Symantec Shareholders Worried
Symantec shareholders are increasingly worried about the growing likelihood of multiple legal prosecutions and adverse publicity surrounding Symantec's Rulespace software.
Concerned shareholders who remain unaware of the impending problems should investigate the claims of thousands of internet users and webmasters who are currently gathering together to force Symantec to stop blocking websites and blogs simply because the Symantec management does not approve of their political content.
If these claims are true, this will be seen as a sinister development to people who are concerned about civil liberties, freedom of speech and internet censorship.
Worse, from Symantec's point of view, is that thousands of these sites have been categorised as "hate sites" by Symantec, but a close look at many of these sites clearly reveals that they are nothing of the sort.
One good example of this is the website ...
DV Men UK
... which is a site simply devoted to pointing out that men, as well as women, can experience domestic violence.
As a result of these serious misclassifications, webmasters and bloggers are gradually uniting and planning to sue Symantec for libel and defamation.
The costs of such suits for Symantec could run into millions of dollars; particularly since the management has been aware of these misclassifications for some considerable time - thus compounding the company's liability in law - but appears to have made no attempt to deal with them.
As such, shareholders might well have grounds to wonder if the company is much more concerned about the political leanings of its management and much less concerned about them.
More disturbing, perhaps, is that Symantec is being accused by some people of blocking web sites devoted to exposing child abuse. And the question is being asked, "Who is Symantec trying to protect? What is the company trying to hide?"
On a lighter note, the Fathers For Justice website was, until a few days ago, catagorised as a "Shopping" site.
Symantec is also likely to face intense lobbying in the UK following the revelation that, despite having made millions of pounds from its UK activities, it pays virtually no tax in the UK.
UK politicians, UK government departments and UK businesses are therefore coming under increasing attack for using Symantec products.
It is also seems likely that Symantec has been avoiding the payment of millions of tax dollars in America - where it is based.
Many people are now arguing that even if Symantec's tax avoidance measures are currently legal, American patriots should choose to use other products particularly given the current poor state of their own economy.
In January of 2012, James Gross filed a lawsuit against Symantec for distributing fake scareware scanners that purportedly, and fraudulently, proclaimed to have discovered malware issues with their computers. The solution proffered? Buy Symantec's Norton Security software.
To add even further to its woes, there has recently been the suggestion that Symantec is heavily blocking non-USA sites while allowing equivalent sites in the USA to pass through its filters.
Finally, as of June 2013, the widely respected Customer Service Scoreboard rated Symantec's customer service as "Disappointing"
All in all, therefore, it looks as if Symantec's shareholders might shortly be in for a bumpy ride as more and more questions arise over the competence and trustworthiness of its senior management.
Angry Harry
Sunday, June 30, 2013
Thursday, June 27, 2013
Fight back against Dear Collegue
From SAVE Services:
On May 9 the federal government issued a decision that expands the definition of sexual harassment and removes free speech on campus. This has triggered 100 critical editorials.
On June 26 Arizona Senator John McCain sent a letter to the Department of Justice challenging its recent settlement with the University of Montana.
We fully support the senator's efforts, and we'd like to see more lawmakers follow suit. That's where you come in.
Urge your senators to join with Sen. McCain to restore free speech on college campuses. Call 1-866-220-0044.
Thank you for helping college students all across the country.
teri
Teri Stoddard, Program Director
Stop Abusive and Violent Environments
www.saveservices.org
From Senator John McCain's website
June 26, 2013
Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator John McCain (R-AZ), Ranking Member of the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, today condemned the proliferation of settlement abuses orchestrated by President Obama’s administration. To expose this practice, Senator McCain sent two letters to separate Obama administration officials.
In the first letter, sent to the Department of Justice, Senator McCain expressed concern that the civil rights division under Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez has circumvented the regular rulemaking process and congressional authority by redefining long-standing legal precedent through a settlement agreement with a single university.
In that letter, Senator McCain wrote, “Without congressional authorization or even any formal agency rulemaking, Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez and a group of lawyers in DOJ’s Civil Rights Division have single-handedly redefined the meaning of sexual harassment at all universities and colleges across the country that receive public funding.”
June 26, 2013
The Honorable Eric Holder
Attorney General of the United States
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20530
Dear Attorney General Holder:
I am writing to request more information on the settlement reached between the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the University of Montana-Missoula with regard to the enforcement and application of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 (“Title IX”). Without congressional authorization or even any formal agency rulemaking, Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez and a group of lawyers in DOJ’s Civil Rights Division have single-handedly redefined the meaning of sexual harassment at all universities and colleges across the country that receive public funding.
Given that the interpretation of Title IX has such a widespread impact on the well-being of young students, it is troublesome that significant changes to nationwide sexual harassment policy were unilaterally dictated by DOJ – through a settlement – rather than through congressional or regulatory action. In short, Assistant Attorney General Perez and DOJ have used a settlement to effectively change the law, avoiding public accountability for their actions.
The Civil Rights Division, led by Assistant Attorney General Perez, ignored years of Supreme Court jurisprudence regarding Title IX when it decided to unilaterally make its new standard. Whereas the Supreme Court held in Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education that sexual harassment must be “so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive that it effectively bars the victim’s access to an educational opportunity or benefit,” Assistant Attorney General Perez on his own volition, unauthorized and unchecked by Congress, has issued a much broader definition that may compromise the constitutional rights of students and teachers.
According to the Civil Rights Division’s Letter of Findings, DOJ now defines sexual harassment as “any unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature.” DOJ also requires that universities immediately take actions against students accused of harassment before the completion of any investigation. DOJ’s new interpretation of sexual harassment and its suggested disciplinary procedures are direct hindrances to students’ and teachers’ First Amendment rights as well as their right to due process.
On June 6th Professors Ann Green and Donna Potts, members of the Committee on Women in the Academic Profession of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), wrote a letter to Mr. Perez expressing deep concerns about the broadness of DOJ’s new interpretation of sexual harassment. The letter asserted that the new definition “eliminates the critical standard of ‘reasonable speech,’ and, in doing so, may pose a threat to academic freedom in the classroom.”
Given that the new Title IX sexual harassment standards and suggested disciplinary procedures raise great concerns about the security of constitutional rights, please provide the following information by July 17, 2013.
1. From what source does DOJ claim its authority to revise Court-approved Title IX jurisprudence through the settlement with the University of Montana rather than by judicial, regulatory, or legislative means?
2. How do you specifically define “unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature”? Having promulgated a new regulatory standard regarding the definition of sexual harassment, how does DOJ plan to ensure consistent application of that standard to avoid undesirable outcomes, including vexatious litigation?
3.To what extent does the broad nature of the new and judicially untested “unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature” standard, increase the risk of a wrongful conviction?
4.Could the following scenarios constitute “unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature” and demonstrate reasonable grounds for filing a sexual harassment complaint under the new definition:
a.A professor assigning a book or showing a movie that contains content of a sexual nature.
b.A student who makes a joke of a sexual nature to a friend and is overheard by another student.
c.A student asking another student on a date.
d.A student listening to music that contains content of a sexual nature overheard by others.
e.A student giving another student a Valentine’s Day card.
f.A student or professor using masculine terms for generic pronouns (e.g., “Each student must bring his own laptop to the exam.”)
5.What safe harbors are available to students and teachers so that they can be assured that innocent behavior is not investigated and punished?
Thank you for your attention to this important matter.
Sincerely,
John McCain
Ranking Minority Member
Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations
To find your Senators click here
We've got a Senator's attention,I suggest we do not waste this moment but instead lobby against the "dear colleague" letter. This is our chance. Let's not let it slip away.
Also it would be a good idea to contact Senator McCain and thank him for tackling this issue. That could go a long way down the road for us so let's do it.
On May 9 the federal government issued a decision that expands the definition of sexual harassment and removes free speech on campus. This has triggered 100 critical editorials.
On June 26 Arizona Senator John McCain sent a letter to the Department of Justice challenging its recent settlement with the University of Montana.
We fully support the senator's efforts, and we'd like to see more lawmakers follow suit. That's where you come in.
Urge your senators to join with Sen. McCain to restore free speech on college campuses. Call 1-866-220-0044.
Thank you for helping college students all across the country.
teri
Teri Stoddard, Program Director
Stop Abusive and Violent Environments
www.saveservices.org
From Senator John McCain's website
June 26, 2013
Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator John McCain (R-AZ), Ranking Member of the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, today condemned the proliferation of settlement abuses orchestrated by President Obama’s administration. To expose this practice, Senator McCain sent two letters to separate Obama administration officials.
In the first letter, sent to the Department of Justice, Senator McCain expressed concern that the civil rights division under Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez has circumvented the regular rulemaking process and congressional authority by redefining long-standing legal precedent through a settlement agreement with a single university.
