise that “the DNA evidence
requested will immediately rule out any innocent
persons.”
But since when did exculpatory evidence stand in
the way of a good ethnic cleansing?
So that evening Grace invited attorney Wendy
Murphy to her show. Despite evidence now pointing
to Mangum as an opportunistic perjurer, Murphy
illogically claimed the woman was “entitled to
the respect that she is a crime victim.”
On May 10 the prosecution team leaked a
misleading account suggesting a partial match of
the stripper’s DNA. And once again Grace
resorted to an over-blown metaphor: “At the
eleventh hour, suddenly, a Hail Mary pass was
thrown, and it’s a touchdown for the
state!” she exulted.
Five days later lacrosse captain Dave Evans
stood in front of the Durham County
magistrate’s office and defiantly announced,
“These allegations are lies, fabricated –
fabricated, and they will be proven wrong …
You have all been told some fantastic
lies.”
While most media commentators were struck by
Evans’ sincerity, Grace sarcastically
retorted, “What, were they all together,
holding hands at a prayer meeting?” Then she
played video clips of Richard Nixon saying, “I
am not a crook.”
Nancy Grace even vilified those who cautioned
the rush to judgment might be premature. During one
interview Stephen Miller of the Duke Conservative
Union began to worry that “two innocent people
may have possibly …” But Grace quickly
cut him off: “Oh, good lord! … I assume
you’ve got a mother. I mean, your first
concern is that somebody is falsely
accused?”
Bloviating entertainment for the masses,
perhaps. Informative legal commentary, definitely
not.
In their must-read book Until Proven Innocent,
Stuart Taylor and JC Johnson describe Nancy Grace
as “CNN’s egregiously biased,
wacko-feminist former prosecutor.” One of
these days, Ms. Grace’s pangs of conscience
may well get the best of her. Let’s hope she
solemnly declares for all to hear, “I’m
deeply sorry for all the hurt and pain that
I’ve caused to these three innocent lacrosse
players.”
Massive Human Rights
Abuses in the Name of Stopping Abuse
Remember Colleen Nester? She was the forlorn
New Mexico woman who claimed she was being harassed
by TV talk show host David Letterman, who was
allegedly beaming mental telepathic messages and
using televised facial gestures. Under New Mexico
law, harassment is a form of domestic violence, so
Ms. Nester was granted a restraining order.
Yes, really.
Domestic violence is defined so broadly these
days that just raising your voice is now considered
grounds for state invention. The mere allegation of
abuse invites a draconian response, requiring the
man to vacate his home and avoid any contact with
the woman or even his own children.
Many believe protective orders do more harm than
good. “Few lives, if any, have been saved, but
much harm, and possibly loss of lives, has comes
from the issuance of restraining orders,”
writes Milton Raphaelson, retired judge from the
Dudley, Mass. District Court.
But the somber voice of reason is drowned out by
the shrill clatter of advocates who argue we must
nip abusive situations in the bud, even if innocent
men must be falsely accused and constitutional
protections set aside.
In the United States, one million restraining
orders are issued each year without even an
allegation of violence – recall the David
Letterman dust-up. [www.mediaradar.org/docs/RADARreport-VAWA-Restraining-Orders.pdf
]
State-sanctioned disdain of civil liberties has now
spread to foreign lands.
Earlier this year Mexican lawmakers passed a new
domestic violence law that allows authorities to
issue emergency protective orders. Now a conviction
of being jealous or sexually indifferent can land a
hapless man in jail.
In Costa Rica, an American ex-patriate was
recently put behind bars when he told his
girlfriend’s son to stop painting satanic
symbols on the wall. One police officer noted,
“Women in Costa Rica are taking advantage of
this new law. They throw out their boyfriend and
then steal their things and leave.”
In Canada, “judges routinely hold
five-minute hearings at the start of the day and
make ex parte orders without any inquiries as to
why the opposing party cannot be notified,”
reveals Louise Malenfant of Parents Helping
Parents.
In Israel, the Knesset recently appointed a
committee to probe the extent of false claims of
domestic violence. Last month Dr. Orli Iness of the
University of Haifa revealed, “there have been
reports that in some precincts the figure is as
high as 50%.”
A 1999 survey of judicial magistrates in
Australia concluded that “almost 90% believe
domestic violence orders were used by applicants
– often on the advice of a solicitor – as
a tactic in family court proceedings to deprive
their partners of access to their
children.”
Libertarian Casandra Hewitt-Reid of New Zealand
describes her country’s Domestic Violence Act
in these terms: “it is possible for a
perfectly innocent man, who has done nothing
outside the law, to be sent to prison on one
person’s unsubstantiated word.”
In Germany, Michael Bock, criminology professor
at the University of Mainz, reveals that the
so-called Force Law (Gewaltschutzgesetz)
“gives an effective tool to the hands of
mothers who want to separate children from their
fathers. ... It is not meant to start a
constructive dialog between the parties, but to
expropriate, disempower, lock out, and punish
men.”
Last year Maria Sanahuja, chief justice in
Barcelona, Spain issued a scathing commentary on
her country’s Gender Violence Law. Sanahuja
rebuked the law as representing a “repugnant
violation of fundamental rights” that has
caused “enormous pain to tens of thousands of
men.” Sanahuja’s acid opinion concludes,
“The massive detention of men for scarcely any
reason is a characteristic of totalitarian
countries.”
In India the situation has reached crisis
proportions. Section 498a of the Cruelty Against
Women Law has lead to widespread arrests of
husbands with no evidence of wrong-doing. Because
the law states the man’s relatives are likely
accessories to the crime, many thousands of
brothers, sisters, and elderly parents have also
been wrongly imprisoned. In 2005 the Indian Supreme
Court labeled the egregious abuses of Section 498a
to be an “assassin’s weapon” and a
form of “legal terrorism.”
Last April a group known as RADAR (Respecting
Accuracy in Domestic Abuse Reporting) sent a letter
to Senator Joseph Biden, pleading that he not
introduce a bill ominously called the International
Violence Against Women Act. [www.mediaradar.org/docs/RADARletter-to-Biden-and-Lugar-against_IVAWA.pdf
]
Earlier this month, Senator Biden shrugged off
the concerns and introduced the Act. If passed, the
law would send $175 million of taxpayer money to
foreign governments to issue more restraining
orders and to kick men out of their homes without
evidence or proof.