In that letter, Senator McCain wrote, “Without congressional authorization or even any formal agency rulemaking, Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez and a group of lawyers in DOJ’s Civil Rights Division have single-handedly redefined the meaning of sexual harassment at all universities and colleges across the country that receive public funding.”
June 26, 2013
The Honorable Eric Holder
Attorney General of the United States
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20530
Dear Attorney General Holder:
I am writing to request more information on the settlement reached between the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the University of Montana-Missoula with regard to the enforcement and application of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 (“Title IX”). Without congressional authorization or even any formal agency rulemaking, Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez and a group of lawyers in DOJ’s Civil Rights Division have single-handedly redefined the meaning of sexual harassment at all universities and colleges across the country that receive public funding.
Given that the interpretation of Title IX has such a widespread impact on the well-being of young students, it is troublesome that significant changes to nationwide sexual harassment policy were unilaterally dictated by DOJ – through a settlement – rather than through congressional or regulatory action. In short, Assistant Attorney General Perez and DOJ have used a settlement to effectively change the law, avoiding public accountability for their actions.
The Civil Rights Division, led by Assistant Attorney General Perez, ignored years of Supreme Court jurisprudence regarding Title IX when it decided to unilaterally make its new standard. Whereas the Supreme Court held in Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education that sexual harassment must be “so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive that it effectively bars the victim’s access to an educational opportunity or benefit,” Assistant Attorney General Perez on his own volition, unauthorized and unchecked by Congress, has issued a much broader definition that may compromise the constitutional rights of students and teachers.
According to the Civil Rights Division’s Letter of Findings, DOJ now defines sexual harassment as “any unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature.” DOJ also requires that universities immediately take actions against students accused of harassment before the completion of any investigation. DOJ’s new interpretation of sexual harassment and its suggested disciplinary procedures are direct hindrances to students’ and teachers’ First Amendment rights as well as their right to due process.
On June 6th Professors Ann Green and Donna Potts, members of the Committee on Women in the Academic Profession of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), wrote a letter to Mr. Perez expressing deep concerns about the broadness of DOJ’s new interpretation of sexual harassment. The letter asserted that the new definition “eliminates the critical standard of ‘reasonable speech,’ and, in doing so, may pose a threat to academic freedom in the classroom.”
Given that the new Title IX sexual harassment standards and suggested disciplinary procedures raise great concerns about the security of constitutional rights, please provide the following information by July 17, 2013.
1. From what source does DOJ claim its authority to revise Court-approved Title IX jurisprudence through the settlement with the University of Montana rather than by judicial, regulatory, or legislative means?
2. How do you specifically define “unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature”? Having promulgated a new regulatory standard regarding the definition of sexual harassment, how does DOJ plan to ensure consistent application of that standard to avoid undesirable outcomes, including vexatious litigation?
3.To what extent does the broad nature of the new and judicially untested “unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature” standard, increase the risk of a wrongful conviction?
4.Could the following scenarios constitute “unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature” and demonstrate reasonable grounds for filing a sexual harassment complaint under the new definition:
a.A professor assigning a book or showing a movie that contains content of a sexual nature.
b.A student who makes a joke of a sexual nature to a friend and is overheard by another student.
c.A student asking another student on a date.
d.A student listening to music that contains content of a sexual nature overheard by others.
e.A student giving another student a Valentine’s Day card.
f.A student or professor using masculine terms for generic pronouns (e.g., “Each student must bring his own laptop to the exam.”)
5.What safe harbors are available to students and teachers so that they can be assured that innocent behavior is not investigated and punished?
Thank you for your attention to this important matter.
Sincerely,
John McCain
Ranking Minority Member
Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations
To find your Senators click here
We've got a Senator's attention,I suggest we do not waste this moment but instead lobby against the "dear colleague" letter. This is our chance. Let's not let it slip away.
Also it would be a good idea to contact Senator McCain and thank him for tackling this issue. That could go a long way down the road for us so let's do it.
Tuesday, June 25, 2013
Bobbitt revisted 20 years later
Lorena Bobbitt and the politics of hate
by Pierce Harlan
Introduction
The mutilation of John Wayne Bobbitt by his wife, Lorena, twenty years ago today — June 23, 1993, to be exact — marks one of the most shocking chapters in the modern annals of gender relations. The story is well known: Lorena Bobbitt said her husband abused her over a prolonged period of time and that, on the night in question, he raped her. In a moment of what she claimed was temporary insanity, while her husband slept, she went to the kitchen of their apartment, grabbed a knife, returned to the bedroom, and proceeded to cut off most of his penis. She then hopped in her car, penis in hand, and drove off. As she sped by a field, she tossed the severed appendage out the window. The organ was later recovered and, miraculously, reattached to its owner.
The Bobbitt affair was appalling and reprehensible, and not just because of the gruesome act of mayhem at the heart of it. It was all the more despicable because of the inexplicable glee expressed by large segments of the American population, mostly women, who luxuriated in the vile mutilation of a lower class nobody — a man who had difficulty even holding onto a job as a manual laborer. Media pundits, looking to advance a narrative, ignored the grays in the story and treated it as a bright line morality play, a watershed moment in the battle of the sexes — even a justifiable assault on maleness.
In the immediate aftermath of the incident, the perpetrator was branded “the victim,” and the victim “the perpetrator,” strictly along gender lines, despite the fact that she mutilated him while he slept. Mrs. Bobbitt’s defenders insisted her act was justifiable because allegedly he had raped her, but the “rape” was a classic “he said, she said” claim. The public reaction wasn’t just a rush to judgment; it was a 60-meter sprint completed in record time. Before a single scrap of evidence was considered by a jury, the trial was over even before it had begun. Lorena’s devotees arrogated to any woman the right to exact the most gruesome vigilante justice on any “member” of any member of the opposite sex – and due process be damned.
John Bobbitt: Oppressor or False Rape Claim Victim?
The mutilation couldn’t then, and can’t now, be rationally justified on any level. It was not self-defense. Ample evidence showed that both Mr. and Mrs. Bobbitt abused each other during their marriage. There is no evidence that anything stopped either of them from leaving the other. By any measure, Mrs. Bobbitt’s vigilante “justice” didn’t fit the crime, even if Mr. Bobbitt had raped her earlier in the evening, as she claims.
But did Mr. Bobbitt rape his wife? When the legend becomes fact, old cowboys and gender warriors alike insist on printing the legend. In the Bobbitt case, the legend quickly took hold that of course John Bobbitt raped his wife!
The only problem is, the facts don’t support the legend. Mrs. Bobbitt’s version of the facts was the evolving narrative of a woman groping for victimhood. At the time of her arrest, according to the New York Times, she told police: “He always have orgasm and he doesn’t wait for me to have orgasm. He’s selfish. I don’t think it’s fair, so I pulled back the sheets then and I did it.” That was the reason she gave for severing his penis.
Later, however, she claimed she cut her husband in anger after he raped her, and she told a psychiatrist that she cut him “really fast.”
Later, at her own trial, she claimed she couldn’t even remember doing it.
“This was all contrived to strike back at him after he said he was going to leave her,” said Mr. Bobbitt’s counsel, Gregory L. Murphy. “She was acting out a fantasy . . . .” Mel Feit, executive director of the National Center for Men in Brooklyn, might have hit the nail on the head with his explanation for the mutilation. It was the result of teaching “that men are natural oppressors.”
As befits a case where the accuser’s story is a moving target, at his trial for marital sexual abuse, John Bobbitt was acquitted. But that didn’t end the hysteria.
Lorena Bobbitt: ‘National Folk Heroine,’ and ‘Symbol of Innovative Resistance Against Gender Oppression’
From the outset, Lorena Bobbitt was widely regarded in some quarters as a hero. Time Magazine said there was a “ripple of glee that passed through the female population when Lorena Bobbitt struck back.”
Vanity Fair ran a sultry photo spread of Lorena Bobbitt and branded her a “national folk heroine.”
A woman wrote the following to the New York Times:
Prof. Catharine MacKinnon of the University of Michigan and the writer Andrea Dworkin long ago pointed to the institution of marriage as a legal cover for the act of rape and the permanent humiliation of women. Lorena Bobbitt’s life has been a poignant instance of that nightmare, which elicited a bold and courageous act of feminist self-defense. As one who recently returned from a conference of feminist activists in Europe, I can assure readers that the Lorena Bobbitt case has galvanized the women’s movement worldwide in a way the Anita Hill case never did. No feminist is advocating emasculation as the weapon of first choice. And some women question the political prudence of ‘sociosexual vigilantism.’ But whatever the judgment of America’s patriarchal legal system, Lorena Bobbitt is for most feminists no criminal. She is instead a symbol of innovative resistance against gender oppression everywhere.
Another woman said simply: “Every woman I’ve talked to about this says, ‘Way to go!’”
A sexual assault counselor said she didn’t condone the maiming but could “understand it,” and “could sympathize.”
The severance of this 26-year-old loser’s penis somehow became, in the words of that sexual assault counselor, “a critical event in the history of women.” Why? Because “violence is done to women continuously and pervasively. And this is a retaliatory act of great dramatic value . . . .” John Bobbitt was Everyman, and John Bobbitt’s severed penis was, in some weird sense, a sacrificial offering for the collective guilt of all men on the altar of political correctness.
The mainstream media mirrored the glee with scarcely any more restraint. Some writers dubbed the affair a “cautionary tale” for men. The lesson wasn’t that mutilating another human being is never justified; the lesson was that men had better wise up when it comes to how they treat women or they’ll rightly lose their dicks.
One columnist wrote: “Personally, I’m for both feminism and nonviolence. I admire the male body and prefer to find the penis attached to it rather than having to root around in vacant lots with Ziploc bag in hand. But I’m not willing to wait another decade or two for gender peace to prevail. And if a fellow insists on using his penis as a weapon, I say that, one way or another, he ought to be swiftly disarmed.” (That comment is all the more chilling since we are at the two decade mark referenced by the writer.)
Then there was celebrated columnist Ellen Goodman, Radcliffe grad and Pulitzer Prize winner, one of the darlings of the media whose column appeared in hundreds newspapers across the nation and who, on the the entitlement and privilege scale, was a “ten” to John Bobbitt’s “one.” Ellen Goodman took time out from polishing the awards on her mantel to make this working class putz her personal piñata.
Ms. Goodman, of course, refused to come out and condone the mutilation, but she certainly could “explain” both the mutilation and the celebratory reaction to it. Ms. Goodman concluded that this story became a national sensation only because a woman finally fought back. “Last year,” she declared, “the police blotter was full of abused and battered wives — an almost unilateral massacre.” Now, Ms. Goodman gushed, men “see a dangerous enemy where there was once a victim.” And the men squirming at the thought of being Bobbittized? “If women smile at men who squirm, maybe it’s at that recognition of power.”
Goodman apparently belonged to the Church of Gender Get-Even-ism: in April 1997, the late Michael Kennedy’s 16-year marriage publicly collapsed amid accusations that he had had an affair with the family baby sitter, allegedly beginning when she was just 14. It was never proven he had sex with her before she was 16, the age of consent in his jurisdiction, and criminal charges were not pressed for statutory rape. Here was Ellen Goodman’s take: “So far the most widespread fallout of the so-called Baby Sitter Affair has been a nervousness on the part of perfectly respectable men. With lechery all across the media, they don’t even want to get in the car with the sitter. Assorted fathers in my sample have concluded (1) that every 15-year-old regards him as a potential predator or (2) that if his hand lingers too long while passing out the money, he’ll be accused of making a pass.” Goodman concluded, in words a little too reminiscent of Catherine Comins’ “men unjustly accused can sometimes gain from the experience”: “I don’t mind men getting a little nervous,” Goodman bubbled. “It kind of balances things out.” That’s Ellen Goodman.
It is well to note that none of the writers applauding penile mutilation would applaud any other type of brutal vigilante justice, for any other type of crime. Yet vigilante justice directed at the penis of some below average guy was heralded with a giddy exultation. The fact that purportedly enlightened publications were quietly, and sometimes not so quietly, rooting for Mrs. Bobbitt even before a single fact was adjudicated or a scrap of evidence admitted at trial is nothing short of astounding, puzzling, and frightening, all at once.
Why did Mr. Bobbitt deserve this rush to judgment? Thomas Sowell didn’t have Mr. Bobbitt in mind when he wrote the following, but he should have: “Information or allegations reflecting negatively on individuals or groups seen less sympathetically by the intelligentsia pass rapidly into the public domain with little scrutiny and much publicity.” Sowell cited two of the more prominent hoaxes in recent history as evidence for this point: the alleged gang rapes of black women by white men in the Tawana Brawley and Duke lacrosse cases.
The Politics of Hate
But some columnists couldn’t accept that women in general embraced the glee over the mutilation. Syndicated columnist Mona Charen explained that the case gripped the media because “they [media pundits] really believe that most women feel that way deep down.” But Ms. Charen recognized how utterly twisted all of it was. If they “are seething with such hatred for men, that is evidence of a politics bordering on pathology.” She continued: “To see the mutilation of a man’s body as a political act and to signal secret approval and a vicarious thrill . . . truly deserves the label ‘the politics of hate.’”
Charen found the nation’s obsession with the mutilation “bizarre, abnormal and sexist to boot.” It would be impossible to disagree with Ms. Charen’s observation about reversing the genders: “If a woman were similarly wounded by a man, no one would treat it with ghoulish humor. Men are evidently fair game.”
Dr. Charles Krauthammer, the intellectual firepower of American conservatism (even Bill Clinton once called him a “brilliant man”), chimed in and noted that the hypothetical where the genders were reversed “would not have the weight of feminist rage behind it.”
Newsweek said, tongue in cheek: “Feminists have a cutting-edge sense of humor…but only if it’s directed at men.”
Even when Mr. Bobbitt was found not guilty of marital rape, that didn’t change the view of Lorena’s devotees that, of course, he was really guilty. Kim Gandy of NOW said the verdict “discourages women and gives men a free ride in marital rape cases.” It never occurred to Gandy that John Bobbitt might not have raped his wife.
The Lorena Bobbitt Trial: Things Get Really Nutty
Finally, it was time for Mrs. Bobbitt’s trial for maliciously wounding her husband. Much of the nation, and beyond, watched intently with sympathies split largely along gender lines. In Ecuador, Lorena Bobbitt’s home country, the National Feminist Association called several news organizations to announce that if Mrs. Bobbitt went to prison for mutilating her husband, 100 innocent American men would be castrated (it is not clear if they really meant “castration,” which generally means removal of the testicles, or if they meant they would slice off 100 innocent penises). The organization also staged a large protest outside the U.S. consulate. This was kooky, outlier stuff, for sure, but what was going on in the mainstream was nutty enough even without it.
The Lorena Bobbitt trial was a mini-feminist Woodstock. A carnival atmosphere swept over Manassas, where it was conducted. A woman sold homemade, penis-shaped white chocolates outside the courthouse. T-shirts were hawked that said “Revenge — how sweet it is,” and “Manassas: A Cut Above.” Some feminists sold buttons that read: “LORENA BOBBITT FOR SURGEON GENERAL.” Disc jockeys handed out “Slice” soda pop and cocktail wieners “with lots of ketchup.”
Hundreds of Lorena Bobbitt supporters cheered their champion outside the courthouse. When the man she mutilated — the real victim — walked outside, he was greeted with boos and whistles, but he stoically showed no reaction. He took it like a man.
Mrs. Bobbitt’s self-defense claim — that she was justified in maiming a sleeping man — would be laughable in any context outside feminist jurisprudence. Here’s what Newsweek said about it:
“. . . the traditional definition of self-defense wasn’t enough for radical feminists. And so in the 1970s, feminist psychologist Lenore Walker conceived the ‘battered-woman syndrome.’ Women beaten by their mates, she claimed, are so demoralized that they become too helpless to leave or to take steps to help themselves. They become convinced their only option to stop the abuse is to kill the abuser. So even if the woman is in no physical danger at the time of the killing, she’s defending herself against future beatings. Get it? Because men supposedly have so much power over women in our society, women should be given the powers of judge, jury and executioner.
“Ideas–especially seminal ideas such as these–have consequences. In 1991, the governors of Ohio and Maryland commuted the sentences of a number of jailed women who had killed or assaulted their mates because they claimed to have been victims of battered-woman syndrome. But reporters turned up embarrassing evidence indicating that 15 of the 25 women freed in Ohio had not been physically abused. Six, they said, had talked about killing their boyfriends or husbands, in some cases months before doing so; two had tracked down and killed husbands from whom they were separated. If they were capable of that much premeditation, they were certainly capable of picking up and leaving.”
The female prosecutor kicked off the trial by telling the jurors, apparently with a straight face, that it was “his penis versus her life.” Charles Krauthammer called that characterization a “stark summation of feminist victimization theory.” Dr. Krauthammer added that the Bobbitt case wasn’t one of self-defense but of revenge. He noted that evidence of self-defense, improper though it was, came in quite handy for Lorena Bobbitt because it allowed her to introduce “the most lurid allegations of sexual abuse.” The trial made the Bobbitt marriage “one of the most highly publicized and minutely scrutinized ever,” said the New York Times.
One of Lorena’s former co-workers testified that Lorena once said she would chop off her husband’s dick if he cheated on her. Witnesses testified that Lorena was mean, violent, and subject to jealous, unpredictable physical attacks.
In the end, the jury found Lorena Bobbitt not guilty of malicious wounding — not because she didn’t do, and not because she had a right to do — but by reason of insanity. They committed her to a mental health facility for 45 days for observation. The New York Times reported that “a gasp went up among her supporters in the courtroom.”