Until Proven Innocent:
Cultural Marxism at Duke
How did a drug-addled stripper succeed in
smearing the reputations of three Duke lacrosse
players, dividing a community along racial lines,
and making a mockery of the American legal system?
That’s the question that Stuart Taylor and KC
Johnson pose in their recent bell-ringer book,
Until Proven Innocent.
Unless your news source is the New York Times,
you know by now that Crystal Mangum accused three
young lacrosse players of brutally raping and
sodomizing her in the early morning of March 14,
2006. (My August 30 editorial was one of the first
to publicly disclose the accuser’s name:
www.ifeminists.net/introduction/editorials/2006/0830roberts.html
. I surmise the Old Grey Lady editors didn’t
take note.)
Now fast forward to April 11, 2007 –
that’s the day North Carolina attorney general
Roy Cooper stood before a hushed crowd and
declared, “We believe that these case were the
result of a tragic rush to accuse and a failure to
verify serious allegations … we believe these
three individuals are innocent of these
charges.”
Call it the perfect scandal. The Duke lacrosse
case emerged from the rarified nexus of a
mentally-imbalanced lady of the night, a
racially-divided community, a cabal of Duke
University professors, a politically-ambitious
prosecutor, and a media enterprise that cared more
about hyping a morality tale than getting the facts
right.
For the first time, Until Proven Innocent weaves
the delicate strands of the story, rendering the
outrageous at least comprehensible.
From the very beginning, the Durham police knew
Crystal Mangum was a crock. At 1:22am they were
summoned to pick up a semi-conscious female at a
local grocery store. Not a word was mentioned about
rape.
Fearing she might harm herself, the officers
decided to have her committed to a local detox
facility. But Mangum knew she could side-step the
detention center if she played the rape card.
Problem was, she couldn’t make up her mind
whether there had been three assailants, five, or
twenty.
But there was one person stood by her to the
bitter end – Tara Levicy, the hospital nurse
who later said she never doubted a woman who
screams “rape.” Over the ensuring months,
Levicy would repeatedly amend, back-fill, and
embellish upon the details of her hospital
encounter.
Now enter district attorney Nifong who once
proclaimed, “My name is Michael Nifong, and
I’m the chief asshole of the Durham County
district attorney’s office.” He knew the
case was a flaky as grandma’s pie crust, but
after all, probable cause means different things to
different people. Plus, Crystal Mangum would be a
godsend for his stalled political campaign.
Nifong, 56, was already mapping out his
retirement plans. If he could win the May 2
primary, those four extra years in office would be
worth an extra $15,000 to his annual retirement
pension. Playing the chivalrous defender of a
single mom who claimed to be brutalized by three
well-heeled Dukies would translate into a boatload
of Black votes.
Within days of the alleged attack, the campus
potbangers were brandishing signs that read,
“You Can’t Rape and Run” and
“Castrate.” All that was missing was the
scalpel and hang-noose.
The story also fit perfectly into the
neo-Marxist morality tale of race, class, and
gender oppression. So the Duke Gang of 88 issued
its guilty-until-proven-innocent manifesto,
“What Does a Social Disaster Sound
Like?”
Equally reprehensible was the conduct of the
media, which modeled itself on the yellow
journalism of a by-gone era. On March 25 the local
News and Observer ran a steamy front-page article
titled “Dancer Gives Details of Ordeal”
– somehow omitting the word
“alleged.” Within days the New York
Times, CNN’s Nancy Grace, and the rest of the
media posse were in hot pursuit of the “scummy
white males” who refused to own up to their
heinous crime.
The American legal system is founded on the
principles of due process and the presumption of
innocence. Mob rule is the antithesis to what our
country stands for. So exactly what went wrong?
The roots of the Duke fiasco can be traced back
to the Frankfurt School, founded nearly a century
ago and modeled on the Marx-Engels Institute in
Moscow. “The traditional idea of revolution
and the traditional strategy of revolution have
ended,” wrote philosopher Herbert Marcuse.
“[W]hat we must undertake is a type of
diffuse and dispersed disintegration of the
system.” [www.newtotalitarians.com/FrankfurtSchool.html
]
And exactly what did he mean by a “diffuse
and dispersed disintegration of the
system”?
Marcuse was outlining a breath-taking plan to
weaken constitutional protections, bias the media,
politicize the academy, portray men as the unruly
oppressors of women, and eventually turn American
society against itself.
And that’s what happened at Duke
University.
Hillary Flips over her
Debate Flop
What are we to make of a presidential candidate
who portrays herself as strong and independent, a
courageous exemplar to the members of her gender --
but at the first hint of criticism collapses as the
pitiable victim of gender politics?
Last Tuesday Hillary Clinton delivered a
horrendous performance at the Democratic debate.
She claimed she wanted to end the war in Iraq --
and in the next breath explained that as president,
she would continue to guard our embassy, provide
training, and continue to wage the fight against Al
Qaeda.
As far as allowing illegal aliens to get a
driver’s license, her answer was more
convoluted than a New York City subway map. And
when it came to rescuing the Social Security
system, she declared, “I do have a plan, but
personally I am not going to be advocating any
specific fix until I am seriously approaching
fiscal responsibility.”
Huh?
Debate moderator Tim Russert tried without
success to pin her down. Finally candidate John
Edwards stated the obvious: “Unless I missed
something, Senator Clinton said two different
things in the course of about two minutes.”
Barack Obama of Illinois added, “She had not
been truthful and clear.”
Clinton launched an immediate counter-offensive.
First she accused Russert of playing
“gotcha.” No, Hillary, he was trying to
clarify your contradictory statements –
that’s what a moderator is supposed to do.
Then the Clinton campaign released a memo called
“The Politics of Pile-On.” Implying that
her competitors weren’t bowing and scraping to
the inevitability of her nomination, the statement
ended with the incongruous claim that Hillary is
“One strong woman.”
Still fixated on playing the gender card,
Clinton’s media spinners held a conference
call. Senior strategist Mark Penn make the shrill
claim that he was already “detecting some
backlash” among female voters because they
fretted the debate had turned into an ugly
“six-on-one to try to bring her
down.”
Would someone please order the de-caf next
time?
Clinton’s surrogates in the media rose to
the occasion, but their comments were so off base I
wondered if they had actually watched the debate.