It is well to note that until relatively recently, many states punished rape with the death penalty. While many men and boys have been put to death for rape, a woman who sliced off her sleeping husband’s penis got 45 days of observation in a nice, clean hospital.
Whatever this was, it was not justice.
The verdict elicited the predictable response. Self-described feminists cheered and gave each other high fives that a woman was permitted to get away with what now literally, and officially, could be called an insane act. Kim Gandy, executive vice president of the National Organization for Women, summed up the position for the lunatic fringe, which in this case seemed to comprise a regrettably large segment of the nation’s population: “We’re glad the jury rejected the twisted argument that a battered woman should be locked up in a prison cell.” Ms. Gandy used the verdict as the occasion to push one of her pet projects: “. . . this whole saga drives home the need for swift passage of a comprehensive version of the Violence Against Women Act . . . .”
In Lorena Bobbitt’s hometown of Bucay, Ecuador, hundreds took to the streets, cheering and firing shots into the air the way joyous fans do when their team wins the World Cup or the Super Bowl.
The New York Times chimed in, ever so delicately: “[I]n this case,” the Times pontificated, “the jury can be forgiven for finding a reason to excuse Mrs. Bobbitt’s brutality . . . .” It also noted: “. . . perhaps the verdict will indeed make some abusive men think twice before they strike again.” But, the Times refused to go so far as to invite every self-anointed victim to resort to retaliation: “. . . violence cannot be the standard answer to violence.” If violence can’t be the “standard” answer, this suggests that, sometimes, violence is OK, and presumably that “sometimes” includes any time it is done to a penis by a self-anointed wronged woman.
But Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, the voice of reason, said violence is not OK. Mrs. Bobbitt “pulled the wool over the jury’s eyes,” Prof. Dershowitz said, by claiming that abuse left her unable to take responsibility for her actions. He called her a “feminist Dirty Harry.” The “abuse excuse,” Dershowitz explained, “is dangerous to the very tenets of democracy, which presuppose personal accountability for choices and actions.”
Mona Charen, likewise, was in no mood to celebrate. She knew that the reaction of feminists, and of too many women, was as wrong as can be: “Rarely have I been as ashamed of my sex as I have been in the aftermath of the Lorena Bobbitt verdict.”
The brilliant Charles Krauthammer, a Harvard educated psychiatrist before becoming a political pundit, said it best: this verdict took “political correctness to its ultimate extreme, to the point where for those who claim politically correct victimization, the laws no longer apply.”
“Politically correct victimization” sums up the entire affair.
Legacy
The Bobbitt affair ripped off an ugly scab and exposed an oozing pus on gender relations in America. The principal legacy of the Bobbitt affair might have been to “empower” women by insisting that they are so powerless that they are entitled to ignore the law. But the more the gender warriors insisted that women are powerless, the more they underscored that women aren’t men’s equals.
A more immediate impact was that copycat crimes cropped up and continue to crop up to this day, including the crime that led to the Brigitte Harris trial, where a young woman admitted to researching the Bobbitt case before severing her allegedly abusive father’s penis. Ms. Harris made sure to burn the purportedly offending appendage to avoid Mrs. Bobbitt’s mistake that allowed John Bobbitt to be reunited with his organ. Ms. Harris’ father died in the ordeal, so his side of the story will never be known. (At the young woman’s trial, the jurors convicted her of second degree manslaughter and not murder, which prompted the judge to chide the jurors for elevating their sympathies over the law.)
John Bobbitt was no saint, and there was plenty of evidence that he abused his wife during the course of their marriage – just as there was ample evidence that she abused him. That changes nothing. The brutal act of mutilation, and the depraved reaction of gender warriors, the mainstream media, and, frankly, too many others, cannot be justified, or respected, on any reasonable, logical, moral, or other level. The celebratory reaction and tolerance for this most vicious act of vengeance was morally grotesque and seemed largely the product of fear-mongering about men as natural oppressors. It was an all too predictable response to the systematic maligning of a gender over the course of several decades.
Following the mutilation, men, as a class, were exposed to a disdain many had not even known existed, and they didn’t know how to react to it. But men’s bewilderment was understandable. They didn’t realize that they were “all” rapists. Nor did anyone bother to explain to them that they were the beneficiaries of a “patriarchy” that made them undeservedly privileged. That included men who, by any rational standard, were not privileged, like Mr. Bobbitt. You see, most men were too busy working to make ends meet, often to support the very people who actually believed those loony things. So when women shamefully applauded the vile mutilation of another human being — a man who was not privileged, or smart, or wealthy, or lucky — all that men could muster in the face of this fusillade of misandry was a muffled and chivalrous grumble.
In the years since the Bobbitt affair, it has become even more common for gender warriors to reduce masculinity to vile caricature and to pass off outlier attributes as “cultural norms” of maleness. By the same token, since that awful June night in 1993, the Internet has exposed countless men and women to an ongoing battle of the sexes that they didn’t even know was being waged. If something like the Bobbitt case happened today, would it be met with a different reaction? Would it bring to the front burner the issues of female-on-male domestic violence and false rape claims? No one can say for certain, but my guess is it would. If it happened today, the debate would be far more heated, and men would actually answer the bell instead of sitting on a stool in a corner of the ring, allowing the maleness-is-broken crowd to win by default.
Source:click here
This is what helped me become an MRA,this is what cemented it. I was sickened by the reaction of the country at the time. It was just inexcusable.
by Pierce Harlan
Introduction
The mutilation of John Wayne Bobbitt by his wife, Lorena, twenty years ago today — June 23, 1993, to be exact — marks one of the most shocking chapters in the modern annals of gender relations. The story is well known: Lorena Bobbitt said her husband abused her over a prolonged period of time and that, on the night in question, he raped her. In a moment of what she claimed was temporary insanity, while her husband slept, she went to the kitchen of their apartment, grabbed a knife, returned to the bedroom, and proceeded to cut off most of his penis. She then hopped in her car, penis in hand, and drove off. As she sped by a field, she tossed the severed appendage out the window. The organ was later recovered and, miraculously, reattached to its owner.
The Bobbitt affair was appalling and reprehensible, and not just because of the gruesome act of mayhem at the heart of it. It was all the more despicable because of the inexplicable glee expressed by large segments of the American population, mostly women, who luxuriated in the vile mutilation of a lower class nobody — a man who had difficulty even holding onto a job as a manual laborer. Media pundits, looking to advance a narrative, ignored the grays in the story and treated it as a bright line morality play, a watershed moment in the battle of the sexes — even a justifiable assault on maleness.
In the immediate aftermath of the incident, the perpetrator was branded “the victim,” and the victim “the perpetrator,” strictly along gender lines, despite the fact that she mutilated him while he slept. Mrs. Bobbitt’s defenders insisted her act was justifiable because allegedly he had raped her, but the “rape” was a classic “he said, she said” claim. The public reaction wasn’t just a rush to judgment; it was a 60-meter sprint completed in record time. Before a single scrap of evidence was considered by a jury, the trial was over even before it had begun. Lorena’s devotees arrogated to any woman the right to exact the most gruesome vigilante justice on any “member” of any member of the opposite sex – and due process be damned.
John Bobbitt: Oppressor or False Rape Claim Victim?
The mutilation couldn’t then, and can’t now, be rationally justified on any level. It was not self-defense. Ample evidence showed that both Mr. and Mrs. Bobbitt abused each other during their marriage. There is no evidence that anything stopped either of them from leaving the other. By any measure, Mrs. Bobbitt’s vigilante “justice” didn’t fit the crime, even if Mr. Bobbitt had raped her earlier in the evening, as she claims.
But did Mr. Bobbitt rape his wife? When the legend becomes fact, old cowboys and gender warriors alike insist on printing the legend. In the Bobbitt case, the legend quickly took hold that of course John Bobbitt raped his wife!
The only problem is, the facts don’t support the legend. Mrs. Bobbitt’s version of the facts was the evolving narrative of a woman groping for victimhood. At the time of her arrest, according to the New York Times, she told police: “He always have orgasm and he doesn’t wait for me to have orgasm. He’s selfish. I don’t think it’s fair, so I pulled back the sheets then and I did it.” That was the reason she gave for severing his penis.
Later, however, she claimed she cut her husband in anger after he raped her, and she told a psychiatrist that she cut him “really fast.”
Later, at her own trial, she claimed she couldn’t even remember doing it.
“This was all contrived to strike back at him after he said he was going to leave her,” said Mr. Bobbitt’s counsel, Gregory L. Murphy. “She was acting out a fantasy . . . .” Mel Feit, executive director of the National Center for Men in Brooklyn, might have hit the nail on the head with his explanation for the mutilation. It was the result of teaching “that men are natural oppressors.”
As befits a case where the accuser’s story is a moving target, at his trial for marital sexual abuse, John Bobbitt was acquitted. But that didn’t end the hysteria.
Lorena Bobbitt: ‘National Folk Heroine,’ and ‘Symbol of Innovative Resistance Against Gender Oppression’
From the outset, Lorena Bobbitt was widely regarded in some quarters as a hero. Time Magazine said there was a “ripple of glee that passed through the female population when Lorena Bobbitt struck back.”
Vanity Fair ran a sultry photo spread of Lorena Bobbitt and branded her a “national folk heroine.”
A woman wrote the following to the New York Times:
Prof. Catharine MacKinnon of the University of Michigan and the writer Andrea Dworkin long ago pointed to the institution of marriage as a legal cover for the act of rape and the permanent humiliation of women. Lorena Bobbitt’s life has been a poignant instance of that nightmare, which elicited a bold and courageous act of feminist self-defense. As one who recently returned from a conference of feminist activists in Europe, I can assure readers that the Lorena Bobbitt case has galvanized the women’s movement worldwide in a way the Anita Hill case never did. No feminist is advocating emasculation as the weapon of first choice. And some women question the political prudence of ‘sociosexual vigilantism.’ But whatever the judgment of America’s patriarchal legal system, Lorena Bobbitt is for most feminists no criminal. She is instead a symbol of innovative resistance against gender oppression everywhere.
Another woman said simply: “Every woman I’ve talked to about this says, ‘Way to go!’”
A sexual assault counselor said she didn’t condone the maiming but could “understand it,” and “could sympathize.”
The severance of this 26-year-old loser’s penis somehow became, in the words of that sexual assault counselor, “a critical event in the history of women.” Why? Because “violence is done to women continuously and pervasively. And this is a retaliatory act of great dramatic value . . . .” John Bobbitt was Everyman, and John Bobbitt’s severed penis was, in some weird sense, a sacrificial offering for the collective guilt of all men on the altar of political correctness.
The mainstream media mirrored the glee with scarcely any more restraint. Some writers dubbed the affair a “cautionary tale” for men. The lesson wasn’t that mutilating another human being is never justified; the lesson was that men had better wise up when it comes to how they treat women or they’ll rightly lose their dicks.
One columnist wrote: “Personally, I’m for both feminism and nonviolence. I admire the male body and prefer to find the penis attached to it rather than having to root around in vacant lots with Ziploc bag in hand. But I’m not willing to wait another decade or two for gender peace to prevail. And if a fellow insists on using his penis as a weapon, I say that, one way or another, he ought to be swiftly disarmed.” (That comment is all the more chilling since we are at the two decade mark referenced by the writer.)
Then there was celebrated columnist Ellen Goodman, Radcliffe grad and Pulitzer Prize winner, one of the darlings of the media whose column appeared in hundreds newspapers across the nation and who, on the the entitlement and privilege scale, was a “ten” to John Bobbitt’s “one.” Ellen Goodman took time out from polishing the awards on her mantel to make this working class putz her personal piñata.
Ms. Goodman, of course, refused to come out and condone the mutilation, but she certainly could “explain” both the mutilation and the celebratory reaction to it. Ms. Goodman concluded that this story became a national sensation only because a woman finally fought back. “Last year,” she declared, “the police blotter was full of abused and battered wives — an almost unilateral massacre.” Now, Ms. Goodman gushed, men “see a dangerous enemy where there was once a victim.” And the men squirming at the thought of being Bobbittized? “If women smile at men who squirm, maybe it’s at that recognition of power.”
Goodman apparently belonged to the Church of Gender Get-Even-ism: in April 1997, the late Michael Kennedy’s 16-year marriage publicly collapsed amid accusations that he had had an affair with the family baby sitter, allegedly beginning when she was just 14. It was never proven he had sex with her before she was 16, the age of consent in his jurisdiction, and criminal charges were not pressed for statutory rape. Here was Ellen Goodman’s take: “So far the most widespread fallout of the so-called Baby Sitter Affair has been a nervousness on the part of perfectly respectable men. With lechery all across the media, they don’t even want to get in the car with the sitter. Assorted fathers in my sample have concluded (1) that every 15-year-old regards him as a potential predator or (2) that if his hand lingers too long while passing out the money, he’ll be accused of making a pass.” Goodman concluded, in words a little too reminiscent of Catherine Comins’ “men unjustly accused can sometimes gain from the experience”: “I don’t mind men getting a little nervous,” Goodman bubbled. “It kind of balances things out.” That’s Ellen Goodman.
It is well to note that none of the writers applauding penile mutilation would applaud any other type of brutal vigilante justice, for any other type of crime. Yet vigilante justice directed at the penis of some below average guy was heralded with a giddy exultation. The fact that purportedly enlightened publications were quietly, and sometimes not so quietly, rooting for Mrs. Bobbitt even before a single fact was adjudicated or a scrap of evidence admitted at trial is nothing short of astounding, puzzling, and frightening, all at once.
Why did Mr. Bobbitt deserve this rush to judgment? Thomas Sowell didn’t have Mr. Bobbitt in mind when he wrote the following, but he should have: “Information or allegations reflecting negatively on individuals or groups seen less sympathetically by the intelligentsia pass rapidly into the public domain with little scrutiny and much publicity.” Sowell cited two of the more prominent hoaxes in recent history as evidence for this point: the alleged gang rapes of black women by white men in the Tawana Brawley and Duke lacrosse cases.
The Politics of Hate
But some columnists couldn’t accept that women in general embraced the glee over the mutilation. Syndicated columnist Mona Charen explained that the case gripped the media because “they [media pundits] really believe that most women feel that way deep down.” But Ms. Charen recognized how utterly twisted all of it was. If they “are seething with such hatred for men, that is evidence of a politics bordering on pathology.” She continued: “To see the mutilation of a man’s body as a political act and to signal secret approval and a vicarious thrill . . . truly deserves the label ‘the politics of hate.’”
Charen found the nation’s obsession with the mutilation “bizarre, abnormal and sexist to boot.” It would be impossible to disagree with Ms. Charen’s observation about reversing the genders: “If a woman were similarly wounded by a man, no one would treat it with ghoulish humor. Men are evidently fair game.”
Dr. Charles Krauthammer, the intellectual firepower of American conservatism (even Bill Clinton once called him a “brilliant man”), chimed in and noted that the hypothetical where the genders were reversed “would not have the weight of feminist rage behind it.”
Newsweek said, tongue in cheek: “Feminists have a cutting-edge sense of humor…but only if it’s directed at men.”
Even when Mr. Bobbitt was found not guilty of marital rape, that didn’t change the view of Lorena’s devotees that, of course, he was really guilty. Kim Gandy of NOW said the verdict “discourages women and gives men a free ride in marital rape cases.” It never occurred to Gandy that John Bobbitt might not have raped his wife.
The Lorena Bobbitt Trial: Things Get Really Nutty
Finally, it was time for Mrs. Bobbitt’s trial for maliciously wounding her husband. Much of the nation, and beyond, watched intently with sympathies split largely along gender lines. In Ecuador, Lorena Bobbitt’s home country, the National Feminist Association called several news organizations to announce that if Mrs. Bobbitt went to prison for mutilating her husband, 100 innocent American men would be castrated (it is not clear if they really meant “castration,” which generally means removal of the testicles, or if they meant they would slice off 100 innocent penises). The organization also staged a large protest outside the U.S. consulate. This was kooky, outlier stuff, for sure, but what was going on in the mainstream was nutty enough even without it.
The Lorena Bobbitt trial was a mini-feminist Woodstock. A carnival atmosphere swept over Manassas, where it was conducted. A woman sold homemade, penis-shaped white chocolates outside the courthouse. T-shirts were hawked that said “Revenge — how sweet it is,” and “Manassas: A Cut Above.” Some feminists sold buttons that read: “LORENA BOBBITT FOR SURGEON GENERAL.” Disc jockeys handed out “Slice” soda pop and cocktail wieners “with lots of ketchup.”
Hundreds of Lorena Bobbitt supporters cheered their champion outside the courthouse. When the man she mutilated — the real victim — walked outside, he was greeted with boos and whistles, but he stoically showed no reaction. He took it like a man.
Mrs. Bobbitt’s self-defense claim — that she was justified in maiming a sleeping man — would be laughable in any context outside feminist jurisprudence. Here’s what Newsweek said about it:
“. . . the traditional definition of self-defense wasn’t enough for radical feminists. And so in the 1970s, feminist psychologist Lenore Walker conceived the ‘battered-woman syndrome.’ Women beaten by their mates, she claimed, are so demoralized that they become too helpless to leave or to take steps to help themselves. They become convinced their only option to stop the abuse is to kill the abuser. So even if the woman is in no physical danger at the time of the killing, she’s defending herself against future beatings. Get it? Because men supposedly have so much power over women in our society, women should be given the powers of judge, jury and executioner.