“Her fighting spirit was all the more
impressive because so many of the positions she was
defending were virtually indefensible,” Gail
Collins argued in Thursday’s New York Times.
Problem was, no one could figure out exactly what
positions she was defending.
Then HRC’s handlers had the gall to send
out a fund-raising letter condemning the men’s
actions with the plea, “Hillary’s going
to need your help.”
But the counter-offensive stalled when bloggers
ridiculed Clinton’s scripted and evasive
answers. Commentator Jed Babbin noted, “But
one thing isn’t in doubt after Tuesday night:
Hillary Clinton can dish it out, but she can’t
take it.” Jennifer Rubin satirized,
“Indeed it is sometimes difficult to follow
the Hillary rules of etiquette.”
Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker
offered this sisterly advice: “Sorry, but when
girls insist on playing hardball with the boys,
they don’t get to cry foul – or change
the game to dodge ball – when they get
bruised.”
Clinton’s Democratic rivals kept the heat
on. Asked on NBC’s Today show whether Clinton
was trying to play the gender card, Barack Obama
responded it didn’t make sense that when
“people start challenging her point of view,
that suddenly, she backs off and says,
‘Don’t pick on me.’”
John Edwards hit on Hillary’s
double-standard. “I think that Senator Clinton
ought to be held to the same standard that every
presidential candidate is held to,” Edwards
told reporters. “That standard is to not
engage in double-talk.”
Finally Mrs. Clinton made a lame effort to
defuse the controversy. “I don’t think
they’re picking on me because I’m a
woman; I think they’re picking on me because
I’m winning.”
“Picking on me”?
When Barack Obama was excoriated for offering to
meet with Fidel Castro, I don’t remember him
saying he was being singled out because of his skin
color. And when persons ridiculed John Edwards for
his $300 haircuts, he didn’t provide the
sad-sack defense of being “picked
on.”
In the past, playing the victim worked wonders
for Mrs. Clinton. During her eight years as First
Lady, her highest approval ratings came in the wake
of the Monica Lewinsky scandal. And following a
debate with candidate Rick Lazio, Clinton and her
aides claimed that his actions were
“menacing” and
“threatening.”
But in 2007, the last thing our country needs is
a candidate who uses divisive gender tactics to
satisfy her need for personal satisfaction and
political gain.
Bad-Girl Culture Goes
Chic
Halloween is around the corner and honestly,
girls, that rhinestone-studded “I love Rosie
O’Donnell” T-shirt should just stay in
the closet. Plus this year, prison pink is all the
rage.
So show your solidarity with Paris Hilton by
wearing a pink-and-black striped prison suit --
complete with jailbird cap. Get some smudged
bat-wing eyeliner and become an Amy
Winehouse-wannabee. Or help Lindsay Lohan deal with
her issues by strutting a black mini-dress
emblazoned with “Rehab Reject.”
Kyrra Rankine of New York plans to go
trick-or-treating as “bald Britney” this
year. “She’s given me too much material
to work with. ‘You go girl, work it
out!’” exclaims the 30-year-old social
worker.
Retailers can barely keep pace with the demand,
USA Today reports, as sweet young things flock to
buy bad-girl costumes and temporary tattoos.
Ricky’s NYC, a chain of beauty stores, is
devoting a seasonal section to this profitable
niche. [www.usatoday.com/life/lifestyle/2007-10-25-celeb-halloween_N.htm
]
Most of us, of course, are appalled by
lip-glossed celebrities who turn their legal
escapades into just another photo-op. But we
shouldn’t claim to be surprised. “Rehab
Reject” outerwear is only the latest example
of a growing trend of evincing ridicule and disdain
for traditional notions of law and order.
How did this come about?
Back in the 1980s Gloria Steinem and her
Ghoulish Gals issued a curse, claiming that
long-held notions of due process and judicial
neutrality are part of a broader patriarchal plot
to protect male privilege. So nothing less than a
complete transformation of the legal system would
suffice.
To accomplish that goal, definitions would have
to be broadened, standards of proof relaxed, and
the presumption of innocence eliminated. The
decades-long effort to revamp our legal system is
detailed in the Cato Institute’s must-read
report, “Feminist Jurisprudence: Equal Rights
or Neo-Paternalism?” [www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-256es.html
]
Under the new regime, “equal treatment
under the law” would no longer carry the day.
Instead, the justice system would employ “an
asymmetrical approach that adopts the perspective
of the less powerful group with the specific goal
of equitable power sharing among diverse
groups,” as Martha Chamallas baldly declared
in the Texas Journal of Women and the Law.
Rape had long been treated under Anglo-American
law as a capital offense. True, the prosecution of
these cases was sometimes as weak as watered-down
cider. But advocates went too far by insisting on
rape-shield laws, changing the definition of
consent, and shifting the burden of proof to the
defendant.
Then new categories of crimes with broad
definitions and subjective standards of proof were
invented, namely sexual harassment, stalking, and
hate crimes.
Sen. Joseph Biden was one of the earliest
proponents of the hate crime theory. Arguing for
passage of the Violence Against Women Act, he
claimed that “rapes are hate crimes committed
against women.”
Thirteen years after the passage of VAWA,
domestic violence courtrooms have been turned into
a House of Horrors. Husbands are evicted from their
homes on the sole claim that their wives are
“afraid,” and men under a restraining
order are thrown in jail because they sent a
birthday card to their children.
And long-standing laws that prohibit false
allegations and perjury are all but ignored. As
we’ve been repeatedly lectured, prosecuting
women like Crystal Mangum who make false
allegations of rape would only discourage future
victims from coming forward.
VAWA also cemented an emerging sex-based double
standard. “We adopt the perspective of a
reasonable woman primarily because we believe that
a sex-blind reasonable person standard tends to be
male-biased and tends to systematically ignore the
experiences of women,” the Ninth Circuit court
famously held in Ellison v. Brady in 1991.
Then speech codes were introduced in the name of
eliminating a “hostile” school and
workplace environment. As these restrictions took
hold, it became necessary to simultaneously deny
their existence. “We forbid any course that
says we restrict free speech,” explained one
Bowling Green U. feminist.
As if revamping the laws wasn’t enough,
persons began to argue that self-proclaimed victims
“should be spared having to take legal
action,” according to a 2001 article in The
Independent. In other words, a woman should be able
to by-pass the legal system and send the accused
directly to jail.
And if that doesn’t work, vengeful women
should simply take the law into their own hands.
“Get them jailed or get them killed …
When the law fails us, we cannot fail each
other,” misandrist Andrea Dworkin once
advised.
But come to think of it, maybe we’re being
too judgmental. I’m sure Rosie has her good
moments. And who can say for sure that Lindsay,
Amy, Paris, and Britney should be held accountable
for drinking the spiked punch? Probably the Wicked
Witch put them up to it.
Ready for the Next Wave
of Sex Abuse Hysteria?
In 1994 a Child Protective Services official
instructed his employees to dig up child sex abuse
cases to justify the agency’s budget. Before
long 43 parents and Sunday school teachers in
Wenatchee, Wash. had been arrested and charged with
nearly 30,000 cases of sex abuse involving 60
children. It wasn’t until four years and many
ruined lives later that the Wenatchee witch hunt
was exposed as a fraud.
A decade later, we seem to be on the verge of
another moral panic involving sex abuse, but this
time with a new wrinkle: its perpetrators are as
young as four years old.
Last year a pre-schooler in Waco, Tex. hugged a
female aide as he boarded the school bus. The
four-year-old’s embrace lingered a bit long,
and soon the boy was required to defend himself
from a charge of sexual harassment. The scarlet
letter of “inappropriate physical
contact” is now stamped on the child’s
school records.
In December a kindergartener in Hagerstown,
Maryland pinched a classmate’s bottom. For
that he, too, was branded a sexual harasser. To
those who asked how a little boy could understand,
much less commit such an action, spokeswoman Carol
Mowen came up with this loopy explanation:
“It’s important to understand a child may
not realize that what he or she is doing may be
considered sexual harassment, but if it fits under
the definition, then it is, under the state’s
guidelines.”
Middle school students in McMinnville, Ore.
designated Fridays as Slap Butt Day. Those days
“pretty much we would just go around slapping
people’s butts,” recounted Megan Looney.
But one day the local police got wind of the racy
activities. They came in and arrested 12-year-old
Ryan Cornelison and 13-year-old Cory Mashburn,
charging each with five counts of felony sex
abuse.
Six times the teenage boys were subjected to a
strip search. Six days later they were released
from jail. Then it took the judge six months to
hear a motion to dismiss the case, even though the
“victims” had signed affidavits saying
they wanted the charges to be dropped.
Even respected media organizations are beginning
to jump on the sex abuse bandwagon.
This past weekend the Associated Press released
a report with the five-alarm headline, “Sexual
Misconduct Plagues U.S. Schools.” The word
“plague” suggests a pestilence descending
upon schoolhouses in every hill and dale throughout
the land.
But a closer reading of the article reveals that
among 3 million public school teachers nationwide,
500 have their teaching credentials restricted each
year due to a sex abuse charge. So cause for
concern, yes -- a plague, definitely not.
Lest you accuse me of going wobbly on the
horrific crime of child sex abuse, I will remind
you that when the Congress held hearings on the
problem in the early 1970s, similar white-hot
rhetoric was bandied about in a calculated effort
to convince the federal government to invest
millions to halt the abuse
“epidemic.”
The bigger problem with the AP study is that was
run by journalists, not trained researchers. They
only looked at teachers whose credentials had been
revoked or restricted, and then concluded “in
nearly nine out of 10 cases, they’re
male.” Indeed, every one of the teachers
highlighted in the AP article are men.
There they go again, those beastly men, this
time ravishing young innocents. But hold on a
minute …
What about Debra Lafave, the reading teacher in
Tampa who admitted to deflowering a 14-year-old boy
in her classroom, car, and at home? Have we already
forgotten about Mary Kay Letourneau of Washington
who had an affair with a sixth-grade boy?
Just last week, Meredith Vincent, a home school
teacher in Van Nuys, Calif. was arrested for
allegedly molesting a 14-year-old boy. And on
Friday, Kay Sorg, a science teacher at Albany
Middle School, Calif. appeared in court following
an accusation of having sex with a high school
girl.
According to a 2004 Department of Education
report, “Educator Sexual Misconduct: A
Synthesis of the Literature,” student surveys
reveal that only 57% of sex offenders are male.
That’s a far cry from the nine-in-10 statistic
reported by the AP. So how do we explain the
discrepancy?
A few years ago Tina Smith wrote a book on
Perspectives on Female Sex Offending: A Culture of
Denial. Smith reveals that when it comes to
female-perpetrated sex abuse, we live in a state of
selective amnesia. Thanks to chivalrous school
administrators, female abusers are often given a
second chance and their record stays clean.
So before we stick men with the sex offender
moniker and ban them from the schools, let’s
be sure to look at both sides of the sex abuse
equation.
Women Who Batter,
Proudly
Chivalrous men resist the image, but it’s
a problem that has become so pervasive that we must
summon up the courage to face it – an epidemic
of women who pummel their husbands and
boyfriends.
A recent survey by the Centers for Disease
Control found that among physically aggressive
couples, 71% of the instigators in nonreciprocal
partner violence were female. And last year Renee
McDonald of Baylor University published a study in
the Journal of Family Psychology with almost
identical results.
What’s going on, ladies?
The problem isn’t just gals who clean their
boyfriends’ clock in a drunken rage. These
high-testosterone females abuse their men and then
come clean with a swaggering braggadocio.
A few months ago ABC Primetime did an
experiment. The producers hired two actors
–male and female – to feign partner
violence in a public park. They wanted to see what
passers-by would do when they spotted the woman
pounding her boyfriend with a rolled-up newspaper.
[abcnews.go.com/Primetime/story?id=2741047
]
Most persons paused, then cast a “it’s
not my problem” shrug. But one young lass was
caught on camera doing a pumped-fist
“atta-woman” salute. You go, girl!
That would never happen in real life, right?
Consider superstar singer Amy Winehouse. Married
to Blake Fielder-Civil, she now admits that she
uses him as a “punch-bag.”
“I’ll beat up Blake when I’m drunk.
… If he says one thing I don’t like then
I’ll chin him,” she brags.
I recently came across a website called
Jezebel.com. Jezebel is one of those tell-all
websites run by women who flaunt tattoos that
declare, “I know what I want and I know how to
get it.”
Recently a Jezebel editor named Slut Machine
posted a cheeky piece called, “Have you Ever
Beat up a Boyfriend? Cause, Uh, We Have.”