“Ideas–especially seminal ideas such as these–have consequences. In 1991, the governors of Ohio and Maryland commuted the sentences of a number of jailed women who had killed or assaulted their mates because they claimed to have been victims of battered-woman syndrome. But reporters turned up embarrassing evidence indicating that 15 of the 25 women freed in Ohio had not been physically abused. Six, they said, had talked about killing their boyfriends or husbands, in some cases months before doing so; two had tracked down and killed husbands from whom they were separated. If they were capable of that much premeditation, they were certainly capable of picking up and leaving.”
The female prosecutor kicked off the trial by telling the jurors, apparently with a straight face, that it was “his penis versus her life.” Charles Krauthammer called that characterization a “stark summation of feminist victimization theory.” Dr. Krauthammer added that the Bobbitt case wasn’t one of self-defense but of revenge. He noted that evidence of self-defense, improper though it was, came in quite handy for Lorena Bobbitt because it allowed her to introduce “the most lurid allegations of sexual abuse.” The trial made the Bobbitt marriage “one of the most highly publicized and minutely scrutinized ever,” said the New York Times.
One of Lorena’s former co-workers testified that Lorena once said she would chop off her husband’s dick if he cheated on her. Witnesses testified that Lorena was mean, violent, and subject to jealous, unpredictable physical attacks.
In the end, the jury found Lorena Bobbitt not guilty of malicious wounding — not because she didn’t do, and not because she had a right to do — but by reason of insanity. They committed her to a mental health facility for 45 days for observation. The New York Times reported that “a gasp went up among her supporters in the courtroom.”
It is well to note that until relatively recently, many states punished rape with the death penalty. While many men and boys have been put to death for rape, a woman who sliced off her sleeping husband’s penis got 45 days of observation in a nice, clean hospital.
Whatever this was, it was not justice.
The verdict elicited the predictable response. Self-described feminists cheered and gave each other high fives that a woman was permitted to get away with what now literally, and officially, could be called an insane act. Kim Gandy, executive vice president of the National Organization for Women, summed up the position for the lunatic fringe, which in this case seemed to comprise a regrettably large segment of the nation’s population: “We’re glad the jury rejected the twisted argument that a battered woman should be locked up in a prison cell.” Ms. Gandy used the verdict as the occasion to push one of her pet projects: “. . . this whole saga drives home the need for swift passage of a comprehensive version of the Violence Against Women Act . . . .”
In Lorena Bobbitt’s hometown of Bucay, Ecuador, hundreds took to the streets, cheering and firing shots into the air the way joyous fans do when their team wins the World Cup or the Super Bowl.
The New York Times chimed in, ever so delicately: “[I]n this case,” the Times pontificated, “the jury can be forgiven for finding a reason to excuse Mrs. Bobbitt’s brutality . . . .” It also noted: “. . . perhaps the verdict will indeed make some abusive men think twice before they strike again.” But, the Times refused to go so far as to invite every self-anointed victim to resort to retaliation: “. . . violence cannot be the standard answer to violence.” If violence can’t be the “standard” answer, this suggests that, sometimes, violence is OK, and presumably that “sometimes” includes any time it is done to a penis by a self-anointed wronged woman.
But Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, the voice of reason, said violence is not OK. Mrs. Bobbitt “pulled the wool over the jury’s eyes,” Prof. Dershowitz said, by claiming that abuse left her unable to take responsibility for her actions. He called her a “feminist Dirty Harry.” The “abuse excuse,” Dershowitz explained, “is dangerous to the very tenets of democracy, which presuppose personal accountability for choices and actions.”
Mona Charen, likewise, was in no mood to celebrate. She knew that the reaction of feminists, and of too many women, was as wrong as can be: “Rarely have I been as ashamed of my sex as I have been in the aftermath of the Lorena Bobbitt verdict.”
The brilliant Charles Krauthammer, a Harvard educated psychiatrist before becoming a political pundit, said it best: this verdict took “political correctness to its ultimate extreme, to the point where for those who claim politically correct victimization, the laws no longer apply.”
“Politically correct victimization” sums up the entire affair.
Legacy
The Bobbitt affair ripped off an ugly scab and exposed an oozing pus on gender relations in America. The principal legacy of the Bobbitt affair might have been to “empower” women by insisting that they are so powerless that they are entitled to ignore the law. But the more the gender warriors insisted that women are powerless, the more they underscored that women aren’t men’s equals.
A more immediate impact was that copycat crimes cropped up and continue to crop up to this day, including the crime that led to the Brigitte Harris trial, where a young woman admitted to researching the Bobbitt case before severing her allegedly abusive father’s penis. Ms. Harris made sure to burn the purportedly offending appendage to avoid Mrs. Bobbitt’s mistake that allowed John Bobbitt to be reunited with his organ. Ms. Harris’ father died in the ordeal, so his side of the story will never be known. (At the young woman’s trial, the jurors convicted her of second degree manslaughter and not murder, which prompted the judge to chide the jurors for elevating their sympathies over the law.)
John Bobbitt was no saint, and there was plenty of evidence that he abused his wife during the course of their marriage – just as there was ample evidence that she abused him. That changes nothing. The brutal act of mutilation, and the depraved reaction of gender warriors, the mainstream media, and, frankly, too many others, cannot be justified, or respected, on any reasonable, logical, moral, or other level. The celebratory reaction and tolerance for this most vicious act of vengeance was morally grotesque and seemed largely the product of fear-mongering about men as natural oppressors. It was an all too predictable response to the systematic maligning of a gender over the course of several decades.
Following the mutilation, men, as a class, were exposed to a disdain many had not even known existed, and they didn’t know how to react to it. But men’s bewilderment was understandable. They didn’t realize that they were “all” rapists. Nor did anyone bother to explain to them that they were the beneficiaries of a “patriarchy” that made them undeservedly privileged. That included men who, by any rational standard, were not privileged, like Mr. Bobbitt. You see, most men were too busy working to make ends meet, often to support the very people who actually believed those loony things. So when women shamefully applauded the vile mutilation of another human being — a man who was not privileged, or smart, or wealthy, or lucky — all that men could muster in the face of this fusillade of misandry was a muffled and chivalrous grumble.
In the years since the Bobbitt affair, it has become even more common for gender warriors to reduce masculinity to vile caricature and to pass off outlier attributes as “cultural norms” of maleness. By the same token, since that awful June night in 1993, the Internet has exposed countless men and women to an ongoing battle of the sexes that they didn’t even know was being waged. If something like the Bobbitt case happened today, would it be met with a different reaction? Would it bring to the front burner the issues of female-on-male domestic violence and false rape claims? No one can say for certain, but my guess is it would. If it happened today, the debate would be far more heated, and men would actually answer the bell instead of sitting on a stool in a corner of the ring, allowing the maleness-is-broken crowd to win by default.
Source:click here
This is what helped me become an MRA,this is what cemented it. I was sickened by the reaction of the country at the time. It was just inexcusable.
Thank you Wall Street Journal
Sex, Lies and the War on Men
The rights of the accused are under vicious attack..
By JAMES TARANTO
A massive twit-storm washed over your humble columnist yesterday, set off by our Wall Street Journal op-ed defending an Obama nominee and the rights of criminal defendants. To recap briefly: Sen. Claire McCaskill has placed a "permanent hold" on the nomination of Gen. Susan Helms to be vice commander of the Air Force Space Command. McCaskill is punishing Helms for having granted clemency to an officer under her command, Capt. Matthew Herrera, who was convicted of aggravated sexual assault.
We reviewed the facts and concluded that Helms was correct in holding that the prosecution case was so weak as to make the conviction unjust. (Herrera did not escape punishment: He pleaded guilty to an "indecent act" and was involuntarily discharged from the service.)
Our argument infuriated feminists, yielding hundreds of tweets and perhaps a dozen posts on various leftist websites. Particularly noteworthy was a tweet from @Invisible_War, which promotes a documentary described as "a groundbreaking investigation into the epidemic of rape in the US military." The tweet read: "Appalling: @WSJ's @jamestaranto thinks we're criminalizing male sexuality by prosecuting military rape."
That is an utter falsehood. Our column discussed sexual assault but made no specific mention of rape, a distinct and more serious offense under military law. Herrera was not accused of rape. We sent a corrective tweet to @Invisible_War, but no correction has been forthcoming. Readers are left to draw their own inferences as to the film's credibility.
The falsehood that we were somehow defending rapists was propagated widely. At Salon, Katie McDonough published a piece titled "Five Easy Steps for Becoming a Rape Apologist: James Taranto's editorial provides a handy guide for blaming the victim." (Amusingly, McDonough faults us in Step 3 for using the "gendered" word "histrionic." She must imagine that it has an etymological commonality with "hysterical." In fact they come from different languages: hystera is Greek for "womb," but histrio is Latin for "actor." Remember when that municipal worker in the District of Columbia got fired for saying "niggardly," which a coworker mistook for a racial slur?)