Let’s put it this way -- the column brings a
whole new meaning to the phrase, “female
empowerment.”
Ms. Machine confided that one her co-editors had
overheard her boyfriend flirting on the phone,
“so she slapped the phone out of his hands and
hit him in the face and neck” Another smacked
a guy when he tenderly revealed to her “he
thought he had breast cancer.” As an
afterthought she wrote, “that one made us
laugh really hard.”
[jezebel.com/gossip/domestic-disturbances/have-you-ever-beat-up-a-boyfriend-cause-uh-we-have-294383.php
]
I was certain that such brazen admissions would
draw howls of protest from persons who know full
well that “there’s no excuse for domestic
violence.” Well, this is what they said:
Probationer announced to her on-line Sisterhood,
“Yeah, I've punched the shit out of a guy. But
I don’t like to brag.”
Fromthetulleshed bragged, “I’ve had
many satisfying dreams where I beat up my ex.
If I saw him again, I don’t think I’d
be able to restrain myself.”
Some thought assaulting a guy was downright
hilarious: “I bounced an alarm clock off my
husband’s head from across the room once. I
haven’t been able to find a decent alarm clock
since,” lamented Kwindsorfish.
And Sparkle proved you don’t have to be
physical to be abusive: “I try so so SO hard
to do the sitting silently trick. … But I just
couldn’t keep myself from laughing after like
a minute thirty of ‘ignoring’ him. It
just makes me too giddy to think that I can have
that much power by doing absolutely nothing at
all.”
When it came to the fact that female abusers
often use weapons or the element of surprise to
compensate for their smaller size, the women seemed
clueless. JoanCrawford revealed, “My Ex told
me his former lover beat him. I was a bit startled
when I met her. He is 6’3” about 195
lbs.; she was 5’ and appeared to weigh
literally 98 lbs. Battered men? The question is,
are these men really physically afraid?”
Creative excuses were de rigueur. Goupie
reasoned, “I slap my boyfriend on a
semi-regular basis. It always hurts me more than it
hurts him. And he usually agrees that he deserves
it.” Azi’s comment, “I have to say I
think he may have had it coming,” was the most
common pretext.
And Crocodile Tears of remorse were shed by the
bucket-full. Washionfore confessed, “I have
slapped a man down before, quite hard, but I love
him so I felt bad because, well, it’s
abusive.”
Actress Sally Field recently received an Emmy
Award for best actress. During her acceptance
speech she boasted that women are of the
peace-loving kind, crudely shouting, “And,
let’s face it, if the mothers ruled the world,
there would be no [expletive deleted] wars
in the first place.”
But based on the gleeful comments of the naughty
Jezebel girls, somehow I don’t think Miss
Field’s act is ready for prime time.
IMBRA: Anatomy of a
Feminist Hoax
Want a textbook example how the Left
manufactures a crisis, passes a law that rolls back
Constitutional protections, snookers card-carrying
conservatives, and bilks American taxpayers? Look
no farther than IMBRA, the International Marriage
Broker Regulation Act.
A little background: It’s no secret that
conditions in post-socialist Russia are grim.
Author Sonya Luehrmann recounts how women
desperately search to find a husband “to put
one’s personal life in order, to settle down
with a stable family.”
And here in the United States, some men find
American ladies to be a little too, shall we say,
high-maintenance for their tastes.
Before long over 200 match-making services
around the world had sprouted up like a clutch of
springtime tulips.
A few years ago University of Pittsburgh
professor Nicole Constable set out to probe the
inner workings of these dating agencies. In her
book Romance on a Global Stage, Constable revealed
the international match-makers were simply
responding to a human need for companionship and
love. Many men who marry foreign brides “went
to great lengths to ensure their partner’s
comfort and happiness in the United States,”
she noted.
But feminists are rankled by any hint that their
nostrum for female liberation may be curtailing
American women’s marriage prospects. Worse,
some of these foreign women actually aspire to be
mothers and homemakers. Imagine that!
So the Sourpuss Sisters conspired to put the
kibosh on the operation. They knew convincing
Congress to regulate romance would be a hard sell.
So they resorted to their tried and true formula of
hackneyed stereotypes, outright demagoguery, and
appeals to male chivalry.
It was Senator Maria Cantwell of Washington who
quarterbacked the legislative strategy. First she
brandished the notion of “mail-order
brides,” casting foreign women as victims of
predatory males. Then she dubbed international
dating services as “marriage brokers,”
conjuring up the image of a rogue operation trading
lives for dollars.
On July 13, 2004 the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee scheduled a hearing to air the issue. No
dating services or happily-betrothed foreign women
were invited to testify -- their comments would not
likely fit the script.
During her testimony, Cantwell made the
startling claim that match-making services serve as
a nefarious front for international human
trafficking. She concluded, “there is a
growing epidemic of domestic abuse among couples
who meet via international marriage brokers.”
As proof of that “epidemic,” she
highlighted the cases of three abused women.
Cantwell’s depiction of comely maidens
being seduced into prostitution rings was more than
Sen. Sam Brownback could resist, and before long he
signed on as a leading co-sponsor of the
International Marriage Broker Regulation Act. With
liberals and conservatives now on board,
IMBRA’s political star was rising.
But it turns out that Senator Cantwell’s
supposition that dating services drag women into a
life of sex slavery and indentured servitude was
nothing more than a feminist tall-tale.
There was the U.S. Immigration and
Naturalization Service report that revealed,
“less than 1 percent of the abuse cases now
being brought to the attention of the INS can be
attributed to the mail-order bride industry.”
[www.uscis.gov/portal/site/uscis/menuitem.5af9bb95919f35e66f614176543f6d1a/?vgnextoid=9ba5d0676988d010VgnVCM10000048f3d6a1RCRD&vgnextchannel=2c039c7755cb9010VgnVCM10000045f3d6a1RCRDwww.uscis.gov/portal/site/uscis/menuitem.5af9bb95919f35e66f614176543f6d1a/?vgnextoid=9ba5d0676988d010VgnVCM10000048f3d6a1RCRD&vgnextchannel=2c039c7755cb9010VgnVCM10000045f3d6a1RCRD
]
A second analysis soberly concluded that foreign
brides are “dramatically less likely to be
involved in domestic violence as calculated by the
Intimate Partner Murder Rate.” [www.online-dating-rights.com/forum/index.php?topic=544.0
]
And earlier this week the Washington Post
reported that early estimates of up to 100,000
human trafficking victims being secreted into the
United States each year were grossly exaggerated.
Despite more than $150 million of taxpayer dollars
diverted to a massive search and rescue effort, it
turns out the actual number of trafficking victims
is closer to 200 annually. [www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20929223
]
But in the politically-correct atmosphere that
envelopes Washington these days, agendas count for
more than the truth.
So after the gavel fell on the Senate hearing,
the International Marriage Broker Regulation Act
was bundled into the Violence Against Women Act.
That law was signed into law on January 5, 2006. A
few days later, Fox News columnist Wendy McElroy
castigated the act as branding all American men as
“abusers.” [www.ifeminists.net/introduction/editorials/2006/0111.html
]
Now, any man who wishes to go through an
international dating company must submit to an
extensive background check. That’s right,
guys, get ready to tell them about your arrests,
criminal history, restraining orders, how many
times you’ve been married, and even how many
children you have. For good measure, don’t
forget the sex offender registry check.
So thanks to Senator Cantwell’s artful
dissembling and Senator Brownback’s
white-horse chivalry, men are presumed to be a
threat to foreign women. And Cupid’s arrow now
falls under the watchful eyes of green-visored
bureaucrats.
How Female Illegals
Abuse the System
Every year thousands of Americans are
victimized by a swindle known as the
“immigrant abuse scam.” What’s
amazing is this shake-down is paid for by the U.S.
taxpayer under the guise of stopping domestic
violence.
One of those persons was Roger Knudson, 64, of
Arizona. When he discovered his wife was having an
affair, he filed for divorce. Fearing the judge
would learn her visa had expired and order her back
to Mexico, she fell into a rage and attacked
him.
But the DA refused to prosecute the assault.
Then the illegal went to a local woman’s
shelter that provided her pro bono legal services
and told her to accuse her husband of the very
crime that she herself had committed. “I have
spent thousands of dollars since 2002 clearing
myself of the accusations,” Knudson wrote
sadly.
So here’s how the scam works: A woman makes
an accusation of abuse. The laws define domestic
violence so loosely that she doesn’t need to
provide a scrap of evidence -- she only needs to
scream “abuse!” So the judge issues a
let’s-play-it-safe order.
That restraining order becomes the gold-plated
meal ticket that entitles her to preferential
treatment by immigration authorities, free legal
services, and a generous helping of welfare
services. And anyone who questions the swindle is
accused of being “soft on domestic
violence.”
Elizabeth Howard of Arizona recounts how the
wife of her father trapped him in the bedroom and
threatened to kill him. When he called for help,
the police arrested both of them. As soon as she
got out of jail, she marched over to the domestic
violence shelter to have him kicked out of his
home. Then she began to hold yard sales to sell his
car and tools.
“A friend at work whose family migrated
here from Mexico told me it’s common knowledge
that if a woman marries a U.S. citizen and it
doesn’t work out, she can claim abuse and get
the resources she needs,” Howard sadly
explains. “I believe the Violence Against
Women Act should be called the ‘Women Get What
They Want Act.’”
In two cases, the extortion tactics continue to
this day, forcing my informants to protect their
identities.
One woman’s close friend was falsely
accused of abuse by his immigrant wife. The
courtroom hearing resembled a kangaroo court more
than the even-handed administration of justice:
“We were not allowed to present a case, ask
questions, look at the evidence that the accusing
party submitted, two of our witnesses were cut off
after two minutes, and the third was not allowed to
testify at all,” she revealed.
“As a victim of abuse previously myself, I
am sensitive to real victims of abuse. But those
who commit fraud and claim abuse where none exists
endanger us all,” the woman confides.
In 2001, Bob planned to marry a woman from the
Caribbean. Shortly before the ceremony, she
informed him she was an illegal alien. But he loved
her so he went ahead with the wedding, knowing he
could sponsor her for a work permit.
Then the relationship went sour and she
threatened to abduct their newborn daughter if he
didn’t accede to her demands. One day she
surprised him with this news: “I have my baby
– I don’t need you anymore!” Bob
grew fearful of the intimidation tactics, so he
filed for divorce and withdrew her work permit
application, believing the immigration service
would protect his daughter, a newborn U.S.
citizen.
Turning the tables, she requested amnesty under
the Violence Against Women Act, even though she
didn’t produce an iota of police or medical
proof of violence. This filing prohibited him from
submitting any evidence of immigration fraud or
even appearing in the courtroom during her
hearing.
“In the end, she got everything she could
have hoped for: A work permit, VAWA amnesty, $750
tax-free dollars per month, and bragging rights on
her cleverness on screwing over a stupid American
fool in his own stupid country,” Bob bitterly
notes.
The abuse rip-off has become so accepted that
its proponents openly instruct women how to fleece
their boyfriends and husbands. One group instructs
gold diggers to view restraining orders “as a
tool for economic justice.” Simply accuse your
man of violence, and you can force him to pay your
attorney’s fees, medical expenses, punitive
damages, use of his house and car, and much, much
more. It’s really that simple!
That advice comes to us from the Washington,
DC-based Center for Survivor Agency and Justice,
which receives generous support from the U.S.
taxpayer by way of the Department of Justice. The
Center offers no advice to help American taxpayers
deal with false accusations of domestic violence by
immigrant women.
Love Song to the Son I
Never Knew
Last month my column highlighted the
often-neglected voices of fathers in the abortion
debate. [www.ifeminists.net/e107_plugins/content/content.php?content.207
]
Afterwards, several men contacted me to recount
their painful memories.
Wayne Auman of North Carolina was one of those
courageous men. His memories are so vivid and his
pain so poignant, I invited him to share the story
in his own words:
It all began in 1981, I was dating an incredible
girl, and we planned to eventually marry. We had
been together over a year, and we were crazy in
love. Then one September day she approached me with
tears in her eyes and told me she was pregnant. You
could have knocked me over with a feather.
After the shock wore off, I suggested we get
married and start our family. I was stunned when
she refused. I tried to tell her she would love our
baby so much, and most of all, that abortion is
murder. She cried at me to stop, saying that she
had made up her mind, it was her body, and this was
the “easy” solution to her problem.
She also told me I was making a difficult
decision harder by “preaching” to her. In
retrospect, I didn’t preach nearly enough. If
I had tried harder, she may not have gone through
with it. I will always regret not fighting harder
to save the life of our son.