Some of the comments were just abusive. At the website of Cosmopolitan magazine, Natasha Burton called us a "freaking jackass." Victoria Lee tweeted: "why is it always guys who look like Taranto, the ones who know crap about women, ... try 2talk abt women." We contrasted that tweet with one from Jessica Valenti (who was not referring to us): "Calling a feminist 'ugly' is generally the first response of humdrum misogynists and the last resort of covert ones."
Sauce for the goose, we suppose. (Though we now need a gender-specific phrase for an argumentum ad hominem against a man, the male equivalent of the argumentum ad feminam.) But then Lauren Rankin replied: "good god, man. that's not a comment on your attractiveness; it's a comment on your white, male privilege." Rankin thinks she's defending Lee by construing her comment as racist.
Best of the Web Today columnist James Taranto on Lt. General Susan Helms, a victim of Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill's war on men. Photos: AJ Mast
The feminist website Jezebel featured a piece by Katie Baker (last seen lashing out at Susan Patton) calling us "a prolific woman-hating troll," "the worst" and, for good measure, "THE WORST." We'll give her "prolific." Then she wrote: "I'm not interested in engaging with Taranto, because he's a cockroach." As we've noted before, describing one's adversaries as vermin is a rhetorical trope of the genocidaire.
All this viciousness was in the service of denying that there is, as we wrote in yesterday's article, a "war on men." Well, imagine if a prominent feminist journalist wrote about the "war on women" and dozens of conservative male writers responded by subjecting her to similar verbal abuse. Would that not be prima facie evidence that she was on to something? If the answer is yes--and we'd say it is--then either the same is true in our case or the sexes aren't equal. (Select one or both of the above.)
We can take the abuse. In fact, in this instance we delight in it, not only because we see the humor but because it proves us right.
But the underlying subject matter is far from funny. The objective of these ideologues is to destroy the lives of men. Some such men are serious criminals who deserve severe punishment. But others are victims of false accusations or overzealous prosecutors. Some were involved in ambiguous situations in which a fair trial cannot establish their guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Herrera clearly fell into at least that last category.
Everyone accused of a crime, even the guilty, is entitled to the basic protections of due process, including the presumption of innocence, the right to a fair trial, and the right to appeal a guilty verdict.
One way of responding to our op-ed would have been to concede that Taranto has a point about the Herrera case and McCaskill's treatment of Helms, but to argue that sexual assault in the military is nevertheless a serious problem that requires new administrative or legal remedies.
We can imagine being persuaded to agree with such an argument. But we haven't seen anybody make it. The tweets and articles quoted above are typical of the response from the feminist left. The few who've deigned to discuss the facts of the case at all--Slate's Amanda Marcotte and TalkingPointsMemo's Catherine Thompson among them--have distorted them beyond recognition, obscuring the questions about the credibility of Herrera's accuser that led Helms to reject the court-martial verdict of guilty.
This appetite for punishment regardless of facts, this contempt for the rights of the accused, is worthy of a lynch mob. That is an inflammatory analogy, but we employ it advisedly. The victims of lynching were not infrequently men accused of sexual violations.
Source:here
It's about time someone told the truth and the fact he pissed off the feminazis too is just great. I'm going to leave some positive comments on the Wall Street Journal page. Come join me.
The rights of the accused are under vicious attack..
By JAMES TARANTO
A massive twit-storm washed over your humble columnist yesterday, set off by our Wall Street Journal op-ed defending an Obama nominee and the rights of criminal defendants. To recap briefly: Sen. Claire McCaskill has placed a "permanent hold" on the nomination of Gen. Susan Helms to be vice commander of the Air Force Space Command. McCaskill is punishing Helms for having granted clemency to an officer under her command, Capt. Matthew Herrera, who was convicted of aggravated sexual assault.
We reviewed the facts and concluded that Helms was correct in holding that the prosecution case was so weak as to make the conviction unjust. (Herrera did not escape punishment: He pleaded guilty to an "indecent act" and was involuntarily discharged from the service.)
Our argument infuriated feminists, yielding hundreds of tweets and perhaps a dozen posts on various leftist websites. Particularly noteworthy was a tweet from @Invisible_War, which promotes a documentary described as "a groundbreaking investigation into the epidemic of rape in the US military." The tweet read: "Appalling: @WSJ's @jamestaranto thinks we're criminalizing male sexuality by prosecuting military rape."
That is an utter falsehood. Our column discussed sexual assault but made no specific mention of rape, a distinct and more serious offense under military law. Herrera was not accused of rape. We sent a corrective tweet to @Invisible_War, but no correction has been forthcoming. Readers are left to draw their own inferences as to the film's credibility.
The falsehood that we were somehow defending rapists was propagated widely. At Salon, Katie McDonough published a piece titled "Five Easy Steps for Becoming a Rape Apologist: James Taranto's editorial provides a handy guide for blaming the victim." (Amusingly, McDonough faults us in Step 3 for using the "gendered" word "histrionic." She must imagine that it has an etymological commonality with "hysterical." In fact they come from different languages: hystera is Greek for "womb," but histrio is Latin for "actor." Remember when that municipal worker in the District of Columbia got fired for saying "niggardly," which a coworker mistook for a racial slur?)
Some of the comments were just abusive. At the website of Cosmopolitan magazine, Natasha Burton called us a "freaking jackass." Victoria Lee tweeted: "why is it always guys who look like Taranto, the ones who know crap about women, ... try 2talk abt women." We contrasted that tweet with one from Jessica Valenti (who was not referring to us): "Calling a feminist 'ugly' is generally the first response of humdrum misogynists and the last resort of covert ones."
Sauce for the goose, we suppose. (Though we now need a gender-specific phrase for an argumentum ad hominem against a man, the male equivalent of the argumentum ad feminam.) But then Lauren Rankin replied: "good god, man. that's not a comment on your attractiveness; it's a comment on your white, male privilege." Rankin thinks she's defending Lee by construing her comment as racist.
Best of the Web Today columnist James Taranto on Lt. General Susan Helms, a victim of Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill's war on men. Photos: AJ Mast
The feminist website Jezebel featured a piece by Katie Baker (last seen lashing out at Susan Patton) calling us "a prolific woman-hating troll," "the worst" and, for good measure, "THE WORST." We'll give her "prolific." Then she wrote: "I'm not interested in engaging with Taranto, because he's a cockroach." As we've noted before, describing one's adversaries as vermin is a rhetorical trope of the genocidaire.
All this viciousness was in the service of denying that there is, as we wrote in yesterday's article, a "war on men." Well, imagine if a prominent feminist journalist wrote about the "war on women" and dozens of conservative male writers responded by subjecting her to similar verbal abuse. Would that not be prima facie evidence that she was on to something? If the answer is yes--and we'd say it is--then either the same is true in our case or the sexes aren't equal. (Select one or both of the above.)
We can take the abuse. In fact, in this instance we delight in it, not only because we see the humor but because it proves us right.
But the underlying subject matter is far from funny. The objective of these ideologues is to destroy the lives of men. Some such men are serious criminals who deserve severe punishment. But others are victims of false accusations or overzealous prosecutors. Some were involved in ambiguous situations in which a fair trial cannot establish their guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Herrera clearly fell into at least that last category.
Everyone accused of a crime, even the guilty, is entitled to the basic protections of due process, including the presumption of innocence, the right to a fair trial, and the right to appeal a guilty verdict.
One way of responding to our op-ed would have been to concede that Taranto has a point about the Herrera case and McCaskill's treatment of Helms, but to argue that sexual assault in the military is nevertheless a serious problem that requires new administrative or legal remedies.
We can imagine being persuaded to agree with such an argument. But we haven't seen anybody make it. The tweets and articles quoted above are typical of the response from the feminist left. The few who've deigned to discuss the facts of the case at all--Slate's Amanda Marcotte and TalkingPointsMemo's Catherine Thompson among them--have distorted them beyond recognition, obscuring the questions about the credibility of Herrera's accuser that led Helms to reject the court-martial verdict of guilty.
This appetite for punishment regardless of facts, this contempt for the rights of the accused, is worthy of a lynch mob. That is an inflammatory analogy, but we employ it advisedly. The victims of lynching were not infrequently men accused of sexual violations.
Source:here
It's about time someone told the truth and the fact he pissed off the feminazis too is just great. I'm going to leave some positive comments on the Wall Street Journal page. Come join me.
Wednesday, June 19, 2013
Protest prosecutor misconduct
From SAVE Services:
Over-criminalization is a hot-topic in America. And for good reason. Last week we told you about the Center for Prosecutor Integrity's recent survey on the criminal justice system, where two-fifths (42.8%) of the respondents said they believe that prosecutor misconduct is widespread.
We learned that 71.4% believe most cases of prosecutor misconduct are kept hidden from the public. And 73.5% believe prosecutors who commit misconduct are almost never punished. Now it's time to do something about that.
Contact your state lawmakers today, and ask that they put effort towards ending over-prosecution.
Thank you for joining our efforts to restore confidence in America's criminal justice system.
teri
Teri Stoddard, Program Director
Stop Abusive and Violent Environments www.saveservices.org
Over-criminalization is a hot-topic in America. And for good reason. Last week we told you about the Center for Prosecutor Integrity's recent survey on the criminal justice system, where two-fifths (42.8%) of the respondents said they believe that prosecutor misconduct is widespread.
We learned that 71.4% believe most cases of prosecutor misconduct are kept hidden from the public. And 73.5% believe prosecutors who commit misconduct are almost never punished. Now it's time to do something about that.
Contact your state lawmakers today, and ask that they put effort towards ending over-prosecution.
Thank you for joining our efforts to restore confidence in America's criminal justice system.
teri
Teri Stoddard, Program Director
Stop Abusive and Violent Environments www.saveservices.org
Petition for men and masculinities program at NYU Stony Brook
The State University of New York at Stony Brook received a grant to inaugurate a center for the study of men and masculinities. The advisory board for this center consists of six women and four men.
No womens' programs of any kind permit male dominance of any type on their advisory boards, nor do they select men with a track record of antagonism toward and mockery of women and womens' issues.
Stony Brook's current board is stacked with feminists, including the icon Gloria Steinem. Google "Feminist Boot Camp" to see why a majority of feminists on a mens program advisory board is ill-conceived; unless that mens program is intended to be an example of false advertising in the first place.
We, the undersigned, urge the administration at Stony Brook University to create a more balanced advisory board for its new mens program, one that consists of five men and five women.
Mike Kimmel is stacking the advisory board of his new masters degree program with feminist grandmas.
Please check out our petition and pass it on. Comments are what we want! Thanks always!
Regards,
Robin
petition
These feminist grandmas are gloria steinem and jane fonda. Do you want anything to do with them? I don't. Sign the petition.
No womens' programs of any kind permit male dominance of any type on their advisory boards, nor do they select men with a track record of antagonism toward and mockery of women and womens' issues.
Stony Brook's current board is stacked with feminists, including the icon Gloria Steinem. Google "Feminist Boot Camp" to see why a majority of feminists on a mens program advisory board is ill-conceived; unless that mens program is intended to be an example of false advertising in the first place.
We, the undersigned, urge the administration at Stony Brook University to create a more balanced advisory board for its new mens program, one that consists of five men and five women.
Mike Kimmel is stacking the advisory board of his new masters degree program with feminist grandmas.
Please check out our petition and pass it on. Comments are what we want! Thanks always!
Regards,
Robin
petition
These feminist grandmas are gloria steinem and jane fonda. Do you want anything to do with them? I don't. Sign the petition.
Tuesday, June 18, 2013
Dan Perrins' article
I was reading Dan Perrins' University of Toronto Stu-dunces Union At it Again when I read the following:
Do we attract males who have been hurt and abused by a corrupt misandric society?
I’d have to agree we sometimes do have a disturbed individual or two come by and try to join but they are ousted from our ranks and urged to seek the medical help they desperately need.
That sounds like the old feminist shaming tactic:
You need help for your hatred of women. You're a loser.
It's really weird they are recommending psychiatry because in another one of their articles they say the field of psychology is overran with feminists. So if a young man is victimized by a misandric society and he is angry and hateful toward his oppressors then not only will he not be welcomed in Elam's group but that they will turn him over to feminist psychologists and psychiatrists to victimize him further. I wonder if occured to Elam and the others at AVFM that what they are doing is playing into the feminists hands. Does Perrins or any one else think that the feminists are going to purge the misandrists from their ranks? If he thinks that I have some beachfront property in Nevada he may be interested in. I wonder if they are doing this to appease the women giving lip service to men's rights. It seems that when women join men's groups the men put on the shining armor and play the white knight game. White knights for women,white sheets against other men.
Do we attract males who have been hurt and abused by a corrupt misandric society?
I’d have to agree we sometimes do have a disturbed individual or two come by and try to join but they are ousted from our ranks and urged to seek the medical help they desperately need.
That sounds like the old feminist shaming tactic:
You need help for your hatred of women. You're a loser.
It's really weird they are recommending psychiatry because in another one of their articles they say the field of psychology is overran with feminists. So if a young man is victimized by a misandric society and he is angry and hateful toward his oppressors then not only will he not be welcomed in Elam's group but that they will turn him over to feminist psychologists and psychiatrists to victimize him further. I wonder if occured to Elam and the others at AVFM that what they are doing is playing into the feminists hands. Does Perrins or any one else think that the feminists are going to purge the misandrists from their ranks? If he thinks that I have some beachfront property in Nevada he may be interested in. I wonder if they are doing this to appease the women giving lip service to men's rights. It seems that when women join men's groups the men put on the shining armor and play the white knight game. White knights for women,white sheets against other men.
Saturday, June 15, 2013
Wanetta Gibson is nailed for $2.6 million by school board
Long Beach Unified wins judgment against accuser in false rape case against Brian Banks
By Greg Mellen
6/14/2013
WANETTA-GIBSON-400LOS ANGELES – The Long Beach Unified School District won a $2.6 million default judgment against a woman whose false rape allegation in 2002 cost the school district money and landed a fellow student in jail.
Although Wanetta Gibson has not appeared in court throughout the proceedings and her whereabouts were not know, the ruling allows the school district to recoup the money through her future wages and property.
Gibson was a student at Long Beach Poly High when she first sued the district for having lax security and an unsafe environment after she accused Brian Banks, a promising football star, of rape.
Gibson later recanted the rape claim on tape, paving the way for Banks’ exoneration of the charge – however, he had already served more than five years in prison.
Banks earlier this year signed a contract to play football for the Atlanta Falcons. He was unavailable for comment.
According to the school district, the judgment recoups a $750,000 settlement paid to Gibson and also includes attorney’s fees, interest and $1 million in punitive damages.
“The court recognizes that our school district was a victim in this case,” Long Beach Unified Superintendent Christopher J. Steinhauser said.
“This judgment demonstrates that when people attempt to defraud our school system, they will feel the full force of the law.”
When the school district first announced it was suing Gibson, district spokesman Chris Eftychiou said “It is important to convey that the school board isn’t going to sit idly by if someone tries to defraud it of taxpayer resources.”
Lawyers from the school district were unable to locate Gibson, who in 2007 was awarded the settlement.
The Press-Telegram reported initially that Gibson received $750,000 from a $1.5 million overall settlement.
When Banks was exonerated in May 2012, the school district refused comment on whether it would pursue Gibson for damages.
The district has since filed a complaint in Long Beach Superior Court and a summons against Gibson.
In January, when Gibson could not be found, an order for publication was granted, meaning Gibson could be served via a public announcement.
Legal experts debated whether a judgment would be won from Gibson if she had adequate representation.
The statute for limitations on fraud is three years from when it is discovered; it is unclear whether the clock should begin when Gibson recanted on tape, or whether it could have been discovered earlier with reasonable diligence.
Gibson was also a juvenile when she first accused Banks, but not when she received the award.
Court records show Gibson has had a tumultuous life since she won the settlement, with a number of claims lodged by and against her in civil litigation, including temporary restraining orders and domestic violence charges.
According to news reports, Gibson and her children have received public assistance and she has been sued by the county for child support.
After Banks’ release from prison, Gibson sent him a “friend” request on Facebook and was seeking to “let bygones be bygones.”
Private investigator Freddie Parish, whose son played football with Banks at Poly, was able to elicit the recantation on audio and videotape from Gibson, who was unavailable for comment.
In the tape, which has been widely circulated since Banks was exonerated in May 2012, Gibson gives one-word “no” answers when Parish asks her if she was raped or kidnapped. In a separate interview, Gibson said she was hesitant to help Banks when he asked for her help.
“I will go through with helping you, but all that money they gave us, I mean, gave me, I don’t want to have to pay it back, all of it, because that would take a long time,” Gibson said.
Source:click here
Poetic fucking justice. That is what I say. Now throw this bitch in prison so she knows how it feels. Fucking worthless cunt. I'm glad she got nailed and will have her future earnings garnished. Maybe they should give the money to Brian Banks since Gibson turned his life upside down.
Thursday, June 13, 2013
SAVE goes after Mary N. Kellett
There is a petition to Governor Paul LaPage of Maine urging him to hold rogue ADA Mary N. Kellett accountable for the her misandric crimes. She has deliberately trampled on the rights of men and now she has to account for it. Kellett is someone who not only should be permenantly disbarred she should also be imprisoned for decades. She raped these men and used the law to do it. She is a rapist and should do what they sentence rapists to.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)