When the day came to do the procedure, I was
depressed, scared, and worried about my girlfriend.
Upon entering the non-descript waiting room, I felt
a dozen pairs of female eyes suspiciously evaluate
me. The atmosphere was dark, dreadful, and
depressing. The feeling of shame was palpable.
Muted whispers and muffled sobs were heard in a far
corner.
As I tried to comfort my girlfriend, I told her
it wasn’t too late to change her mind.
I’ll never forget the look in her eyes when
she refused my offer. The look was a pleading,
agonizing glimpse into her soul.
During the time my girlfriend was gone, the
stillness of room was shattered by a piercing wail
of pain from the procedure room. I will never
forget the desperation and agony of that
scream.
I feared that it was my girlfriend so I got up
to ask a staff member. I was instructed that I was
to sit down and wait quietly. When I insisted that
someone check on my girlfriend, my request was met
with a contemptuous glare. Eventually, someone did
check on her and informed me it was not my
girlfriend who had cried out.
An hour later she emerged. Hunched over,
clutching her purse and prescription, she shuffled
slowly into the waiting area, and stifled a painful
moan. My heart broke into a thousand pieces, never
to be whole again. I mourned for her, her wounded
soul, but most of all, for our dead child. We had
knowingly, deliberately, murdered a child.
And for what? So she could be a college student
and have a career, unencumbered by the
responsibilities of raising a child?
The effects of the procedure were traumatic. My
girlfriend experienced heavy bleeding, severe
abdominal pain, and anemia. She was physically
affected for months afterward, and is spiritually
affected to this day. She refused all attempts to
talk about our ordeal. I realized that she
experienced something profoundly more horrible than
she had expected.
That meant that I would have to deal with my
tortured emotions alone, as we agreed not to tell
anyone of the deed. This proved to be too much for
me to bear, and our relationship would never be the
same. One murderous act succeeded in killing not
only our child, but the incredible love we had for
one another.
Now I am blessed beyond my dreams with a wife
and three incredible sons, 11, 8, and 4. I am
grateful to God that I have found forgiveness and
restoration. I will never forget, however, the life
that God intended to be born, I allowed to be
murdered.
Don’t let anyone tell you that abortion is
a quick, easy solution to an unwanted pregnancy.
What appears to be an easy solution has life-long
consequences. Twenty-five years later, I am still
haunted by the memories of that day, and the lost
life of my beloved son. Every day of my life, I
know that I’ll wonder.
So on the 25th year anniversary of the abortion,
I composed a ballad called “I Wonder: A Love
Song to the Son I Never Knew,” which can be
seen on YouTube: www.youtube.com/watch?v=QP44BEGnXec
.
Here are the lyrics:
“I Wonder: A Love Song to the Son I Never
Knew”
Wayne Auman & Jamie Dickmann © 2007
Performed by Jamie Dickmann
You never had a birthday,
But I remember you my unborn son.
25 years since you passed away,
Was there anything more I could have done?
We were so in love,
That’s what we were,
Not a care in this great big world.
I must admit you were not thought of,
Until God’s plan for us unfurled.
I wonder what you would have become,
If choice had not got in the way,
Of hearing you laugh and watching you run.
In my heart your life has begun,
Who had the right to deprive us
Of all of the things we’d have done?
I Wonder...
Precious gift, that’s what you were,
God built his work within her womb,
But a hardened heart and a selfish wish,
Turned that place into your tomb.
I wonder what you would have become,
If choice had not got in the way,
Of hearing you laugh and watching you run.
But in my heart your life has begun,
Who had the right to deprive us
Of all of the things we'd have done?
I Wonder...
My only peace is knowing
That He is at your side.
That He holds you close,
And tucks you in at night.
I’ll bear this empty hole,
Without you in my life,
Knowing that someday,
You’ll run to me - eternally.
I wonder what you would have become,
If choice had not got in the way,
Of hearing you laugh and watching you run.
In my heart your life has begun,
Who had the right to deprive us
Of all of the things we’d have done.
I wonder what you would have become,
If choice had not got in the way,
Of hearing you laugh and watching you run.
We’ll always be father and son,
Who had the right to deprive us
Of all of the things we'd have done.
I Wonder...
Fathers, The Third
Victim of the Abortion Industry
Why are men reflexively treated as the fall-guy in
the abortion debate?
Recently National Review Online convened a group
to opine what would happen in a post-Roe v. Wade
world to women who might obtain an illegal
abortion. The panelists reveal that before 1973,
women who sought an abortion were not subject to
criminal prosecution. So overturning Roe v. Wade
would not fill our jails with post-abortive women.
[article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZjkwNWQ4ZDQ2NTljNDg4MjUyYWIxZWQ0NDVjMTkxYjg=
]
One theme surfaces repeatedly in the
commentaries: feckless boyfriends who abandon their
partners in their hour of greatest need.
Hadley Arkes of Amherst College describes women
having an abortion as routinely “Abandoned by
the man.” And Dorinda Bordlee from the
Bioethics Defense Fund obliquely refers to fathers
as “those who should be caring for [the
mothers] and their unborn children.”
So does research back up these broad
pronouncements of male abandonment?
In their book Men and Abortion: Lessons, Losses,
and Love, Shostak and McLouth report that 44% of
single men offered to marry the woman, 18% of the
couples had discussed adoption, and half the men
accompanied the woman to the abortion clinic –
hardly the image of wholesale male abandonment.
When these men show up at the clinic, they are
met with a chilly reception. Two-thirds of the
fathers want to accompany their partner throughout
the experience, and nine out of 10 hope to hold the
hand of their partner in the recovery room. But in
most cases abortion clinics prohibit men from such
expressions of support.
But the NRO panel reserves it harshest criticism
for men who force their girlfriends to abort.
Walter Weber at the American Center for Law and
Justice claims that “many” women (we
aren’t told the number) obtain abortions
because “they are coerced by boyfriends,
bosses, parents, etc.”
Joseph Dellapenna of Villanova University
states, “Significant evidence led one
sociologist to conclude that ‘the attitude of
the man is the most important variable in a
woman’s decision to have an abortion.”
Dellapenna does not cite, however, the name of the
sociologist or explain what constitutes
“significant evidence.”
And Frederica Mathewes-Green recounts the tales
of two women who were undergoing an abortion. As
they lay on the clinic table, both of them were
praying that the boyfriend would burst through the
doors and say, “Stop, I changed my mind.”
Mathewes-Green’s imagery of the angelic woman
succumbing to the spell of the conniving male is
unmistakable.
But research paints a very different
picture.
Several years ago Carol Gilligan’s
acclaimed study, In a Different Voice, examined the
dynamics of the abortion decision. She found in
only one-third of cases did the father have any
influence on the woman’s decision to
abort.
Likewise, professors Arthur Shostak, Ross
Koppel, and Jennifer Perkins recently summarized
several large-scale surveys of men in abortion
clinic waiting rooms. They reported that only 19%
of men in waiting rooms affirmed the idea of
abortion in general, and fewer than 5% of men
“may have cajoled their partner into having
the abortion.” [www.menandabortion.com/articles.html
]
The conclusion is clear: men are not dragging
their pregnant girlfriends willy-nilly into
abortion clinics against their will.
Abortion is one of those moral and social
tragedies that seems to invite simplistic
explanations. But the reality is far more
complex.
For example, none of the NRO participants
mentioned the fact that thanks to the 1992 U.S.
Supreme Court decision Casey v. Planned Parenthood,
women are not required to inform the father of the
impending abortion. That’s an important
omission -- according to clinic workers, in 15% of
abortions the man never finds out, or learns of the
deed until it’s too late.
I once met such a man – years later he was
still grieving the silent loss of his precious
innocent.
A growing body of research reveals that fathers
suffer a variety of ill-consequences following the
abortion. Dr. Catherine Coyle recently reviewed 28
studies that reveal men often suffer regret,
sadness, and depression. One-third admit to a
longing to see the fetus.
Coyle sums up the research with this
observation: “Several authors have noted a
tendency among men to defer the abortion decision
to their female partners as well as a tendency to
repress their own emotions in an attempt to support
their partners.” [www.ispub.com/ostia/index.php?xmlFilePath=journals/ijmh/vol3n2/abortion.xml
]
Many argue that women are the second victim of
the grisly abortion industry. Clearly men can be
victims, as well. So when will we stop treating
fathers as social pariahs?
Misandry in the Least
Likely of Places
Dial up your local Country and Western station and
you may soon find your fingers tapping out the beat
of Carrie Underwood’s latest hit, Before He
Cheats. Underwood suspects her boyfriend is
probably cheating on her (in matters of infidelity,
I guess “probably” is proof enough).
This how she extracts her revenge:
“I dug my key into the side
of his pretty little souped-up four-wheel
drive,
Carved my name into his leather seats...
I took a Louisville slugger to both headlights,
slashed a hole in all four tires...”
Trashing your boyfriend’s car has little to
do with sugar and spice and everything nice. But
it’s the title -- Before He Cheats
– that turns this song into a bitter gender
tirade. Just imagine a male star reaching platinum
for crooning, Before She Aborts.
For years women’s libbers have reviled
misogynist societies that disrespect women. And
they have a point. But why haven’t we given
equal consideration to the other side of the coin
– persons who evince contempt and distain for
men – and then pretend it’s a joke.
The problem of misandry has reached the point of
commanding scholarly attention. McGill University
professors Paul Nathanson and Katherine Young have
published two books that reveal male-bashing has
become commonplace.
Their first book, Spreading Misandry: The
Teaching of Contempt for Men in Popular
Culture, examines books, TV shows, movies,
greeting cards, commercials, and even comic
strips.
Remember Steven Speilberg’s acclaimed
movie, The Color Purple? When the movie
didn’t win an Academy Award, critics cried
“racism!” But how many people objected
to, or even noticed the fact that all the male
characters were depicted as stupid buffoons or evil
tyrants?
Thoroughly documented and persuasively argued,
Spreading Misandry sardonically concludes
that “men are society’s official
scapegoats and [should be] held responsible
for all evil, including that done by the women they
have deluded or intimidated.”
Last year Nathanson and Young released their
second book, Legalizing Misandry: From Public
Shame to Systematic Discrimination Against Men.
Even bolder than their first treatment, they reveal
how ideological feminists capitalize on contempt
for men to reshape the law in the areas of
employment, marriage, divorce, custody, sexual
harassment, violence, and human rights.
It’s one thing to peruse a scholarly
analysis of gender contempt. It’s quite
another to experience it up close and personal,
like a bare-knuckled fist shoved into the gut.
That happened last week. I came across an
article that announced, “The Spirituality of
Moms Outpaces that of Dads.” Based on research
by a California-based new-age outfit called The
Barna Group, the article purports to show that
compared to women, men are spiritual dwarfs.
[www.barna.org/FlexPage.aspx?Page=BarnaUpdateNarrow&BarnaUpdateID=270
]
That’s right, a couple hundred years ago we
were debating whether American Indians had souls.
Now, it seems the spirituality of men is being
called into question.
Over the last decade, we’ve watched as our
churches have fallen captive to female bonding
rituals, Aphrodite worship, and revisionist
versions of the Ten Commandments that begin,
“Adore me, the Mother. Know that I, the
Mother, am immanent and transcendent.”
I’ve seen this with my own eyes, and
worse.
And no surprise, men are leaving the church in
droves. And now along comes the Barna Group that
pompously informs us that “Men generally lag
behind the spirituality of women.” Want proof?
Because in a typical week, “mothers are more
likely than fathers to attend church.”
Girls, how’s that for a plan –
we’ll feminize the church, send the men
packing, and then proclaim our moral
superiority!
So Gents, switch off the mute button while I
indulge in a few moments of unedited indignation.
(Ladies, you’re welcome to come along for the
ride.)
When you were young and a schoolyard bully
insulted your courage and strength, did you turn
tail and hide behind your teacher’s skirts?
Presumably you confronted the tormenter and told
him to lay off, in no uncertain terms –
right?
Then why are you allowing ideological bullies
who spout feminist mantras to kick you around? Why
do you shrug your shoulders when a California guru
who purports to “facilitate the spiritual
transformation of America” does a shame and
blame number on you?
So send an e-mail
to director George Barna. Or call him at
805-658-8885. Get it off your chest. Do it today.
(Ladies, you’re welcome to protest this moral
hubris, as well.)
I guarantee you’ll recapture some of that
warrior spirit. And before long we’ll turn
around this torrent of misandry.
© 2007 Carey Roberts
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